‘Heroes’ Star Recognizes Benefits of BitTorrent
Written by enigmax on August 29, 2007The actor who plays the time-and-space warping ‘Hiro Nakamura’ in the hit US TV show ‘Heroes’ has made some positive comments about file-sharing after it became evident that French fans had either teleported into the future and watched the show before it aired on TV, or maybe downloaded it using BitTorrent.
Currently in Hong Kong promoting the hit TV show ‘Heroes’, actor Masi Oka who plays Hiro Nakamura in the show, made some pro-BitTorrent comments.
According to the International Herald Tribune, the Emmy nominated actor noted that when they went to France recently, the reaction from the fans was very positive as many of them had already seen the show, even before it aired on TV.
Of course, in order to do this the fans didn’t manipulate the space-time continuum like Hiro does in the show, they simply grabbed a .torrent file and downloaded with their favorite client. There’s nothing quite like a free sample to generate interest in your product and this French situation is a shining example of that.
Despite the great reaction in France, Masi commented with care: “It takes a lot of money to create a really high quality show. We have a lot of support from the advertisers … all the buyers. We just feel like we’re doing a disservice to them if we do BitTorrent”
Although Masi Oka is an intelligent man with an IQ of 180 and a degree in Computer Science and Mathematics under his belt, it doesn’t take a genius to work out what he worked out already about BitTorrent promotion: “if we get a lot of people to watch the show” he said, “it’s only going to be great for the show in the future too.”
Oka seems to recognize that true fans of productions such as ‘Heroes’ not only watch the shows via BitTorrent, TV or both, but will likely go out and buy the DVDs too – if the show is any good of course – which ‘Heroes’ definitely is.
“Hopefully, if they can buy the DVD after they watch it on BitTorrent, that would be great” he said.
Perhaps realizing that his bosses at NBC may not appreciate such an influential guy making pro-file sharing comments, Oka added a disclaimer:
“I am not advocating BitTorrent”
No, of course you’re not Masi, we understand!
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22 Responses
Hiro is a pirate!!!
The TV show ‘Heroes’ like any other TV show or anything else available to the public will always be cracked/copied and released on bittorrent regardless of what they do. They might as well take advantage of it and release promos and other content.
They may not believe me but if a show is good people will end up buying the DVD even if it is available on BT because they want the better quality. The DVD will also have surround sound which most BT releases don’t have.
enigmax, good article.
This is a very good point. Companies with physical products have to pay a lot to give away free samples, and often do so because it works so well. Companies with digital products can take advantage of this concept without paying a lot of money for the “sample” goods.
I downloaded some Heroes episodes that were HD, and I’ve decided to take the plung into HD DVD. Without seeing the difference, I would have just bought the DVD version of it.
Perhaps realizing that his bosses at NBC may not appreciate such an influential guy making pro-file sharing comments, Oka added a disclaimer
Isn’t his employer FOX and not NBC?
Masi Oka was a programmer before he was an actor. I’m not surprised that he’s one of the few who get it.
Now if someone could just stand up to the MPAA in court and show that they have no legal basis for suing anyone for piracy (see http://thewaronbullshit.com/2007/07/30/riaa01/) I’d be happy.
Heroes is aired on NBC, not Fox. It’s obvious you’ve never watched the show.
[quote comment="155029"]Heroes is aired on NBC, not Fox. It’s obvious you’ve never watched the show.[/quote]
Just because it airs on one network does not mean that’s the company who produced it.
But in this case the show is produced by NBC Universal.
IQ obviously doesn’t make one wise.
IF I could have downloaded every episode of heroes 30 minutes before it aired on regular television, I would not care how much larger the file would be if all the commercials were in it.
They want people to see the commercials right?
So put the shows on the net yourselves before anyone else has a chance to and people won’t care that it still has commercials in it!
You can scrub past the commercials. NBC no likey…
ABC.com has the right idea, though…
Here’s the thing. NBC released the episodes for free on their webpage. However, the problem with that was, their download speeds were low and the interface was, well, crappy. If the interface was fine and the movie quality was good, I’d stick to the website episodes and not have to rely on obtaining the videos from BitTorrent. And I’ll definitely be buying the First season on DVD. I love that show!
To satisfy its viewers and combat piracy, the French broadcaster of Heroes has announced on wednesday that it will make episodes of the second series of Heroes available on its video-on-demand service 24 hours after their broadcast in the US.
See story here
here on French-law.net.
Tbh, just by looking at the title I knew it would be him!
People forget that turning a blind-eye to pirating is what made most software giants what they are today. If you make a quality product available for Free it’s much easier for it to become the de Facto standard (ie. Windows, AutoCAD, etc.)
the same concepts basically transfer to television products. The New Doctor Who, Battlestar Galactica, Heroes. I have all of them on DVD because I actually WANT to support good TV and want to see it continue.
Bittorrent is actually an extreme extension of natural selection – if the product is weak and it’s leaked (pick just about any Hollywood movie in the last 3 years) then the masses will quickly cull it from the herd. However, if it’s a genuine, quality product then not only do you get massive amounts of exposure, you also recieve free word-of-mouth advertising (the most valuable) which, more often than not will translate into increased sales in the end.
Slowly the big wigs are starting to figure it out. Give it another 5 years or so.
I torrented the first 10 episodes of Heroes because a friend of mine had downloaded them and said it was good…
I went and bought the first season DVD pack yesterday, $36 from Fry’s.
Awesome show, totally worth it.
Good comments, I think the way forward with this kind of advertising is forcing rights producers to loosen their grip on TV media, which is what i ultimately hope bittorrent will do, such that international distribution can be done by TV companies like NBC on the internet; instead of the current situation where local broadcasters pay huge fees to show these shows years after they have been produced and shown in america. its a win win for tv companies and comsumers, the looser is rights holders (for things like music and stock shots) who have scammed people for too long
He is an IT guy lol.
He better be seeding what he downloads :]
i watched every episode on tv and downloaded them for backup but then my hard drive crashed so i never downloaded them again but either way even if i had not lost them on hard drive that would not have stopped me from buying the dvd which i pre-ordered
The only reason I download most of my TV series is the fact its the only way i can watch them in HD, Because as usual us in the UK have a piss poor selection of live HD content unless you can get Sky HD of course
Quoted from the article: “- if the show is any good of course – which ‘Heroes’ definitely is.”
Exactly… Does anyone here have their Stargate: Atlantis box sets from the store??
….Yeah, me either.
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