A typical 4K download for just a single TV episode can be as large as 10GB — if you can get a legit 4K download from the Internet.
But the wild, wild west that is the Internet has now opened up a new way to rip 4K shows from streaming services like Netflix and Amazon.
For the most part, the best pirates could do was release upscaled releases of 4K-only shows, but those files floating around torrent sites were typically pixelated and coded at low bitrates and barely came close to real 4K quality.
Recent 4K leaks of shows from streaming services reveal, however, that it’s not a security problem with Netflix only or Amazon only either.
“The new 4K leaks come from both Netflix and Amazon, suggesting that there’s a general loophole that allows pirates to circumvent the copy protection on both services,” says all-about-torrents site, Torrentfreak.
Until recently, the difficulty in ripping quality 4K content was because of a security protocol called High-Bandwidth Digital Copy Protection or HDCP. HDCP prevented pirates from copying streaming video from streaming sites like Netflix and Amazon. However, the Internet is beginning to leak with legit 4K copies of TV shows from each company. As a result, it seems hackers have found a loophole allowing them to circumvent the copy protection of a handful of shows so far.
The ripped 4K releases spreading online include Amazon’s “The High Man in the High Castle” and pilots for “Edge,” “Good Girl’s Revolt,” “Highston,” “One Mississippi,” and “Patriot.” The most high-profile leaked show so far is the original Marvel series, “Jessica Jones,” being streamed on Netflix.
Pirates are going to need larger and larger storage should 4K torrent releases become wildly popular and become the norm. The torrents alone can be as large as 15GB per download while the original files can be as large as 100GB. For a 1TB drive, only ten original movies will be able to fit in that amount of space.