Hollywood keeps reminding us why we need physical media | Hacker News Reader

Hollywood keeps reminding us why we need physical media

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69 pointsthrow0101d23 comments

It’s shocking how streaming service prices have been skyrocketing, when the actual libraries they each provide have been dramatically cut back.

I think if these firms continue recreating the old miseries of cable TV, another golden age of piracy is inevitable.

Just let me buy an mkv file

Or buy yourself a dvd/Blu-ray drive, several terabytes of storage, handbrake, and a public library card.

Fun fact: that's the exact same amount of illegal as regular piracy is. Just less convenient.

Edit: Could the downvoters at least leave a comment with why they think my comment isn't adding to the discussion?

Copying DVDs onto your NAS or whatnot involves breaking their encryption. However poor said encryption is, breaking it runs afoul of the DMCA.

Sure! The Pirate Bay accepts various cryptocurrencies =D

You at least got 20 episode seasons you could freely record with DRM-less VHS back in the day

It's actually worse than that. There was an article recent, I don't think I'll be able to find it now, describing the incorporation of product placement in shows now as a means of perpetual revenue. VHS let you pause recording and skip the ads, but now shows have ads fused right into them.

Every time I see a show with a 5 second scene of a brand new car driving on a street, or a shot of the front of the car with the main character(s) stepping in/out, all I think is this is an ad.

Product placement has been a thing for a long time. Do you remember Chuck and Community? And that's just the most overt...

I think Wayne's World covered this pretty well: https://youtu.be/8lgLYGBbDNs?si=SbJcKhaxRW_pORyA :-)

But the content has been getting higher quality no?

I feel like we have such a huge selection of high quality TV series these days that rival the quality of blockbuster movies, at least compared to say a decade ago when we were stuck with basically just network tv series.

Like we had HBO and their original series and they were quality. But now we have a bunch of new studios and services creating quality on par with that.

That's how I feel about it at least. AppleTV+ for example has been pumping out some real quality shows. So has Amazon and even Netflix from time to time.

Netflix feels dropping the ball. Did everybody forget House of Cards? There is no house of cards now.

You have to dig to find appealing stuff.

And all their anime and cartoons and 3d stuff are low budget although some of them have good idea, they are always clearly low budget.

> how streaming service prices have been skyrocketing

I’m still paying way less than cable, or even when I bought physical media. Even at high incomes, password sharing is common.

I buy what I know I enjoy on DVD. I have plenty of old Christmas movies of VHS....

If I really want to watch some new thing I check eBay or my local thrift store for the DVD....

I haven't paid for a subscription service in years. Its freeing....and I don't have to worry about a subscription service being forgotten and forgetting to cancel. It also forces me to really consider what I am going to consume.

I have that too. I have a big cases of DVDs and blue rays. If I want to watch something I open case, and watch it. No ads. No streaming. No internet problems. No internet drama. No price hikes.

It is also better in some cases than NAS drive, or plex server. In one case, full of 50 Blue rays I can have 50x25GB of storage. No electricity is required to store these movies. I do not have to make RAID setups to be sure that the data will not be gone if electricity goes nuts.

The one downside is searching. It requires some time to find the movie in the case. I do not store movies in DVD cases, because they occupy to much space physically.

When you realize hitting yourself with the claw side of the hammer hurts, the solution isn't to go back to hitting yourself with the flat side.

I stopped using dedicated physical media for entertainment nearly two decades ago, and have had no regrets. The difference is I never bought into this backwards "streaming" gimmick. All the files I transferred from dedicated physical media as well as what I've obtained by downloading are still in my collection, despite that collection moving to new disks several times.

This is my approach:

- figure out what to watch

- subscribe via iOS

- cancel immediately to not get billed after the first month

- watch show

- repeat

If it is just a single movie, rent instead of subscribe.

I don’t want to own movies or discs, because I never consume the same thing twice.

> I don’t want to own movies or discs, because I never consume the same thing twice.

For real?! You don’t have movies you love and rewatch? Are you not one for watching much TV?

I’m intrigued :)

I watch a lot of series and movies, yet again, never felt an urge to rewatch one - not even those I would say I loved. There's no wonder anymore, so why would I? Can you tell me why you do rewatch things? I assume you don't mean after a long time when it got mostly forgotten, right?

You can get a lot of the emotions back when rewatching, but I suspect this is extremely specific to the individual

I don’t either. I watch maybe one or two movies and a couple of seasons of television a year. I would only ever rewatch a movie if it happened to be on at someone’s house.

But don’t stress, I’m not working on self improvement or my side hustle or whatever, I am watching sport or playing video games instead!

This is shortly after the Ubisoft CEO make a big statement saying that "gamers need to get past the idea of owning their games."

Fun fact: The Pirate Bay trial ended 15 years ago.

im all for price hikes on streaming services—gets me to the break-even point on my nas setup sooner.

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