this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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If you can't save it, its not yours. Sail the seas.
Or buy it on physical media. More and more studios are pulling their disks and it is getting harder to find. If you have a disk, it can never be recalled.
Ever since Disney announced they are also going to ban account sharing, I've been going to thrift stores and grabbing any DVDs my children like or might like. I've gotten quite a few classics so far for less than the cost of one month of Disney+. I almost bought a VCR because the VHS collection at thrift stores here is huge and they are so cheap, but rewinding sucks.
I don't think you realize how unwatchably blurry VHS is. I can't believe we ever watched those things now.
DVD is still a bit of a nuisance because of aspect ratios and they're a little blurry because SD, but VHS is just garbage.
VHS can look as good as DVD (or better in cases where the DVD was poorly mastered), but there aren’t many good VCRs out there anymore. A well maintained VHS tape and VCR can give you a great capture. https://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/video-restore/1567-vcr-buying-guide.html
I still have my CRT and old game consoles and use them sometimes. The blurriness with the games doesn't bother me, but maybe a movie would be worse. I am constantly forgetting my glasses though so I'm kind of used to blurry. I still might grab a VCR if I see one, though, just to show my children what it was like when I was a kid. Could be fun.
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The ability to hear this comment is dependent on the reader's age in a rather interesting way.
Nothing better than a 15625hz sawtooth tone.
smart move. make sure to back up everything on multiple hard drives.
I'm the worst at backups...
Maybe look into the cost of transferring those vhs to dvds/memory sticks. It might be worth the cost if you buy enough VHS tapes.
I haven't looked into it, but doesn blu ray need some kind of connectivity to manage its cryptography?
The encryption keys are stored on the disk I believe. I use MakeMKV and load the files into my media center software (Jellyfin). That works for DVDs, Blu-rays and 4K disks just fine. Every once in a while if I get a 4K early, the keys haven’t been updated yet and I have to give it a day (usually less) before it rips.
But it can just stop playing... I have a handful of discs, still in cases, look pristine, no scratches, and yet can't be read by either my computer or DVD player. No recourse. It's a separate problem of course, but similar.
Disks can degrade or be manufactured badly. If they never play you can usually get a warranty replacement. Old disks can degrade, but I have many 20+ year old DVDs that play fine.
technically you dont own the disks either bro have you never read the back of a DvD box
I mean, yeah, but so what? We are talking about an article where Amazon pulled a video someone purchased down so they can never watch it again. I have never heard of a company recalling physical media and demanding it’s return.
This is a non-story.
"Who knew $EvilCo would fuck me over for a sub-$10 profit?!"
I never stopped stealing media, and I never will.
You can't steal media unless you steal the medium.
Copyright infringement is a crime you might commit but by its draconian length, most cases are the public taking back what's rightfully ours.
Superman II (any version) should be in the public domain.
you can't steal media, it's still there but just copied over.
Sucks for online games though...
Or just buy the disk
Unless you can physically hold an offline device containing everything you need to replay it you don't own it.
According to my local (Dutch) laws, I don't need to own a physical copy. A YouTube purchase is sufficient for me to legally download a copy over p2p, I'm just not allowed to upload it.
We're still being charged "thuiskopie" taxes on storage devices, so I'm still allowed to make copies for personal use, either via the app I bought it on, or as an MKV found on torrent sites.
This is banking on someone else providing the data you want when you want it. Things on torrent sites do disappear especially if they are more niche media.
Yeah, but I usually buy it somewhere and then torrent it. Except for YouTube, most UIs aren't all that dashing (or just slow, like Prime).
Amazon's Music service, while it takes some hoops to jump through, actually does let you download music. Though I don't know if that's a general policy or on a per music/per artist basis.
I get the feeling they're trying to get rid of that feature, whenever I try to download something there I have to jump through an increasing number of hoops to get the download option to appear.
I'm fairly certain it's been the same number of hoops to get there. Same with actually trying to buy it specifically.
But yeah, its so sequestered away that honestly, I'd probably just outright pirate it if it wasn't for the fact that it's readily available on release and I'm familiar with the methodology of it.
and save outside of their app as a non DRM'ed file because otherwise its extra hoops for the same problem
Everything should allow you to download what you purchased. The fact that the music industry has pushed streaming so goddamn hard is because they're mad that people can still download MP3s.
And above all of this, let's not forget that a major negotiating point of the Hollywood strike was getting residuals per stream, something that never existed when people actually had their own media. It's greed on every single side in that corrupt, hell town and I'm at the point where I don't even watch TV or movies any more, not only because it all sucks, but because of this bullshit. The greed and the corruption needs to be punished.
Why is owning sth you might watch once every 10 years so important? I don't care about it, as long as it isn't some niche content or stuff I watch every year.
Because paying actual money for something that can be taken away with the changing of ever shifting IP ownership and steaming rights is a giant waste of money.
I disagree. Like I said, I don't need to 'own' something I rarely use. I'm fine just borrowing it for a couple of days as well.