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Uncategorized Monday, March 5th 2012 at 10:30 am

TV Release Groups Dump Xvid and Enrage the Internet

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If you are one of those unfortunate souls that do not have cable and get your TV by questionably nefarious Internet means, you might’ve been greeted with a rude awakening when you tried to download last night’s episode of The Simpsons (which had a stellar Game of Thrones parody for the opening): Your favorite TV release group switched away from the Xvid-AVI format in favor of MP4-x264.

What does this mean for you, the torrenter? Well, MP4-x264 generally ends up a smaller file size than the trusty Xvid, so that means a quicker download and space saved in your “shows I downloaded that I need to watch” folder. For those unaware, piracy groups get together sometimes and decide on scene standards. Recently, this kind of standard was set and explained in the document “The SD x264 TV Releasing Standards 2012.” The governing body of these rules, as one might imagine, are the groups which release the torrents, so failure to follow said rules results in a nuking (basically, looked down upon by peer torrent groups) of a release.

So, who cares if release groups are trying to bring people smaller sized files with equal to or better quality? The main issue seems to be people involved in the scene don’t have a player that can deal with x264 and MP4. Yes, they can most likely use their computer, but it’s hard to argue with someone who’d rather relax in bed and watch something on their giant television, than have to sit in a chair and watch it on their small laptop screen. This is probably a limited group, but they exist and are being affected by the switch nonetheless, claiming that most DVD players don’t play MP4 format — something that I experienced frustration with once upon a time while trying to convert video for a phone before the smart phone era.

If one meanders around some of the TV release torrent sites and checks out some comments, one will quickly see that either many people who use said torrents site do not quite understand the switch, how to deal with it, or even that the torrent sites aren’t responsible and it’s the TV release groups’ decision to switch to x264. But that’s the Internet for you.

Amusingly, with certain releases, it seems users are downloading the MP4 release and re-uploading it as an AVI. Is the outrage one can quickly see in various comments sections justified? After all, torrents of television episodes aren’t exactly legal, and the people releasing them into the wild are not only taking a risk, but providing a free, relatively easy service to use. So, if you’re a person who regularly visits the television torrent scene and haven’t realized what’s been going on, be prepared for some comment outrage and different file types next time you miss that episode of The Walking Dead and need to catch up.

(via TorrentFreak)

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  • Drdetroit

    It’s simple. If you need to view MP4 or x264 on your PC, then you need to the codecs which are easily available from any K-lite website. PLUS, if you desire to burn these formats to DVD, then a program such as ConvertXToDvd will handle these formats with ease.
    I don’t see the issue with people being upset over the new formats.
    It’s a small adjustment.
    Get over it.

  • Anonymous

    Glad to hear it! Now I don’t have to convert my downloaded AVI files to MP4 to watch them on my Apple TV. Yahoo!

  • Jonathon Doerthy

    U’ve missed out on the fact that u can connect ur laptop (or a device which supports these formats & has a harddisk drive) to ur giant flatscreen TV with a HDMI cable! Most 720p & upwards rips on the pirated www are in a MKV or MP4 format, which is not friendly with a lot of TVs off the fly – u really think that target market actually sits & watches all these high qlty rips on a small laptop! ? :))

  • Rubes

    Just rename the file with .avi as the extension and it will stream/play just fine on the Xbox 360 as well as most other media boxes.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/EU3FP6ALBOYVUDR6Z7GUQYGY2Q Mike N

    no problem here putting it on my external hard drive to use for my ps3 it actually saves me space. 

  • Fake

    Get VLC. What’s the problem?

  • Iris7

    All of you are right about what you are saying, but although I speak for myself, i am hardly the only one at whom it happens. On my TV an mp4 file elongates the image (people become taller and skinny) and 2 vertical black lines on each side of the screen. This only happens with mp4 x264 and not on on mkv x264. My question is why and what can I about and stop viewing distorted images.

  • Devinology

    The problem is this:

    Xvid codec is a known standard that is compatible with everything and has been used for over a decade.  It has increasingly improved and supports 1080p encoding, so there is really no need for a switch.  x264 codec is easy to get on a computer but is generally not very compatible as of yet.  This is no big deal, but the main kicker is that the audio being used in these x264 rips is an inferior Mac based format, AAC, which has tons of issues right now (namely syncing issues) that result in most of the x264 releases not working properly.  The main complaint from the community is that the switch was made to a format that is ultimately still in the pre-beta stage regarding wide spread ease of use and compatibility.  Almost none of these files work for me, and no, I’m not some idiot amateur, I know what I’m doing.  The files themselves are not being encoded properly on the audio side and it is frustrating. 

    Ultimately using the only real benefit of using the x264 format is the compression method offers smaller file sizes for the same quality.  It DOES NOT offer better quality videos.  An xvid video at 1080P resolution looks exactly the same as an x264 video at 1080P resolution.  The x264 file will just be a little smaller.  The very reason xvid became big in the first place was it used a vastly superior compression method to make files smaller, which was sorely needed a decade ago given the average user’s download speeds at the time.  By this logic, the switch to x264 seems reasonable since it is just doing what xvid did, but going further with it.  The only problem with this line of reasoning is that download speeds are almost a non-issue these days, and so is storage space.  So ultimately although it kind of makes sense, I still so no real hard reason to make the switch worth it, at least not until using x264 has been perfected.

    An additional gripe, which is the big one for me, is the choice of mp4 container.  For those that don’t know, the container (indicated by the file name ending), has nothing to do with the encoding method used and is simply the file container that holds the video and audio (and possibly other data such as subtitles) in one file.  Thus the scene could have chosen to still keep using the avi container, or at least use the far superior mkv format.  Typically x264 video is paired with either mp4 or mkv containers.  mkv is generally agreed to be the best format out there, while mp4 is a joke.  Why the scene chose mp4 is a complete mystery as it is garbage.  They may have been trying to take incompatible and unready video and audio formats and stuff them into a fairly widespread container in some sort of foolhardy attempt to balance out the compatibility problem, which is obviously mental without explanation.  

    Anyway, I have been struggling to find all my video in good ol’ xvid avi and sometimes it has been a pain. 

  • Sil3nt Smok3r

    just buy an apple tv, and install xbmc, then you are set for the next 10 years!

  • Adele_ah

    help!!!!
    when i donwnload the said file (x264) it will not show a picture only sound, is there something i need to get to fix this problem.

    thank you 

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_CSLBNVUIZ35XGGDC3MOYSHB44Q Rimmus

    I stream to my XBox.  It doesn’t play MP4, it plays AVI.  I have to convert the file to make that work. 

    It’s 2012.  An extra 100 MB is nothing on a file for someone with a decent internet connection and terabytes of storage space. 

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_CSLBNVUIZ35XGGDC3MOYSHB44Q Rimmus

    That’s a HUGE hassle.  Streaming over the network to your television is way easier. 

  • Tahrey

    Yeah, but then whoever’s releasing it has to make and keep two different copies (or three, if another new standard comes along… etc) just to keep some other particular set of leechers happy.

    Or you could just get one of any number of fairly easy to handle conversion programs and just transcode the H264 copy into XVid-AVI for your older, less compatible hardware. A modern PC shouldn’t take too long about it. Unless you’re itchy to watch the thing the very moment it arrives on your hard disk (in which case, MTFU and watch it on your monitor, or find some way to route a VGA cable to your TV), that extra half-hour to an hour or so shouldn’t be too much of a hardship. Queue up a load of them to run overnight.

    Don’t even have to keep the transcoded files permanently either, just as long as you want to repeat-watch it on the old hardware, so you can ramp the quality way up to reduce transcoding artefacts. Just convert, watch once in comfort on the TV, then keep the H264 copy as an archive version.

  • Tahrey

    If it’s a “smart TV” it should be H264 compatible already, unless you’ve bought a shit one. Otherwise, you’re using SOME kind of device to play the file. Why not use a cheap second-hand laptop hooked into your network?