• merc@sh.itjust.works
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      6 days ago

      where owning media is considered a luxury.

      Much more likely that it will simply be impossible to legally own any media.

      Back when people bought analog media, I don’t know if it was fully spelled out what you did and didn’t actually own. Obviously you didn’t own the copyright to whatever it is you were buying. But, you did own the physical item. What rights were transferred to you when you bought the record in the record store? Probably an unlimited right to play the record at home, but not the right to play it in a dance club. I wonder if the “copyright license” was ever actually spelled out though.

      In the digital era there is no longer any physical item to own, and since you never did own the “information” encoded into the physical medium, ownership of digital files is already on shaky ground. In the past you could buy MP3s, and these days it’s still occasionally possible to buy DRM-free e-books. But I wouldn’t be surprised if in the future just having media stored locally will be presumed to be illegal.

      • breakingcups@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        We’re running out of safe havens to host, I feel. Countries that won’t submit to the industry’s will. With the additional clamping down on material not government-sanctioned recently, with invasive biometric and ID checks, it certainly feels like the wrong direction.

        • They tried to kill piracy so many times, and it never worked.

          They will try again and fail again. And the best of it is that sales won’t go up anyway because the problem is not piracy, is their own greed.

          If they somehow manage to completely kill piracy, I won’t be able to pay for every streaming service anyway because I don’t have the time to enjoy them all nor I think they are worth my money at all.

          • AFallingAnvil@lemmy.ca
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            9 days ago

            I already have more media than I could watch in a lifetime on a home server, if we lose new media I can happily enjoy the old stuff for decades to come

          • OrteilGenou@lemmy.world
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            9 days ago

            Someone will figure out a way to allow micro-transactions where you pay a small fee to piggyback on existing subscriptions, so you don’t have to pay for everything, you can just drop three bucks to use part of an account that a subscriber isn’t using

          • A Wild Mimic appears!@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            I agree - if they stop piracy, i will start selling copies of my stash for the cost of the Hdds to clone to and the time it took me to copy the files, under the pretense that they do the same for others. free delivery!

            hmmm somewhat of an offline torrent lol

        • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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          9 days ago

          Host? Sounds like a problem I’m too “several large HDDs” to understand.

          • breakingcups@lemmy.world
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            8 days ago

            And, pray tell, where does the material on your hdds come from? Would it happen to be peers kind enough to host the material for your consumption?

        • ThePantser@sh.itjust.works
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          9 days ago

          Meanwhile NZB will still exist and never targeted. Funny how they hate torrents so much when NZB is superior and easier.

        • OrteilGenou@lemmy.world
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          9 days ago

          I wonder how tough it would be for someone to start a DVD cottage industry, replicating the old Netflix model, where you mail hard copies of pirated movies upon request? I already order hard copies of movies from Amazon if I know I want them in my collection permanently, but damn, sometimes those are pricey as hell

      • Strider@lemmy.world
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        If companies are allowed unlicensed access (AI training) to media en masse I don’t see a reason everyone else shouldn’t have that either.

      • 33550336@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        True, but if you get a walk to the library it is both healthy and you support your local library (more users means more funding hopefully).

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      I’ve got no way to play DVDs though I’d have to go and buy a DVD player. Streaming content is much more convenient I would like to be able to do it legally and without hassle. But the content creating companies don’t seem to be interested in providing me an option to do that.

      Anyway my local library isn’t really that local it’s a 25-minute drive and probably an hour plus walk up a really steep hill.

      • LotrOrc@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        Oh no not having to leave my house or get a little bit of exercise or go outside!

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          8 days ago

          Except I didn’t actually say that. I said that going to a physical location and getting a physical disk and then driving all the way back home is considerably less convenient than streaming content.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          8 days ago

          I’m happy to favour things they are just not giving me a convenient way to give them money.

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        I get that this isn’t an option for everyone. Part of why I wrote it in such big text without any qualifiers is that it is an option for a significant amount of people, yet frequently gets completely overlooked.

        But I gotta ask

        Why would you make a 25-munute drive but stop at the bottom of the hill? Why not just drive the rest of the way up?

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          7 days ago

          Why should I put in effort, they don’t, the content creators don’t.

          The content creators have not built a method via which I can legitimately give them money. If they wish to do that then we can talk but they apparently are not interested.

          I have no idea what an earth it is that you think I should do instead, clearly you are an intellectual though so I would value your input.

          • AppleTea@lemmy.zip
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            7 days ago

            For high cost production that takes tens or hundreds of people to make, it’s usually not up to the actual artists and creators how their stuff gets distributed. That’s up to the publishers. They kinda… destroyed their older distribution methods, each one chasing the impossible goal of a streaming monopoly.

            For some people, local Libraries are an option. If that isn’t feasible, there are other options. Legal or otherwise. Whatever works, works. Most artists care more that you engage with their work, than how you got a hold of it. They already got paid, and residuals are less and less offered (or weaseled out of) by the publishers.

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    Burn your “acquired media” to physical media now folks. The powers that be are purposely limiting physical media so the have an excuse to phase it out

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
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      “The powers that be” aren’t doing some kind of nefarious thing here. Physical media is only worth producing if they’re doing it at incredibly high volumes. The smaller the run, the more expensive it is for each individual unit. Fewer and fewer people are buying, and there are fewer and fewer physical devices out there capable of playing the media.

      For them, it’s a simple calculation of the cost of producing physical media, getting it from the factory to stores, paying the stores to shelve it, etc. vs. simply having a website with media files on it.

      While there are some people who still prefer physical media, for the most part consumers also prefer just going to a website and clicking a button vs. driving to a store, parking, searching the shelves in the hope they have what they’re looking for, and so-on. In addition, as fewer companies put out physical media, it’s harder to find the physical media you want in the stores, so more people prefer to go online, which leads to less demand for physical media, fewer choices on the shelves, and more demand for streaming.

      I’m sure the bonus of consumers rarely having a way to view a movie or listen to a song an unlimited number of times without paying is something the media companies also enjoy. But, the main reason physical media is disappearing isn’t some kind of conspiracy by the mysterious “powers that be”, it’s a simple profit calculation by accountants at Sony and Disney.

    • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      Or save them redundantly to several archive-quality hdds. Why have 20 blu-ray dvds for one copy of a collection when you could have 3 complete copies on 3 hdd. Both are life limited media, both will eventually require re-archiving. One has potential for mechanical failure, the other more likely to physically degrade. Pick your poison, or do one of each.

    • ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world
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      Genuinely curious how are publishers limiting physical media? I haven’t bought a blu-ray in a long while.

        • ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          Not the publishers fault, for the vast majority it’s by choice and not necessity that they don’t buy physical media anymore.

        • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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          Yeah, but that’s not some massive conspiracy to remove them. They just don’t sell, like CDs before them. Blu-ray never really won its format war. It just staved off the execution of discs for a few years.

          £25 for one movie is a hard sell when it will come to Disney+ in a month. Even more so when it can get you a VPN for 6 months and you can have it now.

          • pseudo@jlai.lu
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            8 days ago

            You should go to the flea market. No recent things but lots of choice for maximum 3€ the DVD.

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      8 days ago

      No they’re not, hard drives are for sale everywhere and not being phased out any time soon.

        • Deceptichum@quokk.au
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          Why not talk about floppy discs?

          Just because Blu-Rays are going away, does not mean physical media is going away. We have better physical media options, use them.

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            While we do have floppy disks, the storage capacity limitations do not make them practical in today’s era

            I wouldn’t consider floppies superior to Blu-ray.

  • pedz@lemmy.ca
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    I’m sure there’s other “old” people here that never stopped sailing the seas. I started to use a computer in the mid 90ies and internet a few years later. From the start, there has been attempts at streaming. I remember using RealPlayer trying to stream some video while on dial-up, only to be just a bunch of pixels in a very tiny window. So you downloaded everything, and kept it because you didn’t want to spend 45 minutes to download the very same song once again.

    And I never stopped this practise. I still have my MP3 collection that I started 25 years ago. I still have .rm files from movies that I captured myself. I can’t believe how much bandwidth we just waste on streaming stuff again and again.

    Once, the zoomer trying to sell my a data plan for my phone couldn’t believe I didn’t need more than a few gigs a month. No, I don’t stream music. No, I don’t stream movies nor series. I download them once, store them, and enjoy them whenever I want. No censored episodes, no missing episodes, no ads, just the content.

    Although I do buy some of my MP3s now if possible. If I can straight up pay to download MP3 files, like on Bandcamp, I will. I wish we could do the same for series and movies, but since we’re absolutely not there, I’ll just continue to sail the seas and fill up my hard drives.

    • LousyCornMuffins@lemmy.world
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      oh man I used to have (way long ago, the statue of limitations has crumbled) the most extensive collection of early simpsons. then my family started buying me plastic simpson head collections for birthdays and holidays, so I stopped downloading. still have a great collection.

      now instead my hard drive is filled with so much music. more music than games, which my wife refuses to believe (but half of it is hers).

      and we have an entire cd collection, and vinyl collection to rip if I ever get bored.

      there was this old blues program on the local npr station that I’d listen to religiously in high school. I was trying to learn sax. I kind of did, but I’ve got a stack of those tapes taller than me. I just right now found out the guy who ran the program died last month so I’m trying to dig out a cassette deck. here’s a song i got off his program.

      • kungen@feddit.nu
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        8 days ago

        hard drive costs halve every 2 years or so.

        Where did you get halves from? Maybe if you’re buying refurb/low-cap/shuck-drives on sale…? Not even the 2 year price projections (which are usually extremely optimistic) are anywhere near halving for higher-cap drives.

        Even now, the only thing you’d get even nearing the optimal $10/TB mark would be a shuck-drive on sale as far as I can tell. Whereas the cheapest non-shuck is like $12.50/TB, but you’ll most likely be wasting tons of time RMAing it within a year anyways because it’s Sea*ate 🤢

    • Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      8 days ago

      Workin’ on it! Got me a used laptop that’s about as recent as possible to still have a slim bluray slot built in. Learning all the things.

  • otacon239@lemmy.world
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    I started building an all-BluRay collection back in 2018. I saw the writing on the wall when I would go to watch a movie with friends on streaming and it would be gone.

    Almost all of my favorite movies are mine now. I see a lot of comments talking about pirating, but for me personally, the display I get and being able to just have guests grab from the wall is a lot cooler than scrolling.

    Not to mention, some of them are quite collectible. It’s neat having some movies that are really rare and I know I had to work to find them.

    • ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      I highly suggest that you make ripped backups. I learned the hard way, I digitised my grandfather’s CD collection and some of his DVDs, some of which were already damaged beyond repair. Some of his broken DVDs are less than 20 years old. They are not scratched, they are in mint condition.

      • otacon239@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        Yeah. Was thinking of starting that this year. Getting ready to switch my last Windows machine to Linux and it’s the one running the BluRay drive. Linux is way easier to rip with.

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          I have a decent dvd/blu-ray collection and was hoping to rip them and put them on Jellyfin. I haven’t ever ripped video before, only CDs and that was a long time ago. I also would have to pick up a usb disc reader or similar since I don’t have one in my machine. Any suggestions on applications to use or external disc readers to look out for? I’m running Linux not windows.

          • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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            Probably the same software tbh. Handbrake. Whatever you choose, it’s nearly all ffmpeg under the hood.

            Downloading might still be better, depending if you’re in the subtitles gang or not. Disc subtitles are ugly af, and might not play without transcoding on some devices.

            • BurntWits@sh.itjust.works
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              8 days ago

              Good to know. I’m not picky on subtitles but my wife needs them. A friend of mine is very familiar with the high seas so I may consider getting his help instead.

          • Cenzorrll@lemmy.world
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            Check out the makemkv forums on drive advice. The gui makemkv should work as well, not so much anything relying on the command line tools (arm ripper, etc).

            Handbrake is encoding software that works pretty well and can encode straight from disc.

            VLC can also do it.

            I have personally started dd’ing to iso then encoding the main feature from that for my server, and saving the iso separately just in case I really want to play those dumb dvd extra features and fbi warnings.

            Ripping can be a pain, there’s all kinds of encryption hoops to jump through, and I have come across a few dvds that I just couldn’t rip no matter what I tried.

      • skisnow@lemmy.ca
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        9 days ago

        I started doing that a while back, but quickly realized that it’s both faster and less effort to torrent those same movies than to fanny about ripping the discs…

    • skisnow@lemmy.ca
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      9 days ago

      My Spotify playlists get greyed-out sections in them with disturbing regularity. As soon as I figure out how to download them without installing software that gives me a million viruses, I’ll be deleting my account…

  • bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works
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    9 days ago

    People got lazy and threw away their stuff thinking streaming was the future. Some of us knew better because we know how capitalism works.

    Own your media folks!

    • Jesus@lemmy.world
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      I’d still rather have on demand streaming over broadcast. Having to time-shift by recording live shows was super annoying.

        • Jesus@lemmy.world
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          I feel ya. There was nice to have a forcing function to give something new a chance for a bit.

          It was also nice to not have everyone watching their own little micro-targeted version of reality.

    • Jerb322@lemmy.world
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      I just don’t have nearly the amount of places to get them anymore. Still, I have a small wall worth of DVDs and Blu-ray.

  • PattyMcB@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    Luckily I saved all of my blu-rays. And, bonus: they’re all good movies from before Disney went to shit

        • scott@lemmy.org
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          7 days ago

          It’s not an attack on libraries or funny, it’s a legitimate point about digital libraries that our repressive regime deems fit to burn regularly.

        • ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml
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          So are your local pirates. Where would we be without rippers, uploaders and seeders?

              • macniel@feddit.org
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                9 days ago

                its a figure of speech, but that’s not important right now.

                Local Libraries allows us to lend media in a social way, and just like the Internet Archive are an important pillar to our society. But thats not how Media Companies see it that way and compares the Internet Archive with Piracy.

                Torrenting is fine and dandy though, so is Soulseeking.

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    I was in a car with one of them there blu-ray players, and it turned out there was actually disc in, so we tried to use it. After 15 minutes of unskippable content, we finally got to the start of the film and wanted to select language/subtitles - and it wouldn’t let us. 20 mins wasted.

    DVDs and BlueRay were crap, we just forgot.

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          Good old two disc VCDs. Man I miss those days.

          I was happy to get a DVD burner though. My best friend and I had Netflix and we’d rip everything that came in the mail. A huge book full of movies and tv shows.

          Good times.

          We had no phone, no cable, no internet. Most creative time in my life.

    • TORFdot0@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      Man if there was only a convenient program that can be used to make mkv’s from optical media

    • Bloomcole@lemmy.world
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      Exactly just like CD’s huge, unpractical and fragile.
      While you could have mp3’s and movie files at about the same time.
      I don’t understand people’s choices sometimes, and now I can’t get how everyone pays for this ridiculous Spotify, with it’s scummy practices and worse, when you’re at some houseparty and the host asks what I want to hear it doesn’t have my music since it’s not mainstream enough.
      Glad I’m old and don’t have to deal with this BS where consumers can choose from the same multinational corporate pushed garbage they hear everywhere and nothing else.
      And they’re OK with it too since it’s all they know.