Judging by the various threads on this topic, the current streaming reality isn't "a few bucks" and it actually involves quite a lot of cognitive overhead (exactly when you just want to be relaxing!). Neither do you have to go "trawling" for torrents - public trackers/catalogs easily get you the contemporary zeitgeist and its back catalog. But sure, keep on enjoying the simulated liberation of the corporate sandbox. My comment was meant for those on the fence.

It's funny you mention that. Convenience is exactly why I switched to piracy earlier this year.

To watch content legally, I first have to work out who owns the rights in Australia (it can be different to the US, and often changes - e.g. last time I watched The Terminator it was on Netflix but now it's on Amazon Prime), see if I have that app (I'm not signing up to an app to watch one film, even if it were free it's not worth the bullshit), and if not pick a different film and start the whole process again. It's worse for TV shows, where season 1 could be exclusive to Netflix but seasons 2-7 are only on Stan.

To pirate content, I open the Elementum tab in Kodi, type in what I want to watch, and 20 seconds later it's directly streaming from the bittorrent network in fantastic HD quality.

Elementum is a plugin for Kodi, works great.

These days you get a much worse service if you pay[0].

Can't make that shit up.

0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4GZUCwVRLs

This is, unfortunately, a point very much tied to the region you live in. In my region, even if I pay the same price as the users from US, not only do I pay much more in terms of percentage of my income, but I also get just a fraction of the content available.

Imagine, I'd want to watch some Doctor Who for example, there's exactly zero streaming services offering the show in my country.

For a while now there are services out there (usually on discord) who will rent you a plex container hooked up to a ridiculous size media library (I’ve seen multiple in the 1.5 PB+ range) with basically everything from every streaming service , Bluray, or DVD in the original bit for bit download, just sans-DRM

This is probably going to catch on more and more - it’s not free, you have to pay, but! - it’s $10 a month for everything like Spotify

Popcorn Time is "just an app" too.

I've never understood this idea of good torrents being hard to find. TPB has been around for a long time.