Goodbye SlySoft and AnyDVD

[ControlD]

I used to be this way, but blu-ray was a HUGE step backwards in terms of functionality.

In what way?

I agree there are some downsides. They are slow to load for one thing, and a lack of common sense menu structures is frustrating. We like to watch stuff in 3D if available, so that means spinning discs for the most part.

 

[poofyhairguy]

How many steam games can you play on your android phone?

None that I want to play on a phone. I can play Steam games on every PC I have though- Windows, Linux, and OSX.

And Im sure you can stream your amazon content on your phone.

Sure but I can't play the content on an Android TV device. They are just as bad as Apple about not playing nice with certain platforms.

Netflix on the other hand I can use everywhere, which I why I happily give them money every month.

As for the quality issues. Everything is good on purchased content. Color depth and audio is all of good quality.

"Good" quality isn't what I want to buy, I want to buy "great" quality like I get on Blu Ray discs.

And I debate if it really is good quality. The audio on iTunes videos are worse than some DVDs (and they aren't even close to the quality of uncompressed audio on a Blu Ray). Heck the DTS core on many Blu Rays just BLOWS AWAY what iTunes offers.

As for the video? There is nothing that can make up for the massive bitrate advantage Blu Ray has. Here is a comparison still shot from Gravity:

Notice how clear the reflections are on the helmet compared to the streaming options. Here is another comparison from Django:

Look at the incredible difference in detail the scarf around his neck has on the Blu Ray copy.

What you maybe can argue is that is "good enough" for most people, and it probably is. But this isn't a forum of most people, this is a forum for nerds. I collected plasma tvs, and spend hours tweaking MadVR, to get the best experience possible. For now that means Blu Ray which means ripping discs to my server if I want to watch them with on demand convenience.

 

[CZroe]

You have no innate right to have a 1:1 copy of a bluray disk on your harddrive.

And lot of people rip rentals dude. Who the fuck you talking to? We arent dumb. Fine redbox then. So what?

This stops *some* thieves. I know this is a tech forum and full of wink wink nudge nudge. I see it. You are all assholes for stealing people's hard work. You guys are gonna keep on stealing and nothing will stop you because you are ahead of the curve. Congrats. This will stop a lot of people who are ripping blurays and returning them with their 4000 bluray hd libraries. Who the fuck is actually buying 4000 bluray movies?

Actually, you kinda do. First Sale Doctrine and the Home Recording Act made that kind of use perfectly legal for audio recordings. You were legally entitled to a backup. In practice this extended to software and movies (why shouldn't it?) until the DMCA stripped us of that in 1999 or 2000 or whenever it was. The DMCA only makes it illegal to circumvent a copy protection to do it, but that copy protection already circumvents our right to do what we want with our personal copy (there were already applicable laws against duplicating to sell). I'd say that, if anything, the DMCA's restriction on an already established acceptable practice is illegal. This is why so many CDs tried to add copy protections around that time, trying to keep you from ripping them to your PC, MP3 player, or phone. Just because you've accepted that for the last 16 years does not mean that I do.

Do you honestly think it should be illegal to copy a CD to your phone? Well, that's pretty much exactly what I do with Game of Thrones every time a new box set is released. Why should one copyrighted work be treated any differently than another in that regard? You can point to any track or file on my phone and I will show you where I legally obtained (and still have) the source copy. I paid. I did not steal.

 

[CZroe]

Its pretty easy to buy movies on amazon and itunes. I do it all the time. $20 and you have a streaming movie forever. How is that not convenient? Oh because you dont like the price. Fuck you.

You and I have a very different definition of "forever." I've lost hundreds of dollars of digital purchases due to service shut downs.

 

[CZroe]

Thats not true. You own a digital copy on that service. Amazon isnt going anywhere. Apple isnt going anywhere.

...and Nintendo isn't going anywhere...and Microsoft isn't going anywhere...and Sony isn't going anywhere...and Electronic Arts isn't going anywhere. Oops! Why can't I download that Wii Virtual Console game?! Why is Sony shutting down the PlayStation Store services for the PSP? They don't have to "go anywhere" to stop supporting these things. FFS, I've had many digital copies of movies I have purchased which were already expired when I bought them!

Apple abandons platforms like anyone else. Good luck accessing their services with an original AppleTV ten years from now.

 

[HeXen]

Typically I just buy DVD's and pop them in the DVD player. It's not like they're expensive or anything and I don't watch them so often that they wear out or nothing.

 

[CZroe]

Maybe you should ask Ichinisan how going legit is working out for him.

Hey, smart guy: I've personally witnessed worse problems for pirates than that many times more often than I have for legit users. Oops! Cinavia. Oops! This is the nuked version with the bad audio. Oops! This was the old work print with unfinished special effects that some idiot is still sharing despite the film being available on Blu-Ray. Oops! This is some horrible SD rip that some idiot line-doubled to 1080p and re-encoded at a ridiculous bit rate!

Ichinisan has recourse with AnyDVD HD and possibly a replacement from Fox.

For anyone wondering:
Sunshine BD has a mastering error where it plays the PIP version instead of the normal version on certain players. Not such a big deal, right? Right. That's why he mentioned it in the First World Problems thread. Also, it was me attempting to play it for our other brother, so that is why I am responding about it.

 

[CZroe]

where do you buy your blurays and how many do you own?

If he's anything like me, his answer will be useless for you. My answer: Everywhere. SlickDeals.net leads me to all the new releases I want as cheap as possible, Black Friday leads me to a lot more, and one of the biggest sources of all is Goodwill, which happens to be the source of the Sunshine BD we were discussing. I gave it to my older brother to take back home with him several states away. I told him that if it didn't work on his player then he could try calling Fox to see if they are still doing the replacement program.

 

[CZroe]

How many steam games can you play on your android phone?

And Im sure you can stream your amazon content on your phone.

As for the quality issues. Everything is good on purchased content. Color depth and audio is all of good quality.

It sounds like you are completely oblivious to game streaming and Steam on Android (nVidia Shield with Half-Life 2 and Portal, anyone?). Even with my old an Xperia Play Gingerbread Android phone I played full console games using OnLive. Xperia phones stream PlayStation 4 games as easily as they stream Steam games from an nVidia Game Stream-equipped PC.

nVidia GameStream is a thing. SteamBox is a thing. SteamOS is a thing.

 

[CZroe]

How many steam games can you play on your android phone?

And Im sure you can stream your amazon content on your phone.

As for the quality issues. Everything is good on purchased content. Color depth and audio is all of good quality.

Bull. On my PS3 I paid a dollar extra for the HD version of some Clint Eastwood movie that starts out with him as a jewel thief. This was around 2009 or 2010. The movie was LITERALLY just the line-doubled SD version and I had no opportunity for a refund (believe me: I tried). My Interstellar digital copy shows obvious artifacts all over when I pause on a complex scene (redeemed through iTunes). There's nothing like that on my BD version. Prince of Egypt and Team America aren't even available on BD and the digital HD versions are so bad that I will still buy the BD versions on day one if they ever make them available.

You are as wrong as wrong can be about this. There is no replacement for bitrate.

 

[Jeff7]

Thats not true. You own a digital copy on that service. Amazon isnt going anywhere. Apple isnt going anywhere.

"We just lost all rights to Viacom/Time Warner/Disney/Whatever content. Streaming of these videos will no longer be possible for our customers. Sorry about your luck."

DRM'd stuff is more like "You have permission to use this" than "You own a copy of this."
A DVD or an MP3 on my hard drive won't stop working because a company somewhere else says so.


Or there's always the slim possibility of Jeff Bezos deciding that he can one-up the shady and illegal bookkeeping and accounting manipulation done at Enron.
Lehman Brothers, WorldCom....some of the others on this list.
(It's a page-by-page click-harvesting setup. For those who don't want to click:
Lehman Brothers (subprime mortgage crisis)
Washington Mutual (subprime mortgages, and a run on the bank piqued the FDIC's interest)
WorldCom (accounting scandal at highest levels of management)
General Motors (didn't weather the global financial problems around 2009)
CIT (A financial institution. 2009 claimed another victim.)
Enron (accounting scandal)
Conseco ("years of poor executive leadership" and "massive debt")
Chrysler (global financial problems around 2009 pushed it into bankruptcy)
Thornburg Mortgage (subprime mortgage crisis)
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (CA electricity crisis)
)

Some of these companies were around for many decades, some even founded in the 1800s. Some survived in some fashion through buyouts after bankruptcy, or were able to reorganize and persist.

In any case, you can still have a long-lived company worth many billions of dollars that seems to be doing fine, only to have it blown apart from within by corrupt management with no real warning.


Or just "We don't feel like offering streaming for content created 20+ years ago. Insufficient profit. Here's a free pillow for your upcoming kick to the curb."

streaming movie audio quality is what I would call "passable" it is by no means good

I just toss my name out there into the group that still buts Blu-Rays, shit I still buy music on CDs
ive never purchased a digital movie, and I rarely buy music digitally - only when I can get it as FLAC which is not often, I honestly think its like 3 album

It's also possible to quickly skip around on a local disc or hard drive copy without having to wait a few seconds each time for the stream to scratch its head and figure out what to do, or else 10-20 seconds to force-refresh the page in order to get Flash or Silverlight to pull its head out of its ass when it forgets where the server is, and then re-seek to find approximately where you left off. (Amazon, you seem to be a consistent offender of the latter, so it might not be the player.)

 

[Skeeedunt]

If he's anything like me, his answer will be useless for you. My answer: Everywhere. SlickDeals.net leads me to all the new releases I want as cheap as possible, Black Friday leads me to a lot more, and one of the biggest sources of all is Goodwill, which happens to be the source of the Sunshine BD we were discussing. I gave it to my older brother to take back home with him several states away. I told him that if it didn't work on his player then he could try calling Fox to see if they are still doing the replacement program.

Buying at anything less than MSRP is basically content theft. Buying second hand is even worse. And don't even get me started on the idea of watching something and then giving it away for free you scumbag.

 

[ControlD]

If you wait long enough, any BluRay will end up in the $7.99 bin at your local Walmart.

 

[Ichinisan]

Maybe you should ask Ichinisan how going legit is working out for him.

Probably referring to my attempt to watch Sunshine BD on PS3. Apparently I missed out on a disc replacement program / recall years ago. There is a mastering error on these discs and some BD players (mostly Sony) started having this problem after a firmware update to enable 3D capability. The picture-in-picture behind the scenes stuff starts playing during the movie and there's no way to turn it off.

 

[Ichinisan]

If you wait long enough, any BluRay will end up in the $7.99 bin at your local Walmart.

This. I have a huge BD collection. Paid $3-$6 for most. I would rarely ever spend more than $10 for one.

 

[CZroe]

...Paid $3-$6 for most. I would rarely ever spend more than $10 for one.

Here are some from a proud AnyDVD HD owner/user. The vast majority are in DiscGear disc selectors with the original cases stored in bins like that one. The shelves are layers deep. We just purged ourselves of many (gave away a lot more than just Sunshine). This is probably about half of what remains.

Plenty of DVD sets too but I'll just show a few because they aren't organized at all:

LOTS more elsewhere. Don't insinuate that I'm a pirate just because I use SlySoft products to view these how and where I please. I paid for it. Clearly, copying something I paid for against the will of the copyright holders does not automatically mean that I "pirated" or "stole" it. I paid. I did not duplicate to sell/profit or share indiscriminately. My conscience is clear.

 

[HeXen]

Why is everyone so scared of being perceived as a pirate? I wouldn't post pics to prove jack shit. But I'll readily admit I pirate a few things based on how much I care to spend money on it or not, don't really give a fuck what anyone thinks of it. Movies not so much as I rarely watch TV and it's easier for me to pop in a $5 DVD than convert an xvid to one or the trouble to copy a Redbox dvd.
BR's never did anything for me, last thing I care to notice is the wrinkles in someone's scarf but then again I'm not a movie person. Hell we still use the TV's built in speakers but don't get all butthurt over some geek's remarks or innuendo's just because you use AnyDVD.

 

[StrangerGuy]

LOTS more elsewhere. Don't insinuate that I'm a pirate just because I use SlySoft products to view these how and where I please. I paid for it. Clearly, copying something I paid for against the will of the copyright holders does not automatically mean that I "pirated" or "stole" it. I paid. I did not duplicate to sell/profit or share indiscriminately. My conscience is clear.

Now, let's see Mr JSt0rm's 100% legit Bluray collection, and since he operates on the logic of "guilty unless subject proves he is 100% innocent without even needing to bear the burden of proof" so let's use the same standard on him. Any attempt to shift his own goalpost means he is a hypocritical jerkass.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

This. I have a huge BD collection. Paid $3-$6 for most. I would rarely ever spend more than $10 for one.

I stock up during the holidays, especially on series, as Amazon and others usually have great deals. And oftentimes, if there is a movie I kind of want to see but am not sure, I'll just wait and buy it on blu-ray as it is often cheaper than going to the theater.

As to the argument of "Why would you buy media? You can stream off of Amazon/Netflix/{insert service}." The answer is that while the service may not go anywhere, the content might. Netflix has lost a ton of content over the years and that isn't going to stop for them or anyone else. They'll get some new content, lose some older content, and the cycle will go on and on. So if I really like a series, I'll buy it and have it so I can watch it whenever I want without having to subscribe to a new service just to see it.

As usual, the only people hurt are the ones who legitimately buy things. Pirates are going to hack this stuff anyway and get whatever they want.

 

[alan1476]

Meanwhile back on topic, this was the Slysoft is closed thread right? It seems that Slysoft, yes the name Slysoft is gone, but thats the only thing thats disappeasred. Slysoft is just a name, my AnyDVDHD works just fine for over 130,000 DVD and all Blurays until Feb14th 2016. Has anyone actually kept up with the story or you all so righteous as to think everyone in this thread pays for all their downloads. The name Slysoft is gone, but what business doesnt have a Plan B, they knew all along that the AACS-LA could do this. So now is time for plan B. If you read whats actually going on you might want to re name this thread. LOL. Read this and rejoice. https://forum.slysoft.com/threads/no-fox-no-job-no-future.68331/

 

[AnitaPeterson]

Buying at anything less than MSRP is basically content theft. Buying second hand is even worse. And don't even get me started on the idea of watching something and then giving it away for free you scumbag.

Well, folks, it looks like we have found ourselves an MPAA shill.

You know: one of those people who think second-hand sales are imoral, public libraries are dens of crime, and everyone should pay the industry (mind you, the INDUSTRY, not the authors!) every time they re-read a book, listen again to a song, or rewatch a film.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Well, folks, it looks like we have found ourselves an MPAA shill.

You know: one of those people who think second-hand sales are imoral, public libraries are dens of crime, and everyone should pay the industry (mind you, the INDUSTRY, not the authors!) every time they re-read a book, listen again to a song, or rewatch a film.

Looks like you got a broken sarcasm detector.

 

[JSt0rm]

Actually, you kinda do. First Sale Doctrine and the Home Recording Act made that kind of use perfectly legal for audio recordings. You were legally entitled to a backup. In practice this extended to software and movies (why shouldn't it?) until the DMCA stripped us of that in 1999 or 2000 or whenever it was. The DMCA only makes it illegal to circumvent a copy protection to do it, but that copy protection already circumvents our right to do what we want with our personal copy (there were already applicable laws against duplicating to sell). I'd say that, if anything, the DMCA's restriction on an already established acceptable practice is illegal. This is why so many CDs tried to add copy protections around that time, trying to keep you from ripping them to your PC, MP3 player, or phone. Just because you've accepted that for the last 16 years does not mean that I do.

Do you honestly think it should be illegal to copy a CD to your phone? Well, that's pretty much exactly what I do with Game of Thrones every time a new box set is released. Why should one copyrighted work be treated any differently than another in that regard? You can point to any track or file on my phone and I will show you where I legally obtained (and still have) the source copy. I paid. I did not steal.

Those copies back then were not 1:1 digital copies. I dont know how you are getting your got dvds onto your phone but why do it? HBO now is $15 a month.

 

[JSt0rm]

Here are some from a proud AnyDVD HD owner/user. The vast majority are in DiscGear disc selectors with the original cases stored in bins like that one. The shelves are layers deep. We just purged ourselves of many (gave away a lot more than just Sunshine). This is probably about half of what remains.

Im sure you deleted your digital copies of those dvd's/blu rays when you sold the originals.

 

[TheVrolok]

where do you buy your blurays and how many do you own?

Show us a screenshot of your bluray purchaase history on amazon with this thread as a tab.

Just wanted to present another person (myself) who has issue with prevention of ripping our personal collections for media streaming. I like physical media (for movies, don't care about video games and am a big Steam guy). http://www.invelos.com/dvdcollection.aspx/TheVrolok is a reasonably recent list of my BRD collection, I don't have my DVD collection there (which is significantly larger) and all are legitimately purchased products. I'm not at home now so I can't take a picture of my BRD rack, but they're all there.