> I don't know how fast your internet is, but I can get an hour-long TV show in 720p in <10 minutes from torrents, and I'm paying $45/month for internet (in America).
For a 2 megabit encoding that would effective DL speeds of 12 megabit, which is impressive. I've never gotten that consistently in the US. I pay $70/month from Comcast and if I start torrenting it doesn't sustain that, I'm not sure if it's throttled or what, or maybe the connection is saturated because I'm in an apartment in mountain view no doubt full of geeks.
> Are they? 2 TB hard drives are now $70 a pop, and who says you have to save everything like a pack rat anyway?
Normals don't buy HDs. The point is this shit can still fill up your HD really quick, which is just a hassle for non-geeks. That is why streaming is such a win for most people.
> They've never been for me. There have always been plenty of seeds, and there has always been a high quality version that has been easy to find (usually because it has the most seeds & snatches).
If you're not searching for the most popular or recent stuff then the quality degrades though. You need to have a variety of torrent trackers in your pocket. You have to have an intuitive filter to avoid the bullshit, and still sometimes you will get shitty encodings or something that's fucked up some way.
Seriously this is a geek hobby. Not necessarily computer geek, it's accessible enough for anyone to geek out on, but it's not a superior user experience to Netflix. The fact that you like the end result better doesn't make this any less true.
For a 2 megabit encoding that would effective DL speeds of 12 megabit, which is impressive. I've never gotten that consistently in the US. I pay $70/month from Comcast and if I start torrenting it doesn't sustain that, I'm not sure if it's throttled or what, or maybe the connection is saturated because I'm in an apartment in mountain view no doubt full of geeks.
> Are they? 2 TB hard drives are now $70 a pop, and who says you have to save everything like a pack rat anyway?
Normals don't buy HDs. The point is this shit can still fill up your HD really quick, which is just a hassle for non-geeks. That is why streaming is such a win for most people.
> They've never been for me. There have always been plenty of seeds, and there has always been a high quality version that has been easy to find (usually because it has the most seeds & snatches).
If you're not searching for the most popular or recent stuff then the quality degrades though. You need to have a variety of torrent trackers in your pocket. You have to have an intuitive filter to avoid the bullshit, and still sometimes you will get shitty encodings or something that's fucked up some way.
Seriously this is a geek hobby. Not necessarily computer geek, it's accessible enough for anyone to geek out on, but it's not a superior user experience to Netflix. The fact that you like the end result better doesn't make this any less true.