Hacker Cinema
Dexter
2006 · TV series · 60 min episodes · 8 seasons
Created by James Manos Jr.
Dexter Morgan, a blood spatter pattern analyst for the Miami Metro Police also leads a secret life as a serial killer, hunting down criminals who have slipped through the cracks of justice.
10 positive13 negative4 mixed55 neutralfrom 82 commenters
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93 comments on Hacker News
(I have only watched the first season of Dr. House and watched a lot of clips of the shows. I am more familiar with Dexter and also recently The Mentalist)
I would say that it depends. I know that Dr. House once caught a girl who had a condition where she wanted to get doctor's attention and he did some really bold move with this hunch.
Dr. House moves on his hunch and he (usually?) turns out to be right. Though most of it is focused on the diagnosis of disease.
It's unclear if they cross paths or not and if House is invested in catching Dexter, if House wants Dexter to be caught.
I do feel like though if Dr. House is somehow invested in catching Dexter. He might be able to do that.
A much more interesting question could also be how Patrick Jane from Mentalist could catch Dexter?
I recommend watching this video if this topic interests you (although I haven't watched it myself and I am going to do it just now): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJB8agSrx-8
I think this was a fun Ask HN and I was actually reading it on the phone and I opened my laptop just to answer it because it caught my attention. I love dexter, its just such a great show in my opinion :-)
[0]: How Long Would It Take Patrick Jane To Catch Dexter?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJB8agSrx-8
And yet with all these techniques easily available to them, modern filmmakers still churn out a lot of trash.
It’s a matter of taste and style, not technique or quality of gear.
But I don’t agree that old==good and new==bad. There was plenty of trash back in the day, and plenty of great stuff now.
Breaking bad had fantastic cinematography and it didn’t really use advanced techniques like dolly zoom, crane, drone, etc. It had buckets of style though. Compare it to one of its contemporaries, Dexter, which had completely unremarkable, boring, functional cinematography.
The single most important advancement for modern cinematography is to be able to instantly see what your shot is going to look like without having to develop film. This allowed filmmakers to shoot at night, use natural or diegetic lighting, etc. it used to be risky and require a lot of testing to do anything other than bathe your scene in bright light and then use even brighter stage lights for highlights, to give cameras enough light, and to ensure that performances and stunts are visible in the final product. This is way way more impactful than drones and dollies.
Currently eating dinner & reading the comments. I have got 2 priorities for this project. This is the 3rd one.
Commenting to not forget it as its actually pretty nice and I can feel useful for people. Personally I am more of a new account guy (joined in 2024) but the website's really old & it's history's quite rich! [the famous rsync comment]
Actually this website is older than me. (It's 18 when I am 17)
maybe I am getting offtopic but I wonder how many teenagers use this website quite a lot like me (don't use tiktok)
I wonder because when I mention hackernews to my age friends.
Me:"Yea I use hackernews"
They say: "Oh so are you a hacker?"
Me:...
I just end up saying computer tinkerer. Actually (I have written about this once or twice here) but it's actually really hard finding people (my age) to have something in common at times.
Actually the reason why this and many other reasons made me want to watch movies & series again. Dexter is awesome :D
> Yes, the type of drama does include the range you're describing
When your "certain type of drama" covers every genre under the sun, and you pretend that Dexter and Justice League are somehow the dame type of genre, excuse me for bot taking your words seriously.
> I don't know what comedies you're watching, but it's not the case.
Whatever comes across my radar.
BTW it's also quite telling how in your classification there's "certain type of drama" (90% of genres apparently) that is susceptible to the sludge, and then comedies and reality shows (the only two you could come up with that are not. Even though comedies, especially movies, are often just as drab and gray as every other genre)
> The article you link even begins: "So many TV shows and movies now"
and from this you somehow deduce "hose "so many" belong mostly to a certain type of drama."
Where "certain type of drama" is anything from procedurals to action, from drama to fantasy.
> It may, however, seem "everywhere" if you're only watching that type of drama.
Where the article uses the following "certain type of drama" examples: Justice League, Dexter. Definitely they both fall into the category of "the same type of drama".
> You're not seeing it in comedies.
As in: modern comedies are washed out and desaturated more often than not. For every Barbie there's a dozen Red Notices
True. Dexter tv series was also popular - reason they made so many seasons.
> I would prefer my hangman enjoy his job
I don't want him looking away at the last minute.
> I think it's a holdover from a puritan mindset that [...] only okay if the person doing it feels bad the whole time.
The Dexter tv series did popularise the idea of an externally moral psychopath mass murderer.
Or rather, if you happen to be a person who just wants to kill, at least channel your energy.
Watching Dexter this 'blood splatter anaysis' seemed beyond ridculous to me. I thought there were no way it would be a thing in the US in the way portrayed.
But then I learn truth detectors are? What more movie tropes are not tropes?
NOT A FAN.
Its both terrifying and amazing.
Im going with terrifying.
But, also, this is how Mecha works... but in anime the pilot is inside the robot.
Teleportation is Avatar... but yeah, now its a reality is super FN scary
---
WAIT: what was that movie with Dexter where they controlled prisoners though such as a game... its a brilliant movie...
I don’t think the author is the relevant person here. The filmmakers are, and they pretty clearly chose to make Durden a charismatic figure and Jack an awkward one. And of course they would - it makes for a better story and overall film.
Beyond that, I think most films/shows are functionally the same. No one wants to watch an ugly, uncharismatic actor just…fail. That doesn’t make for a good story. It seems pretty obvious to me that the vast majority shows are produced based on the quality of the story, not on instilling ethical values. Otherwise why would something like Dexter even exist?
You say lowered, I say writing in such a way that communicates what the author actually intends to communicate. If what you're trying to say doesn't land among your intended audience that's a you problem.
Having read the book and seen the movie adaptation I have to disagree. Alex is charismatic, popular, a feared leader, independent, and rebellious. The brutal rape scene while singing makes him look like an absolute badass (a la the Joker) existing well beyond the reach of society's rules and importantly, makes him look powerful. Ultraviolence sounds like an achievement in DOOM. When he's caught it's framed as a betrayal not "we finally got the bad guy." Then they make him sympathetic through the torture and weakening him and making him unable to defend himself to the point of being driven to suicide. It's harrowing, not the cathartic comeuppance of a terrible man. And then the police apologize, let him go and arrest the man he brutally beat to near death.
The narrative considers Alex to be horrible but the view as seen by the camera/reader thinks he's hot shit and a tragic victim of a dystopian society.
As another example, when you watch Dexter you're rooting for Dexter and the show makes him cool despite him ya know being a killer.
In a lot of ways I think it's actually a hallmark of media literacy that readers/viewers largely ignore the narrative as a source of moral judgment because it's fiction and we like compelling villains and instead finds it in how the characters are actually portrayed.
Fun analysis! Some thoughts and subjective opinions.
- Westworld's very poor showing helped me realize what I think the major flaw is in this analysis, which is that it doesn't properly capture shows that have been on the decline for a while. In Westworld's case, the season scores are as follows: S1 8.86, S2 8.38, S3 80.25, S4 79.38. As you can see, there is a consistent decline from beginning to end, not just a disappointing ending. The series average is propped up by a very strong first season and goes downhill from there. Not sure how to best adjust the calculation to try to take this into account.
- I found The Expanse ending disappointing because it ended mid-plot (which is less excusable than GoT since the authors actually finished the book series), but I also understand that they had to end it somehow and did pretty well with what they had. As a note to anyone that is enjoying The Expanse show but maybe hasn't finished it, I would definitely recommend stopping now and reading the books first, then watching the show. The books actually have a complete arc, but also the first six books pretty closely match the series, so if you watch the show first those books will be a bit of a slog to get through. Doing it the other way I think will work much better, because although you'll know the plot of most of the show in advance, the space battles and other visuals are so cool that it is still a fun watch. Then you can just kinda imagine what the rest of the books would look like if the'd actually made them into the show.
- Ozark being in the Disaster Finale surprised me – I thought the ending was good (if not great). I guess viewers were hoping for a Breaking Bad-tier ending (given the subject matter and strong rest of the show) and so were let down.
- Agree with the author that Lost is a surprise "satisfying finale". It is definitely in my top 5 most disappointing series endings (alongside the unsurprising disaster finales of GoT and Dexter).
- Big Bang Theory had a finale that seemed right in line with the rest of the show, surprised by the delta that puts it into Transcendent territory. I have a sneaking suspicious that non-fans may've been watching other random episodes and rating them (negatively), thus dragging down the season average by a good bit. But non-fans would probably not be tuning in for the finale, thus leaving that score to be entirely dictated by fans.
You have to imagine that they are using some expanded definition of abuse to arrive at that 90% number that is not in line with the average person's views.
I'm sure there is a lot of abuse and torture in online porn though.
But just as a counterpoint, most movies contain all kinds of criminal acts and the average person isn't going out committing criminal acts, just because they watched Dexter.
To me, this section of the article deserves more attention:
> They confessed they had thought it was a fictional concept made up as a narrative device in the TV show Dexter
I imagine a person saying "I have an internal narrator", and other person thinking "shit, I don't hear stuff like TV shows, that person is different". A misunderstanding.
I can bet that if the expression "internal narrator" was changed to "an internal voice that you can feel but cannot hear", more people would say they have it, and those poll numbers would change.
Reminded me immediately of a tweet someone made about Dexter when the newest season aired: https://twitter.com/_katiestebbins_/status/1461348307901378561?s=20
Personally I don't agree with the take of the article in two ways. The first one is that it gives way too much default credit to realism as a stylistic choice. Movies are works of fiction and the creator has total artistic freedom in what aesthetic to go for, and being 'realistic' isn't necessarily a good thing, you still need to make the case for it.
Secondly I think the bigger reason is a trend towards grittiness, bleakness or a sort of 'scandi-noir crime drama' look. People go for that mood not just visually but also in terms of writing, muted mumbly dialogue, minimalism, and so on.
Villeneuve's Dune that's mentioned in the article is to me, despite the apparent popular appeal, a negative example of this trend. The movie is overly bleak and oppressive, cold, distant in a way that many of his films are and heavy on visual stereotypes. (the hairless, pale, black-dressed 'brutish' Harkonnen's, a caricature that the books deliberately avoided).
Recently someone gave me this book called "Difficult Men" by Brett Martin. Nope wasnt about mass shootings. It was about the protagonists created in the most popular TV shows in the US and the minds of the writers behind them. So Sopranos, Mad Men, Dexter, Breaking Bad, The Wire, Deadwood, Six Feet Under etc etc. Its a super impressive and ever expanding list of writing. But the common thread is dysfunction. They are all coping badly with whatever situation they are thrown into or run into. And the costs and consequences keep building up and nothing ends too happily.
While reading it I was feeling, this too is a sort of mass attack on the minds of people. Cause its a hope and faith killer. The message is always - here is some entertaining and mesmerizing hypocrisy your small chimp brain hasn't imagined and guess what? Whatever move you make you loose. After reading that book, I see that same message in stand up comedy, in the news media, in tech and business news etc. Probably exacerbated since social media finds and amplifies such things. But I feel the messaging and signaling underneath really needs to be different.
Not that surprising. Pedophilia is probably the biggest taboo in western society right now. In some cases worse than murder.
Consider that pedophilia is maybe the only instance of a "thought crime" in western democracies. That is: you are guilty of a crime if you possess depiction of child pornography that comes from your own imagination (like lolicon). We have several TV shows (real and fiction) that focus on "child predators" in the same way that crime stories focus on murderers. I am also not aware of any mainstream work with a pedophile with any redeeming feature, but there are many works with sympathetic murderers (ex: Dexter).
And a lot of "anti-privacy" laws use child abuse as an excuse: not murder, not arson, only terrorism comes close. Pedophilia is put on the same level as mass murder!
Note that some fetishes in that list are pure fantasy, "transforming" and "dragons" for example. You can roleplay your fetish, it doesn't have to be real, especially if it is a crime, but even fantasy pedophilia is taboo. I would have liked to see "age play" in the list though, it can be borderline pedophilia (adults acting as children), but with less stigma associated with it.
> Junk science is a huge problem in law enforcement. Treating lie detectors as canonical, the blood splatter analysis to recreate crime scenes, this kind of stuff.
I'm not sure what's the bigger problem. The use of junk science by law enforcement or how law enforcement and their methods are portrayed by popular media that ensure the use of junk science (and other harmful methods) can persist long-term. I'm sure everybody and their mother has seen Dexter (who works as a blood splatter analyst) or any number of shows/movies or all the news where police dogs are portrayed in an incredibly positive light (I'm looking at you, Paw Patrol).
I think you're absolutely correct. The show was campy, and in time, would have become grating and fallen apart.
Star Wars, once lauded, has been milked dry. There are a few good works, but by and large they're beating a dead horse.
The same thing is happening to Marvel. People checked out after Endgame.
Game of Thrones was so near to perfection. It had an unusually large cast of a hundred characters and an expansive world to draw down. But even if the new show is good, the magic is gone.
The mystery of Stranger Things after season one ended. We're getting a rehash with common character tropes you can find anywhere.
The allure of Westworld softened after season one attempted to open up to bigger themes, but actually cut down on the possibility space.
The third Godfather. Dexter. Every single Jurassic Park but the first. Jaws. On and on.
Chiefly, it's simply a function of multiplied probabilities to continue with a success streak. Eventually the odds do not pay off in your favor.
But I think another contributing factor is that our brains begin to fit the shape of the setting, the motifs, the character arcs, the narrative world - and we just aren't surprised or pleased any longer. Few people would ask for twenty seasons of a show. Or ten movies in a given franchise. Our brains learn the shape of the landscape and grow bored.
I think it demonstrates why it's so easy for technology to run ahead of ethics. No one wants to hear a public safety announcement when they get the keys to a new car.
OTOH, I think the risk of CSAM from this kind of thing is overblown, because either (1) it wouldn't actually involve real children in any way, or (2) the model would have to be train on actual CSAM, which there are already laws against.
If no humans are harmed by it at any stage, then how's it any different from the CGI murders all over movies and TV? In the absence of harm, the only reason to consider it a crime is that it's disgusting. But we don't prosecute people for having sick thoughts, just for acting on them. If you take the child and abuse out of the equation, the only argument left is that seeing CSAM (artificial or not) is a "gateway drug" to commiting child abuse. If that's the case then why shouldn't we prosecute people for watching Dexter, on the grounds that they're on their way to becoming serial killers?
reminded me immediately of a tweet about the recent season of Dexter (https://twitter.com/_katiestebbins_/status/1461348307901378561). When new TV shows air I can't avoid paying attention to colors now, this kind of 'Scandi-Noir' look for a lack of a better term has become super common.
I don't know if I'm young or old, I'm in my 30s and from that narrow slice of America that was too young to fly commercial prior the eternal September 11th that was post 9/11 security theater.
I still remember my first transatlantic flight:, some ancient (by my standards) woman (probably more like 60s or 70s) was tearing apart the first class crew to CDG that they weren't serving tea, just bags of... she stopped overdoing the posh accent and just did some some kind of weird British hand gesture to indicate the plant matter in bags steeping in front of her did not fit her definition of tea. She didn't have a cognitive impairment, she was just posh by Pittsburgh standards and didn't seem to understand you can just bring tea onto the plane and ask for hot water if you're that OCD and/or Oxbridge.
I walked my fat Appalachian ass to the back of the plane, and promptly became sad that I hadn't threat modeled that my heavily encrypted laptop full of softcore pornography and pirated episodes of Dexter[1] was too large for the economy seatbacks if the geriatric in front of me reclined their seat, so I promptly and promptly started downing tiny bottles of wine I'd filled my TSA approved quart bag with rather than shampoo or conditioner to get in touch with my Catholic heritage and nudge myself to sleep, having given up on reading my copy of "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" I'd removed the cover from lest I look like some kind of weird Nazi rather than merely a dark, brooding intellectual, since it was... massive, and thus had all the issues of the laptop plus nearly broke the seatback when I placed it daintily upon to distract myself as we prepped for takeoff rather than risk blowing up the plane by texting about how I was annoyed I was seated next to a 9/11 truther.
(You haven't lived until you have to whip out a copy of popular mechanics and start circling shit in it in the middle of the boarding area to some future Q-anon)
Anyways, walls of gonzo written... on the fly... aside, I agree age is more of a feeling, but sadly some people abuse the spirit of that idea, hence ten-ish years later us having what seems like seven different podcasts about Jeffrey Epstein, smaller seats, and pretty much the same people "up front" ;-)
TL;DR: Yes it's a good article, and yes, age is more of a feeling... but don't abuse the spirit of the rule.
[1] those SHOULD be two separate things, but I can't control what people do in their free time
So dumping my bodies at sea is not safe? This is surprising bad news, thanks Season 1 Dexter.
This reminds me of the TV Show "Dexter".
True, but the price seems a bit lower (for now). A fully loaded cable account back in the day for me was $180 (including internet).
Now days you can get internet for $50 or $100 (depending on location, speed etc).
Then if you wanted say 5 of the various platforms, that's going to roughly be $50 to $70 more. So that's still a likely savings.
And on top of that, all new movies are basically being PRODUCED by these networks, so for the most part you don't need a theater (or their prices).
And on top of all that, instead of just fully subscribing to all of them, just get one at a time. Want the new Dexter series, get Showtime. Done with that? drop it until season 2 is out.
So it definitely can be a lot cheaper than the old days.
Tossing a huge range of different properties in a blender is fine, ripping off a single property is just lazy. Which sounds more original pure Harry Potter fan fiction or ER the TV show + Harry Potter + Cheers the TV show.
Draw evenly from M*A*S*H + Dresden Files + Mass Effect + Dexter and your going to end up in some strange and interesting places. Play through Starcraft 1+2 on the other hand and the story is fine if a bit bland.
As an avid fan, I enjoyed how Breaking Bad wrapped things up. Checking right now, it has a 9.9/10 rating on IMDB as well. Dexter, one of the examples in this article, was falling apart before the final episode. The Simpsons, unfortunately, may end up having more bad episodes than good. Thanks to a user on Reddit, you can see the badness creeping in visually https://i.redd.it/edv7vzciu8r41.png
> in general, what separates the best tv shows from great tv shows - is that they are able to have a good ending.
"Dexter" has made this painfully clear.
Good thing someone is teaching Hollywood's next batch of writers how to churn out boring sequels with de-risked financial prospects for the investors.
What I want to hear about is, how will the medium of uncertain-life multi-year serials get beyond the 4th/5th season disapointments of GOT, Lost, BG(reboot)?
I spend an inordinate amount of time investing in these endless storylines, only to have them 1) get canceled after Season 3 or 2) start sucking in season 4 or 5 (Might get lucky with a Dexter and not suck until year 6 or 7, but still...)
This is an important cultural issue, what with the pandemic and whatnot
I think Showtime should have followed this. Usually the first season is spectacular, and it's almost as if the writers are surprised it is renewed, but they wasted their best material on season 1.
Weeds Season 1 was amazing, the rest not so much. Dexter, season 1 should have just been a single season, sooo good, after a while you wonder how many serial killers reside in Florida. Billions, season 1 amazing, it hasn't been too bad after, but after a while it just starts to seem forced.
This is a psychopath fantasy. It's the IT version of You (the novel / TV show), Dexter etc.
Nobody wants to be a psychopath unless they are, but there's a certain feeling of liberty that comes with imagining doing things without caring about the consequences.
There's only one joke here, which is repeated over and over and over: it's the callous carelessness by which the protagonist breaks every single social rule imaginable. Nearly every single sentence contains this joke, and there are no other jokes.
It's like Dave Chappelle's "so I kicked her in the pussy" skit, but without the buildup. And ofc way less well done because this isn't Dave Chappelle.
This one has been making rounds in movies and TV shows like Dexter:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femoral_artery
More potential attackers are aware of it now. Whether that's a risk that's going to play out for real is anyone's guess.
> You should throw out all the games.
This resonates a lot. I used to be a huge gamer, but as I moved along my career I had less time and less mental bandwidth to game.
In a pique of nostalgia I tried one last hurrah recently and built a gaming PC (documented here https://www.leonroy.com/blog/2018/10/teeny-tiny-workstation/ ) but even with a machine which 20 something me would’ve drooled over I find I no longer have the patience to play something like the new Assassin’s Creed, Breath of the Wild or Witcher 3. It leaves me a little sad because gaming brought past me a lot of joy but after sinking 80+ hours into a game you question whether that time would have been better spent doing an online course or heck spending an extra hour each evening exercising instead of twiddling thumbs on my controller.
Same goes for TV IMHO - I ask myself what was the last TV show which affected my outlook or moved me in some way and heck The Wire maybe, Battlestar Galactica perhaps? I’ve watched all of Dexter, Chuck, Game of Thrones, Greys Anatomy, Castle, the list goes on and not one of them feels like they had a measurable improvement on my life. I do wonder when we go too far the other way though.
Just stop. If you need closure on what happens with some of your shows, read short synopses on Wikipedia. Don't pick up any new shows. After a while you will not miss it anymore.
The hardest thing will be that these days, TV viewing is at an all time high, and you will be out of the loop on a cultural touch point, just as if you stopped watching sports. You will also have to deal with people saying "oh, I know, I don't watch TV either, except for [Dexter/The Wire/Breaking Bad/etc]." Just smile and resist their advice. Make peace with the idea that yes, there is good content on TV, but there's also good content in books and in real life, like in your side business. Your life is not less fulfilling if you miss out on some of the good TV shows. You just chose to prioritize other things.
By the way, congratulations on trying to do this - I think this is one of the best things you can do to improve your life.
Dexter was an unbelievable show but that final episode was the worst one I've ever seen. Visually it looked like Sharknado too haha.
Only that's not the case at all. Popular cinema and TV are bursting at the seams with antiheroes. From Clockwork Orange through Hannibal Lecter to Sopranos, Dexter, Breaking Bad...
Last time I saw a dateable sample (i.e. straight from the crematorium vs. at a mountaintop or waterfall) was about nine years ago, and it was quite chunky. This was from a crematorium in Arizona that was presumably using modern methods. I do recall that there was an episode of a TV show a while back (Dexter?) where someone did an ashes swap and it was discovered because the ashes looked like they were from the 70's, but that could have just been something the writer dreamed up.
Also, it seems incredibly delicate.
Upon finishing the final season of Dexter, I clicked on an episode in the first season to look up something. I jumped to the 18 minute mark and watched about 10 seconds and closed the tab.
Now Netflix asks me every time if I want to continue watching Dexter from where it now thinks I left off in season one even though I spent a whole year watching all of the seasons.
So I have the same concern. If they have a more sophisticated model, it certainly doesn't get reflected in the UI...
"The men who ran the Mega sites passed around customers' e-mails with reactions, complaints, and compliments, many of them mentioning obviously copyrighted content. For instance, in May 2009, Batato sent an e-mail to Ortmann with a customer note reading: "We watched Taken successfuly [sic] and then tried to watch the Alphabet Killer a day later and got the message to upgrade if we wanted to continue watching."
Another user in 2010 e-mailed Batato asking, "where can we see full movies?" Batato answered, “You need to go to our referrer sites. Such as www.thepiratecity.org or www.ovguide.com[.] There are the movie and series links. You cannot find them by searching on MV directly. That would cause us a lot of trouble ;-).”
In 2008, a user wrote directly to Dotcom complaining about video problems. "I’ve been trying to watch Dexter episodes, but... the sound doesn’t match up with the visual," he wrote. "I didn’t choose to use your site, you seem to dominate episodes 6 and 7 of Dexter on alluc[.org, a linking site]."
Dotcom forwarded the e-mail to Ortmann, writing: "on many forums people complain that our video / sound are not in sync... We need to solve this asap!”
from http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/us-unveils-the-case-against-kim-dotcom-revealing-e-mails-and-financial-data/
I'm native Romanian, fluent English and medium German. I've learned both on my own. School was terrible for learning anything.
Read, read a lot. But not hard-copy books. Read short articles. Read something you're interested in and already have some knowledge of. Technical stuff is easier than literature. No metaphors, no hidden meaning. You might not understand much in the beginning, but that's ok. If you at least get the gist of the article, you're good to go. It keeps you interested. Install the "Wiktionary and Google Translate" addon (if on Firefox, or similar for other browsers). Double-click a word to pop up it's definition. Or select whole sentences to instant-translate them. Every word definition is a click away. The more you see, the better you become.
Watch your favourite tv show with subtitles. If the tv show is in English and you already know English, that's all you need. Put on the subtitles in the language you want to learn and see the magic happen. You'll pick up words and expressions in no time. Dramas/thrillers work better than comedy. Comedy is usually fast-paced and has complicated expressions. Recommended: Dexter, Breaking Bad, SOA, etc. Not recommended: Friends, Big Bang Theory, etc. You get the idea.
It takes time, but it's better than learning all the grammar before you even have the chance to use the language. It's like learning the geometry of the hammer without ever using it. A little grammar right at the beginning might help, of course. But don't stay too long in that corner.
Can you check if the content served is uncensored or if scenes with any kind of nudity are blurred or cut outright? Check a few episodes of Orange Is The New Black or Dexter or Marco Polo, maybe? I also wonder if the movies are cuts or the originals as available in the U.S. Sometimes the shows become unwatchable when cuts are done wholesale.
You're more likely to see a copyrighted episode of Dexter removed from YouTube if someone complained than to see it improved. You seem to be grasping at straws here.
Kimble Schmidt is getting what he deserves.
There may be some irony in your choice of example.
Showtime allowed Dexter to be rebroadcast in NZ on a delayed schedule (sometimes close to a year) on free, broadcast TV.
That means any viewer with a little patience could watch Dexter without paying anything. Also, sometimes these American programs are shown on an accelerated schedule. Viewers can watch a new episode every night instead of having to wait for a week.
Process arguments aside (and there may be process arguments that demolish the US case here, and I care about process too, especially if they involve getting evidence in bogus ways):
The US has Kim Schmitz dead to rights in this case.
There's a whole mythology about what MegaUpload actually was, and it gets partial anecdotal support from people who, for instance, used it or had friends who used it solely as a sort of Dropbox or benign file transmission method.
But when the DOJ imaged the servers, they got Schmitz's mail spools, and they have Schmitz and his employees in black- and- white discussing payment systems that disbursed cash to users specifically based on pirated media.
My favorite anecdote from the indictment:
At one point during the operation of MegaUpload, a user downloaded an episode of Dexter from it, and complained to Schmitz via email that the video quality was low.
Schmitz responded not by scrubbing Dexter off his site, but instead by demanding that his staff fix the video quality issues.
Here's at least the press release with a little more details:
https://pr.netflix.com/WebClient/getNewsSummary.do?newsId=2603
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DO YOU KNOW WHEN YOU WERE HOOKED? NETFLIX DOES Netflix Unveils When Fandom Begins For Some of Todays Most Popular Series Sep 23, 2015 Los Gatos, Calif., September 23, 2015 -- It may have taken Walter White nearly an entire season to become Heisenberg and Frank Underwood 13 episodes to become VP (spoiler alert!), but it turns out fans committed to these series long before those plot twists unfolded. Hint: it wasnt in the pilot episode.
Netflix analyzed its global streaming data* across the inaugural seasons of some of todays most popular shows - both Netflix original series and shows that premiered on other networks - looking for signals that pointed to when viewers became hooked. It turns out that when commercial breaks and appointment viewing are stripped away and consumers can watch an entire season as they choose, you can see fandom emerge. That is, 70% of viewers who watched the hooked episode went on to complete season one or more poetically, when members were hooked and there was no turning back.
“Given the precious nature of primetime slots on traditional TV, a series pilot is arguably the most important point in the life of the show,” said Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer for Netflix. “However, in our research of more than 20 shows across 16 markets, we found that no one was ever hooked on the pilot. This gives us confidence that giving our members all episodes at once is more aligned with how fans are made.”
While the data identified the hooked episode, it was shy on pinpointing exact moments, but we have a few ideas of our own to help jog your memory... For starters, in Breaking Bad it may have taken the flip of a coin to decide whether Jesse or Walt would put the finishing blow on Krazy 8, but when the decrepit heap of a former drug dealer rains down from Jesse’s ceiling, theres no denying viewers would stay to see how the season cleaned up (episode 2). Speaking of messes, Crazy Eyes drops both poems and fluids in her roller coaster romance with Piper in Orange is the New Black, but it was likely the throw of a pie to defend her (then) bae’s honor that had members asking for seconds (episode 3). For Dexter another episode equals another body, this time courtesy of the “Ice Truck Killer,” but our money’s on Dexter’s trip down memory lane reliving his inaugural kill that was the real tipping point - after all, fans never forget the first time (episode 3).
“There’s a unique sense of intimacy with creating a show for Netflix. Knowing you have an audience's undivided attention and that in essence, they are letting these characters in their home, we unfolded storylines at a more natural pace,” said Marta Kauffman. “In episode four, we see Grace and Frankie having no choice but to confront their fear, anger and uncertainty head on, which to me as a creator was a nice turning point to shift the narrative to focus on the future instead of the past; it is nice to know viewers were there right along with us.”
While around the world the hooked episode was relatively consistent, slight geographic differences did present themselves. The Dutch, for instance, tend to fall in love with series the fastest, getting hooked one episode ahead of most countries irrespective of the show. Germans showed early fandom for Arrow whereas France fell first for How I Met Your Mother. In Better Call Saul, Jimmy McGill won Brazilians over one episode quicker than Mexicans. And Down Under, viewers prove to hold out longer across the board, with members in Australia and New Zealand getting hooked one to two episodes later than the rest of the world on almost every show. Despite these differences, the hooked moment had no correlation to audience size or attrition, regardless of show, episode number or country.
Methodology: The data in this research was pulled from accounts who started watching season one of the selected series between January 2015 - July 2015 in Brazil, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, UK and US and between April 2015 - July 2015 for Australia and New Zealand. A hooked episode was defined when 70% of viewers who watched that episode went on to complete season one. Hooked episodes were first identified by country, then averaged to create the global hooked episode. The hooked episode had no correlation to total viewership numbers or attrition.
Denotes shows where for one or more countries, the show was unavailable to watch on Netflix and therefore the average is comprised of data from less than 16 countries
*The Netflix research didnt indicate exact plot points, but it did confirm episodes.
I feel sorry for the lead character and he obviously has problems, but the wannabe CTO of EvilCorp reminds me more of Dexter. This is the first TV show I've enjoyed enough to schedule for it in a long time but that character (Tyrell Wellick[1]) is a bit too dark for comfort.
[1] http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0514444/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_2
I just saw the pilot yesterday, and aside from having a really cool storyline, the tech/lingo is surprisingly accurate. I don't want to hype it too much based off 1 episode, but the whole show feels very Dexter-esque.
I'm amazed Dexter maintained the highs it did. Everything after Season 4 was inferior.
Oh my, I could spend hours with this!
'Sopranos' has the same 'Season 4' problem as 'Shield':
http://graphtv.kevinformatics.com/tt0141842
The massive drop in Twin Peaks after the murderer is revealed:
http://graphtv.kevinformatics.com/tt0098936
The awful last season of 'Dexter':
http://graphtv.kevinformatics.com/tt0773262
And that's how you do a last season (Six feet under):
http://graphtv.kevinformatics.com/tt0248654
The 'Red Wedding' episode of Game of Thrones was the best single show rating I could find - 9.9! http://graphtv.kevinformatics.com/tt0944947
The 4th episode of True Detective was 9.8. http://graphtv.kevinformatics.com/tt2356777
Check out this outlier on Dexter's last season lol http://graphtv.kevinformatics.com/tt0773262
ha ! like the Dexter of the cyber world. I sense a tv series idea coming on..
Yeah. Probably not. I haven't even watched Saw. I'm too emotional. As for Dexter I don't think it's violent. It would be family comedy-drama about slightly maladjusted individual if not for all the killings. On the other hand I have friends who coldn't suffer through first episode. At the same time they happily watch something as nasty as Das Experiment. I guess there is some variation in perception of violence.
So audience data when you're talking about original productions can be a blessing and a curse. We don't need big data to tell us that the top four favorite subjects of Netflix users are marriage, royalty, parenthood, and reunited lovers. We've been telling stories about those things for hundreds - if not thousands - of years.
The data can also be misleading, because sometimes what audiences want isn't what's good for dramatic effect. Both Dexter and Homeland suffered from audiences reacting positively to the main character, which caused Showtime to stop the writers from making creative decisions that yes, would have alienated the audience initially, but on the other hand would have made for shows that would have in their later seasons been better received.
Another example: I'm pretty sure that if you looked at the Netflix data it would show that people liked to watch movies and TV shows that either had happy endings or twist endings. The former makes you feel good, the latter makes you appreciate the writing. What people really don't like are ambiguous endings. If we based creative decisions purely on audience data a show like The Sopranos wouldn't have the ending it does. The upshot of all of this is that many writers end up 'cheating' the data to get their shows made. Take Orange is the New Black, where the creator Jenji Kohan has gone on record saying she basically used the main white, engaged protagonist as a trojan horse to get the show commissioned. What I'm basically trying to say in this rant is that using data to inform what shows to commission is one thing, but using it to direct the shows as they progress is another (and something I'm against).
No, from the available information (including the indictment) it did not appear that Megaupload complied with DMCA laws. Specifically:
(1) They sought to rate-limit DMCA takedown requests
(2) They operated the service with red-flag knowledge of copyrighted content, such as when a user complained that the video quality of the Showtime show "Dexter" was poor, and Kim Schmitz mailed his team to work on improving the quality of that content.
(3) They themselves used the service to exchange copyright-encumbered material, such as the movie "Taken".
(4) They operated a paid incentive program to get users to upload copyrighted content, and in their itemized performance reports for the program acknowledged repeatedly that the content they were paying for was copyrighted.
When people tell the story of great content they tend to focus on the very high points. "Breaking Bad" is much better than "Dexter". Even "Mad Men" which isn't as good as "Breaking Bad" is much better than "Dexter", which is arguable the best show on Showtime. Aiming for decent content isn't as meaningful as actually getting that content. Starz and Showtime have failed to get anything approaching HBO or AMC.
You can change your approach but you can't change your taste and if whoever is making content decisions at Starz or Showtime continues to have their jobs then it will not get them very far.
You see it now with the results of Microsoft copying Apple's strategy. Microsoft is doing the same thing that Apple did but since they're out of their element it's not going well. They would have been better off just being a boring company that made a great Office product and an increasingly 3rd party hardware partner friendly operating system. In the same way it would have been better for Showtime to just show movies that no one wants to see but pay for the opportunity to not watch.
Funny, I didn't notice the negative connotation here. But maybe that's because of sentences I heard lately:
"Hey, what's the problem with being a fucking whore?" (Street whore¹ in Dexter –forgot which episode.)
"I have a lot of respect for whores." (witness in a radio documentary —quite moving, by the way.)
[1] I swear I mean no disrespect.
I'm pretty close to canceling my Netflix subscription. Their movie selection sucks. I found Amazon Prime Video to have a better selection. Netflix is missing a lot of TV shows I want to watch (eg Dexter, The Simpsons). They're constantly losing content.
I wish they'd raise their price and get more content contracts. $15/m for good content is better than $8/m for stuff out of the Walmart $5 bin.
Exclusivity shouldn't matter. Subscribers don't care if content is available elsewhere. They already have a Netflix subscription.
Have you tried their original programming recently? At the turn of the century HBO and Showtime started producing really amazing original shows that easily rival any movie and have become the top tier of TV shows. I would venture to say that most people that get HBO nowadays do it for the original programming and not the movies.
These premiere shows had a much different feel than normal "big 3" network TV shows. They tend to be much more serial, with story arcs that go for whole seasons or even longer. They also tend to have much shorter seasons (generally around 8 to 12 episodes). This serial style really lends itself well to in-depth story telling and the shorter seasons means more attention is spent on each episode (since they don't have to constantly churn out new episodes all year).
An interesting technique that many of the shows use is to base themselves off a book series but make the entire 10 to 12 episode season cover a single book. Dexter, Game of Thrones, and True Blood all seems to do this with reasonable success. It allows them to get much more detailed than a 2 hour movie based on a book could possibly be.
Hmmm, this is difficult to fix because it relies on Ebay's search engine. The only solution I could think of is to add a 'price filter slider' on the results page. This way, you could set the limits to how much you think Dexter Season 6 should cost.
HBO knows it's 2013. It's built a Netflix competitor. They have the whole tech stack for subscription internet streaming running and proven.
I guess (failed to find how I can check it so far) that this is again US only. Of course we're talking about a US anti 'piracy' law, so that kind of makes sense. But the GP still has a point: Making content available, in a reasonable way, would make people like me shell out a good amount of $currency (in this case, USD?) to get access.
I love a couple of TV series. In Germany everything is dubbed (Yeah, Sheldon Cooper sucks if he talks German.. Don't even get me started on Dexter, who sounds like the most uninteresting guy ever on the German show). I'd love to pay for timely access to good content, in its original language.
All of Netflix, Hulu (and, with the disclaimer that I couldn't check yet, probably HBO as well) play that braindead, stupid 'Not in your country' game. Which isn't 2013 and something I have problems to accept since the 90s.
Only to a limited degree. Yes, there were soaps and other serials that had long-running narrative arcs, but not with the kind of sophistication contemporary writers are using.
Let's call it the 'Post-Buffy' school of thought, where character nuance, motivation, back-story, plot and sub-plot are all delivered with a kind of attention to detail formerly only used by novelists. There may be a few examples from the 60's -- The Prisoner comes to mind -- but even that can't really touch the narrative layers we've seen in the last decade: The Wire, Lost, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Battlestar Galactica, Game of Thrones (TV as novel if there ever was one), Six Feet Under, Dexter, Band of Brothers, and so forth. These aren't just books, they're novels.
This I think is partially the result of the ability of viewers to sit down and spend concentrated time with a series when they come out on DVD. The first time my wife and I did this was maybe 10 years ago with Buffy and Angel, and it was the most fun I'd ever had with television. This was a new experience. We'd lose 4 or 5 hours late on a Friday just chaining one after another, like the Battlestar Galactica skit on Portlandia.
What I think Netflix is doing, and probably what it has massive amounts of data to back up (I watched Buffy through Netflix, come to think of it), is that this new type of viewer engagement -- long sessions of series "gorging" -- has completely transformed the way we experience television. I think this is why they released the House of Cards episodes all at once. This is also probably why they're not releasing viewing numbers -- the new experience context of contemporary viewers has very little to do with the old Nielsen ratings arc, and would be a poor measure of the show's success, from Netflix' own point of view.
Felt compelled to post because I hadn't seen Suits mentioned. Modern Family continues to be reliable for laughs and hasn't been added yet. The League is the other show which I find myself laughing out loud at least a few times every episode.
Hell on Wheels surprised me by having a strong second season.
I had high hopes for Copper, but it hasn't really grabbed me in the 1st handful of episodes.
Agree with all the obvious ones:
Homeland, Louie, Newsroom, Sherlock, Game of Thrones, Community.
My wife is addicted to Castle and I've come to really enjoy it too. Since we've caught up to date with that we've now switched over to Person of Interest, which I'm really enjoying.
I've fallen behind with the following and plan to catch up ASAP:
Dexter, Sons of Anarchy, 30 Rock, Breaking Bad.
PS: yeah, I watch a lot of TV :)
Louie, Season 3 stands out to me as the best show of the year. Every 'section'(between advert breaks) is extremely well written, directed, and even orchestrated. Each 'section' feels like an operatic movement, with each episode being extremely cohesive and emotive. From an artistic point of view, it's one of the best shows of the year. From a comedy point of view, it's probably the best show of the year, definitely the stand out show for me this year.
Homeland was also very good this year, it managed to keep up the suspense and excellent acting, I'm excited to see the new season next year.
I enjoyed Dexter, I'm not sure I like where they are heading though, it's getting darker and darker by the series. I also enjoyed Castle, I think it's very funny and well written, but perhaps I have a soft spot Nathan Fillion.
Most anticipated TV series for next year is the new Arrested Development. I love the first three seasons, I'm a bit nervous with netflix financing it, I hope the (probably) smaller budget hasn't meant too many compromises in terms of writing and production, but with the excellent cast from the previous seasons all returning, I'm excited to see how they're going to pick up from the end of season 3.
I just added it to the list. Perfect timing, because I need a new TV series to get addicted to now Dexter and Homeland are over for the season.
Oh c'mon, you do have a solution, exercise a bit of patience for 24 hours (if that). I bet most people complaining about this only found out about the film in the past few hours.
It's hardly the same as waiting for months before Dexter turns up in a format you want to pay for in your region.
Perhaps there is no strategy here, perhaps they just wanted a bit of extra time to make sure that their download and payment services were up to scratch so that there isn't a repeat of the JetBrains 75% off calamity.
One guy complains to support about the quality of the video on a Dexter episode, and Kim writes concerned mail to his team about video quality!
This is called "Doing it right."
If Showtime would sell me a license to view their content, I wouldn't even be tempted to download it for free. Since they refuse to, it's going to be tough to work up any righteous dudgeon towards Schmitz and crew, especially when they go out of their way to adopt a customer-oriented approach.
Copyright is a government entitlement that we spun from whole cloth. Capitalism, on the other hand, comes naturally. You can't fight Mother Nature.
Again: the Mega indictment is full of transcripts of emails in which Kim and his team arrange to pay people to put pirated material on the site, and in which they repeatedly acknowledge the existence of copyrighted material on the site. One guy complains to support about the quality of the video on a Dexter episode, and Kim writes concerned mail to his team about video quality!
I was recently thinking of how much money I've spent on iTunes in the past two years (since we've "cut the cable") and a lot of our purchases were from TV series seasons that we bought after we watched the first seasons on Netflix and wanted to catch up with the latest. (Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy, Dexter, etc.)
Yes, they would deserve a cut on most of our iTunes purchases, but for one thing, I don't know what that would amount to. Maybe not enough. (I believe the iTunes affiliate rate is 5%, so that would be $1-$1.50 per TV show season, 25 cents per movie rental)
And indeed it doesn't seem to make sense: let's say they added a "latest season is on iTunes" link. It would tell the user "we are not able to secure the latest content for you". And if they added exclusive rentals on top of the flat fee, it would be tempting to delay the switch from exclusive to regular catalog for how long as necessary. It would be going against everything Netflix has been about from the start: flat-fee for unlimited consumption.
A few bugs:
1. Dexter hasn't aired on the west coast, but the next episode is listed as 7 days from now, when it's really a few hours from now. Same with The Walking Dead.
2. Doesn't work on my iPhone.
A few comments:
1. Don't make me click to see the next episode air date. If you want to keep the current interface, do it on mouseover. Better yet, just let users add shows and present a table with a list sorted by date.
2. It'd be nice to show the next air date of old show re-runs too.
Obviously it hasn't been proven, because the case hasn't been taken to trial. But the indictment is damning; the DOJ has MegaUpload's emails and lays the case out in Kim & Co's own words. For instance:
On or about April 23, 2009, DOTCOM sent an e-mail message to VANDER KOLK, ORTMANN, and BENCKO in which he complained about the deletion of URL links in response to infringement notices from the copyright holders. In the message, DOTCOMstated that “I told you many times not to delete links that are reported in batches of thousands from insignificant sources. I would say that those infringement reports from MEXICO of “14,000” links would fall into that category. And the fact that we lost significant revenue because of it justifies my reaction.”
And:
* When an outsider complained that MegaVideo's hosting of the Showtime pay-tv series "Dexter" had desynchronized audio/video, instead of taking down "Dexter", Kim Schmitz fired off mail saying that fixing the AV problem was a priority.
* Mega employees themselves uploaded copies of major motion pictures to the service, such as Luc Besson's _Taken_.
* There are Mega emails, on which Kim is apparently CC'd, in which employees enumerate the specific files uploaded to certain high-performing affiliate members, noting (approvingly) that they include copyrighted movies and TV shows. For instance, one line item in an accounting mail: 100 USD [USERNAME DELETED] 10+ Full popular DVD rips (split files), a few small porn movies, some software with keygenerators (warez)
There's a widespread misunderstanding of the DMCA on Hacker News and Reddit, and that misunderstanding goes like this: "to follow the letter of the law, you must somehow be responsive to individual takedown requests from rightsholders". That is in fact not correct; it only captures part of the responsibility of service providers under the DMCA. Another responsibility, clearly spelled out in the DMCA, is that you can't operate a service with knowledge of specific infringing content. You cannot know that Luc Besson's _Taken_ resides on your service at a specific URL and then simply wait for a rightsholder to request its takedown. If you operate your service knowing that there are specific pieces of copyrighted content on your site that you're "getting away with" having because nobody's sent you a takedown, and a prosecutor can show that (for instance, with an email obtained during discovery in which your staff does a line-by-line accounting of a promotional program you ran in which you paid contributors to your site to upload copyrighted material, and in that email you specifically make a case for paying one such prolific uploader more because more of their material is copyrighted), you forfeit safe harbor protections.
Finally, and orthogonally, let me just add that while we can't convict Kim Schmitz on the presumption that he is a scumbag fraudster, and the checks and balances in our system of government do require us to dot every 'i' and cross every 't' with regards to chain of custody of evidence, evidentiary standards, and cause for search --- so that if Schmitz escapes his inevitable imprisonment this time, I'll at least be comforted that our legal system takes those issues seriously --- Kim Schmitz gets no such pass in the court of public opinion. The evidence against him in that court is overwhelming. Unless you think the DoJ fabricated his emails, we know he's a crook. You can pretend there's a controversy here, but if you do, my take is you're not allowed to criticize Zynga or evil hedge fund managers and HFTs anymore.
Thanks for asking this question. To help understand what's being alleged by the DOJ, you'd probably want to know what they found in Mega's email; for instance:
On or about April 23, 2009, DOTCOM sent an e-mail message to VANDER KOLK, ORTMANN, and BENCKO in which he complained about the deletion of URL links in response to infringement notices from the copyright holders. In the message, DOTCOMstated that “I told you many times not to delete links that are reported in batches of thousands from insignificant sources. I would say that those infringement reports from MEXICO of “14,000” links would fall into that category. And the fact that we lost significant revenue because of it justifies my reaction.”
* "We have a funny business... modern days pirates", said one Mega- employee to another. "We're not pirates", he responded. "We're just providing shipping services to pirates."
* When an outsider complained that MegaVideo's hosting of the Showtime pay-tv series "Dexter" had desynchronized audio/video, instead of taking down "Dexter", Kim Schmitz fired off mail saying that fixing the AV problem was a priority.
* Mega employees themselves uploaded copies of major motion pictures to the service, such as Luc Besson's _Taken_.
* There are Mega emails, on which Kim is apparently CC'd, in which employees enumerate the specific files uploaded to certain high-performing affiliate members, noting (approvingly) that they include copyrighted movies and TV shows. For instance, one line item in an accounting mail: 100 USD [USERNAME DELETED] 10+ Full popular DVD rips (split files), a few small porn movies, some software with keygenerators (warez)
Remember: there are two sides to claiming "safe harbor": complying with takedowns, and not operating your service with actual knowledge of infringing activity on the service. Mega obviously operated with extensive actual knowledge of infringement. The operators of Youtube obviously knew that piracy was rampant on the Internet, and even on their service, but no prosecutor or litigator was ever able to show that Youtube's operators knew of specific, actual infringing activity on the site.
I found it easier to cite my comments from the last big Mega thread here than to go back to the indictment, which you can find easily on Google. The indictment is hilarious. The craziness at Mega just goes on and on. If you can think of something a lawyer would tell you not to do if you were going to run a file sharing service, Mega probably found a creatively terrible way to do it.
100% spot on, Facebook could see massive profits if it pulls off any or all of the following:
- Upon logging in Facebook lets me know my favourite band is playing in a few weeks, tickets are $25 and I can purchase with one click.
- A new episode of Dexter comes out, Facebook knows I love dexter and thus notifies me and allows me to watch instantly in my browser for just $1.
- A games company (steam, humblebundle, blizzard, whoever) is running a sale on games similar to ones I've already liked on Facebook, I can view and purchase the bundle through Facebook.
All of this is taken care of in one click by my credit card being linked up to Facebook, just like iTunes. They can basically combine the best bits of iTunes + Amazon + All the data they have on everyone on Facebook and build the ultimate relevant shopping directory completely personalized to me.
Sure there are sites that already cater for this but it's about the convenience and instant gratification. 50% of their users log into Facebook daily and won't even bother checking out other sites for these things if they're already right there in front of them available with one click.
They don't even have to do it themselves initially, just hook into Amazon / Ticketmaster / iTunes data and this shouldn't take too long to develop.
This is where the future is and if Facebook does this there's no reason they can't be the most profitable web company in the world.
Hopefully this means that all cable companies will die soon... Ok maybe that is a bit too hopeful. But I've been looking for ways to drop my TV bill recently (directv) I pay $90 a month to watch maybe 3 channels once or twice a week. I can't think of any other consumer service I pay that much for. Unfortunately new episodes of Dexter and BreakingBad aren't easily available online yet. The Cable/Satellite TV industry is just so broken.
Yes: the DoJ built a case for almost 2 years again MU, and subpoenaed and obtained huge amounts of intracompany email in which MU repeatedly admitted knowledge of and financial benefit from piracy. For instance, when an outsider complained that MegaVideo's hosting of the Showtime pay-tv series "Dexter" had desynchronized audio/video, instead of taking down "Dexter", Kim Schmitz fired off mail saying that fixing the AV problem was a priority.
That's just one of many many instances; see up and downthread for others.
>> If you love the show so much then pay don't pirate.
Well, you're right. But as someone above me said, those are two completely different use cases.
If you can't watch a show on netflix/hulu right away one day later, it's nearly impossible to use the internet anymore without getting spoilered (one word: DEXTER. I simply wouldn't be able to think about something different, let alone wait fucking 1 1/2 years for that shit to appear legally on DVD). So, in this case, people are much more likely to torrent something, to "quickly catch" up. The other use case however is, that you buy your dvd box, for example after each season, to re-watch your show and show your support. And be proud to own it physically.
Completely different things:
- Torrent d/l == catching up, satisfying your addiction - Buying DVDs == supporting shows/movies you love
A lot of Americans can combine these two because of online services as Hulu or Netflix. Sadly there are other countries where this is just not possible.
Yeah, it's more like a typical episode of Dexter. (Not Dexter, but that week's killer/victim.)
European who loves watching USA TV shows: it can literally take YEARS before very successful US shows make it to (non-pay) TV over here and quite often they are not being shown at all.
I was honestly surprised "Dexter" was on regular German TV here rather soon - I was on season three when they started season one here. I cannot say "Breaking Bad" is being aired yet nor "The Shield", "The Wire" or any other of my favorite shows. Not even "Battlestar Galactica" or "South Park" made it to non-pay TV.
Well, at least "Two and a Half Men" is on if you are so inclined.
The distinction between downloading and streaming can be considered odd from a technical standpoint, however I do think that it's much much easier to stream illegal content unknowingly than it is downloading it.
Basically, if you download an episode of a TV show for free, common sense would tend to say that something is fishy: you end up with a file on your drive forever. However, in the case of streaming, I feel like it's much less clear.
Two scenarios: I want to watch an episode of The Office, I google "The Office season 6 episode 3" and end up watching the episode with ads on Hulu. I can also pay a subscription to watch any episode I want.
I then want to watch an episode of Dexter and google "Dexter season 5 episode 3" and end up watching the episode on MegaVideo with ads (for MegaVideo, MegaUploader… mostly) and a daily limit that can be waived with a subscription.
The first one is legal, the second one is not but a non-savvy user couldn't really tell the difference. I don't really have a way to know that MegaVideo doesn't pay the copyright holders with the subscriptions and ads.
It probably hasn't helped that TV can now feature long-running complex shows (Lost, the Sopranos, the Wire, Dexter, Mad Men, the Office, etc) that 2 hour movies can't beat in terms of character exploration and plot depth.
I suppose it would be possible to learn faster than by just going the official route. Does Batman need a detective license? I think not.
I wonder if there are cases of people leading batman style lives. Or even maybe Dexter style lives (going about dishing out illegal justice in their spare time).
One thing that comes to mind is from a movie I saw (maybe smoke signals?), where the native american tribe (living in modern times) had a traditional role of some people disguising and teaching other people a lesson.
As for the signalling problem, maybe something could be built with modern technologie (SMS, mobile internet, social networks).
In fact today I had this thought, fueled by paranoia: what if your child was abducted, but could send one last distress call. I suppose police wouldn't be able to block the roads in time to catch the abductor, but what if by a snowballing flash mob effect, all people would take to the street and blocked all roads until police would arrive? It would be a kind of distributed batman effect...
Rather than "TV makes people feel lonely", that's more like "Sitcoms make people feel lonely".
Could you not turn the argument around, and say that watching shows like Oz, The Wire or Dexter where the other people definitely aren't having fun makes people feel better?
Per-item, it's probably less. But overall, they're drastically increasing the size of their potential market.
Real life example: say I have a friend who says "dude, you should totally check out Dexter. Great show!"
In the old content model, I go to Best Buy, see the DVD set for the first season on sale for 39.99, and unless my friend is godlike in his predictions, my response is "hell no."
In the new content model, I log on to my Netflix account and watch the first episode. Not bad. I watch another. Pretty good, and now I'm invested in the story. Whoever produces Dexter is now making free money off of me that they definitely would not have otherwise.
And that's only the first-order effects... by allowing the market to be more responsive to the actual viewing habits of consumers (rather than being mediated by network decisions on what shows to air), consumers will eventually get more of what they want, particularly niche audiences who aren't a fan of standard TV fare. This increases the entire market size, and allows producers of individual shows to expand the market on a per-show basis, something that was previously impossible. Experimental indie shows were simply not on the table, before. Now, they at least have a chance of finding a market.
In fact, Netflix is most interested in library stuff, says chief content officer Ted Sarandos, who has been running around Hollywood striking streaming deals with any network, studio and producer who has content to sell. Netflix even likes serialized dramas that traditionally don’t sell for much in TV syndication because, unlike procedurals, they must be aired in order. “I don’t care about last night’s episode,” Sarandos says. “I do want all of last season’s episodes.”
I wish I understood his thinking. Ted, you may not care about last night's episode, but the viewers damned sure do.
I, for one, would rather stop BitTorrenting episodes of shows that are likely to be spoiled if I watch them even a few days after airtime. ("Hello, Dexter? I have money I would like to give you. Why aren't you interested in taking it? No, I am not going to get cable and subscribe to Showtime. Thanks for your, um, input.")
oh it's not a valid excuse for piracy, piracy is always wrong but it's an explanation of why I pirate. I do buy films and TV shows when I can (I paid $80 for a boxset of The Wire last week (excellent show btw)) but often I can't find the films I want in store so my choice is to either go without or pirate. I have no problem paying, but the availability is a problem. If there were a service that I could pay for and stream movies when I wanted to and they were available I'd have no problem paying for and using.
For example, last week I wanted to watch the latest Season of Dexter which had just finished, I'd have had no problem paying for it but I couldn't, it's not available, so I pirated it.
I haven't had cable or satellite for 4 years, so this rings true for me. I go to bars or friends' houses to watch MNF, or I just skip more of them these days. Other than that, there's no way to get the current episodes of Dexter online without subscribing to Showtime.
Funny thing is...I'd pay for both MNF and Dexter a la cart on iTunes/Amazon if it we're available. As it stands, neither networks get any of my money. But the local bars do :)
I just dropped my cable TV, I never watch it and anything I do watch comes from Netflix, including TV Shows (like Mad Men and Dexter right now). Still playing with what / if I want to get a replacement box (Google TV / Apple TV / Roku) but for now, now cable tv for me, and frankly I won't miss it either.
Of course Charter in their infinite wisdom decided that they were going to cut of my "cable" which means TV AND Internet. The level of incompetence of ISPs have reached these days is mind boggling.
You mean except for The Sopranos, The Wire, The Shield, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The West Wing, Six Feet Under, Dexter, BSG (gak), Friday Night Lights, Lost, Sons of Anarchy, Deadwood, Extras, Damages, Weeds (gak), House...
What's tricky about this comparison is that there's so much North American TV. A lot of it is ABC sitcoms, yes.
Poster frame for the episode:
Title: Dexter - My Bad.
Description: Dexter stands in a dank, dirty, dimly lit public bathroom, gripping a fishing anchor, a malevolent look in his eyes.
To use a non-hypothetical example, right now I'm watching a series:
Title: Dexter. Description: A likable Miami police forensics expert moonlights as a serial killer of criminals who he believes have escaped justice.
The exact episode also has those attributes:
Title: My Bad. Description: In the aftermath of last season's chilling finale, Rita's death has left Dexter feeling responsible, possibly even...guilty. Unable to deal with the trauma, Dexter makes a drastic decision that will impact everyone around him. Quinn stirs up trouble at the station when he notes that Rita's murder, which is being pinned on the Trinity Killer, doesn't fit his normal murder profile. Things get even more heated when Quinn suggests to LaGuerta that they look at the husband: Dexter Morgan. Meanwhile, Quinn offers Debra much needed support, causing her to see Quinn in a new light.
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Simply put, titles and descriptions are not the same thing. It seems silly to me that somebody would advocate that they should be treated as the same thing just because there is overlap when the content is a 15 second video of a cat.
Not that you are wrong. But when do we start & stop using 'spoiler' tags?
A week after the episode was on TV for the first time? A month? A year? And with movies?
I guess it's right to not use the tag when talking about Star Wars, for instance.
I guess too that The Wire's 5th season was enough years ago to don't use spoiler tags. I've learned this the hard way (Dexter 5th season finale, amongst others) and stopped worrying about this. It's the Internet, there will be spoilers no matter how careful you browse.
Again, the only thing I can think of where using spoiler tags was absolutely necessary is in unreleased shows/movies/narrative
Send an SMS to (650) 918-6928 with the name of a TV show.
You will receive a reply with the number of days the next episode will be on (and the date) as well how many days ago the last episode was broadcast (and the date).
eg. Send an SMS to (650) 918-6928 with “Dexter” and you will get the following reply: Next episode of Dexter in 224 days (9/25/10). Last episode was 62 days ago (12/31/09).
I haven't had Cable/Satellite since 2002. I started watching all my TV on DVDs that I bought from Amazon, but then switched to iTunes around 2006.
Now it's mostly a combination of iTunes/DVD - I'm pretty certain it's less expensive than subscribing to TV.
The good part of this (and it should be emphasized) - is that you now watch for a _purpose_ - Latest episode of Lost, BSG, Dexter, Weeds, South Park, Doll House, BtVS, Angel, The Wire, DeadWood, Heroes, The Office, Dr. Horrible, Mad Men, Parks and Recreation, Castle, Californication, Dr. Who, Kings, Sarah Connor Chronicles, True Blood, Torchwood.
Any time that might have been lost to just passively watching television, news, is now, of course, lost to passively reading ycombinator, nyt, wsj, groklaw... :-)
That's actually a good question. I watch a limited number of shows, and I wonder if simply buying the DVD's of a program would turn out to be cheaper than actually subscribing.
Edit: I mean I've seen boxsets in BestBuy for as little as $25 and they're shows I watch.
If I had all the series of Simpsons, Futurama, Mythbusters, Family Guy and American Dad I believe from then on I believe I would rather use the monthly subscription fee (about $150 here for all the channels we want; TMN is great to have as they're free of charge for a monthly fee, I get all the recent Stargate and Dexter episodes and most of the big movies not too long after they're out for rental) for buying more boxsets and movie rentals.