Downloading vs. Purchasing - General Discussion

i just thought i would generate a discussion here after reading a post from
aydin about purchasing dvd's after watching the episodes he's downloaded. i
also do the same thing (obviously just the series i enjoy of course) and i was
curious about how often people actually do this.

naturally, it would also depend on whether or not you are the kind of person
that can watch the same show or movie more than once...some people are
simply "one-off" types and have no desire to see a show again once they've
watched it once.

personally, i download shows to watch during long breaks in the summer and if
it's a show i enjoy, like 24 for example, i buy the dvd set to get all the
extras and clearer pic. i have somewhere between 500-700 dvds at home (both tv
shows and movies) and i would guess that more than half were purchased.

i think if the true stats were known, a large percentage of people that
download also purchase the shows they enjoy, but this is only my guess. i also
think downloading shows keeps studios on their toes as well. they can no
longer produce crap (in theory) and count on dvd sales to make up for lost
costs. we can now see what we are buying before the actual purchase. this
should be a basic right of everyone.

all of this piracy hooplah is just a panic tactic of studios trying to bilk
every last cent from a public and force them to purchase something blindly. a
system that has been implemented since circus freakshow days (ya pays yer
money, ya takes yer chances).

in my opinion, people are tired of getting ripped off and have now become
sophisticated enough to device a way to "try before you buy" and i think that
is an awesome thing!

i'm not going to pretend that i buy everything i download. since my disability
makes it difficult to get out and sit in a movie theatre for a few hours, i
will download several movies that i wanted to see from viewing trailers, and
i'll watch them at my leisure. if it's something i truly enjoy, i'll still buy
it. if it's crap, it usually helps fill an already overstuffed library until i
get around to cleaning out the ones i never watch again.

anyways, just thought this would make an interesting discussion. how many
people actually "buy what they try".

if its a show i love then i'll definately buy it.
sometimes if i see a first season box set on sale of a show i've never seen
but heard good things about i'll buy it and if i enjoy it i'll download the
remaining seasons.

generally though i just wait until i see one of the shows i watch on sale and
but it then. so to answer your question i will buy my fave shows but only when
they're cheap 🙂

i totally concur with your opinion, i infact, have to chime in on this
discussion.

i recently moved into a loft/flat above my parent's home with my daughter,
while i look for a home to buy in the area. there is no connection to cable
inside the dwelling, and i don't see any reason to get it istalled, since the
right home at the right price,location, etc..., could come along anytime. as
long as i have wireless access to the internet (which i do) and my extensive
collection of dvds i'm all good.

here's where my story relates to this thread......

i'm a series-long fan of shows like real time w/ bill maher, sopranos, weeds,
and lost.

i own the dvd seasons of all (except real time, which is not out on dvd).
i moved in to the loft 2 days before the final sopranos miniseason, and i have
to get my fix, but had to wait until it was posted here, as soon as it comes
out on dvd, i will buy it (i'm a little ocd like that i have to have the
comlpete series of it even though the 4th season sucked ass and i probably
would only watch two eps again from that pathetic season).

anyway to sum it up i believe that there are leechers an theives amongst us, i
do believe that those unfortunate souls would steal money from their
grandmothers purse if left open and unattended. i also believe that with the
economy the way it is and inflation only getting more and more "inflated" ($60
for the first 3 seasons of smallville are you fucking kidding me?), there are
people that may even download some thing that they won't buy, but they will
buy something they are truely passionate about (eg. an advance copy of a cd
two months before it's release by a band or artist they are truely a fan of).

and then there are the incredibly wealthy that will download and buy every
single thing they have downloaded.

let's face it digital media is here to stay, and there will always be
dishonest, sincere, honest, and incredibly honest people (it's the nature of
the beast) damn alexander graham bell, marconi, zworykin, farnsworth, bill
gates, steve jobs, al gore (ha, ha), etc.....

those are the people or estates that the mpaa, riaa, etc... should be going
after, not you and i.

wait a minute, if it weren't for those men, or you and i, the mpaa, riaa, hbo,
time warner, etc... wouldn't have jobs, because nobody would watch.

the industry is in a "catch 22" if you will, and the soon it is recognized and
accepted the better popular media will become.

hey, isn't there a war going on that shouldn't be?
aren't there diseases remaining uncurable?
aren't there over-paid atheletes making money from the puppet masters, because
all of that money they make off the consumer has to go somewhere (new york
yankees.......)
that's all the little one is waking up.
jas

superbly stated and you also brought up the important factor about
backtracking to pick up "cheap" seasons of shows you like.
i have all 6 seasons of 24 on dvd and simply replaced each downloaded season
with store bought ones as they came on sale. actually, i just purchased season
one about a month ago to complete the collection (aside from the latest season
obviously). it cost about $20 which is about a third of the normal price.
great deal and everyone still wins.

one more point...since being here, i've had shows recommended to me that i
would not normally watch. the shield and dexter are two prime examples. that
will eventually mean more dvd sales because i never would have bought them had
i not downloaded them first.

your point about the piracy "witch hunt" is well taken. they are after the
wrong people.

actually, no need to justify our doing. i'm sure we are not just best customers
(i confess, i also buy all the stuff i like, simply due to better quality,
extras, etc.), but also great promoters for big media industry. or should i say:
useful idiots, cause we pr them in a way money can't buy and all we get is being
sued by f***ed up money-matters blind eyed copyright-mafia?

living in a country other than the us as i do, our local broadcasters can be
fairly reliable in the time between when the us airs the shows and when we get
them. here in australia the local networks air the main shows like heroes, lost,
house etc, a couple of months afterwards to suit our calendar year of
television. so generally if you can't wait, you download them. however, shows
like dexter, deadwood, rome, nip tuck etc, are never going to make it here
unless you download them or buy the dvd. i personally enjoy the shows on hbo,
showtime more than the high rating shows. so i generally get them off here, then
wait for the dvd set to be released to get the added benefits and to feel good
about giving back to the respective companies.

being a student at the moment i don't always have the funds to go out and buy
the series, but when i do have a few spare

but what we do here has nothing to do with movies, a bad movie for example
could take up 2-3hrs or $15-$30 of your life or money that you can not get
back.

a television show however, could take up to twenty-four hrs of your life that
you can't get back (that's an entire day!) so by being able to come to a great
site like this and check out a show that a friend has raved to you about, you
won't be out $50 bucks because your friend didn't know what the f$@k he was
talking about. i had a point........

oh yeah, most of the networks (here in the usa) show the full shows on their
websites after it has aired on television, but the minute you download it from
a site like this they're writing you some c&d letter.

***news flash***

the networks don't care about the effing shows!

it's the commercials that they really care about. i mean sure they want a
good show that advertisers are willing to spend the money to advertise during,
but they really could give a shit whether you watch the show or not, they want
you to watch 20 minutes of programming that is interrupted every five minutes
by 10-15 minutes of a television program.

i buy what i like and delete what i don't
jas

everyone so far has made very valid points. even though most shows i do only
watch once, the rest of my family tend to re-watch stuff they enjoy. so we buy
the ones that we really like (like sg-1 & atlantis). as for movies, because we
are on a low income, i tend to get movie rips for the kids to watch soon after
they are released, because i just can't afford to take 3 kids to the movies.
it would cost in excess of $60aus to do so. but usually, when they come out on
dvd (and when they are on special) i buy the originals. better quality and all
that jazz.

as for tv shows, here is aust., the networks are very unreliable. they start
playing a show, and then they throw in an old episode or two. or they change
the playtimes to ridiculous hours, and you miss them completely. they don't
advertise following seasons well, so you miss them too. or they even play
episodes out of sequence. it gets very annoying. it's a mixture of all of
these facts that caused me to start downloading. i get to watch the shows i
like, in order, and uninterupted. the added bonus is that in many cases, i can
finish watching the season before even half of it is played here.

another added bonus is that i find excellent shows on here that will probably
never see the light of day in australia.

i don't sell any copies of the things i download. i might share them with my
friends, but they often do the same so that we don't download the same thing
and waste bandwidth (which is absolutely atrocious here, might i add).

as far as i'm concerned, it's just like video taping a show that you want from
the tv. who watches ads when they tape stuff (even though i'm pretty sure
taping is considered piracy also???!!! go figure.)

... i'm kind of only posting to get my userid. oh, i haven't bought a tv series
dvd yet. i'd like to, though. i'll be buying the shield when it's complete.

talk about hitting the nail on the head! i am now to the point that i refuse
to get involved with any new show until i'm sure it's going to survive a
season. i don't even want to start naming the shows in the past year alone
that have been cancelled without giving them what i would call a "fair chance".

it seems if a show doesn't drag in ratings to compare to shows like heroes or
24, they are scrapped within 3 or 4 episodes. networks seem intent on giving a
new show a few weeks to prove themselves or they throw back in a bunch of
reruns. at least, as santabj said, p2p gives us the choice to view what we
enjoy and whatever night we choose to watch it.

plus if we are really patient (not my strongest suit), we can wait until a
season is complete and watch the whole thing. that way if it's cancelled
within a month, we can scrap it without getting hooked on a show that will
have no proper ending.

buy vs download. most arguments have been given already by the previous posters
so i'm not going to recycle them too much.
by downloading i can see if a show is worth buying or not. most shows i watch
once or twice before i throw them away and some i really like i prefer to have
them as original dvd's. but i'm not spending money on dvd's when prices are way
too much. for example i love babylon 5 but i'm not willing to pay 100euro for 1
season dvd box. maybe by looking very hard i can get it a few euro cheaper but
still you would be talking about 80-90 euro for 1 season. b5 has 5 seasons, not
including the movies and spin-off serie, which would mean i'd have to pay close
to 500 euro for the complete series. 500 euro is for me a lot of money which
equals for me about 4 months of rent on my little flat. most dvd's i buy are
around 10 euro and less.
but here's another one on copying and downloading. when audio-tapes where normal
back in the days of vinyl, yes before cd's, record companies cried murder as
they would kill the industry as everyone would copy their records to tape. 30
years later we know they only grew richer of them and they are still here.
when vhs, betamax, was released the movie companies did the same and yet they
grew rich of it and are still here.
when burnable cd's where released the same story. when burnable dvd's were
released same story yet again. check out the profit these companies makes in one
year. most small countries would love to have that much cash to solve some real
problems. each time a new medium is released to the masses those companies act
with the same dogmas as now.
the only truth is when internet came available for the masses they saw a real
drop in profit. most of us aren't willing to pay so much money for something
that is mass-produced. take the music industry. for years prices of cd's
remained the same in the netherlands even though cd's had become normal and
replaced vinyl. knowing that when a product is mass-produced it's normal that
production costs go down. instead of lowering their prices companies increased
their prices. when a cd cost you 40guilders, this was before the euro, one week
the next week it suddenly cost 45guilders. asking why was only met with a stupid
answer. tapes were destroying the market. artist wanted more money when in fact
those artist were paid the same, or even less, than before.
i think i should end my ranting here or else i'll never stop. 😛
downloading for me is normal. if something is crap i'm not going to buy anyway
even if the price is 1euro in the stores. same goes for overpriced things i
like. i have a large collection of original dvd's and even a larger collection
of downloaded dvd's. when possible i will replace series with the original dvd's
but not with those retarded price-tags. as for the argument by not downloading
it will bring the prices down i can only give you my middle finger as this is a
clear lie fabricated by the big companies. keep in mind that those companies are
only interested in profit and don\'t care what you think. the whole 'market' is a
perpetuation self controlled market where demand is created by the companies
themselves and not by you. the internet broke this down somewhat but not as much
as they want you to believe.

i would never buy the dvd of a series i already watched except for the simpsons,
which i still plan to buy. onne exception in smallville: i jumped in last
summer and had a lot of catching up to do. i got season one from the library,
season two was from ebay (bootleg), season three from ebay (real). i then
learned about bit torrent and downloaded, didn't buy, seasons four and five.
that's really the only case where i might have bought a tv show and didn't
because of bt.

the one getting screwed is the local cable company. when i moved last year i
decided that i didn't want cable and that is how i got into bt. part of it was
that i didn't feel like paying a monopoly that packages a whole bunch of stuff i
don't want just to get a clearer signal on the few channels i do want. part of
it was that i am cheap. part of it is that i didn't want some corporation
pumping commercials into my house 24 hours a day. so now i use bt and don't
have cable (although i do use that same cable co. for my internet
connection--they are not getting screwed that much).

also, hbo and sho and to a lesser extent disc and bravo have shows that i watch.
those channels are all solely or partially driven by subscription fees, which i
don't pay. the premium channels especially get screwed by my usage of bt.

on another note, i almost exclusively download movies now--i don't think my
consumption of movies in the theater has changed, but i never rent movies now,
so the ones really being hurt are blockbuster and the local public library. i
pretty much stopped buying dvds before i got into bt, with teh big exception
being kids movies. i still buy some for my daughter, but i think i would have
bought more had it not been for bt.

i don't usually like to watch a movie or tv show i've already seen. the
exception would be something i really, really liked, several years after i've
first seen it.


my limited income from disability keeps me from buying very many dvds anyway. my
former viewing habits were mostly getting movies from the local library several
months to a year after they came out on dvd, and the occasional blockbuster
rental of something i wanted to see sooner. i had basic cable tv and watched
shows on it, but frequently forgot when a show was on if it wasn't one of my
absolute favorites. i never bought tv shows on dvd, and only bought movies on
tape or dvd if they were cheap. i never watched much tv back then anyway, it was
mostly my fiance who watched tv. he was mostly the one who wanted to rent from
blockbuster, too. after he died, my viewing habits changed.


after the tv season ended last year, and my favorite shows were off, i realized
a month had passed, and i had not turned on the tv once. being limited on funds,
i cancelled the basic cable tv service and kept the high speed cable internet
access, which is from the same company.


now i watch all my tv on the pc after downloading from torrents, unless i'm at
somebody else's house. i don't rent or borrow movies from the library anymore, i
download them. i don't have a car, so it's very difficult to get out and get
movies anyway. i watch some movies at other people's houses who have premium
cable channels, or they buy the dvds.


my main change in habit is i watch far more tv shows now than i ever did before.
i'm at home all day alone, and the convenience of watching what i want, when i
want is wonderful. i download an episode, watch it, share it, then delete it. in
a few years when i want to see a tv series again, i would rather have the higher
quality and extras from a retail dvd set from a store. i plan to wait until a
series or movie is on sale, then buying them. i only have one series on dvd so
far, and i would have never bought it if it weren't for downloading off the
internet.


these are things i have gotten from downloading tv shows:


1. being able to watch a tv show whenever i want, even if i forget when it's
on. (that's frequent with me, lol.)


2. catching up on episodes i missed from more than a year ago.


3. downloading old favorites that have been off the air for years.


4. getting recommendations from other file sharers for shows i would have never
found otherwise, like dexter.


5. access to shows from the uk and australia that may never be shown in the us,
unless it's a decade or more later. like hustle or primeval from the uk, or the
new sea patrol from australia, which i'm hooked on after only 4 episodes, lol.


6. if i start to get tired of a series and stop watching it, i can always catch
up on it later if i change my mind, or if it gets better.


7. most of all, the idea of a show not being ephemeral--watch it when it's
shown, then it's gone forever if it gets cancelled. you can't count on being
lucky enough to find an episode you missed in reruns years later, if it's even
rerun sometime later. downloading shows spoiled me this way. this is why i will
be buying all my favorite tv shows on dvds. this wouldn't have happened without
being able to download them.



as for movies, i rarely went to the theater anyway, mostly i waited until they
were on basic cable, or at the library. i have always bought copies of my
favorite movies when they were on sale cheap, and will probably keep on doing
that, maybe even more now. i have gotten spoiled by the large selection of
movies available on torrent sites. i have found all kinds of horror and suspense
movies i never heard of in the theaters, or didn't watch when they came out.


i think an online retail movie site with a huge listing of movies not currently
for sale in most video stores would do well. you would go to the site, pick
whatever you wanted and pay for it. they would burn a professional retail copy
for you on demand and mail it out. overhead would be low, orders would be high,
and the prices could be kept down. maybe $2-$5 us for most movies, including
classics and cult films. i can dream, anyway....