[HN Gopher] Pirate site traffic surges with help from manga boom
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       Pirate site traffic surges with help from manga boom
        
       Author : gslin
       Score  : 59 points
       Date   : 2022-05-03 18:58 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (torrentfreak.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (torrentfreak.com)
        
       | Blackthorn wrote:
       | This is one of those cases where the pirates really are providing
       | a superior product. Same-week translations that are often
       | superior to the official ones, which come months (or worse)
       | later.
       | 
       | Some publishing houses like alphapolis are so backwards they
       | don't even license English releases at all. Even ones that have
       | gotten a popular and officially translated anime adaptation.
        
         | QuikAccount wrote:
         | Not only is the product better, manga scanlators have a "code
         | of honor." If a manga is licensed in English they will
         | typically drop the manga no longer scanlating because there is
         | now a provider in English. Of course, not all of them do this
         | but more often than not it is adhered to.
        
           | MichaelZuo wrote:
           | Yes, this means that some clever folks realized they could
           | have a legit manga website that removes the unlicensed
           | translations the moment an official release is available. And
           | they never allow uploads in the original copyrighted
           | language. See mangadex.org
           | 
           | Idk who the founders are, or if it was a bunch of scanlation
           | groups that combined their efforts, but it's a pretty smart
           | way to get around the copyright problem.
        
             | falcolas wrote:
             | And until there is a company who has the license to publish
             | in English, there's a benefit to the Japanese rightsholders
             | - free and extensive market research.
        
         | teawrecks wrote:
         | People will always choose the product that best meets their
         | needs (price, convenience, content, etc). Therefore, the only
         | piracy that ever happens is that which provides a superior
         | product.
        
         | unicornporn wrote:
         | > This is one of those cases where the pirates really are
         | providing a superior product.
         | 
         | Product? Are they sellings these files?
        
           | fluoridation wrote:
           | The word "product" refers not only to things that are sold,
           | but also to things that are produced (made, fashioned,
           | fabricated, etc.).
        
           | teawrecks wrote:
           | In some cases, pirate sites do have a cost to be able to fund
           | operations and maintain quality, but one way or another, the
           | customer pays something to someone (even if it's just access
           | to internet via their ISP) and receives a product. So yes.
        
           | BigBubbleButt wrote:
           | You make a good point. Their product is better _and_ cheaper!
        
           | Blackthorn wrote:
           | Not the question you asked but to make it clear, I don't mind
           | paying for things. I've had a Crunchyroll premium account for
           | years and I have a whole bookshelf filled with official
           | translations. But sometimes they come years later and you
           | want to actually discuss the series that's going on right now
           | with fellow fans, just like you would for an English book. Or
           | you want to be able to read it at all (see: alphapolis).
        
             | xemdetia wrote:
             | The worse part is when you see translation rights being
             | bought and then the translator never following through to
             | the end even if I put my money into it. I feel that's why
             | I'm mostly ambiguous to the whole situation on what could
             | be done better. I just know I would not be exposed enough
             | without the pirates.
        
             | thaumasiotes wrote:
             | An interesting story:
             | 
             | Long ago, I downloaded a fansubbed anime series. My sister
             | is interested in anime as a genre and has been interested
             | in watching that series. When I asked her recently why she
             | hadn't already watched it, she said "because it's not on
             | crunchyroll".
             | 
             | In the pirate ecosystem, you can watch what you want to
             | watch. The "legitimate" ecosystem seems to breed learned
             | helplessness.
        
         | thaumasiotes wrote:
         | Viki licenses Asian film and lets the community provide
         | subtitles. The results are excellent. Viki doesn't do any
         | translation themselves.
         | 
         | For one show I liked, Viki lost their license to show it.
         | Instead, the show (and its second season) are available on
         | youtube. English subtitles are provided, but they are so bad
         | that it's clear there was no human input to or review of them.
         | The show is unwatchable. (Think I'm exaggerating? See what you
         | think:
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAOdWOS49RE&list=PLvBtqeytAL...
         | )
         | 
         | I'm not sure how this could have happened, but there are
         | failures at several levels. Viki got high-quality subtitles
         | without paying for them. People who couldn't speak the language
         | got to watch foreign shows. NoahMob is attempting to show a
         | series with subtitles that aren't better than nothing. They
         | could have real subtitles for free! It's not like I'm going to
         | branch out into their other videos based on the experience of
         | being unable to watch the show they ruined.
        
       | PebblesHD wrote:
       | The ongoing and rather poorly executed merger of Funimation and
       | Crunchyroll certainly isn't helping in my circles. After years of
       | subscribing to Animelab, which merged into Funimation in rather
       | poor fashion, I was abruptly told no new content would be added
       | and that I should sign up for Crunchyroll, never mind that my
       | annual subscription had renewed a month prior. Crunchyroll then
       | announced that annual subscribers would be given credit for their
       | remaining time, but no timeframe was given and after waiting
       | months, I ended up getting a refund last week and am now looking
       | for another company to give my money to. Unfortunately they all
       | seem to be owned by the same group now, with ongoing concerns
       | around quality and conditions for the voice actors working on
       | their content, so for now I have started buying physical media
       | again from the Japanese distributors to at least register my
       | interest in these shows in some way.
       | 
       | Content in Australia has aways been a bit of a mess and I can't
       | see the market improving, meaning to me the conditions that I
       | believe drive piracy are only set to continue and expand. We
       | really need less exclusivity in the market and more of a
       | competitive landscape for sourcing existing content. I'm happy to
       | deal with a few extra players for original content, but needing 5
       | different subscriptions to watch all of Stargate, Star Trek, and
       | Star Wars is never going to work for me.
        
       | kiawe_fire wrote:
       | As a manga reader, one of my biggest frustrations is with
       | censorship.
       | 
       | 10 years ago, Viz and Tokyopop dominated English published manga,
       | yet they each had very spotty records with regards to translation
       | quality, editorial decisions and censorship.
       | 
       | I didn't want to read Full Metal Alchemist or Dragon Ball or
       | Initial D knowing that random instances of blood would be erased
       | or religious symbols replaced or weird editorial changes would
       | change the tone. And unlike the edited anime airing on TV, there
       | was no "uncut" version I could buy and even finding lists of
       | changes was difficult.
       | 
       | So, I kind of learned to avoid buying North American manga. Only
       | recently have I started buying some releases from publishers like
       | Kodansha and Dark Horse that, from what I can tell, have a better
       | track record.
       | 
       | But ultimately that's the problem - you shouldn't make a customer
       | guess what they're getting. I want to collect way more manga than
       | I do, but my confidence in the industry was shaken very early on,
       | and that's hard to gain back.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | babypuncher wrote:
         | How prevalent is censorship of imported anime/manga today?
         | American media in general has become far less puritanical over
         | the last 15 years. I can't imagine those changes being made to
         | Fullmetal Alchemist today.
        
         | HalcyonicStorm wrote:
         | I pay Viz and Shonen Jump as a subscriber in their apps. Whats
         | frustrating is that I only get a tiny subset of their
         | catalogue. I can't ready some of their older series. I'm even
         | willing to buy them if given the option but I'm only offered
         | new stuff that I'm not really interested in.
        
           | kiawe_fire wrote:
           | It is frustrating when you want to do the right thing and pay
           | for a product that you have great demand for, but which
           | nobody is offering to you.
        
         | cogman10 wrote:
         | Translation really is a major problem with Anime/manga. The
         | unfortunate thing is the pirated versions often have better
         | translations and translation notes vs the official release.
         | Why? Because it's mostly just a bunch of nerds trying to share
         | what they love.
         | 
         | It seems like the studio translators are very often just trying
         | to churn out a translation as fast as possible. It gets a
         | little better when dubbing is involved (because someone
         | ACTUALLY has to speak the line, which makes bad
         | translations/awkward phrases a lot more apparent)... But, like
         | you said, there's often a lot of editorial choices to make sure
         | things are palatable to the widest portion of the English
         | speaking population.
        
           | bitwize wrote:
           | It's always a bit jarring when the ara-ara anime lady with
           | big breasts and no inhibitions about showing them off, drops
           | a reference to "toxic masculinity" in the dub.
        
             | falcolas wrote:
             | Culture collision. A lot of things embraced in Anime and
             | Manga in Japan are drastically taboo outside of Japan.
             | 
             | The lusty 1,000 yo vampire inhabiting a girl's body is but
             | one such example.
        
           | anigbrowl wrote:
           | Legal factors can also arise; such as one very popular
           | franchise where many of the characters are named after
           | western pop/rock bands or fashion icons, which are
           | deliberately mistranslated by the publishers to avoid
           | trademark infringement. It's still enjoyable, but loses some
           | comedic/thematic elements of the original.
        
           | klodolph wrote:
           | Not really trying to nitpick here, but I'd say the official
           | translations are _usually_ way better than the pirated
           | translations--but occasionally it's the other way around.
           | 
           | There are a ton of really bad pirate translations out there.
           | The vast majority of scanlations you'll find, if you really
           | dig through them, are barely readable. For every top-notch
           | scanlation group out there, there are probably ten groups out
           | there producing garbage.
           | 
           | I've seen groups that put out English translations which are
           | translated from the Spanish version of the manga, because the
           | scanlation group has nobody who can read Japanese (but has
           | someone who understands Spanish).
           | 
           | Some translation groups put out super inconsistent work, such
           | as translating names differently from chapter to chapter.
           | Foreign names, especially, have already been transliterated
           | into Japanese and you have to guess what the original name is
           | before transliterating.
           | 
           | One particular offender was "Xerxes" in the Fullmetal
           | Alchemist manga, which was spelled as "Cselkcess" in the
           | official Viz translation and something similar in various
           | scanlations. Maybe in the 1990s this would have given you
           | trouble, but these days you just pop over to ja.wikipedia.org
           | and look for kuserukusesu, and find out that this is how
           | "Xerxes" is transliterated into Japanese.
        
             | falcolas wrote:
             | Something that can cause poor scanlations is, ironically,
             | competition. When there's competition, there's huge
             | incentive to post chapters first. The first releases will
             | get the vast majority of the views (they will often remain
             | listed first, even after other versions come out), and
             | cause other groups to drop the manga - even when their
             | product was superior.
             | 
             | And for some groups, they leverage that to get ad
             | impressions on their own sites (or YouTube videos) before
             | releasing them via the more generic methods.
             | 
             | The best scanlations will usually be niche titles done by
             | one group.
        
             | jbluepolarbear wrote:
             | Scanlations of the big Shonen were far superior to the
             | official translations. I read one piece and Naruto
             | scanlated first and then through a subscription to shonen
             | jump. The shonen jump translation were awful. Reading
             | yugioh was so bad I just download the scanlations and found
             | them much better. The best official translations I read
             | were the CLAMP manga xxx Holics, tsubasa chronicles, etc.
             | there was a lot of bad scanlations, but the good scanlation
             | was better than the best official.
        
           | thaumasiotes wrote:
           | > It gets a little better when dubbing is involved (because
           | someone ACTUALLY has to speak the line, which makes bad
           | translations/awkward phrases a lot more apparent)...
           | 
           | I have played a video game (sadly, I forget which one) which
           | had broken English subtitles voiced over in what sounded like
           | a native speaker's pronunciation.
           | 
           | Either someone local really nailed their English
           | pronunciation without managing to absorb the grammar, or the
           | money for a voice actor was good and the studio wasn't open
           | to changing the dialog just because a native speaker didn't
           | like it.
        
           | AdmiralAsshat wrote:
           | > The unfortunate thing is the pirated versions often have
           | better translations and translation notes vs the official
           | release.
           | 
           | Depends on the team doing it, really. I've seen some fan
           | translations before that are so obsessed with delusions of
           | purity or faithfulness to the source that it beckons the
           | question why they even bothered rendering it into English if
           | it's going to be not so much translated as transliterated.
           | We're talking guys who will unironically refer to the manga
           | as "Boku no Hiro Akademia" instead of "My Hero
           | Academia"...even though the translated English title is
           | literally in the logo:
           | 
           | https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5a/Boku_no_Hero_.
           | ..
        
             | jbay808 wrote:
             | To be fair, some things are lost in translation. There are
             | many ways to say the word "my" in Japanese, each carrying
             | their own connotation of status / attitude, and it's hard
             | to preserve that connotation in an English translation.
             | Purists might target an audience of readers that, while not
             | fluent in Japanese, have enough interest to learn that much
             | and meet somewhere in the middle, with a bunch of
             | untranslated words sprinkled around.
             | 
             | Keikaku (and most loanwords, like hero) are weird choices
             | to leave untranslated, though.
        
             | cercatrova wrote:
             | What's wrong with referring to it by the Japanese title? I
             | often look for the Japanese title specifically when looking
             | for manga or anime.
        
               | babypuncher wrote:
               | I suspect that searching for an anime/manga by its romaji
               | title is going to yield far fewer results than searching
               | by its English title. Especially in cases like the one
               | highlighted above, where the original work actually uses
               | the English title in its Japanese branding.
        
               | falcolas wrote:
               | A counter point: Danmachi.
               | 
               | You'll get plenty of search hits off it.
        
               | klodolph wrote:
               | You can index by both easily enough. But how are you
               | searching for the Japanese version? Are you typing in "Pu
               | nohiro"? Or "Boku no hiro"? Or "Boku no hiirou"? "Boku no
               | hero"?
               | 
               | If you get a Japanese copy of the manga, in Japan, it
               | will say, at the top, "My Hero Academia" in English.
               | There's no excuse for using some other title. You can
               | always add alternative names to your indexing system--
               | just like you might search for "In Search of Lost Time"
               | and find a book titled "Remembrance of Things Past"--but
               | the English translation would never be called "A la
               | recherche du temps perdu". That would be silly.
        
               | babypuncher wrote:
               | If you're looking for Japanese results, searching using
               | the Japanese name makes the most sense.
               | 
               | I'm not sure what people expect to find searching for
               | something by its romaji title.
        
               | falcolas wrote:
               | Not all titles are translated the same. This is
               | particularly a problem with Japanese titles, which can be
               | frustratingly different sometimes.
               | 
               | For example, the following is the title as used in the
               | Anime: "Graced by the Gods". However, a more literal
               | translation (and the one the novel was originally
               | (unofficially) translated under) was "The Man Picked Up
               | By the Gods". Compared with the romanji "Kamitachi ni
               | Hirowareta Otoko", which is much more consistent to find
               | it by.
               | 
               | Separately, there's also titles that translate like: "I
               | Came to Another World as a Jack of All Trades and a
               | Master of None to Journey while Relying on Quickness"...
               | 
               | EDIT: Another advantage of using the Japanese names is
               | you can use fewer words to search/refer by. For example,
               | "The Irregular in Magic High School" is most often
               | referred to simply as "Mahoka" by its fans. Same with
               | Danmachi.
        
             | lotyrin wrote:
             | Yeah, being mostly unable/unwilling to navigate the
             | spectrum between the commercial censorship overly
             | westernized crap and the fan translation "All according to
             | Keikaku (TL Note: Keikaku means plan)" crap and who has
             | what licenses and how to get quality pirate copies when
             | needed (yet support artists somehow), I have just about
             | given up and determined to just have a JP region kindle,
             | buy on Amazon JP and read everything in the original
             | Japanese.
        
           | Blackthorn wrote:
           | Ironically, I think deepL has made this _better_ for novels.
           | It 's shocking how good human-edited deepL transitions can
           | be, and how fast they can be to produce compared to fully
           | human translation.
           | 
           | Before anyone brings it up, it doesn't remove the need for a
           | bilingual translator. They still have to do (sometimes
           | significant) editing.
        
           | kiawe_fire wrote:
           | It might be unfair to generalize, because there are some
           | shoddy fan translations out there, and I'm sure there are
           | some studios / professionals that do great work.
           | 
           | But it can be jarring to see fan-translated versions put more
           | care into preserving intent and readability in translations,
           | and even preserve artwork like onomatopoeia while also
           | providing context, only to see what appears to be sloppy
           | disregard in the official release.
           | 
           | It feels like an industry where you as the customer never
           | really know what you're getting, because the standards are
           | all over the place.
           | 
           | For all the legit criticisms, anime has at least generally
           | evolved to have a minimum acceptable standard by which most
           | studios operate, with considerable blow back when that
           | doesn't happen (see early Netflix dubs that they later re-
           | dubbed based on complaints). The same can't be said for
           | manga, afaik.
        
             | klodolph wrote:
             | My experience with fan-translated versions is that they
             | often prioritize clumsy, literal translations over
             | readable, fluent translations and it's the exception when
             | you find a really good translation. It's not uncommon to
             | see random untranslated words, or an over-reliance on
             | translator's notes.
             | 
             | The most infamous example is "keikaku", which was from an
             | anime fan translation. It just means "plan".
        
               | least wrote:
               | It's a clash of ideals, for sure. A commercial company
               | avoids literal translations for obvious reasons; you want
               | to ingratiate yourself with as large an audience as
               | possible and using terminology that most people don't
               | understand is alienating. Putting a translator's note to
               | educate viewers about Japanese culture isn't really an
               | option.
               | 
               | Fan translations don't have the same restrictions in
               | place and while it can lead to infamous examples like the
               | keikaku one you mentioned, it can be much more
               | enlightening, enriching, and enjoyable. Most of the time
               | they help provide cultural context and some of these are
               | widespread enough in anime fandom that even the official
               | translations will use things like honorifics.
               | 
               | Ultimately, I think it's good to have both. I view it as
               | sort of the "introductory" level and the "intermediate"
               | level of anime watching.
        
               | anigbrowl wrote:
               | I suppose you think the timing of that was an accident
               | [dramatic pause]
               | 
               | I kind of prefer transliteration over fluency unless it's
               | really clumsy; overly 'helpful' translations that
               | prioritize ease over engagement can lead to
               | incongruities, like characters in a medieval or fantastic
               | setting saying 'OK!' rather than 'certainly' or 'of
               | course'.
        
             | falcolas wrote:
             | > fan-translated versions put more care into preserving
             | intent and readability in translations
             | 
             | There's a reason for this - money. If there's a
             | particularly high quality scanlation, it's because someone
             | has paid a group to do it.
             | 
             | There's a lot of relatively skilled work that goes into
             | translating a manga from Japanese to English: Translation,
             | Proofreading, Redrawing (removing Japanese glyphs and
             | literally re-drawing what they covered), Typesetting, QA.
             | Some of these steps can take minutes per chapter, some take
             | days. And like all skilled labor, they're typically paid.
             | Especially the translators - you can't _not_ pay them if
             | you want both quality and stability.
             | 
             | That payment can take several forms - Patreon accounts
             | direct payments to have a particular manga translated
             | (probably most manga produced will never get an official
             | translation), and tip jars. Many scanlation groups would
             | love to go legit - purchasing the American distribution
             | licenses - but it's a hard road.
             | 
             | Also, the scanlation scene provides something very valuable
             | for the Japanese publishers: free market valuation. It's
             | why the Japanese publishers who hold the English
             | publication rights rarely go after scanlation groups and
             | sites - it tells them which of their properties are worth
             | licensing off to American companies. It's these companies
             | that go after the scanlations, and most groups give in
             | peacefully - often glad for the opportunity to reward
             | bringing manga to their countries.
             | 
             | Ironically, the skilled labor I called out above? It's the
             | same thing that causes poor quality official translations.
             | It requires a lot of labor, lots of time, and probably
             | comparatively small profit margins.
        
             | jabroni_salad wrote:
             | Manga does pretty well with fanlations since there is less
             | overall text. It's when you get into webnovels / light
             | novels things get hairy and you pretty much have to lower
             | your standard to the proper nouns being consistent and
             | nothing else.
             | 
             | But the alternative is to wait 2+ years for yen press to
             | ship (Overlord addict here).
        
               | falcolas wrote:
               | As a former reader of "The Irregular in Magic High
               | School", official translations are not proof against poor
               | quality. I get it, the original author used lots of
               | arcane and formal Japanese, but good lord it was
               | terrible.
        
         | subjectsigma wrote:
         | This is becoming even more widespread despite immense negative
         | feedback from fans and it is really concerning. Companies like
         | Crunchyroll carry around a laundry list of translation (as well
         | as other) controversies but for most American anime fans there
         | is no alternative, you either watch on Crunchy or you don't
         | watch at all.
        
           | dragontamer wrote:
           | I can think of at least 3 major groups doing anime in the
           | USA:
           | 
           | 1. Crunchyroll (aka: merged with Funimation)
           | 
           | 2. Netflix
           | 
           | 3. Hidive (aka: Sentai Filmworks)
           | 
           | Amazon Prime tried to do a thing (and still holds some
           | licenses), but I don't think they have done any recent anime.
           | (Especially with the stupid "double-paywall", requiring both
           | Amazon Prime + an anime-specific subscription to get
           | access... it was doomed from the start by bad business
           | decisions)
        
           | tarentel wrote:
           | Or you steal it. It's really weird how some of the companies
           | mentioned in this thread are run. I like this stuff, have the
           | money, and I am more than willing to pay, but as others
           | pointed out the quality is usually much worse than the same
           | thing posted online for free. Whether fixing these quality
           | issues would lead to less piracy overall I don't know but
           | they'd have at least one more customer in me.
           | 
           | Also, wrt to physical manga, availability is often time an
           | issue. I don't want to read everything on a screen.
        
         | bananamerica wrote:
         | You're in north America, I'm in Brazil. I have HBO Max, and I
         | know for a fact that even on HBO dubs and subtitles are heavily
         | censored. If you don't speak English, you'll think that the
         | harshest word in _The Sopranos_ is  "damn".
        
         | 19870213 wrote:
         | Don't get me started on the original (the later omnibus is way
         | better) official english publication for Inuyasha... even
         | ignoring flipping the reading direction and not updating
         | references to which hand someone is using (so referring in text
         | to a right hand, but visually a left hand) the amount of
         | translation errors and swapped text bubbles was just maddening.
        
       | itsthecourier wrote:
        
       | temp8964 wrote:
       | Another reason for me to download stuff and put in a home
       | streaming server is that I get to control what my small kids
       | watch. There are so many stupid stuff on YouTube and other
       | streaming services, so I just download good cartoons for my kids
       | to watch.
        
       | dayvid wrote:
       | Manga's tough because it's so easy to pirate and there are so
       | many older titles out there.
       | 
       | Viz has done an amazing job by having access to a decent Shonen
       | Jump library for only $2/month that hopefully will grow, but it's
       | dead simple to go to a manga fan translation aggregator site and
       | read a larger range of comics (and from non Shonen-Jump titles).
       | I'm a subscriber and read titles they have there. The image
       | quality is better than fan sites unless you download torrents or
       | something.
       | 
       | The obvious solution for this era is to have a Netflix or
       | crunchyroll-like approach with Manga. Also for some newer titles,
       | they're creating the translations to be released when the title
       | is released in Japan.
        
       | cercatrova wrote:
       | Somewhat related, Tachiyomi really is a great Android app for
       | manga, it makes it very easy to read on the go.
        
       | jbm wrote:
       | On a related note, I am ever grateful that I still have my
       | Amazon.co.jp account and a Japanese kindle / Japanese credit
       | card, and a VPN for Amazon Prime Japan. The situation for legal
       | product in foreign languages has barely improved in Canada.
       | 
       | When I was studying Japanese in the early 2000s, you were
       | basically locked into ridiculous 60s-80s era material by Tuttle
       | Publishing. The only way to be culturally fluent was Aozora Bunko
       | and piracy - which is probably why it is less common to find 40+
       | year olds in the west who are fluent non-Japanese Japanese
       | speakers.
       | 
       | Considering the near zero cost of publishing ebooks, you'd think
       | some enterprising Japanese company would sell their books abroad
       | for the same price as in Japan, but I guess that's not happening.
        
       | dmix wrote:
       | I recently got to try out an IPTV service on a smart TV and was
       | amazed at the amount of content you get for about $15/month (I
       | ended up buying a $75 android TV box which is way faster than a
       | TV and has Kodi w/ torrent search + streaming).
       | 
       | It has 4000+ channels but also has two additional sections for
       | on-demand movies and TV series. Each of these has a
       | Netflix/Paramount+/Disney+ etc section that contains every
       | movie/show on all of these platforms (hundreds for each)
       | available with a single click and max quality.
       | 
       | I subscribe to 3 different paid media streaming platforms
       | primarily for content-discovery. The only thing missing in the
       | IPTV app is the recommendation algorithm and the
       | 'featured/trending' movies.
       | 
       | Using a single IPTV service sounds nice, I'd love to be able to
       | just use that...but the recommendation/reminder side seems to be
       | a gap in the market, although I'm not sure there's enough of a
       | market to justify a standalone service (ala last.fm vs Spotify).
       | 
       | IMDB does a poor job of recommending stuff, even though I rate
       | every movie I watch. Seems to be a major oversight on their
       | behalf.
        
         | aerostable_slug wrote:
         | IPTV is a hoot to explore: Emirati horse racing? Got it. 24/7
         | Bob Ross? Yep. Seemingly endless podcasts about bass fishing
         | and bird shooting? Right over there. Ecuadorian soccer league?
         | !Si!
         | 
         | Some universities have excellent channels that stream lectures,
         | demonstrations, performances, and all kinds of other content.
        
         | metadat wrote:
         | > I ended up buying a $75 android TV box which is way faster
         | than a TV and has Kodi w/ torrent search + streaming
         | 
         | What product is this? It sounds freaking amazing!
        
           | dmix wrote:
           | Amazon is full of these boxes, you can use any of them that
           | support new android versions + 4k/8k.
           | 
           | The software I use for torrent streaming is a Kodi add-on
           | called "Elementum". For a similar app that crawls all of the
           | steaming websites see "The Crew".
           | 
           | https://howtomediacenter.com/en/install-elementum-kodi/
           | 
           | https://kodi.expert/best-kodi-addons/the-crew/
           | 
           | It really changed the way I download movies. No need to keep
           | a NAS or collections when you can just stream anything on
           | demand (unless you use private trackers w/ bandwidth caps
           | where streaming doesn't make sense).
        
             | adamomada wrote:
             | I have to say that if you're planning on running Kodi, it
             | can really be a dog on underpowered devices. I like the
             | recommendations that the guy who runs mediaclients.wiki has
             | on the homepage. The Apple TV is probably the fastest set-
             | top box you can get to run Kodi but you have to sign it
             | yourself or pay a signing service. In second place comes
             | the newest fire tv cube which runs Kodi even better than
             | (my third place) Shield TV.
             | 
             | Also, if you want to have your mind blown look into plex
             | media server "shares". I love Kodi but it's just no contest
             | vs the polished commercial app, and it even does the
             | recommending thing you miss from iptv land
        
               | dmix wrote:
               | oh wow I just checked out the Plex shares thing. That's
               | really cool. Man we're living in the golden era of
               | piracy. People who are used to old torrenting on PCs or
               | just Netflix are really missing out.
               | 
               | I got what I thought was a pretty powerful Android box
               | but it is kinda slow when loading in-line EPG TV guides
               | for the channels. I'll look into some of the more
               | powerful ones...
               | 
               | What about Jellyfin or Emby?
        
       | techwiz137 wrote:
       | I cannot believe manganato/manganelo has 100m monthly visits. I
       | mean I just finished catching up to manga(s) and it's my only
       | source but damn, considering the simplicity of the platform, I
       | could have never imagined.
       | 
       | Their search function is also buggy, does not include/exclude
       | categories i am interested in.
        
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