Pirate streamers save UFC 257

Quite liked the irony in this article :rofl:

I agree. This is funny.

Maybe itā€™s just me, but where do people get the right to pirate something if the legitimate stream goes offline? It hardly ā€˜savedā€™ the fight.

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Where does the rights holder have the right to charge and not provide an adequate, working and simple platform?

I find a lot of Sky Sports Box Office stuff fairly confusing and over complicated to set up and use (even having to have specialist hardware such as a Now TV stick to watch) with having to fight restrictions management to watch, the key is providing a good platform where itā€™s EASIER TO PAY than pirate, Spotify is a good and positive example of this.

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In law? They are the rights holder.

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Canā€™t remember the last time I paid for any content to be fair other then when I purchased Disney+ for a year, that runs out in a month and then Iā€™m back to a streaming box.

They have that right by virtue of being the rights holder. Thereā€™s no law that says how easy they have to make it for you to access their materials.

Now, clear commercial pressures strongly encourage them to make they content easy to pay for and access, because that way they earn more money for it. But thatā€™s a very different thing.

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Surely they owe refunds to people that paid but couldnā€™t access it? If you pay for a service in advance that is then not provided, surely there is a claim there? It is the US so if it is as bad/ as widespread as the article infers then they will in due course be facing a class action if they donā€™t offer some compensation?

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Yup - Disney+ is absolutely shit - I have a 21:9 monitor and DIsney+ uploads all content in 16:9 with hard coded letter boxing, pirate copies are proper 21:9 (will obviously put letterboxing if on a 16:9 TV/monitor, The device will do that)

Thereā€™s no need for that, Disney

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This isnā€™t ā€œironicā€.

Itā€™s like saying thank god a load of unlicensed taxi touts came out onto the street when people couldnā€™t find black cabs.

You do realise that a lot of illegal streaming ultimately leads back to organised crime, which uses it to fund human trafficking and terrorism, donā€™t you?

Possibly. Depends on the terms of service. Not really impacted by the existence/non-existance of illegal streams though.

They do love a good class action over there. It seems they have something going on all the time :rofl:

I may be misunderstanding here, but if the original video is 16:9, and the image is scaled to 21:9, then surely youā€™re either stretching the image horizontally or cropping the top and bottom of the picture?

The rights holder holds the rights irrespective to whether they have entered into a contract to allow you to view it. You definitely do not have a right to illegally take the law into your own hands to fulfil a disputed contract with them.

If they are in breach of that contract, you are entitled to restitution - usually in the form of a refund or credit for a future event. You could pursue legal action for the breach, but I doubt it would get far if they offer a fair refund.

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The original images are 21:9 I think. If Iā€™ve understood correctly the the problem is the hard coding of the letterboxing, which means it will appear letterboxed and distorted on a 21:9 display.

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The amusing thing is that the rightsholder will find it difficult to claim they suffered a loss if it didnā€™t actually air properly.

No, the original video is 21:9

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Alright, so itā€™s hard to say with 100% certainty because theyā€™re not the precise same frame, but - the from the examples give, the 21:9 picture appears to be cropped at the top and bottom.

ETA: have looked it up at CoCoā€™s original aspect ratio looks to be 2.35:1, which suggests that it is should indeed be show to more or less fill a 21:9 screen anyway, so please disregard my nitpicking on that point.

I will absolutely concede that the windowboxed Disney+ presentation looks f****** awful and reminds me of the pain that was trying to watch non-anamorphic DVDs.

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You are correct - there is very slight information loss on the top and bottom, but not enough to really notice. I matched them up as best I could frame for frame

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In case you missed the edit I made to my previous reply while you were posting, Iā€™ve withdrawn all my objections as Disney+ have indeed quite clearly screwed the pooch here.

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