Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Monday December 09 2019, @11:59PM   Printer-friendly
from the interesting-development dept.

Submitted via IRC for chromas

The Pirate Bay is Trialing High-Quality Video Streaming Links - TorrentFreak

Developments over the past few days indicate that The Pirate Bay may about to fully launch a brand new feature. In addition to traditional magnet links, many titles now feature a subtle 'B' button which allow users to stream movies and TV shows directly in the browser on a new site called BayStream.

The Pirate Bay is well known for its huge database of magnet links which allow users to download most types of content imaginable.

Over the past few days, however, the platform has been adding a brand new feature that will please those who prefer to access movies and TV shows instantly, rather than waiting for them to download.

As the image below shows, in addition to the familiar magnet and trusted uploader icons displayed alongside video and TV show releases, the site also features a small orange ‘B’ graphic.

In some cases (but currently not all), pressing these buttons when they appear next to a video release diverts users to a new platform called BayStream. Here, the chosen content can be streamed directly in the browser using a YouTube-style player interface.

Loading times appear swift when the content is actually available and as the screenshot below shows, the material appears to be sourced, at least in some cases, from torrent releases.


Original Submission

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
(1)
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @12:23AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @12:23AM (#930366)

    In Somalia and North Korea.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday December 10 2019, @12:28AM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday December 10 2019, @12:28AM (#930369) Journal

    I noticed this earlier. There are zillions of random streaming sites [torrentfreak.com], hosted from some locations out of reach of MAFIAA, and apparently making bank from ads despite the prevalence of adblockers. TPB might as well throw their hat into the ring. Assuming it is even run by them, as TFA notes.

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @12:48AM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @12:48AM (#930385)

    Going anonymous because.....

    I noticed that on Netflix, a show my son likes won't be available after Jan. 1 (Victorious)
    But if I download it, it's available when he wants it! Gee... Pay Netflix for something he wants but cant get or download.....hmmmm....

    I just want to watch WHAT I want WHEN I (my family) want it. I thought Netflix was the place, but here, competition seems to screw with that. Soooooooooo....force me to download.

    Next will be Sam & Cat and Victorious. That's it...make me download them... I dare you! (Dan Schneider...you listening? My son loooves your shows!) Let me PAY you!

      I give people my money and can't watch what I want.
    I give OTHER people my money and can't watch what I want.

    So then I download. I wonder why?

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Tuesday December 10 2019, @12:53AM (4 children)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday December 10 2019, @12:53AM (#930389) Journal

      Dan finally got cancelled [wikipedia.org] after asking for one too many feet pics. But he is still listening [twitter.com].

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @01:01AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @01:01AM (#930393)

        Hmmmm... maybe I'll send him some pics of my feet, lol.

        Still better than Disney's shit kids shows.

          I guess I have to download.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @02:24AM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @02:24AM (#930430)

        What the fucking hell. All I'm getting from that link is this gay shit: "English: Wikipedia is making the site more secure. You are using an old web browser that will not be able to connect to Wikipedia in the future. Please update your device or contact your IT administrator." "We are removing support for insecure TLS protocol versions, specifically TLSv1.0 and TLSv1.1, which your browser software relies on to connect to our sites. This is usually caused by using some ancient browser or user agents like old Android smartphones. Also it could be interference from corporate or personal "Web Security" software which actually downgrades connection security."

        Bunch of Nazis.

        • (Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @03:08AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @03:08AM (#930445)

          "insecure TLS protocol versions, specifically TLSv1.0 and TLSv1.1" [citation needed]

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday December 10 2019, @09:18AM (1 child)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday December 10 2019, @09:18AM (#930497) Journal

      I just want to watch WHAT I want WHEN I (my family) want it.

      Jeez, sounds like a self entitled spoiled brat.
      No wonder free access services have such an appeal to consumers they are streaking on social media.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @02:11PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @02:11PM (#930556)

        While that does sound like a self-entitled spoiled brat if you can get past his sarcasm, you might see his real point.

        He pays for Netflix so he can get shows legally for his son. He looks elsewhere when Netflix pulls it but can't seam to find it. What's left? He was trying to have legal access without copyright issues. He was doing the right thing. In the end the media industry started pushing him to piracy.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday December 10 2019, @03:48AM (5 children)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Tuesday December 10 2019, @03:48AM (#930451) Journal

    It's stunning how quickly the size ramps up with higher resolutions. I must admit that 720p is quite noticeably better than DVD quality (480p). Beyond that, I don't find 1080p much of an improvement over 720p. I've never looked closely at higher resolutions, and can't say whether 4K is worth the wait to download the much larger files on my relatively slow broadband.

    A 2 hour movie at 720p is approximately 1G, which is plenty big for my relatively slow connection. 1080p is about 2G, and from there it gets crazy. 2160p is at least 5G, typically 10G to 20G. On any of these sizes, they could use a very high bitrate, with 7.1 surround sound, and balloon the byte count by at least 5x. Even 720p can take 10G, and as for 2160p, that can be 100G.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @04:13AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @04:13AM (#930458)

      Most shows you won't actually notice a difference from 360p downscales. I watch almost all TV in that now because one hour shows are ~140 meg and half hour around 70-100 megs.

      For reference 720p is 250 meg best case and ~300-600 meg depending on options in h264 format. 1080p can range from 300-1.6gig depending on quality settings. 720p-2160p CAN look much better if you're viewing video with a low amount of motion, but for the majority of content the focus is on the foreground characters and in many the background is faded, which causes the added resolution to provide no improvement in content over lower resolutions. In the case of anime, very few anime have background details requiring the 4x to 16x increase in pixel density, and for most of the ones that do it is writing on signs and other secondary content rather than actual scene details that are important.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @02:37PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @02:37PM (#930572)

        well, i agree that original dragonball doesn't need 1080p to watch, understand and enjoy.
        but for other anime, if you dont watch it in 1080p you're kindda kicking the makers twice: once for not paying them and second for not appreciating their work.
        i get names all wrong all the time but there's these that totally need us to backup/torrent them in 1080p (at least):
        spacebattleship yamoto (my brain keeps reading it yamamoto, lol)
        lot's of studio ghilbi
        knights of sidonia / the new godzilla anime / blame!
        boy and the beast
        FREEDOM
        Harlok spacepirate
        etc.
        some anime is totally worth archiving at high resolution!

      • (Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday December 10 2019, @07:20PM

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday December 10 2019, @07:20PM (#930713) Journal

        720p is a good compromise between quality and file size. New codecs have made it very small, HDD/NAND storage capacity is way up, and average download speed are up. And we still have AV1, H.266, and AV2 coming.

        "4K" and above are useful... for 360-degree VR video.

        --
        [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday December 10 2019, @04:29AM

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday December 10 2019, @04:29AM (#930461) Journal

      I agree that 720p usually looks good enough.

      720p H.265 should be closer to 500-600 MB for 2 hours:

      His Dark Materials s01e01
      torrent/34959182
      Duration = 00:55:28.821
      Filesize = 270 MiB
      Codec info = HEVC Main@L3.1@Main | V_MPEGH/ISO/HEVC
      Resolution = 1280x720

      AV1 should match or improve on that (debate is ongoing). Upcoming H.266 and AV2 will improve on that yet again. The compression improvements may be proportionally greater for larger resolutions like 4K, but 720p can continue to shrink.

      H.265 hardware decode is fairly ubiquitous. Now it's even available on Raspberry Pi.

      What you can do is torrent streaming, where initial parts of the file are downloaded first until enough is available to start playing in VLC. Or you can queue downloads. Slow broadband can do plenty if there is no cap.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @02:22PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @02:22PM (#930568)

      If you have a TV over 50 inches, you will probably start to notice the difference between 720 and 1080. Even with up-scaling, it is very noticeable on my friend's 70 inch TV. I'm not sure where 4K would start to matter (for my eyes) but I suppose somewhere over 80 inches.

  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday December 10 2019, @01:06PM (2 children)

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday December 10 2019, @01:06PM (#930538) Journal

    But the reservoir is dry. That is, there are lots of ways to get content now, but the content is lacking. Hollywood has destroyed so many beloved franchises, so quickly.

    YouTube has had stuff in the past, but now they're changing their algorithm and killing off independent creators.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday December 10 2019, @02:10PM

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday December 10 2019, @02:10PM (#930555) Journal

      IMO, there's no shortage of good content (not just TV/movies, but podcasts, etc). There's enough to watch/listen to 24/7, forever. Finding it is the problem.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @02:20PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @02:20PM (#930562)

      I'm not seeing a lack of good content. I'm seeing the good content getting burred in mediocre content. When I look at Netflix the catalog is mostly B movies, their own content (which generally has pretty good production quality), and a handful of A list content (some of it quite old, but it's still A-list).

      Same thing on Amazon Prime Video, but Amazon acknowledges that Prime Video is really a perk of being a Prime member to get free shipping.

      I'm not in the USA, so no idea about HULU.

      I haven't looked at Disney+ yet, but Disney has a pretty huge catalog of family friendly TV. Remember the old Walt Disney Presents and other anthology series from the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, and into the 90's? Ya, okay so I'm not old enough to remember all of that either. But if you can find it, it was pretty good for whole family viewing.

      HBO seams to have a pretty good catalog. But in my case I can only get it if I also get a collection of utter crap (CraveTV) and add-on HBO.

  • (Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Tuesday December 10 2019, @04:42PM (3 children)

    by jmichaelhudsondotnet (8122) on Tuesday December 10 2019, @04:42PM (#930637) Journal

    Embrace Extend Extinguish

    As useful as TPB is, this seems like a way to poke the bear and get swatted.

    Streaming should not be linked in any legally binding way to torrent trackers, that is outright stupid.

    I can tolerate mining ads and porn ads, but this looks pretty bad.

    They are in the seychelles and a totally opaque organization, should they not already be coopted by spies, they would have to be pretty well heeled to have remained independent until now.

    If it ain't broken don't fix it, TPB serves at the moment a last resort holder of free copyright material that is not available elsewhere, that is a major community role, that someone should maybe consider planning to fill once the tpb age has run its course.

    Here, have a copyright related meme:
    https://archive.is/x5dMp [archive.is]

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Tuesday December 10 2019, @06:41PM (2 children)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday December 10 2019, @06:41PM (#930690) Journal

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay#Projects [wikipedia.org]

      They have done plenty of things on the side. And TPB has changed management at least once. There are other sites [torrentfreak.com] that can accomplish the same purpose, and will do so if TPB kicks the bucket. Running a magnet link torrent site is not particularly hard.

      Streaming sites are "more illegal" than magnet link torrent sites, but it's not clear that TPB even operates BayStream.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @07:05PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @07:05PM (#930704)

        Depends on how they implement it.

        I can conceive of a browser-based application which is part torrent client (not illegal) and part video player (not illegal). The built-in torrent client receives the same magnet hash that regular users already see, but it aggressively prefers to download early sequential chunks until enough of a buffer is built up, and the video player is smart enough to handle/display this kind of buffering.

        Actually I think some torrent clients already do that. So they may just be browserizing existing technologies.

        But it needn't rely on anything more than the currently-available magnets.

        • (Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday December 10 2019, @07:23PM

          by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday December 10 2019, @07:23PM (#930715) Journal

          Torrent streaming has been a thing for years, e.g. uTorrent + VLC. The streaming we're talking about requires centralized hosting of video content, but removes legal liability from (most, if not all) end users since they are not connecting and uploading to a swarm.

          --
          [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(1)