In a world without physical media, the best piracy can deliver is no better than the best encoding streamers have available (and that assumes DRM circumvention remains forever possible, otherwise we're gonna get worst quality from re-encoding decoded playbacks)
> the quality of ahem copies is often no worse than you'd get from an official streamed source
"No worse than streamed" is a far cry from a quality high-bitrate 4k UHD physical release.
I wonder if we can use modern tech to get high quality screen recordings.
By "screen recordings" I mean pointing an actual camera at a screen and by "high quality" I mean some sort of post processing involving automation to remove noise and other artifacts.
Fair point, especially for people with eyes good enough (or screens huge enough) to get the benefit (so, not me!) and who are paying attention enough to notice anyway (so, not a great number of the viewing public).
It is worth noting that "no worse then streamed" generally, even if taken from a streaming source, it's going to be better than most viewers will get streaming because those capping the stream for redistribution are far more likely to have jumped through all the hoops needed to get the best streaming has to offer (paying for the best streaming has to offer, is usually not sufficient).