Netflix dares UK freetards: Watch new Breaking Bad NOW or torrent it? Video-on-demand service Netflix will give viewers on both sides of the Atlantic near instant access to one of the most anticipated TV drama climaxes: the final episodes of Breaking Bad. Streaming the brand new, hotly awaited programmes to UK fans within hours of their premiere in America is seen as an industry first and a …
> I am still gobsmacked that it was never aired in the UK
To be fair, the trailers (from what I recall) were of some middle aged guy running around in his underpants. Even if the programme was better than that, it was a big turn off chez moi, hence never made it onto the list of "must see's"
I don't think shows are picked for TV based on their adverts. Not to mention when it was on UK TV I don't remember any song or dance about it, when say compared to Suits (which is a good show, but basically chewing gum) were Dave went balls to the wall and helped dispel the myth that had - "if its on Dave its a repeat or shit."
I just question why is such a massive American TV show never made it across, nearly every other other has in some form (The Wire, Mad Men, The Sopranos, Lost etc. etc.) and Breaking Bad is right up there among those other highly recieved shows. Not all those shows were on terrestrial TV but I'd believe most people would have heard of them in some form. r
One of the major channels did air the first season quite a while after it aired in the US. I remember being quite surprised seeing it on when flicking through one time. I thought it was channel 4, but I could be wrong. Whichever one it was certainly didn't make a song and dance about it though. There wasn't much in the way of marketing, and it certainly wasn't on at a premium time.
It is a shame really, as it's considerably better than the majority of TV output of both the UK and the US.
"I would be willing too put money on around 10% using this and the other 90% who have been using the "I don't want to wait" excuse finding some other reason (probably some half baked "moral" reason)."
It's still a worse product.
When it comes down to it the pirates have it pretty much as soon as it's shown, you can download it, watch it on any device you like, recode, transcode, down-res, whatever.
Netflix also edited the early seasons of Breaking Bad for no apparent reason.
These are not justifications for breaking the law, but they are reasons.
That said, this is all very encouraging. Now if they could make it so they have more than half a dozen decent movies to stream too, they might be on to something.
Breaking Bad in 720p was available on Usenet within 5 minutes of the end of the closing credits in America already editied without the ads etc. Do not ask me how I know...
I am sure that I have seen some shows that start to be uploaded slightly before the end of the showing in America. What are they doing editing it as it is being shown? Do they actually watch the show or just capture and edit and watch it later?
>What are they doing editing it as it is being shown?
I bet they using some new fangled technology to do it...
Back in the day we used to have to jump out of our seats and hit the pause button on the Video Cassette Recorder, jump up see, no remotely controlling, not at first. Ah then came the wired controller, wow, you could play and pause, fast wind forward and back, all from the slightly less inconvenient distance away from the VCR unit than actually having to touch it but still having to lift the rump enough to let daylight shine between it and your seat...
And we still call them the 'good' old days? Feck it, I love this 'almost like the future is here now' time and can't wait until we're able to watch TV shows BEFORE THEY'RE EVEN MADE!
Ooops...
*shuffles off back to his cave (which has a newly acquired C64 awaiting a VDU - yeah that's what we called 'em when we used 8-bit computers, and it is an 8-bit computer so it needs a VDU, okay? hmmm? gots a problem with that?! where's me stick and I'll wave it atchye!)*
Actually, doing worldwide releases, or releasing internationally first does seem to be curtailing piracy, even here in Mexico "pirate paradise" land. Of course, the ones that aren't moved to the legal channels are the ones in the poor group, who use an entirely different argument on why they pirate: DVDs cost as much as 3 days of their salary. (And even then I'd argue STOP buying them at all! I'm irked at seeing SKY dishes in slum neighborhoods...)
Agreed, its well past due that the entertainment industry allows fast and easy content delivery for a sane price. In fact, this might have got me to sign up to netflix ( ...if I didn't already have newsgroups subscription, which has been merrily grabbing all my favourite shows automatically for me for quite some time.)
Herin lies the problem. Pirating has become so commonplace in the past few years while the industry sat on its arse. They industry is going to have to pull something very special out of the bag to tempt people back from the dark side.
This, whist a nice gesture, probably won't do it. Its just 9 episodes of one show (albeit a good one).
Until something is universally decent, and gets ALL of the episodes of ALL of the shows you want to watch, its not going to be able to compete with pirating.
Ditto. I hope this works out. I'm not a fan of the show, I did watch about half the first series. Some people will always pirate, but there has to be a decent market out there for people for whom linear TV isn't worth the money, even with a dvr, but where streaming with decent content at a sane price could be a win for everyone. Lets hope this is just the start. I cancelled out TW cable tv package a couple of years back. Replaced an $80 a month charge with netflix at $8, we already had amazon prime for the delivery service and every now and again I will get hulu for a month. Unless the big companies get their act together they are losing money.
It's frustrating to be in a position where you want to pay a fair price for a service, something many others seem to want as well, but you can't legally get it because it might just upset someones little world. If they want their $80 a month back they need to offer something that warrants it.
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You pay a license to watch TV, not to own one. Unplug the aerial, and if you're really that bothered let the nice man in next time he calls round to check. You'll have to put up with the begging/harrasment letters from TVLA though, although I used to send them back with "no junk mail please" written on them.
"You pay a license to watch TV, not to own one. Unplug the aerial, and if you're really that bothered let the nice man in next time he calls round to check"
See here for how to do it properly: http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/topics/what-if-a-tv-licence-is-not-needed-top12/
Personally, I just tell them it's a radio goldfish bowl....
"and if you're really that bothered let the nice man in next time he calls round to check."
No. Never. NEVER let the man in. All they have to do is prove there's a signal on the TV and they have you, no matter how tenuous it may be. They have been observed sticking a finger in the aerial socket and using their own body as an aerial.
Besides, if they see a TV they just assume you're unplugged it while they're around and send court summons. Given it's impossible to prove a negative, once that happens you're screwed. Don't let them in. They have no right of entry unless you invite them.
Like vampires.
Funny that.
Streaming the brand new, hotly awaited programmes to UK fans within hours of their premiere in America is seen as an industry first and a clear move to tackle copyright piracy.
You mean like the Simulticasts on Crunchyroll which airs anime with subs normally an hour or so after the original japanese episode airs?
Because really it's not much of an industry first, more like an industry second.
just watched by blokes in their underpants who live in their Mum's house. Anime, eh? Is it so hard to get a girlfriend?
Boxers not briefs
House in the Cotswolds, mother lives 80-odd miles away
Long term relationship
Two kids (so had sex at least twice)
Anime isn't all tentacle rape and cat eared schoolgirls. It's easy to stereotype when hiding behind that little "anonymous" tick box, eh?
I think a correction is due here... your wife has had sex at least twice. No evidence to show that you had anything to do with it :)
I agree, however anime doe have have an appalling sterotypical image. Often not helped by those that are obsessed with it but the anime medium does lend itself to some very diverse environments and effects to back up the plots and scenes. While this may seem odd, it does compare well to many modern "main stream" movies which have spent tens of millions on effects and "name" actors but entirely forgot about the plot.
It is a first for a program that isn't just watched by blokes in their underpants who live in their Mum's house. Anime, eh? Is it so hard to get a girlfriend?
Nope, anime isn't tentacle rape or kiddy Card Captor stuff. They've got adult stuff (that isn't the aforementioned tentacle rape hentai stuff) which has in fact permeated to mainstream Hollywood stuff. Think The Matrix, but also Elysium which seems to have ripped off Battle Angel Alita. Or Pacific Rim, which is an outright tribute to the Mecha genre and the Godzilla big monster movies.
And um... I live in my own flat since I was 20, long-term relationship with a live-in girlfriend for 4 years. Maybe it is you the one living in Mum's house?
Simply said if your used to acquiring your media from a certain outlet, you'll continue doing so.
What pisses me off is the neanderthal atitude fo network TV execs with regards to online streaming.
E.G. Why cant the BBC, ITV, C4, 5 all have every programme they output accross their channels on catch up? And why are some shows available for longer than others?
E.G. 5 showed Sons of Anarchy S5 earlier this year, and it was on demand 5 - but now they are repeating it on 5usa - it's not. The only outlet I can get it is through purchasing it at a greatly over-inflated price.
I have to wait indefinitely for netflix to get it.
Same goes for Dexter season 7.
I am NOT paying £25 a show for HD versions, nor am I going to pay Sky £50 a month to watch a handful of shows.
Netflix has been going great guns of late, and it's more watched in our house than mainstream telly - Orange is the new Black, house of Cards, the back catalogue for Sons of Anarchy, and they're getting better with their movie selection.
If TV executives got their fingers out their bums then they'd see that there is demand for on-demand at a reasonable price , and they'd get a whole new bunch of people hooked on their shows in the future.
Couldn't agree more. I hate it when a show disappears from iplayer before I expected, and for no reason that I can think of.
However you're not immune to this as a Netflix subscriber. I was 2/3 of the way through rewatching Stargate : SG1 on Netflix when it vanished overnight. Netflix only rent licenses to shows, and so when the license runs out, if they choose not to renew, the show disappears. That said, in general, Netflix's catalogue seems to be pretty stable.
E.G. Why cant the BBC, ITV, C4, 5 all have every programme they output accross their channels on catch up? And why are some shows available for longer than others?
Probably because they don't own the rights to the programs in question outright. Licencing can be quite complicated from what I understand (although why we should pay for the media industry's refusal or inability to make things simpler and more palatable to the viewers is another matter)
I will point out that I have suffered a number of problems recently with the legit streaming services of Iplayer and 4OD.
On linux I cannot access 4OD any more which seems due to their DRM stuff. Some windows systems have been affected too leading to channel 4 putting up a webpage explaining the problem and suggesting a solution (flash problem) which doesnt seem to work in my experience.
Iplayer worked fine until a couple of months back when the audio would continue but the video wouldnt. This happened on both linux and windows.
The legit routes are not always possible and it irritates me as I wont pirate. Especially irritating is the extremely long release gap for some shows from the US to europe. Especially to release for DVD. Surely the aim is to provide this content so people will pay for it? Subscription and disk.
Kudo's to netflix for releasing near to the US release and hopefully it will attract the breaking bad crowd. But there is so much good TV which needs releasing at realistic pace.
I have Sky
I have netflix (well the other half has it)
I have Cineworld unlimited card (as does the other half)
I'm in the UK, so have access to iPlayer, 4oD etc.
I have a nice collection of DVDs
Yet I still torrent. All things that I can watch legally.
Why? Its easier. I don't have to have a live connection to Netflix (and risk my phone's bandwidth limit) to watch a TV show on the train.
I can watch something while recording other channels on sky.
I can watch something that was on TV without having to wait for it to constantly buffer (yes, you can download iPlayer and watch on a PC, but that doesn't work on my tablet)
And I can catch that after credit scene that I missed by leaving when everyone else had at the cinema.
I can watch that DVD where I like.
Like I say, I still have legal access to these films/TV shows, but a torrented download is nicely DRM free and so portable.
Am I still breaking the law?
E.G. Why cant the BBC, ITV, C4, 5 all have every programme they output accross their channels on catch up? And why are some shows available for longer than others?
Blimey. The BBC's been about for a long time, and currently has six or seven channels. Granted, they're not all 24hrs and don't all run original content when they are on. And then there are the radio shows too. But the amount of data they generate and have generated since they started broadcasting is quantified in the FUCKLOADS category, if not closing in on at least a megafuckload. Hosting all that and making an episode of The Archers from the 70's, or Eastenders from May 1994, available on request might cost them a fuckload of cash that they can't afford. When BBC / ITV buy the rights to show a film or TV series they do so for that instance. Repeat showing and making it available for download all costs them money in terms of storage, infrastructure, fees to the distributer etc etc..
The BBC do have a program (not programme) in place to digitise all their content. Making it available to all of use licence fee payers will no doubt come along, but it won't be cheap and it won't be fast.
Also, the BBC make a load of cash from DVDs. Remove that income source and you'll suddenly loose the money to pay for something else
because I can then watch it on platforms NOT blessed by Netflix or LoveFilm and watch it as many times as I want also without hammering my monthly bandwidth total.
I hate it how I can only watch LoveFilm on Kindle Fires or else on platforms that can run that Microsoft Silverlight DRM rubbish.
Never investigated Netflix, but strongly suspect it also won't run on Linux officially either.
@paulc
I can see why people would down vote you because you would choose to pirate, but the unfortunate truth is that by pirating it you do get a better service. The massive reduction in cost and the benefits of watching it on your system with no additional installation nor requiring windows (or an expensive tablet which is not a TV screen by far). I cant help but think that you get the quality of service that the paying customer should get but doesnt. I had to up vote you because you have a solution that works.
RonWheeler, I agree.
Decent broadband speed, but quality isn't there. Audio is really muddy too, and what they class as "HD" means the resolution HD, but then so massively compressed that it looks awful.
Also tried EE's film service which lets you download rather than stream, but 450MB for a 2 hour film is never going to give you DVD quality.
I don't download torrents, and an willing to pay, but until the quality is there I'll stick to buying/renting physical discs.
I'm not sure this is going to change a whole lot. My limited viewpoint sees a lot of downloaders watching their content offline on phones or tablets these days, which Netflix doesn't do much to help.
Sure if you watch your downloads on TV, your broadband is fast enough, your ISP limits allow it and you have a TV that is able to play Netflix then this might be a winner. For everybody else, the download will be a higher bitrate and have 5.1 surround.
...but I've been doing a lot of catching up on Arrested Development. I got hooked a few years ago, on an 18-hour flight from DC to Johannesburg, when I watched every episode they had available on the in-flight video system. Wotta scream. Loved it.
Other than AD, almost all of my movie viewing on Netflix (my wife actually "owns" the account) has been from their "classics" archive, of films made before 1970, mostly old film noir and foreign "art" films and such, and it's a real bear to get to the "classics" without having to scroll through page after page of all the Latest Big Hit Movies which I have absolute-zero interest in.
Their removing upwards of 2000 titles from their system, along with the expanded customer data mining, sure doesn't help things, either.
the main bulk of my torrenting/nzb-ing, isn't to get stuff "for free". It's to get stuff like CSI which is delayed by weeks or months. Although the fact they are ad-free is an added bonus.
Problem is I consider I pay Virgin enough already, otherwise I'd happily pay (say) £5/month to some sort of hub service (a la the PRS) to divvy up amongst content providers.
"At the time of writing the first instalment of series 5b has about 30,000 seeders on the Canadian torrent tracker Isohunt."
To the best of my knowledge, Isohunt is not a torrent tracker. It is a search engine. They do not provide trackers of their own, just allow people to search torrents and view aggregated information from all the trackers they are on.
Does it really take netflix that long to send an episode to their UK servers? Perhaps they should learn from the torrent sites as they don't have any such issues.
I don't watch this show and I live in AU in any case, so this doesn't effect me. I do however think that having to avoid spoilers, in this world of instant global communication, is a frustration which paying customers can do without.
I appreciate that netflix is trying to get this right but this is a case where "nearly" isn't good enough. One friend's facebook update, one post in a forum, and the surprise is spoilt for an eager customer who pays to watch a show rather than torrent it.
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I suspect there be a significant portion that do both.
I have a *cough* friend *cough* that has been a Netlfix subscriber since it became available in the UK, yet, at 11am this morning as soon as he noticed it had been uploaded he proceeded to download the latest ep to a USB stick. Netflix is great at off peak times of day, when no one else is using a broadband connection, and you just want to stick something on the telly., But once it gets to the evening and your bandwidth drops faster than a politician's promise after election day, there's no beating an actual mkv on a usb drive. Now, if Netflix would allow temporary download of its files (a limited quantity for a limited time period, a service similar to an ebook rental service maybe), then it might actually have something almost as good as many pirates are using.
Remember, a lot of pirates are paying customers, certainly paying more than £4.99 a month (they just don't pay the networks!). Networks don't need to give all their content away freely to beat piracy, they just need a reasonably priced alternative that pirates can put their money into instead. The only real choice we have right now is Sky at £50, you're joking right?
I already pay my tv license and a monthly fee to Virgin Media for my telly. Now I have to pay NetFlix to watch Breaking Bad, Sky to watch F1 races live and, next year, BT to watch MotoGP. They can all get lost! I watched Breaking Bad at lunchtime after downloading it when I got up, it was awesome.
I just finished watching the new Breaking Bad episode a few minutes ago, I didn't realise it wasn't broadcast in the UK.
I stopped using the more expensive subscription TV services a few years ago when I still lived in the UK, even when I was a subscriber I downloaded most of my TV programs from the torrents.
I've never watched any TV programs on my computer, I just copy the video files to a USB drive and play them back using one of those small MediaMatchBox stand alone devices. They're perfect and play everything you download regardless of what format it's in. They're so handy I take it with me when I travel and use it in the hotels.
Netflix isn't available here. If it was available I would subscribe to it.
I actually started watching Breaking Bad from S1E01 last night - legally, on Netflix. If the last few episodes are still PPV by the time I reach the end of S5E05, and I like the show as much as I think I will from the first three episodes, then I think I'd be prepared to drop a few quid on them.
I'll still be yoinking full-season torrents though - I like having local copies of my media.
So I could torrent a DRM free HD copy which I can watch any time I want for as long as I care to devote a few pence worth of disc space to it. I can reencode it to any format to play on any device (current and future) should I want to. The incremental cost over a net connection is almost nothing.
Or I could pay Netflix six quid a month and be able to stream likely shitty quality (I couldn't find out) to a likely shitty player (is it silverlight in a browser on PC - I couldn't find out) for as long as I pay Netflix 6 quid a month and as long as they choose to keep it available.
And that is for the limited range of content on Netflix.
No dare, no challenge - paying substantially more to get substantially less is a joke.
Paying substantially more isn't the big problem, the big problem is getting substantially less.
£6 a month for limited content with low quality Audio sold as HD!
No Thanks!
When they get services which actually compare then they might combat the problem, until then I guess people are stuck having to get the good quality content from pirate sources!
WE DON'T WANT TO CHANGE Blu\Red\Green or Purple feking Rays with DVDs and CD, we don't want to listen to a brand new release with 20 year old Audio technology and we don't want to be raped for £6 per month of each and every provider under the sun just to see what we want.
When, oh when will these stupid ass MOFO's learn... anything and give us what we want?!
Why do you expect people voluntarily turning their PC which is, essentially an extension of their brains, into a machine obeying your wishes?
I'll gladly pay for things I watch, but I won't give you control over my PC. It's mine, not yours. And as the German constitutional court ruled a few years ago, I have a right to have my data processing equipment to be "confidential and of integrity". This is not compatible with DRM.
I have a right to exercise my constitutional rights, if you won't respect that, you won't see money from me.
Heres the best reason I've seen to pay Netflix and not resort to Torrents
I didn't know this was on Netflix, so I visited an infamous nautical themed Torrent site to obtain a download. First comment when I click on the link: "Oh my god, I can't believe that ****** happens!!! WOW!!! Lolz!!!!111!!OMG!!!111!!".
And so some little annoying F***ER has just ruined the final series for me by posting the final cliff hanger as the first comment on the torrent, with the next half dozen comments elaborating further.
Proof that there is data I absolutely do not want for free. I would now gladly pay for a years Netflix sub to forget what I've just read.
Both the first two seasons were showed by Five USA a couple of years ago, although admittedly they were broadcast at about midnight. They did manage to show each season in the space of about a week though, as if it was some embarrassing piece of crap that they wanted to get out of the way just so they could show some more CSI repeats.
I've only just watched the first series via lovefilm. I have them all queued up, but I'm in no rush as there is dearth of good TV to watch. I have a couple of games still, on rent form them, as they have just cancelled future game rentals, so I'm holding onto them for another month.
I am tempted to cancel my lovefilm now though and go with netflix now though since they cancelled the games subscription.
When you have XBMC, (Beit on Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, iOS (iThingies, and AppleTV), as well as on Raspberry Pi, and Android?), with a streaming Plugin be it Navi-X, or XBMCHub? Both call on the same location of "Project Free TV" and or "Watch TV Now". You also have access to just as many Movies. Plus all of BSkyB Movies & Sport. Jut to kick things off with. Hardly a Wonder why the AppleTV is so damned expensive on Feabay when you take this vector into context.
When I was unemployed I used to torrent all the time, I now have a (quite low paid for the sector I'm in) job and have joined Netflix and there's just no reason to do it anymore. £6 a month to watch full movies or series streamed on-demand and in their full glory (and it's not data limited so you can watch all you want) is a complete no-brainer for me.
Really? Thats your complaint? How about you stop being such a tight geek and invest in one of the thousands of other devices that WILL play it? iOS, Android, Popcorn, LG tvs, PS3, XBox 360, etc etc etc Its not like there aren't choices. If you REALLY want to use Linux get a WD live, it runs a modified Linux and plays Netflix and iPlayer and is hardly expensive.
@AC
Of course. Kinda like DVD which is region controlled, so just go out and buy another DVD player. And of course we can make video games available for select/singular consoles. And while we are at it we should lock down TV so it will only play some content and you can buy a different one for other content. And maybe lock your phone so that you can only call people on the same network. Why not do the same for landlines and make them region specific too.
I only say this because you obviously think there is more benefit to artificially locking and restricting technology so that people must pay over and over again for the same technology with a different artificial restriction. And you obviously have so much room and money that you wouldnt be a tight geek and not buy all these devices to do what you want?
I'm sorry but even if I watched Breaking Bad (it's a good show, but it's not something the wife will watch. We only watch shows we both like) I would not join Netflix just for it.
To stop me "pirating" my requirements are very simple.
* DRM free, I want to play it on my Linux XBMC box setup, or anything else, without restrictions.
* downloads, not streams, downloads so I can schedule the bandwidth use.
* low cost, I don't have much money to flush down the loo on things there is no scarcity of.
* don't make me wait.
* decent easy to use service.
File sharing gives the first four easily, but the fifth it does struggle with. Countless copies of the same of a wide variety of quality. Basic search, no recommendation system, etc etc.
AllOfMp3 showed the way here. Until it was shut, it had me spending more on media than I had since I had money to waste (young free and single). But the copyright bastards closed it down rather than work with it.
I don't think the old grey hairs will ever get with the program. What will force them is things like Google doing TV shows for free. It will be a world of overlay ads and product placement, but there will be competition to keep that at a level users can stand. I see this world as inevitable. The copyright bastards won't win in locking down the world and they won't win against sharing.
One show in isolation fixing one of the issues, is meaningless.
Money not going to artists is a technicality. Point was I am other where paying for the first time in a long time. Many of us beleived at the time the money was going to the artists.
AllOfMp3 claim they offered monet that was refused (too little and they didn't want to legitimize it).
I do get annoyed by your website's continued use of the phrase "freetard" to describe free downloaders.
Aside from the reference to "retards" (which I'm sure some group or other will complain about in time) if one group of people decide to acquire something for free and another decide to line the pockets of a major comms company by paying for it - who's the idiots?
Surely it should be the "paytards" ?
I was planning to rewatch the previous series (not sic) through Netflix before watching the final episodes. Only got as far as the very first episode when I noticed that Jesse's girlfriend was wearing a bra. Goodness knows what other ridiculous bowdlerisations the studio made to the version they give to Netflix UK.
I can get new episodes within hours of them airing on Usenet, but since I love both Arrested Development and Breaking Bad I thought I would give the 30 day free trial of Netflix a try. I have to say, I am very impressed. They are actually offering a better service than the pirates, which I didn't expect. There's a lot of content on there, it's very easy to use and geared towards just letting you watch the shows you want to watch on any device whenever you like, just resuming from where you left off. I think I might actually keep it when the 30 days is over, so they have converted someone who previously downloaded TV shows illegally.
The same thing happened a few years ago with music. When they started selling tracks cheaply and DRM-free and when the likes of Spotify came along, I started using the legal services because they were finally as good as what the pirates offered. It looks like maybe the entertainment industries are finally realising this and catching up with the new technology.
The way to do it is not to try and cripple paying users or try to prevent them from doing anything with your content or limiting how long they can see it for, etc. Pirates will find a way to pirate it anyway, you just push away your paying customers. The way to make more money is to offer a brilliant service that people want to use.
I suspect Netflix will have gained a lot of subscribers over the past few months.
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