What is HDclump
December 21, 2024 9:59 AM Subscribe
Looking to fulfill our cozy tv quota this holiday season (all repair shop episodes are on YouTube!) and when looking for Great British Sewing Bee (unavailable without a vpn) I came across HDclump, which appears to be a black market streaming service dedicated solely to homey BBC shows.
Without some kind of independent information I’m not touching this with a 10 foot pole but was wondering if anyone had information about the world of hyper-specific streaming piracy. Search provides only two sources : hdclump itself and various BBC subreddits being excited about its existence.
Without some kind of independent information I’m not touching this with a 10 foot pole but was wondering if anyone had information about the world of hyper-specific streaming piracy. Search provides only two sources : hdclump itself and various BBC subreddits being excited about its existence.
First off, if you don't at minimum run adblockers on sites like this, run adblockers on sites like this. (Strongly consider script blocking too.)
What these sites do is pull multiple mirrored streaming links from various sources (that are poorly policed so pirated content has a chance to stay up) into their own site.
This is true. If you want to be a little bit hardcore - maybe pointlessly - you can hit ctrl-U to view the webpage's source code and search for the actual video links (I think searching for "embed" usually gets them all but haven't checked). So if it happens that you trust some of the sites they link to more than some other ones, you can go directly to just the one(s) you prefer. Or use the links to directly download the one(s) you prefer using something like yt-dlp, so then you have your own copy.
posted by trig at 11:05 AM on December 21, 2024
What these sites do is pull multiple mirrored streaming links from various sources (that are poorly policed so pirated content has a chance to stay up) into their own site.
This is true. If you want to be a little bit hardcore - maybe pointlessly - you can hit ctrl-U to view the webpage's source code and search for the actual video links (I think searching for "embed" usually gets them all but haven't checked). So if it happens that you trust some of the sites they link to more than some other ones, you can go directly to just the one(s) you prefer. Or use the links to directly download the one(s) you prefer using something like yt-dlp, so then you have your own copy.
posted by trig at 11:05 AM on December 21, 2024
FWIW, we have a home theatre PC set up that is primarily used for gaming and watching video, but nothing else really. I've always taken the track of if something 'happens' to it, I'll just wipe it and start over, as nothing on the machine isn't readily available for re-download. Nothing bad has happened to that machine in at least several years; we run basic malware and antivirus software on it, along with adblockers. Absolutely nothing special, or anything you shouldn't already be running on a computer hooked up to the internet. We've watched many seasons of the Great British Sewing Bee (which, is like, really so much better than GBBO or pottery throwdown. I love it so much), and Gardener's World without ill effect.
My only real complaint is that finding older series can be difficult (either to find them in sequence, or complete series- sometimes an episode is dropped). It really seems to work fine, since no British, or American streamers would like to take my money.
posted by furnace.heart at 11:56 AM on December 21, 2024
My only real complaint is that finding older series can be difficult (either to find them in sequence, or complete series- sometimes an episode is dropped). It really seems to work fine, since no British, or American streamers would like to take my money.
posted by furnace.heart at 11:56 AM on December 21, 2024
FYI I've been watching Sewing Bee pretty much since you posted this question and so far the only ill effect is now my idiot brain thinks "I bet if I bought a sewing machine and a bunch of pretty fabric I could sew my own clothes!" (Wrong.)
posted by phunniemee at 12:22 PM on December 23, 2024 [1 favorite]
posted by phunniemee at 12:22 PM on December 23, 2024 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: We’ve been watching too! And it’s true, give or take a little practice ;)
posted by q*ben at 4:22 PM on December 23, 2024 [1 favorite]
posted by q*ben at 4:22 PM on December 23, 2024 [1 favorite]
« Older Looking for a song about a woman prostituting... | Low quality apple voicemail greeting, Newer »
You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments
I've been watching tv on sketchy streaming sites for as long as video streaming has existed. At a glance through, this is frankly one of the best I've ever seen. I started playing ep 1 of sewing bee and so far so good!
What these sites do is pull multiple mirrored streaming links from various sources (that are poorly policed so pirated content has a chance to stay up) into their own site. There's nothing inherently sketchy about this, except for the ads that tend to run on sites like this. The one doing the illegal thing is the one who uploaded the video to the streaming site. You just watching it isn't breaking any laws. I'm not even sure that hdclump assembling a bunch of other people's content links together into an easy to read format is breaking any laws. There's nothing inherently special about hdclump except that it's obviously a passion project for a very specific kind of show. Like I said, sites like this have been around forever. watchmovies4free, projectfreetv, etc etc etc. They all just organize the content that's already out there on youku/dailymotion/okru, etc, so that it's easier for us to find.
Run an ad blocker and a script blocker on your browser, don't download anything, and nothing bad will happen to you. Do you have a specific concern? My biggest concern with sites like this is that I'll get deep into a show and then someone will finally get smart and start making copyright complaints and then I'll have no way to watch the last 3 episodes of something. But at the same time, the Netflix that I pay for can decide to yeet what I want to watch at any time too, except I'm paying them to make me sad.
Thanks for sharing lol got my holiday plans on lock now.
posted by phunniemee at 10:22 AM on December 21, 2024 [12 favorites]