Pirating TV is Too Expensive to Be Worth the Trouble

[Haywood]

From past conversations, you all know that I use "alternative methods" for acquiring some of my television content. Sometimes it is episodes of TV that got garbled on my DVR due to bad weather. Sometimes it is the odd show that I cannot get from either OTA or my streaming services (and very well may buy on disc later). Either way, I use a fairly elaborate setup to safely acquire the content I want when I want it. I feel no particular moral or ethical qualms since it is mostly stuff I can get OTA or will buy later anyway, but there is a very practical set of circumstances that are making me seriously reconsider doing this at all.

1. It ain't cheap.
That may seem counter-intuitive, but it isn't. I added up all the money I spend per year on proxy services, VPN services, Usenet indexers, Usenet accounts, etc. and it came out to about $323. That is about $27/month, which is more than I spend on Netflix, Hulu and Amazon combined. This might make economic sense if I pirated everything I watch like most other people I know who have this setup, but I don't. I pay for the overwhelming majority of what I watch. That means I am spending $27/mo to pick up a half dozen shows and fill in the odd broadcast TV gap. Honestly, that does not make a whole lot of economic sense. I could literally buy more seasons of TV shows ala carte than I am getting buy spending all this money.

2. It ain't that easy.
Have you ever tried to install and configure nzbGet, SickRage and Transmission on a NAS with an Indexer and Proxies? I have spent hours and hours on this stuff. It is great once you set it all up. All you have to do is log into SickRage, tell it what show you want, tell it whether you want the backlog of past episodes and you are done. It will download the backlog, auto-download every new episode as it appears, rename the files, download the metadata and move it into your file structure in a well ordered manner. It will even tell Plex that the new files are there, so that Plex will automatically refresh. The problem is getting to that point. What a nuisance!

So basically, it is a somewhat expensive and difficult way of getting instant gratification on a handful of shows I'm going to buy later anyway. I pay for most of my services on an annual basis, so I may keep this running for awhile, but now that the streaming options are getting better and better and so much content is available for purchase even during the current TV season, I cannot see myself bothering in the long term.

 

[Botch]

Scott, in another thread you posted your approximate income, and I was wondering "why are you bothering with all these rube goldbergian setups?" (I admit I'm floored by your ability to set them up) I followed this path for a short, expensive time, and something as simple as not getting good OTA reception in my locale torpedoed everything. A $50/mo (for now) simplest-available Dish setup, with free DVR, pretty much solved all my issues, and there are still many nights when I simply curl up with a good book and don't listen to/watch anything at all.

 

[Haywood]

I bothered doing it partly because I simply enjoy tinkering and partly because it gave me some flexibility that I didn't otherwise have. I like that flexibility. It was never really about saving money, but I am not going to buy a huge cable package and rent a houseful of hardware just to get that one or two shows on a few random channels. I am more than willing to buy those shows when they become available, but that is often a full year later. Thus the "alternate method." This lets me get shows like Outlander when they air and then pay the piper when they become available for purchase. I like being able to do this. I also like being able to download an episode of a broadcast show I'm following if bad whether screwed up my reception. I'm slowly addressing this issue by correcting antenna placement, but it is very annoying to not be able to get the missing episode if it doesn't show up on Hulu.

The beauty of programs like SickRage is that they are actually easier to use than a collection of streaming services combined with OTA DVR. Setting up a new show takes minutes. After that, it all just shows up in Plex without any ads. There is no figuring out which service it streams on or fiddling to fast forward through commercials. There are no concerns over what channel it airs on or whether a streaming service even carries it. I look forward to a day when legally buying content is that easy. The problem is the setup, which is a miserable pain in the ass. I am in the middle of switching from SABnzbd and Sonarr on my PC to nzbGet and SickRage on my NAS and it is a freaking monster. I have a masters degree in information systems and even I find it counter-intuitive. The documentation is pretty spotty and the configuration options are both plentiful and opaque. One of the reasons Usenet flies under the radar is that you almost have to be an IT professional to make the bloody thing work.

 

[Haywood]

Putting aside the somewhat nefarious world of Usenet and Bittorrent, my overall setup is very easy to manage and use. It is completely seamless to everyone in the house. Turn on a TV, grab the Roku remote and watch anything. DVR, Plex, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, DramaFever, Funimation, PBS, PBS Kids, Pandora, Spotify, Amazon Music and a number of other options are all right there. Roku Universal Search makes it easy to find out what service has what or where you can buy it. Plex has a fantastic Roku client for accessing all of our music and other content. Apart from the stuff I discussed above, I am in the process of ripping my entire disc library to Plex. I love the setup we have and would not want to trade it for cable. We get so much for our media dollar this way. Even factoring in the costs I mentioned above with the $43/mo we spend on legitimate streaming subscriptions, our total media spend is $70. I promise that I can beat any $70 cable package for content.

 

[Botch]

I enjoy a bit of tinkering too, but as soon as I started reading your second paragraph (two posts up), I looked over at my book stack!

 

[Haywood]

This particular bit of tinkering is making me a bit nuts. I've spent over 8 hours screwing with it this weekend and I'm still not done. Thus the second guessing, especially in light of the new proxy service I have to pay for.