Part 7 (1/2)

Telesync copies look as bad as cams but sound better because audio is captured directly from the theater's sound system (possibly in cahoots with the projectionist). Telesyncs are released at the same time as cams.

Quality: Low.

Torrent labels: TS, TELESYNC.

Example: How.To.Train.Your.Dragon.2010.TS.XviD-PrisM.

Screeners are ripped (copied) from leaked review DVDs that movie studios send to critics, Academy voters, and film execs. Screeners show a movie's theatrical release but are degraded by sudden color changes, ”Property of Whatever Pictures” overlays, or slightly fuzzy video. Screeners can appear at any time, even before cams.

Quality: Medium.

Torrent labels: SCR, SCREENER, DVDSCR, DVDSCREENER.

Example: The Social Network 2010 DVDSCR XViD WBZ.

R5s are ripped from Region 5 retail DVDs. (Region-coding prevents DVDs from working in players outside the countries where they're marketed - an irrelevance to pirates.) Region 5 includes Russia, Ukraine, North Korea, and other countries where legal but inferior DVDs compete with rampant piracy. R5s are released before DVD-Rips.

Quality: Medium.

Torrent label: R5.

Example: Knight and Day (2010) R5 XviD-MAXSPEED.

PPV-Rips are sourced from pay-per-view movies on hotel-room TVs. They're released before DVD-Rips.

Quality: Medium.

Torrent labels: PPVRip, PPV.

Example: Devil 2010 PPVRip IFLIX.

DVD-Rips are copied from retail DVDs and are the most popular type of movie torrents.

Quality: High.

Torrent label: DVDRip.

Example: The Graduate 1967 DVDrip XviD-Ekolb.

DVDRs are full copies of retail DVDs, including menus and bonus features but not copyright warnings, ads, and other cruft. Some DVDRs are compressed from their original dual-layer (DVD-9) format so they can be burned on cheaper, single-layer (DVD-5) DVDs. ”Untouched” DVDRs are perfect copies of the original DVDs, cruft and all.

Quality: High.

Torrent labels: DVDR, DVD-R, DVD-Full, Full-Rip.

Example: Iron Man 2 (2010) DVD-R NTSC (eng-spa) [Sk].

HDTV-Rips are recorded from high-definition television signals, typically via a digital video recorder (DVR) or PC video-capture card. HDTV-Rips are labeled according to how they're sourced and encoded.

Quality: High.

Torrent labels: HDTV, PDTV, DSR, DVB, TVRip, STV, DTH.

Example: Tarzan.1999.720p.HDTV.x264.

BD-Rips and BR-Rips are copied from high-definition Blu-ray disks. BD-Rips are slightly better than BR-Rips. The resolution, 720p or 1080p, is the number of horizontal scan lines of display resolution. High-res files are big but yield sharp images. If you have a 720p display, don't bother downloading a 1080p file.

Quality: Very High.