'Scene' rules

[faceless]

I first heard about these rules a good few years back - and they are exactly why I refuse to have anything to do with the scene. For example, the fact that they are limiting themselves to 700mb standards is laughable. Most have had dvd-roms for at least 3-4 years now (more in a lot of cases) so why do they stick to this standard? Tradition and pig-headedness, that's why!

The vaguaries of saying that ZIP files are ok on 0-Day releases only, while all files must be in RAR format otherwise (at specific sizes!) is just bloody brain damage. If people want to follow these rules and be recognised as being a fecking SHEEP then hell mend em, but the reason for them being there in the first place is for file-transfer integrity - which might be fair enough if we were still using systems that were 20 years old! I got into piracy as a kid because I wanted to share stuff efficiently - so to see that it is required that you make a 700mb CD .bin file from something that may only be 30mb just makes me roll my eyes...

I used to 'crack' games on the Atari ST back in the late 80s and I (on that computer) invented the system whereby compressed games could be fit on to a 'Compact Disc' with 5-10 games on a disc that usually would only fit one, so I do know what I'm talking about on this matter. I remember back then that a few groups wanted me to join them, to provide sources for new software, but for years I refused to join simply because they had all these annoying rules. So, this makes me wonder how many other people are out there not obeying stupid rules who are completely capable (or more so, by dint of imaginative processes) of making things better?

Rules are for breaking - scenes are for actors!

[6ULDV8]

Been there, Scene it, done it....

Yup a majority of the rules appear pointless, but a good many keep the scene consistant.

The .rar rule... for instance...
It sounds stupid to attempt to compress a file such as an xvid / avi any further with rars...
How ever, downloading a movie of some 700MBs to find it is corrupted is a pain & a waste of bandwidth, by having it in rar format, you have a chance to find / fix the corruption or at least request a fix that won't take up all that valuble banswidth / ratio etc.

& the 700MB rule is in place for movies on a single or 2 x's 700mb for doubles (max)...
Not 700MB for 30MB apps etc.

======================================

The scene was great pre- open torrent sites & before people started 'Racing' on the scene (Trying to be the first to have something out there in full)...
Racing IMHO has made the scene sloppy...
Less care is taken in producing the 'product' being 'given', quite often items are not checked before release, they just want to dump it out there & get virtual 'brownie points' for being 1st.

The result is out of sync movies, bad frame rates, bad crops, bad aspect ratios etc etc etc...
The movie "I am Ledgend" is a prime example...
A dvd screener was released, within 15 min.s it was NUKED for 'out of sync'... a whole host of other groups released further copies / versions, all being nuked for the same reasons, or being direct copies of the 1st one etc...
It took a staggering 36 hours for a group to release a "proper" that wasn't nuked...
What this meant was that there were now approx 11 versions from various groups of the same movie in xVid quality from a dvd screener in approx 18 hours that ended up being useless... (TBH, watchable & easy to correct on most media players BTW)
But still not good enough for the Scene...
Nobody took the time, nor did they realize that taking the time to do a proper encode, a few extra passes & they would end up with quality for the masses...
Only after a decent direct rip of the original DVD screener in DVD format was put out by a non scene group, did a decent xvid of it come out & a group that doesn't do much on the scene but is scene non-the-less take the time to do a decent encode...

A few 'private' torrent sites get a hold of scene releases, it's not looked on as good by 'scene' folks... torrents & scene should not mix (another one of their laws)....

Yup, most of their laws suck, but as I said, some are there for a reason that does make sense if your in the scene itself & does help those who eventualy get access to some of their output.

I can assure you this tho'...

No matter how fucked up the rules, no matter how petty it has become...
Without the 'Scene', a lot of people on the interwebbythingymajig we like to pilfer movies, music, apps etc from... well, we wouldn't be getting 85% of it or whats possible.

I say let em fight, let em have their 'Laws & Rules' & keep filling ya' hard drive space with the goodies

Just hold off on jumping on any brand new releases... watch the comments from the "I want to be in the first few to download something" crowd & see if it's any good... knowing the scene, if it's new, it will be nuked for one or another reason (as above movie described) & eventualy a good working version will appear...

Them damn boy racers.... ;-)

[faceless]

But what's the point of consistency if it excludes everyone but the most determined? Most of the time you need to know a fair bit to be able to even use the end results (main exception being mp3s). The 30mb - 700mb point was about the fact you'd need to burn it to a blank CD to get it to work, unless you've also got a virtual disc installed. The whole point as I see it is to make stuff easily available and this bizarre hatred of torrent sites they ahve makes it especially annoying....

Doing stuff by torrent removes the need for error-checking that making rars helps to prevent in other methods of transfer. The torrent software checks for errors live, making the whole RAR process obsolete. Obviously they use this method because of using FTP and newsgroups, but can they really not get a decent FTP client that does the job properly? I don't like those systems at all though because it is deliberately hard to make use of what is there. It's a bunch of wank in other words...

I see some of these group comments on various nfos (another stupid law) where they claim they've done X amount of stuff, but when they think there's a need to provide things like Deal or No Deal, or even daily soaps to the same standard as a major movie then obviously something's wrong. It's like wrapping fish and chips in Basildon Bond instead of yesterday's Sun.

There's bound to be a lot of people out there who could provide interesting and more obscure stuff, but who are simply brushed aside by the overwhelming desire of the rest to be 733t - meaning that if they even get something released it will largely be ignored by the traders simply because they won't get as much 'respect' for uploading it on other sites as they would for say a new Hollywood flick.

When it comes down to it, the end user doesn't care what the source is, they just want the files.

[6ULDV8]

I ain't arguing any points ya' make faceless.. all valid & good...

But the scene is dif' to torrenting & has been around a lot longer as you know...
The rules there are stupid by todays standards...

Good old ISO BUSTER is fantastic instead of virtual drives BTW...

Anyways, the scene releases are not supposed to be in the hands of the average user, thus the sometimes 'complicated' structure of downloads helps to keep em that way.

There are many great non-scene release groups out there, some being anti-scene too...

[faceless]

I'd join any scene that was anti-scene!

I use Magic ISO to extract iso files, but even then it adds another 10 minutes to the whole process. I've run out of grumbling now... haha

[6ULDV8]

ISO Buster is great m8...

It's one click & instant access to any / everything...
Watch movies from VOB or ISO any type of images...
Install an app direct from the ISO Buster window with out having to convert squat...

The only extra time it takes than opening a regular file & clicking to watch / install is navigating to the said ISO / IMG etc...

PM me if ya' need the latest copy.

[faceless]

New grumble!

I downloaded a game the other day and thought I'd give it a go this evening - first of all I had to extract the rars, then the ISO, then when that was done I had to extract this .uha file. The uha system is setup to compress media files, and while it does it really well, it's taken 35 minutes (so far!) on my above average computer to extract the files.

Once this is done I'll then be able to install the game and give it a go. That makes it over an hour's effort all in - for a game that I could probably buy for £3 off ebay!

[nekokate]

[faceless]

haha, that would probably be more like 'Aye! Aye! Ah'm takin this ya bassa!'

[eefanincan]