Heroes was the Most Pirated Show of 2009

\"that\'s over half a million more than the show\'s average tv audience.\"

assuming the nielsen ratings are accurate, which i find difficult to believe.

i've never understood the logic of someone who says that because a tv show is downloaded millions of
times, it will be cancelled.. surely the more people that want to see it, the less likely any sane network
would be to nuke it.
by now at least some of the network people must be taking notice of download figures, and tbh i think it's
probably the only reason that heroes is still going..
a lot of the downloads will be from people who didnt even notice the show as it aired, and only heard about
it weeks, or months into a run, so they will only add to the official figures once they catch up..

first of all, i dont know how id live without eztv!
second of all, for half of the year i live in kuwait and i cant watch shows until theyre done airing
in the us then wait a few months and maybe theyll air in kuwait. so downloading them is the only way
because i am sure as hell not gonna wait a few months. nor am i willing to pay to buy them on dvds 😛

most of the downloaders probably don't live in the us and all dubs no matter how high the quality
are still horrible compared to the original.

i don't get how this would be "stealing" if they put it up on hulu for free anyway? all we're doing
is skipping the commercials.
i'm guessing 90+% of people who download these are outside of the us. i am in england and i don't
want to wait until bbc finally decide to show it. i'm not even sure if they've started to show this
season yet. same goes for every other show.

well, if the networks wanted to play smart, here's what they'd do:

1. find some advertisers willing to go after a world-wide and reasonably tech-savvy audience. the
time might not be worth as much as local airtime, but it's worth something to someone, so find them...

2. pre-encode the show, with those commercials, as standard xvids -- yeah, you could do hd x264s as
well, but most people torrent the smaller xvids and live with the low resolution, so that's where
you start. imho, the people who go for x264s are more likely to wait for the scene anyway, but if
you want, you can launch that later.

3. release on the major torrent sites starting right at the end of the show's first airtime -- thus
pre-empting all the scene releases (with stripped out ads). probably 90% of people will torrent the
first one out, even if they know it has ads they'll need to watch/skip.

why's this gonna work? because you're targeting people who will either dvr it, and skip the ads
anyway, or torrent it from scene releases with no ads -- practically nobody who'll torrent xvids,
even "legit" ones, would otherwise be staring at the tv watching real-time. this means almost no ad
revenue loss for you or your local affiliates. and unlike hulu, you don't even need to cover the big
distribution costs associated with streaming media -- torrents allow insane distribution rates from
only a few servers with good uplink bandwidth, plus all the peers that join (and stick around to seed).

funny that the author criticizes torrentfreak statistical reliability and compare the number of us
viewers with worldwide downloads. what a duch! it is harder to swallow this biased article published
by a web site owned by cbs.



seriously? it's going to axed because it sucks. the first season was really good, but i don't even
download it anymore. it is too freaking boring.

people seem to forget the fact that "pirating"(ridiculous term tbh) is global and heroes is a...
global phenomenon...

it only follows that people like me on the other side of the pond will obviously download rather
than wait months, and in the case of the dutch and german's years, to catch up with popular shows.
if shows were released globally it would make alot more sense, but of course then they'd face the
issue of shows coming out in say... britain five to eight hours before they air in america and thus
americans will be downloading them well before they air.

of course they could set up their own download service...

the day i find an option to legally stream all my shows in english on/shortly after their original
air date is the day i stop "pirating" and start paying. but until then i'd rather "steal" them
instead of waiting for months/years just to watch a terribly dubbed show (anyone who has tried
sitting through an episode of family guy in german will know what i mean). and i'm sure i'm not
alone here... i think the networks could make quite a lot of profit off guys like me - tech savvy
and willing to pay for a quality show.

interesting that of all comments on that article, just one is criticizing "piracy". all the rest are
supporting torrents for distribution of tv shows and giving good explanations why they do it. i
wonder if torrentfreak will publish a response.



i agree. i pay for a satellite subscription, but i prefer to download and the only available source
is from torrents. not to mention the disrespect from the networks. for example, fox used to air 24,
bones and other series in english with subtitles. i was happy with it, but suddenly, they decided to
dub all series in the middle of the season. seriously? that's when i started to download. is their
fault. not mention they advertise new series that have already been canceled in the us in the middle
of the season. so, they basically sell us series without proper ending, knowing that the series has
been axed. when all the produced episodes are aired, they simply remove the series from the line-up
without explanation. another example...battlestar galactica used to air on tnt here (which i pay
for) with original audio. after the third season, they took the show from the line-up, because the
corporation behind tnt was launching a new channel, called space. after more then a year later, they
started to air it on space, dubbed.

there is also the case of csi, which was aired on a basic channel of my satellite provider package,
but after years watching it, they simply moved it to a premium channel.

correlation without causation

do they even consider that maybe more than half of the downloads are made by people from other
country's like me that don't even have the show in our television and those shows that are aired are
like years old ? maybe not years but almost lol

dumbest article ever. what is wrong with the us networks? do they seriously think that it's a bunch
of americans who are downloading the tv shows right after they've just aired in america?! ffs.

stop whinging, set up a system that allows international viewers (i.e. the people who are actually
downloading the shows) to download and pay for the shows. i'd happily pay for all of the shows on
the list. heck, i'd have slept with everybody at shotime to get my hands on the season 4 finale of
dexter! but i don't have to because the torrent scene usually releases a show for download a few
hours after it has aired in america. if people who are completely unrelated to the shows can get off
their bums and do it, why can't the network idiots figure out a way?

downloading a free tv show is not pirating!!!

in fact, several months ago it was torrentfreak that published part of a q&a from the fox tv
forum. the question was "how can i get a copy of a tv show that was previously aired?"
the answer was from fox and it said get it from a neighbor or friend who had taped the show!
well, by extension anyone on the internet can be considered either a neighbor and/or friend and
i can legally download a previously aired tv show from either!

granted heroes is from another tv network, nbc, but i think the same logic applies.

ok... here are my opinions

1. i didn't live in us (neither uk or anywhere near them) and it's took years (a few but
seriously...) for shows to start airing legitimately in my area.
2. i do help by re-watching and pay for the legit cable or buying a real dvd for collections.
3. for those of tv execs who cancel the shows based on the large amount of download numbers should
be considered as stupid since that is still the people who actually watch the shows not only in the
us but worldwide!!!

just my humble opinions 😛 ...