Not just clips, but full TV episodes and movies. It started for a practical reason: I had a night class and I didn't want to miss Star Trek. It also started before I had a good way to get the video onto the TV. My DVD player played VCDs so sometimes I would burn those. I got good at that and even put chapter markers at the act breaks (not that I ever used them or even watched the discs more than once. ) I didn't have a DVD player in my room though but I did still have a VCR so if I wanted to watch something in there, I ran a cable from my desktop PC to the VCR in the living room and recorded the shows I wanted to VHS. I didn't do that more than once or twice but I remember thinking the DivX logo on a video tape was hilarious.
Amazing work Was all of that effort to watch Enterprise? Very impressive.
Outside of the standard "record movies off of HBO during preview weekends" schtick, my dad was able to rewire the cable box in our backyard. He did it for one night so we could watch Jerry Seinfeld's first stand-up special on HBO after his show went off the air in 1998. He was the one who taught me the joy of movie/TV/music piracy.
My first pirated show was Aqua Teen Hunger Force and the Revenge of the Moonities episode. I think some random website had all the episodes saved in Real Media or some other old-timey format. I never tried TV/movie piracy off the P2P services, but a friend of mine got Family Guy's Petoria episode off of Limewire/KaZaa/Bearshare off a dial-up connection. He stayed up every night for a week on the family computer to watch it download at 56k speeds.
I also used VCDs and MPEG-1 clips to watch stuff on my Dreamcast in my room.
Once BitTorrent came around, I was watching a lot more TV on an iMac in my parents' home office. It had a futon so I could lay down and watch stuff. I remember being sick with mono in high school while watching Tom Goes To The Mayor and Collateral.
I can't remember exactly when I started pirating video. Or music come to think of it.
It was just a natural progression of taping things off various broadcasts and evolved from there. I can narrow music down a bit more precise than video though.
The first time I used the internet to get audio was about 2000 or 2001. Video was a bit later. In about 2003-5 I think it was.
Music was great because at recess with high speed school connection I could look up an album, and download it and save it to a USB stick and still have time for food. Lunch gave me enough time to look up games and all other sort of bullshit things I wanted to know. And then I could take the small ass USB stick home and burn it to a CD or store it on my computer for burning later and reusing the USB stick the next day.
I'd say one of the first things I would have pirated, if not the first would be South Park.
I'd gotten sick of waiting for new South Park episodes so I expanded my using of the net at school to get South Park.
See we in Australia used to have to wait months and years for shows to make it here! Not like today at all where there's only minimal waits of only months and half the shit is missing because of regional blocking and licensing anyway, but it's the future!
I only started getting really into video when I got my very own high speed connection in 2007... I'd download so much stuff rather than waiting. Still have lots of it.
pixel wrote: Sat Sep 23, 2023 2:18 am
Amazing work Was all of that effort to watch Enterprise? Very impressive.
Outside of the standard "record movies off of HBO during preview weekends" schtick, my dad was able to rewire the cable box in our backyard. He did it for one night so we could watch Jerry Seinfeld's first stand-up special on HBO after his show went off the air in 1998. He was the one who taught me the joy of movie/TV/music piracy.
My first pirated show was Aqua Teen Hunger Force and the Revenge of the Moonities episode. I think some random website had all the episodes saved in Real Media or some other old-timey format. I never tried TV/movie piracy off the P2P services, but a friend of mine got Family Guy's Petoria episode off of Limewire/KaZaa/Bearshare off a dial-up connection. He stayed up every night for a week on the family computer to watch it download at 56k speeds.
I also used VCDs and MPEG-1 clips to watch stuff on my Dreamcast in my room.
Once BitTorrent came around, I was watching a lot more TV on an iMac in my parents' home office. It had a futon so I could lay down and watch stuff. I remember being sick with mono in high school while watching Tom Goes To The Mayor and Collateral.
My dad worked at Radio Shack in the 90s and he would record movies off their satellite feed. He set up the displays so he'd make sure that the most expensive (and therefore the best) VCR was the one hooked up to the satellite and he'd program it to record after hours. He had famously bad taste in movies though so he brought home shit like Batman and Robin. I'm not one to talk though. I did go to all that effort to watch Enterprise and I'm pretty sure the first episode I torrented was Extinction (aka the one Levar Burton was "ashamed" to have directed)
ian wrote: Sat Sep 23, 2023 3:17 am
I can't remember exactly when I started pirating video. Or music come to think of it.
It was just a natural progression of taping things off various broadcasts and evolved from there. I can narrow music down a bit more precise than video though.
The first time I used the internet to get audio was about 2000 or 2001. Video was a bit later. In about 2003-5 I think it was.
Music was great because at recess with high speed school connection I could look up an album, and download it and save it to a USB stick and still have time for food. Lunch gave me enough time to look up games and all other sort of bullshit things I wanted to know. And then I could take the small ass USB stick home and burn it to a CD or store it on my computer for burning later and reusing the USB stick the next day.
I'd say one of the first things I would have pirated, if not the first would be South Park.
I'd gotten sick of waiting for new South Park episodes so I expanded my using of the net at school to get South Park.
See we in Australia used to have to wait months and years for shows to make it here! Not like today at all where there's only minimal waits of only months and half the shit is missing because of regional blocking and licensing anyway, but it's the future!
I only started getting really into video when I got my very own high speed connection in 2007... I'd download so much stuff rather than waiting. Still have lots of it.
I consider the start of my "collection" to be South Park Good Times With Weapons because it was the first thing I said "I gotta download this and watch it again!" while it was still on.
My dad worked at Radio Shack in the 90s and he would record movies off their satellite feed. He set up the displays so he'd make sure that the most expensive (and therefore the best) VCR was the one hooked up to the satellite and he'd program it to record after hours. He had famously bad taste in movies though so he brought home shit like Batman and Robin.
Hell yeah When the cost is so cheap, why not fill the tapes up with junk? My dad worked at a place with a video-editing studio. The one time I remember him using it for piracy, it was to dub those four TMNT cartoon episodes from Burger King onto one tape.
All this sparked another childhood memory: Movies on Video8 tapes. My dad bought a camcorder that came with a copy of Soap Dish of all movies. That sparked an idea, "Why not dub VHS rentals onto my camcorder tapes?" So that's why from 1992-98, all of our good movies were bootlegs and required us to hook up the camcorder to watch Tombstone. I think my sister watched What's Eating Gilbert Grape? on the damn viewfinder screen during a camping trip.
ian wrote: Sat Sep 23, 2023 3:17 am
Music was great because at recess with high speed school connection I could look up an album, and download it and save it to a USB stick and still have time for food. Lunch gave me enough time to look up games and all other sort of bullshit things I wanted to know. And then I could take the small ass USB stick home and burn it to a CD or store it on my computer for burning later and reusing the USB stick the next day.
I consider the start of my "collection" to be South Park Good Times With Weapons because it was the first thing I said "I gotta download this and watch it again!" while it was still on.
Napster was rampant in eighth grade, and the teachers were the ones installing it. It was a free-for-all until IT caught up. That was the same year we got a disc burner and a friend paid me $10 for a mix CD. I'll always remember the day before they shut down Napster for good. My whole family went out but I stayed home. It seemed like the world was online and it was a frenzy to get our last downloads done.
First thing I ever remember pirating was Jim Carrey’s The Mask. My parent’s friends bought a second VCR for their bedroom and us kids wondered what would happen if we used a blank tape to record what was playing on the second player. We didn’t think anything would happen, but once we hit the end of the movie, we went back and discovered to our amazement the movie was copied over. We made 2 more copies that day before returning the video back to the rental store.
I can think of nothing finer to copy from vhs than the mask!
I know this is Roofus piracy retrospective, but I had a legitimate mask on VHS. It was one of the very, VERY few movies I had on legit media as a kid. Still have the tape somewhere.. and the DVD. AND the Bluray.
melancholy wrote: Sat Sep 23, 2023 2:42 pm
First thing I ever remember pirating was Jim Carrey’s The Mask. My parent’s friends bought a second VCR for their bedroom and us kids wondered what would happen if we used a blank tape to record what was playing on the second player. We didn’t think anything would happen, but once we hit the end of the movie, we went back and discovered to our amazement the movie was copied over. We made 2 more copies that day before returning the video back to the rental store.
There was supposed to be Macrovision protection on VHS tape to prevent copying but I knew people back in the day that would copy rented movies using two VCRs with no problem. I wonder if the Macrovision only activated when using the A/V inputs/outputs? Back then most people used RF. The first time I experienced Macrovision protection was when I got my PS2. My TV only had an RF input so I would hook my consoles into the inputs of the VCR then output that via RF. It always worked fine until I tried to watch the DVD of Christine on my PS2. The picture looked awful. I didn't understand until years later I realized it was that shitty copy protection.
pixel wrote: Sat Sep 23, 2023 7:46 am
Napster was rampant in eighth grade, and the teachers were the ones installing it. It was a free-for-all until IT caught up. That was the same year we got a disc burner and a friend paid me $10 for a mix CD. I'll always remember the day before they shut down Napster for good. My whole family went out but I stayed home. It seemed like the world was online and it was a frenzy to get our last downloads done.
We must be about the same age because for me it was rampant in 7th grade. Everyone had Napster on their computer and was always downloading music. I'm thinking the teacher made people bring in headphones if they wanted to listen to music though because it was in a super small room and 20 computers all playing different music would have sounded wonderful. I remember one day the IT guy came in during class and noticed everyone was using Napster and said "nobody should have Napster on their computer" but they never did anything about it.
The next year all the computer's had something they called a "Sheriff Card". You could still download things but when the computer was restarted everything was gone. By that time everyone had moved on to playing multiplayer Age of Empires II and Quake II.
Calavera wrote: Sat Sep 23, 2023 4:39 pm
There was supposed to be Macrovision protection on VHS tape to prevent copying but I knew people back in the day that would copy rented movies using two VCRs with no problem. I wonder if the Macrovision only activated when using the A/V inputs/outputs? Back then most people used RF. The first time I experienced Macrovision protection was when I got my PS2. My TV only had an RF input so I would hook my consoles into the inputs of the VCR then output that via RF. It always worked fine until I tried to watch the DVD of Christine on my PS2. The picture looked awful. I didn't understand until years later I realized it was that shitty copy protection.
Macrovision worked on any input. The VCR had to support it but not every one did. My dad had a VCR that didn't and also happened to be really good at making recordings, even over RF. Like 95% of our VHS collection was copied from the video store. We had tapes anywhere there was space to keep them and yes we had The Mask too. I picked up the tradition with DVD and Blu-ray.
Roofus wrote: Sun Sep 24, 2023 3:16 am
Macrovision worked on any input. The VCR had to support it but not every one did. My dad had a VCR that didn't and also happened to be really good at making recordings, even over RF. Like 95% of our VHS collection was copied from the video store. We had tapes anywhere there was space to keep them and yes we had The Mask too. I picked up the tradition with DVD and Blu-ray.
The person I knew that would copy rental tapes was probably using an 80s model VCR. I've heard most older VCRs don't have the circuit for Macrovision. I actually bought a box that allows you to defeat the protection a few years ago at a flea market. It was only a couple of bucks so I figured why not, I may need it someday. lol
It also started before I had a good way to get the video onto the TV. My DVD player played VCDs so sometimes I would burn those. I got good at that and even put chapter markers at the act breaks (not that I ever used them or even watched the discs more than once. 
When the cost is so cheap, why not fill the tapes up with junk? My dad worked at a place with a video-editing studio. The one time I remember him using it for piracy, it was to dub 
