THANK YOU <3.

I didn't know! I was aware that I could open video streams (the old-school kind) in VLC, but I never realized it can pull a stream from YouTube video link. I see now it works great, though the video quality option is not obviously available. It can be set here:

http://www.techverse.net/play-youtube-videos-vlc-media-playe...

From the page, under disadvantages of streaming YouTube through VLC:

  Disadvantage
     No annotations.

I absolutely hate streaming videos in the browser. It's a stupid idea. Everyone uses a different player, half of them can't handle rewinding or skipping forward, and all of them are total resource hogs. There are things that really shouldn't be done with web technologies. Like spreadsheets, or video players. They work best if made native.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1PCtIaM_GQ

Ugh, I hate them. Specially when they aren't set to last a specific time and are there the whole video. I instantly deactivate them when I see them.

And with a bit of extra work (very little, really) you can have a ridiculously nice torrenting setup. I can just add a movie to my IMDb watchlist and it will be on my TV in 15 minutes. And 10GB+ h264 Blu-ray encodes are much better quality than Netflix streaming (I can't vouch for their 4k streams, but I reckon they're still much lower bitrate).

I'm uploading 2 torrents right now at almost a megabit and my internet is just fine.

When there are good seeders I can pull 8 down. Most movies and shows are done in minutes.

No noticeable degradation to browsing speed, when a large file finishes there can be a little slowdown, but that's a different thing.

Streaming allows for instant start and adaptive bandwidth. Downloading means you can play it in whatever way you want, watch just the scenes you like, etc.

Netflix has a great UI for simple watching or you can use a full featured player and tweak lots of settings.

Also there are plenty of ways to play anything on a TV (smart tv with usb drive, network share, chromecast, htpc software, dlna) and you can use settings in your torrent client to limit the download speed if necessary. Some clients even let you torrent the file sequentially so you can start playing/streaming it before it's all finished.

1. QOS on the router, set a lower priority for the ports torrents use 2. Set a bandwidth limit in your torrent client 3. Use a queue / batch system to have them download at 3AM or whatever.

Or, you can just get a seedbox or VPS with a decent connection close enough to you that you can stream off it. The torrent will be done near instantaneously, and you'll be able to stream in higher quality than Netflix. You can stream full 1080P MKVs at <20Mbps.

Use private trackers as they're much better seeded, as well as the more obvious benefits.

You may have results like this, but I would guess that you're in the minority.

For me personally, well seeded 6-8GB movie takes an hour at most, usually less. I can still play online games, watch other streams online, browse, etc. and with other people using the same internet connection in the house doing the same things, and not have any noticeable slowdown. Full 1080p with AAC or DTS audio seems like higher quality to me than what Netflix provides.

The only upside Netflix has is the instant streaming, but if you're patient and can wait a bit for some downloads, or maybe run them at night or while at work, then this is a non-issue. Also you can just connect a TV to your computer.

Expect more of that in the future.

Same goes for mpv. DRMed distributors (like Netflix) and their players are just a major usability handicap. Let the age of legal DRM-free video begin (because pirates have been enjoying it for years already). One can hope.

If that works for you then great, but there's obviously much more control available when you have the full file and your own player.

Well, at least I do on occasion. When the kids are watching Netflix cartoons on the living room TV, I can just open up Firefox and watch another show on my (Linux) PC.

I suspect most people won't use it, but I'm glad to have this option.

I watch Netflix exclusively through their website — either on TV with my HTPC (Kodi with Chrome fullscreen) or on my computer. I don't own any devices that can run their Android or IOS apps.