This could probably go in MPSIMS, but it’s really more CS-related since pretty much the only thing you do with Mininova is download music, movies and tv shows.
It looks like The Man finally cracked down on Mininova, who just last week posted this:
“Content Distribution” means legal distribution by the author. In other words, they pretty much shut down. I went on tonight to grab yesterday’s Howard Stern show and was shocked by the complete and utter lack of content. Oh well, it was good while it lasted.
I’m not advocating torrent downloads, and I know the dope mods are skittish about this topic, but the shutting down of a major (“the” major?) torrent site would be similar to talking about a drug bust, which is perfectly fine on the boards.
Damn good guys and their stupid successes in court.
yeah I use this to grab episodes of shows I missed during the week, I was even talking to someone about the subject. Why is it that none of the channels ever host their shows on torrent sites? I would so download an episode of whatever complete with commercials (make them unskippable somehow, yeah I know hackers would break that but guess what? THEY ALREADY DO THAT)
Quite a few more, yes, but this is definitely noteworthy because from what I could tell, Mininova was far superior to the others. They had more content, better download speeds, more user feedback on the quality of each torrent, and fewer torrents that had sniffers looking to send you nastygrams in the mail.
It’s probably an end of an era for me. Like Critical1 I greatly prefer downloading shows I miss or that my DVR can’t catch. The biggest problem right now is Thursday’s at 8pm, when I watch four different shows: Survivor, Bones, Flash Forward, and the NBC sitcoms. DVR catches two, so the other two I either watch via the network sites’ “watch tv” capability, or just wait a couple days and download them both and burn them to DVD.
Burning them to DVD is a million times better because that lets me watch them on the tv sitting on my couch instead of sitting in my computer chair watching on my small monitor in a box that can’t even fill the damn screen.
I wouldn’t mind commercials in torrent downloads any more than I mind them on DVR: I FFWD through all of them anyway. Though with the death of Mininova, I suppose I’ll just watch them online legally and suffer through the subpar experience. I’ll switch to another site for my daily Howard Stern fix, but with slower download speeds and a higher risk of sniffers it’s too much bother to risk going there for tv shows that my DVR can’t record.
Watching tv in a computer chair sucks balls. I don’t know how these kids do it. Actually, I think I do: they all have laptops. I’m such a dinosaur with my desktop computer, no cell phone and low def tv.
If you have an Xbox 360 or a PS3 connected to your LAN you can also watch the stuff directly on your tv instead of having to burn them, it’s really quite convenient. It’s just too bad the 360 doesn’t support .srt subtitles yet, I’m sure it will eventually. Anyway there’s always Isohunt or Pirate Bay, though it’s true that Mininova was far better in terms of feedback (but Pirate Bay has user comments too, there’s usually more than one testimonial on popular torrents).
From this, do I gather that our US cousins don’t have on-demand services like the BBC iPlayer? All major UK channels have a streaming/download service to watch TV programs. As the BBC say, ‘making the unmissable unmissable’.
My eighty five year old mother is so keen on this that she watches more programs on line than she does live. She like the convenience of not being tied to a time.
Some of our free over the air networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox & the CW, not PBS) make some of their content available for streaming for some period of time on their websites. However, that period of time is weeks, not months, so if you’re looking for a show that aired at the beginning of the season and you’re midway through the season, forget about it.
Worse, it’s clunky streaming. If it worked like YouTube or Vimeo, it would be fine, or was backed up by a tried and tested tech like Microsoft Silverlight (like Netflix’s streaming movies) it’d be different, but it’s not. It’s slow, it buffers, it stutters and resets and then if you dare pause for more than five minutes, say, if the phone rings, the playback freezes and you have to reload the page, and fast-forwarding is difficult if not impossible. And don’t dare try to watch with Firefox if you’ve got Adblock and/or NoScript installed because it just won’t work. (I have to switch to Safari every time I bother to try.)
ABC’s streaming makes my Macbook run so hot I don’t dare try it ever again, and CBS’s is laden with commercials that actually are a louder volume – and actually larger in size, screen real estate wise – than the show itself.
My DVR missed this week’s The Amazing Race. I tried to watch it yesterday and had to pause and then reload and start all over again three times because of phone calls and it just wasn’t worth it. I’m just going to forget about it and just know what happened courtesy the Dope recap.
My streaming via official channels has always been quite pleasant. I am able to jump in and out to any spot I please, though on some of them they force you to sit through a 30 second commericial if you zoom past a checkpoint. It never stutters (thanks to a speedy cablemodem) and the video quality is superb; far superior to youtube.
My objections to legal online streaming are only that I can’t fill the screen (on my already pretty small monitor) and I have to be sitting in my computer chair in my office jonesing for a smoke instead of lying on my couch with a cigarette in hand watching tv.
Mininova was my go-to for stuff I couldn’t find on my subscription sites. I used it very little, but I trusted it the most out of the non-subscription sites. I didn’t really trust Pirate Bay because of all the publicity it got - it felt like there were too many mis-named files and viruses on it because it was open to the unwashed masses.
I haven’t hit up Mininova much lately, tho. I’m pretty good with my setup now. Netflix and Hulu cover my needs - as I try not to ever download movies, apps or music anymore. I’m still heavily addicted to my subscription sites, tho, which are all television.
Those of you bummed about not being able to watch stuff on your TV anymore because it’s streaming, I HIGHLY suggest getting yourself set up with a computer hooked up to your TV. I’ve been set up like that for about 5 years now and it’s well worth it. Especially since there is so much free legal streaming content now.