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Comment by moooo99 | Hacker News Reader

As for Netflix I found a great alternative. Many people are selling their DVD/BluRay collections on eBay as bundles. With the rise of streaming services, there is usually not a whole lot of competition on these auctions.

I somehow managed to get 30 pretty decent movies/series on DVD and 20 on BluRay for 25€ including shipping.

Sure, these are usually not very new movies, but I like to watch older movies and its a lot better than subscribing to dozens of streaming services just to watch one specific movie.

As for comfort, sure DVDs are not as comfortable as clicking on Netflix, but if you have a decent NAS at home anyways, Plex still makes a great experience.

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> As for comfort, sure DVDs are not as comfortable as clicking on Netflix

I'm starting to see this as an advantage because it forces me to get up and do something - actually move, even if not very far.

Working at home since March I've also returned to much more frequently listening on CD (I have a modestly large CD collection, with maybe 500 - 600 albums, accrued gradually and over many years, much of it second hand). A big advantage (apart from sound quality vs. streaming)? Most albums fall into the 40 - 60 minute range so I have to get up and move around to change the music at least that often, rather than sitting essentially motionless for hours on end at my desk or on the sofa.

There is definitely a huge secondhand DVD market. Also your local library has a selection of DVDs. I was just at mine yesterday and I saw lots of titles that aren't available to stream on any of the big subscription platforms.

Plex doesn't even require an NAS. I run mine off an old laptop. 100gb of storage is plenty if you have a DVD or are willing to burn one, since you don't need to keep stuff you don't watch in your library if it's backed up to optical media.

Without a NAS what is the benefit of Plex over a DVD player?

My guess is that they're talking about ripping DVDs and storing video files on the laptop HD. It's functionally equivalent to a NAS as far as Plex is concerned.

I understand that, but the process seems to be rip, watch, delete due to limited storage. I’m sure I’m missing something but I don’t know what benefit this process adds over just watching the DVD.

Do DVDs in the last (~10?) few years still have non-skippable adverts at the start? That could be one potential benefit.

But otherwise, I don't see any real plus. Unless you have such a large collection that the search/recommend features are useful. You still have to take the DVD out, put it in the computer, run some program, etc.

> Do DVDs in the last (~10?) few years still have non-skippable adverts at the start?

I honestly don't know, because I rip all my content and play it on Plex. :)

This could be the answer and once you're ripping content anyway, Plex is a decent way to stream it to whichever devices.

Truthfully, probably it would just be easier to watch the DVD for watching on the TV, but Plex lets you watch on all devices.

I really don't need instant access to tons of movies, but my kids watch a lot of the same ones over and over, so I keep those on Plex, rather than paying for Disney plus or whatever.

After ripping I usually increase the crf a little to reduce the file size to host on plex. Movies that we are watching a lot live on Plex, but if we stop watching something, or it seems like a one-time thing, then they can be removed from the library.

The burned DVDs are really more of a personal archive. Those movies could get added back to Plex someday. I don't need all of Lost or Breaking Bad on my Plex server, because I've recently watched them, so they'll live in the DVD drawer for a few years.

Ah, that makes sense, thanks. I’m past my days of the same episodes of The Wiggles over and over (although I still know all the songs), so didn’t think of that aspect.

Once you get past a particular point of number of movies management becomes a problem. For awhile I was using carousels from sony. But kodi/plex have a decent interface with ease of management. You usually only need a NAS if you get past a particular size of files.

I run a Plex server. My question isn’t about the value Plex adds in general. It’s about the value it adds if you are regularly removing things (and potentially re-ripping in the future) due to limited storage.

The GUI is nice to use. Plex and it brother KODI have a nice skinning/metadata system. That metadata looks very nice. They are one of the better players out there. Even if you have to rotate. You could use something like VLC or mediacenter but the user exp is just not as good. For my setup I could get away with a VLC and a folder of stuff and just drag and drop it. But that 10ft aggregated view is why I use it. If you just want to watch stuff and then blow it away then it would not be worth the hassle of setup.

Only tangentially related, but I recently tried Plex to see what the fuzz is about, and the UX is horrible. Both on the smart TV side and on the PC side.

It always takes me forever to find out anything in the GUI and I can never find out how to do the simple things I want - that is - put bunch of files into one end and watch them on smart TV on the other end.

It used to be a lot better. Over the past year they started to prioritize internet content, and your personal server is under a submenu instead of front & center.

I've been running Jellyfin on the side. It isn't perfect (yet!) but it matches up with what I want, which is something that can play files on my network with a TV Remote-friendly interface.

+1 for jellyfin. It is a lot of work going on and 10.7 which will be launching soon will bring a lot of more nice features.

Also, SyncPlay is sweet!

Or just engage in piracy.

Buying a used CD/DVD is usually less work, safer and costs next to nothing. Discogs is great for music CDs in particular.

Less work? It is trivial to do, trivial to do untraceably, and costs literally nothing.

$30/yr for a VPN service so your isp doesn't disconnect you for torrenting, at least in the US

So 2 months of Netflix?

> $30/yr

so, $2.5/month and you get access to all of the content on netflix, all of the content on hulu, all of the content on amazon prime, etc.

> isp doesn't disconnect you for torrenting

in places with isp competition, they don't even disconnect you.

e: and i'm downvoted because...?

I have no idea why a person would pay for a VPN to trickle torrents when they could pay the same to get usenet and download 1080p movies in a couple of minutes, or 4k in ~10.

> I have no idea why a person would pay for a VPN to trickle torrents when they could pay the same to get usenet and download 1080p movies in a couple of minutes, or 4k in ~10.

I don't know what services you're using, but I can download 4k in sub-10 minutes from my seedbox. My understanding was usenet did not have as many options.

I don't really watch TV anymore, but when I did my experience was that Usenet was very good for anything English-language (movies, TV shows), but I had to torrent same-day anime releases.

Don't torrent at home. If you're going to share Linux ISOs (because that's all p2p is good for) pay for a dedicated seedbox. You don't have to worry about cutting into your own bandwidth but for downloading once. It's more expensive, but it's cheaper than Netflix.

openvpn on a vps you already run, or some dirt cheap box. If you're buying dvds and cds every year you're more than likely spending more than you would on a vpn setup, or just use safer trackers. You could probably use nothing and any fines you eventually probably won't get would be less than the cost of the hard media anyway.

I don't know how the used market affects the creators' pockets, but let people who want to pay, pay. Enough people still need to pay to make it worthwhile for the creators to publish the content.

I only made my comment because they were already in the used market and I don't think most people who buy movies do so with an eye towards the resale value, so there is minimal impact on the creators' pockets at all.

I’m not sure that follows. Someone bought the content new. When someone else buys their old stuff, this gives them more money with which to buy new content. I suspect this is a very small effect, but I doubt it’s zero.

> I suspect this is a very small effect, but I doubt it’s zero.

As I said, minimal. If I save money by pirating content and then use that money to pay higher tips to service workers, then maybe they'll turn around and buy more content - helping content creators. These are very tenuous links.

The more clear link would be the used market shifting the demand curve for the new market outwards due to the resale value. I think this is a real effect, but a small one.

The reason to switch from resold to infringed is that infringed is a superior substitute. However, these are not the only two substitutes in the market, and given that the consumer is consuming a stream of items over time, it is the case that by switching to infringed that the consumer will have less reason to ever buy, either at all or in the same quantity, the substitutes that make money for the creators, such as paid streaming or new discs, and so it is plausible (and for many individual consumers likely) that the impact on creators will be non-negligible.

Downloading torrents isn't piracy.

Sharing torrents for free isn't piracy.

These MIGHT be illegal copyright infringement, depending on where you're located.

Piracy is ONLY selling illegal copies of content ...

... or hijacking ships ...

Isn't sharing copyrighted work illegal and thus piracy? I thought the laws about that are pretty uniform now.

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