I already have Prime and Netflix so I'm thrilled either way. My co workers are angry as they believe Prime streaming to be inferior, but whatevs.

So long as the files wind up in the torrent scene within a day or two of airing, I don't care if Game of Cars sign up with some obscure streaming service that's only viewable on an Apple Watch, through a service costing $900 a week, while connected to the WiFi in any Starbucks location which is on a street named after a type of flower indigenous to South America.

Haha true, but for shows that I truly enjoy and provide value (Top Gear, GoT, etc.) I don't mind forking over some digital cash and supporting them.

NSFW or anywhere else:


The Renault Clio joint venture remark...

Now maybe amazon will consider adding chromecast support so I can watch them on something bigger than an apple watch.

Everything ends up on the torrents within a half hour of airing anyway, so who cares where it ends up.

I'm just glad they're back.

For 50m dollarspounds a year, you would think they would provide Clarkson with a steady supply of producers to punch, if that's what he's in to. They basically just gave a 100m USD gift to Amazon.

I am really excited to be able to get the episodes through a service I already pay for, in high definition, without having to deal with a torrent client.

Exactly. I may have torrented one thing in my life and it sucked dealing with that shit.

i have a "virus" computer. it's only job was to download top gear torrents.

I have a VMware virtual machine which runs in the background on my main PC (behind both PeerBlock and a VPN tunnel to some random portal in Europe) whose only function may or may not be similar to the aforementioned.

This is just one man's opinion, but I personally find using the bittorrent system to download content to local network storage to be quite convenient. In particular, pretty much anything you could possibly imagine is available. As an example, last weekend I was bored and felt like watching some old 70s Charlton Heston. So I downloaded Earthquake and Gray Lady Down.

I have, on a few occasions, used Netflix in the post-DVD era. And I say this truthfully: literally every single time I have tried searching it for a specific title, I've been told that said title was not available. And this isn't random, esoteric stuff, either. I'm talking about things like Wes Anderson films.

Back when they did DVDs by mail, you could use the website to browse their catalog, even as a non-subscriber. And, frankly, the catalog was extremely impressive.

The fact that they no longer offer that feature tells me something.

Well yeah. That should come as no surprise. Bandwidth costs money, so they're only going to stream stuff that is in high demand (or if they get extra money for shoving it down our throats). They do still offer DVDs, and usually when I search for something that isn't on there, they have a DVD copy. But that doesn't offer the instant gratification we've become so accustomed to.

Anyway, I'll probably buy Amazon Prime once Top Gear gets started since at least Amazon offers a few other cool perks that Netflix can't offer.

Lol.

Is Clarkson Trolling Top Gear With The Possible Name Of Their New Show?

It's not bandwidth that limits their streaming catalog, because it only uses up bandwidth when you actually stream it.

The streaming catalog is limited because they have to pay a monthly fee for every title in there. They cycle the stuff that's in there, so if you're a regular subscriber you can follow the announcements of what's going in and coming out of the catalog to know when to watch it.

Broadly speaking, netflix's streaming is good if you aren't terribly picky about what it is that you want to watch. It's a lousy way to watch one specific movie a month.

--Ian

You are correct. Bandwidth was not the right word.

^ This.

When Netflix first came into existence as a vast DVD repository, I was actually a subscriber. Back then, the model was "you can watch pretty much any movie or TV show which has ever been made."

Today, the Netflix model seems to be "you can watch anything which we happen to be airing at this specific time."

Or, put another way, Netflix has become the thing which they set out to displace- conventional broadcast / cable television.

No thanks. I'll glady wait 15-20 minutes to watch something I want to watch for free, rather than paying $10 a month to have instantaneous access to things I don't want to watch.

Why doesn't netflix rent offsite cloud based DVD/bluray players? I mean like a warehouse full of automated modern jukeboxes.

It worked for those antenna guys, right?

The DVD rental service had a huge library, but also a huge latency. The streaming service still has something like 10,000 times as much content instantly available as traditional TV.

Bittorrent sucks, it's a pain in the ass and lots of the content is broken in stupid ways. I'm lazy -- if I can't get it with a few clicks of the remote then I'll just skip it entirely.

Amazon Prime gives you access to most stuff for a relatively small fee. When I want to watch something specific I check Netflix first, then Amazon, and occasionally I'll pay a few bucks to watch something.

--Ian

Joe, kinda ignoring the fact that one is legal and one isn't though... That's kindof a big distinction. Right?

I hear people say things like this, and I don't get it.

I have a VM running in the background on my home PC. A 4TB drive is hosted by the main OS, and shared into the VM.

If I'm at work, and someone mentions a movie which sounds interesting, I just remote in, click a few buttons, and it's downloading. By the time I get home, it's ready.

Or if I'm bored on a saturday, and want to watch some random thing, I walk over, start the download, and it's ready in 20 minutes.

In all honesty, I can think of only two things I've wanted to watch in the past year which I wasn't able to find in less than 60 seconds of searching. One was the original 1977 pilot of Fantasy Island and the other was the 1982 season of Ripley's Believe It or Not! hosted by Jack Palance. Aside from that, it's all out there. Seriously, from 50s vintage alien-invasion films to 10 year old reruns of National Geographic to the new episode of My Little Pony which aired a few hours ago, it all out there, and if you use the right search engines it's absurdly easy to find.


And I owe it all to Top Gear. That was the first show I ever torrented, and the reason I wound up building a dedicated torrent box which eventually evolved into my current setup.