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Comment by godzillabrennus | Hacker News Reader

I started buying Blu-ray discs and ripping them to my computer, where I run Plex. Why? I had a long-time subscription to HBO Max, but a few years ago, I went to watch Westworld, and it was gone from HBO. I ended up buying a season on Apple for the price of a monthly subscription to HBO. I cancelled my HBO subscription. I realized that second-hand Blu-ray discs of shows were selling for dirt cheap. I spent $40 to buy the rest of the seasons of Westworld on Blu-ray.

Clearly, new shows aren't getting Blu-ray releases, so this won't work for you if you care about new shows. My wife and I are so over the dystopian view from modern science fiction that we started focusing on shows from the late 1900s (80s/90s) to get more of a positive outlook from our entertainment. We are now going through Stargate SG-1.

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Sucks that the Blu-ray experience is dreadful for 4K content. You've gotta find specific Blu-ray drives with specific firmware versions to do rips, or watch on a PlayStation or similar locked-down console. There isn't even a non-pirate way to watch on a laptop or desktop anymore since Intel SGX is dead.

If you want a fast and easy way to rip 4k Blu-ray buy a drive ready for it. People sell prepatched drives to rip with. They don’t mark them up much. I grabbed a couple and after two yeas I still haven’t worn through the first one yet.

There are quite a few devices these days that’ll allow you to capture streams by stripping HDCP so you can at least record it instead of having the service put it in “the vault,” to appease some bozo in a suit.

I have been trying to put my data hoarding data days behind me, but like the article, I’m being pushed back that direction. Doubly so since I use Linux and they restrict quality to 1080p. The only thing preventing me from it right now is a lack of a computer/server with ECC support (so I can run ZFS). Though encrypting a bunch of data and archiving it into Amazon Glacier seems more and more reasonable as time goes on.

> I went to watch Westworld, and it was gone from HBO.

Wait, isn't that their own IP? I get shows not running on 3rd party streaming services due to IP rights and stuff, but how/why would they be in a position to not stream their own IP?! That's like going to Netflix and not being able to see Stranger Things. It's insane!

From the geniuses who thought throwing away the HBO name in favor of "Max" was a way to unlock brand value

Insane is the understatement of the year. I appreciate their idiocy though. It pushed me to make the switch to ripping discs so I have my own drm free offline library of content now.

Are you over 40?

I ask because I'm over 40 and I've had enough of this too.

Also check out cafedvd.com.

Same. I'm 45 and lately I've been thinking about picking up a Blu-ray player. Not a drive to rip discs—a player to hook up to my TV. It's definitely an elder millennial thing, but I just want to own a physical copy of the movie and not have to worry about where it's streaming or whether the one I "bought" on iTunes has been quietly swapped for another version.

The sad thing is, I don't think Blu-ray is long for this world. But I at least want plastic copies of the classic movies I know I'll go back to.

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