.
That was a very kind response you gave me there, SamKook... about five posts ago. I appreciated it.
I didn't check all of the possibilities on the source page I provided for my 1.32 GB download of ANND-053... but I could see almost all of have gone bye-bye for public use, and I assumed none of the links were alive anymore. (Wupload, Filesonic, Fileserve, Uploadstation... sigh! Those were the days. And, boy, do I miss poor Megaupload.) I just wanted you to see how the short-by-ten-minutes offering was curiously the exact same file size as your complete version.
And you are right, it is very frustrating to find alternatives for free downloading. I came across a recent exchange where someone raved about how zippy Zippyshare (which I've never sampled) is, and you responded that has some truth - but not always, and that they restrict the size to 200 MB.
The two that offer good sizes and speed are Depositfiles and Uploading (not to be confused with the more popular service, Uploaded, a poor alternative). Once in a while, the speed can be off for both, however; I'm working on a Hotfile download at present, and I'm stunned to see their usual "clockwork" downloading speed is around half; I hope this is only a temporary problem. Another filehost that offers pot luck on speed is Bitshare, a most capricious service. (Note how Member isurf has given a big thumb's up to Bitshare in an above post... it looks like he has been having better luck with them.)
I think I have noticed somewhat recent posts of yours where you have utilized Netload. They were fantastic pre-2012, but now their free service, as far as speed, is catastrophic, and simply unusable.
Only a few months ago Filerose was a sponsor of Akiba-Online, as Ryushare is now. Filerose was refreshingly good, as far as speed. Now? Looks like they are out of business already.
Let's see now, Albert Schweitzer... ahhh... Mother Teresa... ah, yes, I think we may safely add SamKook to that short list of selfless ones. That was exceptional of you to consider knocking these giant-sized files to size (or at least in this one case of ANND-053). I have programs such as "Hamster Free Video Converter" and "Any Video Converter," and it's not too difficult to do file re-conversions... but the results can be so imperfect (suddenly the video would become off-sync, for example) that I now pause before attempting it. Yet you appear to have mastered the technical requirements, which comes with your territory.
And you are absolutely right, it's far more pleasurable to watch a giant file. But sometimes this is not a hard-and-fast rule, either. I have downloaded real giganto ones, only to come across surprisingly mediocre quality. (The expertise of the people who prepare these things can surely be a factor.)
Yet it's a trade-off, in my case, between downloading time, frustration with multi-links and hard drive storage, vs. the often better-looking over-one-gigabyte files. I don't feel the smaller files are unacceptably bad, however. (Perhaps those who have theater-sized HD screens have gotten accustomed to the luxury of seeing every skin pore.) I'm very happy with 400 to 600 MB sized .FLV, .RMVB or .MKV files.
Only in the rare cases where a film is fantastic, where you know you're going to keep coming back, have I sometimes hunted down the larger files.
.
lease:
