Hacker News Reader

Comment by gorkish | Hacker News Reader

I maintained my disc sub to the bitter end. Although I rarely used it, it was frequently the only way to view many older or more obscure films without an outright full-retail-price purchase, and even then, good luck on availability. I lament its passing and worry very much that it's function as a pseudo-film library for the average person is no longer available anywhere.

I hear the high seas calling...

View on HN

Genuinely curious whether there were films you found on the DVD service that were inaccessible via your local library loan system (if you are in the US that is, did Netflix ever do the DVD service outside the US though?)

Good library systems have a good percentage of DVD released films readily available for free.

I'm in a fairly rural area. Our library system doesn't have much. However, just across the county line is a much more populated county with a lot more ... of everything in their library system. Turns out I can 'join' their library for $25/year. It's somewhat more convenient, because it's about an 8 minute walk from my office, and open more. The local one to my home has cut back hours. I'd like to find a way to 'support' my local library system more, but short of donating tens of thousands to them on my own, there's not much I can do. I've started to use them some more (which may help activity numbers for future budgets) but the $25/year access nets me probably 10x as much stuff.

There has only been one film I've been unable to find in our library system. It's an out of print foreign film and impossible to buy new or stream so I periodically would check eBay. Finally I found a copy at a good price and bought it.

The seller sent me a DVD-R in a case with an inkjet printed cover. I went out of my way not to pirate it and ended up doing so anyway. :(

In general though, our library has completely replaced Netflix for our house for ages. It's great.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Always:_Sunset_on_Third_Street

I had a Netflix DVD subscription for years, but cancelled it more than a decade ago. I found even then that most of the obscure / out of print / hard to find DVDs were simply being stolen by the people who rented them and it would just sit on your queue forever. Since these were out of print they could not be replaced and eventually would be removed from their catalog.

There are of course many movies on DVD that have not been released on streaming or Blu-Ray, I suppose the size of your local library system could make a big difference on what is available. Especially if you live in a more rural or remote area.

Yes the films are available through my local public library system, and yes they are "free" to borrow. However it is neither convenient nor reliable to borrow a film from my library. Would I pay the library $10/month to be as convenient and available as Netflix was? Yes.

I got my last one yesterday. I will be off to ebay and a few other stores to get them. On ebay there are people who sell 100 dvd sets for 100 bucks.

Wonder how many people dumped their collection because 'i can always get it from netflix'.

Many. I know several in my friends group that tried to offload theirs when streaming became mainstream. I had thought about it but couldn't get enough to justify getting rid of all of them. As things are getting pulled off streaming and some films never making it (Dogma), I'm glad I kept them

Discoverability will also be an issue, I really liked getting into the more obscure parts of the dvd library and found many many titles that I would have otherwise never seen or heard of.

I live in a mid-sized Canadian city, and the collection of DVDs and Blurays available from the city library system is impressive. A fair bit of obscure/older films, as well as new releases, and you can always request that they add titles to their collection if they are missing something.

For me it's super convenient as I can request that they send a copy (found anywhere in their system) to my local library, and I can bike over to pick it up a few days later.

> I hear the high seas calling...

I found that the high seas are only good for popular films, and that obscure films are very hard to find. I've had better luck at the library.

You're in the wrong ocean sailor. Hoist your anchor and sail towards the large scale plex appboxes. They regularly have over 30k whales breaching the briny deep and a hearty request system to track down those rare guppies as well.

Ay sailor, I seem to have lost my map, and I can't find your post address. Maybe you can post me with the location of the treasure.

You have to find the right communities.

Pass me the popcorn while we wait for them to find the right places.

I've been predicting the return of blockbuster for a couple of years for this very reason

Reply on news.ycombinator.com