I suppose that it is impossible (within practical means) to burn a high quality DVD from shows on Hulu, but wanted to check with the experts here before I give up.
Any simple way to do that?
You would need to use screen capture software like camtasia to re-record the video and then burn it as a dvd.
also there are easier ways to pirate movies and tv shows. but it’s also illegal so don’t do it.
Yeah, I heard about this thang called Bit Torrent or some such, I just never really dug much into it. ;)
I was just wondering if there was a simple approach since Hulu is such a nice collection point for so many shows.
screen capture software is the best way i can think of. but it’s time consuming and requires re-encoding multiple times and if your computer is too slow the capture won’t be good.
Wouldn’t taking the material off of Hulu be the effective equivalent of torrenting it? After all, Hulu wants you to watch there as part of their business model, not copy it and watch it elsewhere.
I use DownloadHelper for Firefox to grab Flash videos from sites like GiantBomb so I can watch them without the browser. I don’t have access to Hulu so I’m not sure if it would work with it.
or would it be like recording a dvd or vhs off network tv? what do the lawyers say?
Yeah, this is a good point. Why wouldn’t it be like this?
they have a comparability list on their site and hulu isn’t listed. the way hulu breaks things up with commercials i wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t work. might be woth a shot though.
If you’re going to do this you may as well just torrent.
Yeah, so I gather.
BTW - I actually don’t feel like burning a DVD of a TV show from a Torrent is the equivalent of pirating software. I could have DVRed it or taped it on a VHS machine (which is kinda like 8-tracks these days.) Or I can watch it on Hulu and other places.
Yeah, but companies make ad revenue off the other choices.
Their Terms of Use explicitly do not allow the storing of the stuff on there. It’s a ‘streaming-only’ service, so if you try to circumvent that, you would most likely (IANAL) be in violation of their terms of use.
How do they make ad revenue off of me Tivo-ing it? I watch as many commercials watching a show I’ve recorded as a show I watch from a torrent (i.e. zero.)
Yeah, it’s interesting sometimes what they consider a violation of terms of use. I assume if you were to burn a DVD using screen-cap, you’re going to get the commercials as well, so I don’t see the difference between downloading from Hulu and DVRing, other than…Hulu says “Don’t download our shit.”
On a similar note – I was told by a friend who used to work for Cox that pulling movies/episodes off the DVR and burning them to DVD is considering infringement. Can anyone explain to me how that’s different than recording them on a VHS tape?
- Degradation of quality in analog media disappeared once we got CDR’s
(MIX TAPES!)
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Stuff on the DVR is encrypted, and breaking encryption breaks DMCA and helps terrorists.
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In Tivo, while ad revenue is low, people do watch the commercials. Not everyone enables 30-second skip, and even so, fast forward is unwieldy enough a lot of people just let it run. I read somewhere the ads in the beginning and end cost more as they are less likely to be skipped.
The ad people can convince the companies people watch the ads. Nielsen doesn’t track these, but someone must be? Every click you do, every fast rewind gets sent over to Tivo.
ReplayTV skipped ads completely and automagically, and got sued out of existence twice.
when you record tv to a VHS tape there is a very noticeable quality difference. There is also a loss of quality when you make a copy of a VHS tape. This quality loss does not exist when you rip from your DVR. Tivo and other commercial DVRs are not copyright infringement because it is not indented for you to be able to move the shows to another device, they are specicifically desiigned that you not be able to do that in most cases. Once the show is in a high quality format and is easily distributable it becomes copyright infringement. at least that is how they see it. personally i don’t see why that makes a difference. if you are going to care about downloaders you should care about VHSers too.
I guess I can see that, but it’s not like the only reason someone would want to do that would be to sell/distribute it/whatever. Maybe I’m behind on Dollhouse and I’m going outta town…maybe I wanna take the last 3 eps with me. VHS that’s no problem, but DVR makes that problematic. (Of course, there is Hulu, but that doesn’t invalidate my point.)
I understand now that DVD sales are becoming such a big money maker the makers/distributers have to protect their content, and that’s cool. But at the same time, recording is recording…either it’s okay or it’s not, in my mind.
They’re not going to prosecute for people who are going to go out of their way to do such a pain-in-the-ass procedure as VHS’ing. Particularly since 99% of kids and foreigners just bittorrent.
I think they are avoiding any fight about ‘fair use’ extended to ‘perfect, digital copies’ by just adding encryption.
They need their money, unfortunately it makes it a pain in the ass for consumers. It’s going to be a rehash of piracy/drm laws, but it’s a bit annoying that a legal, paying customer is subjected to more restrictions than leeches.
I really don’t get this. What if a TV show put up some text before it starts stating that it is illegal to record the show. Then if I were to record on my old VHS would I be guilty of copyright infringement? I mean so what if they ‘say’ you can’t do this and you can’t do that. Is that enough to make it into a law?