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Comment by perpetuallunch | Hacker News Reader

Cheaper & easier - not by much. Australia blocks all the good torrent sites, so now I need a VPN, a reputable one. Also need terabytes of network connected storage, and usually I need more and more of it over time. Better and more networking equipment to buy and maintain. Media management and streaming software that works locally and remotely, to (maybe buy) and maintain.

Or I can usage discount offers for the various streaming platforms, and pay for each one I want to watch something on from time to time.

The streaming services also don’t come with who knows what malware like pirated media can.

And a YouTube Premium subscription because you get ad free YouTube Music and ad free YouTube.

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This is true for music because the labels decided that they would upload their catalogs to every streaming service.

It's not true for movies, because the movie industry decided to sign exclusivity deals or make movies only available on their own platforms. Thus piracy is still the only reliable way to watch movies: you might get access to some subset of movies depending on which streaming service you subscribe to, but certainly not to all of them.

How does that negate needing a VPN, storage, networking, media management, remote access, malware?

I’ve never met even a data hoarder who has “all of them”, and I tend to watch them one at a time anyways, so I’d argue “not all of them” isn’t really a problem anyone has.

Having said that, I do tend to pirate a relatively small collection of movies and series, just the ones I could watch over and over and never get tired off.

You can access streaming (not torrenting) sites without a VPN and just watch whatever movies you want and there's no hastle or malware? If you like something particularly you can download it and then storage becomes a factor, and if all streaming sites are blocked a VPN subscription (reputable just mulvad) costs less than any streaming service and gives you access to every single movie and show, impossible to debate that it's not more convenient

> now I need a VPN, a reputable one. Also need terabytes of network connected storage, and usually I need more and more of it over time. Better and more networking equipment to buy and maintain. Media management and streaming software that works locally and remotely, to (maybe buy) and maintain.

Literally none of these things are reality other than for the very specific means you are aware of.

> The streaming services also don’t come with who knows what malware like pirated media can.

What is this, an MPAA pitch from 2007?

I don't see how you would need more and more space for media with time.

You don't have to take it upon yourself to archive the entire history of Hollywood, you know.

You can get _very_ far with 20TB, hell, even with just 10TB.

It’s cat and mouse game. Australia blocks sites, sites move urls. If you don’t keep up, then they have caught you too.

Streaming sites can just delete your purchases whenever they want to. Sony already has.

It's only a DNS block fwiw. If you set your DNS to 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8 everything works fine.

I recently realised even the build in iOS Private Relay gets around the Australian Government site blocks.

> Cheaper & easier - not by much.

I spent a total of $150 for my entire homelab setup two years ago with not a single investment made since then. Used to pay $80 per month for streaming back then, bet it would be >$100 now

> The streaming services also don’t come with who knows what malware like pirated media can.

How does one put malware in media? Are we talking exploiting unlatched vulnerabilities in codecs, or are we talking random exe files?

If you randomly make up issues and limitations then yes of course it is hard to circumvent those non-existing issues and limitations.

I have to use a free DNS over HTTPS in any case, thanks to my amazing government's censorship (italy), so that's something that needs doing in any case.

There's no need for terabytes. You just made it up.

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