Some paid pirate services actually do offer good value for the money. I’ve used a torrent caching service that has any torrent that lets me cap my gigabit connection for any torrent that has been crawled by them or user-uploaded, in practice this is a lot, and if they don’t have it, they will act as a client and acquire it for you, including seeding it for as long as you’d like. It costs $1-2 USD a month, well worth it for me.
Paid pirate IPTV streams can have better speeds, better reliability, and less or no ads.
I don’t personally watch live TV so I don’t use these services, but if I did I would definitely pay a small amount for the conveniences above.
Can anyone explain on technical terms what Real Debrid is? I tried Googling and all I get are layman explanations like "provides access to premium hosts" which doesn't make any sense.
Also what a terrible name it is. Why Real? Is there an original Debrid? And I can't not associate the word with debridement (don't google if you can't handle gore)
That explanation kinda linked together concepts I'd previously read about "debrid" services.
My summary of what they do (from further down the thread) was: Aggregator of premium access to a selection of file hosting sites, plus caching of content that's popular amongst their Customers.
I'm not sure of the applications of their service outside of streaming (copyrighted material), so I'd be a little bit wary of their potential for longevity of service. Never bet on centralised piracy.
In my country, people can't pay internationally, so their only option (especially for sports coverage) is pirated IPTV networks which are very popular in here and are sold everywhere.
I don't watch live television myself so I don't know how good and reliable these services are.
Less expensive yes, but more importantly much more convenient. When 'all' the shows exist on a combination of Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, Paramount, Disney+, and Max... you can easily get to $100/mo+ if you were to subscribe to all of them. Then, if you want to watch something from an international viewership, it might not even be available in your region. In addition, you now have to figure out which service offers what program... which for certain not-current shows can be maddening (some seasons on some services, some on others, some not even available).
As GabeN has stated: piracy is a service problem, not a pricing problem.
I think the answer is that is not nearly as convenient as original service providers would claim it is. I am in US and we just went through a crazy period of everyone and their mother trying to start their own streaming service. Good portion went under, some consolidated, but the market fragmentation leading to actual content you want to see being spread across multiple services is an annoyance.
I will provide a concrete example. My buddy got into anime and was raving about one specific title so I checked Hulu for it, but Hulu, for some unfathomable reason starts that anime at season 4.. If I want to legally Stream season one, I would need to try the Sony owned anime thing, which I refuse to do for reasons not related to streaming wars. I ended up buying a dvd ( cheap and good enough quality for me ).
And pirates... have everything and, unless you are looking for newest releases, is of superior quality.
I used to run one of these. People would pay because (a) we had TV shows that literally were not available through any streaming service, (b) people wanted real downloads they could hoard.
Not the OP, but when you go down the illegal route, it is much easier to find whatever you want to watch, watch it on any device with no limitations, etc. The fragmentation and limitations of the usual big services is a nuisance.
Over here it's a fair bit less expensive because it just has everything. On normal streaming platforms dubbed shows aren't always there and because the market is small a lot of things are just not available anywhere legally
paying per mo is certainly more convenient I guess. but once you are in, there isn't a cost to stay in. Some trackers might boot you if you don't log in once every 3-6 mo.
It is literally the specification to send live tv over IP. The fact some services also support on demand movies is irrelevant to the fact the service in question is for live tv.
I never said it doesn't support live tv. But I was trying to point out that people who pay for the above service are not _necessarily_ interested in the live tv feature. I.e. it's not the reason for some. I'd guess convenience.
Convenience, I guess. I'm not that deep into the piracy world that I even know of all my alternatives, to be honest.
I pay a reasonable subscription fee, download the app on all my devices, and watch whatever I want.
The app is compatible with all of my devices, isn't broken, there are no unreasonable limits or restrictions, and no ads. That's a lot more than I can say for the 5 or 6 subscriptions it replaces.