First Pirated Movie Experience

Instead of listing a specific movie ill just makes some general comments...

putting aside copying VHS tape to VHS tape type of stuff (which did not always work as some were copy protected as you could tell by the image getting brighter/darker etc)... about mid-1990's we had one of those boxes that de-scrambled the cable TV signal and we could record some movies on a blank VHS tape as I remember re-watching 'Face/Off (1997)' quite a bit because of that. this did not last too long before that was pretty much shot as I want to say maybe a few years or so.

but I would say more of the modern times for me pretty much started with SVCD's which I stumbled into the fact our first DVD player could play those and that's when the general volume of movies I watched started to increase quite a bit. this would have been about the year 2003. I remember seeing The Matrix Reloaded (2003) on SVCD as I was a big fan of that movie back then.

but SVCD stuff aside... DivX/XviD/x264 SD/x264 720p(or 1080p) is pretty much how things evolved in the early-to-mid 2000's to date. sure, they got 2160p (i.e. 4k) a bit (which are x265) but I don't really have any interest in 4k because 720p is still offers best image quality vs storage space combo hands down as 4k is not worth the huge increase in storage space required (and not to mention I only have a 1080p TV. but even if I did have a 4k TV I suspect I would still be rarely using anything in 4k outside a real select group of movies that are more visual oriented). but I don't see 720p/1080p popularity dropping off all that much for a while especially given I suspect most people still have 1080p range TV's etc.

but basically XviD (which seemed to be more popular than DivX as time passed) I used from pretty much 2004 (I want to say August( due to moded XBox)) til roughly 2010 or so as XviD became the best overall option once I got a hold of my cousins XBox console as it had a faulty DVD-ROM drive (basically I traded my Nintendo Gamecube for his faulty XBox and it was easily worth the trade once I moded it) but then I moded it and put XBMC (XBox Media Center) on it and that played XviD files well (it does play SD x264 files but occasionally they can be a bit too taxing on the CPU and they can stutter like in more complex scenes like trees etc). I also put a 80GB hard drive in it (for measure... a typical XviD movie used no more than 1.4GB of space). one thing I generally liked about XviD over SVCD was that it generally required less disc/storage space as many SVCD's were 3 CD's (at least 2 if I recall correctly) where as with XviD the vast majority of movies were 700MB(i.e. 1 CD) or 1400MB (2x 700MB) (i.e. 2 CD's). but since you could play XviD files directly off the XBox consoles hard drive it was nice since I did not have to use CD's anymore which was another bonus over SVCD and pretty much made SVCD obsolete and that's pretty much what happened online as those did not hang around for too long as XviD took over (or for those who had a bit more $, like for burning DVD's, could get DVDR downloads but I never messed with these much as XviD were overall better considering they are $0.00 and image quality was close to DVD) and was pretty much the standard along with DVDR rips for years before HD (x264) came on the scene in the late 2000's but it took me a while to really adopt that over XviD as I slowly changed over but was mostly using XviD and occasionally a 720p x264 movie in the late 2000's and probably a bit into the early 2010's. but I have not used XviD in years as it looks like crap on modern TV's/Monitors compared to anything x264 whether it be SD or HD.

but basically I would say around the year of 2010 (especially since I got my current PC monitor in Feb 2010 which is 24" 1080p) I started getting more into HD stuff but never really got maximum benefit from those HD files til I got a hold of my current TV in May 2016 as now I can play any video format a PC can play and run it through the HDMI port (like HDMI port on my GPU on the back of my PC to the HDMI port on the TV using a 20' HDMI cable) to the TV and play stuff in HD. with that said... I still watch some SD stuff here and there but am largely HD (720p) at this point in time.

Not sure if it counts but I remember when Titanic came out one of my girlfriend's friends worked at a movie theater and set up a video camera after hours (small local theater) and recorded it being projected on the screen. Funny stuff.

1980's "The Last Shark" - a dumb, but pretty enjoyable "Jaws" ripoff

I remember buying a disc with an unedited version of 'Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker.'