Netflix has really good compression though. Torrenting takes hours, makes the internet unusable in the whole house, and the quality is much worse. Netflix just works, even if multiple people are using it. And it goes straight to the TV.
Obviously torrenting requires slightly more "technical" knowledge and procedure than Netflix, but I certainly don't find it slow or low quality, and it has never made my Internet unusable.
And with a bit of extra work (very little, really) you can have a ridiculously nice torrenting setup. I can just add a movie to my IMDb watchlist and it will be on my TV in 15 minutes. And 10GB+ h264 Blu-ray encodes are much better quality than Netflix streaming (I can't vouch for their 4k streams, but I reckon they're still much lower bitrate).
If the best service (which for me involves quality, selection, and convenience) was a paid service, and was somewhat reasonably priced, I suspect I would pay for it. I don't know exactly what "reasonably priced" would mean, but for the record I do buy a decent amount of music, mostly through iTunes, because I think it generally provides a better service than torrenting.
This is all about how much control you want and the tradeoffs.
Streaming allows for instant start and adaptive bandwidth. Downloading means you can play it in whatever way you want, watch just the scenes you like, etc.
Netflix has a great UI for simple watching or you can use a full featured player and tweak lots of settings.
Also there are plenty of ways to play anything on a TV (smart tv with usb drive, network share, chromecast, htpc software, dlna) and you can use settings in your torrent client to limit the download speed if necessary. Some clients even let you torrent the file sequentially so you can start playing/streaming it before it's all finished.
There are so many dead simple technical solutions to this I can't fathom someone on HN not being able to find any of them.
1. QOS on the router, set a lower priority for the ports torrents use
2. Set a bandwidth limit in your torrent client
3. Use a queue / batch system to have them download at 3AM or whatever.
I have no access to the router. Of course I know how to throttle bandwidth or schedule it later. My point is that it's far less convenient than just streaming instantly from Netflix.
You should probably either tune your wireless AP (increase max connections, decrease linger time) or change ISP. Torrenting should absolutely not make the internet unusable.
Your connection is only unusable if you don't cap the upload rate in your torrent client to below your total upload capacity, so that you leave some room for ACKs to be sent.
Or, you can just get a seedbox or VPS with a decent connection close enough to you that you can stream off it. The torrent will be done near instantaneously, and you'll be able to stream in higher quality than Netflix. You can stream full 1080P MKVs at <20Mbps.
Use private trackers as they're much better seeded, as well as the more obvious benefits.
> Torrenting takes hours, makes the internet unusable in the whole house, and the quality is much worse.
You may have results like this, but I would guess that you're in the minority.
For me personally, well seeded 6-8GB movie takes an hour at most, usually less. I can still play online games, watch other streams online, browse, etc. and with other people using the same internet connection in the house doing the same things, and not have any noticeable slowdown. Full 1080p with AAC or DTS audio seems like higher quality to me than what Netflix provides.
The only upside Netflix has is the instant streaming, but if you're patient and can wait a bit for some downloads, or maybe run them at night or while at work, then this is a non-issue. Also you can just connect a TV to your computer.
Torrenting is wicked fast for me. I don't do it very often, but when I do they download way faster than realtime. Usually something like a 22 minute TV episode will be done in 5 minutes.
You’re not wrong! But to continue upon those advocating QoS adjustments: A good router (I love my Apple router) and better Internet (oddly… I can’t complain about the actual Comcast service I have) make these problems go away, assuming you nab a high-enough quality torrent.
Ok I get it, everyone has faster internet than me. All I'm saying is that Netflix works fine even with my apparently shitty internet, but torrenting isn't great. I do torrent stuff occasionally, but it just isn't as good or convenient.
in most torrent clients, you can adjust transfer speeds and number of connections... of course that won't make torrent transfer go faster but it may make your Internet connection usable again.
I pay 15 Euro for 100Mbit with no data caps. Torrenting takes minutes, elementary QoS gets the job done for ensuring browsing is ok and 1080p H.264 is hard to beat.
