From this point on, every year "physical media & a Jellyfin install" is going to be more sensible.
Assuming you even care about legality, of course.
Yeah, it's harder. But you can get a lot of "harder" things done in the amount of time you otherwise spend watching ads, after all. Because to me one of the worst things about ads is they're stealing dollars from me to make cents, if not fractions of a cent. This makes them on the dumb end of the bandit classification by the Basic Laws of Human Stupidity metric: https://harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic-laws-of-human-stupidi... It's so dumb.
And as long as we keep letting them give us an option to buy out the ads, but then they get to stick ads on that option anyhow, we can never get our way out of ads on these things. I don't mind buying them out because they make so little money anyhow but by simple game theory "buy out ads + put ads on anyhow" is always > "buy out ads". You need to cancel if they do this to you. I can't, because I don't have a Disney+ subscription. But you really need to. You need to turn the option into either "let us buy out the ads" or "lose the subscription" for them.
I canceled my Prime subscription precisely because they continued to keep mixing ad supported content with my ad free content. There were multiple shows where I unknowingly started watching something with ads where I immediately noped out at the first ad break and never watched that show again. I doubt they'll look at it, but it would be interesting to know how many users do the same thing.
I've already been pausing subscriptions left and right as my trends have been focusing on one platform's content that I'm not even using the others that I'm paying for that month. After dumping Prime, I eventually dumped Disney+/Hulu bundle for being the most expensive. I then got yet another notice from Netflix for increase rates which was already paused so I just went ahead and canceled it as well.
I wonder how much physical media I could acquire if I was to spend the same money that is not being spent on streaming platforms. I bet within a year, I could build up a pretty decent back catalog from used and $5 bins.
> I wonder how much physical media I could acquire if I was to spend the same money that is not being spent on streaming platforms. I bet within a year, I could build up a pretty decent back catalog from used and $5 bins.
This has been the play for a while. I remember when the xbox game pass dropped for the first time. All the younger people were going crazy about how good of a deal it was, and all the tech-weary people could instantly tell that the price will get jacked up again and again and by the time you bail you'll own precisely nothing.
It's not necessarily wrong to take advantage of VC subsidizing you in a bid to gather an audience, but you should always keep in mind that the goal is to have the captive audience so you best have an escape plan, once the prices rise beyond any reasonable point. For movies in particular I struggle how the super-fragmented streaming landscape is worth a damn even if you don't want to sail the seas.
I should have elaborated. I don't plan on watching the physical media. I plan on watching a digital copy of the physical media where the physical media is just my legit license. Obtaining a digital copy of the library's physical media is not something I'd be willing to do.
Speaking as someone who worked at a public library: do it. You paid for the movies and they're provided as a public good. I can guarantee that every single piece of media on the shelf has been ripped multiple times. People do it very frequently.
Back when I could only get barely serviceable dial up I had a large chunk of the local library's and the local rent-a-movie/game 's catalog ripped. If I still had to do that now I doubt I would be missing out enough on anything to really care anbd stop. Stacks of CD-Rs and DVD-Rs of movies or for modded consoles. I never had any complaints about that format so media companies really should get their heads out of their asses.
They are deliberately choosing to stay on the “morally correct” side of the line.
Once you’re talking about ripping library materials, why not just skip the library and download the same items without touching the physical. How is that worse?
For some of the same reasons you might buy something from a local store instead of buying online - you can see actual faces in your community on the way, your library gets usage metrics that help it keep funding and stay around, you might be there already for something else, less time digging around in a screen ui and more time moving in 3d. I also like that the rip itself is totally offlime and not traceable. And it is just stressful wondering if something pirated has something nasty snuck in, however unlikely it is much less likely from a library dvd. Don't if you don't want to, but there are perfectly good reasons.
Exactly this. I could easily just torrent as much as anyone, but I don't necessarily want to meet the low bar. Also, my career path is one such that if I were to ever receive a letter from an ISP suggesting my sailing of the high seas was a bit much, I'd be fired and blacklisted while being forced into a new career path.
Why not? Your taxes pay for the library, so you own a share of their media. If you really want to be honest, check their online catalog and make sure the title is available for checkout before you play it.
I frequently take advantage of the tax payer funded ownership of NASA imagery. I have a nice collection of ISS timelapse footage well before Apple provided them as screensavers.
However, "own a share of their media" means what, that I can have a legit claim to 30s worth of the content? How is that calculated? Divide the number of tax payers in the city by the number of seconds of each bit of content to see how much of it I "own"? You're really bending the concept of tax payer funding here. If that's how you want to go through life, then you do you
You have a right to check out and play the media if it's available. I'm just proposing that you skip the physical "check out" part of that. It's possible to do that honestly: most libraries have an online catalog system and you can see if the title is already checked out or currently available. In fact I'd wonder if some libraries don't already handle their media catalog that way. It would eliminate the risk of damaging the physical media if you could just check out the movie and stream it right from the library's website.
I'll go ahead and duck now from the tomatoes but there is a middle path as well...
Using CheapCharts and buying Movies and TV on iTunes. Yes you don't "own it" and yes there are the rare occasional license revocations but it's not often enough for me to care about that--They still remain in your library anyways.
I have been diligently collecting quality, fun, and beloved movies over the past 2 years when they go on sale. That or buying bundles when they go on sale. I've amassed a solid collection of quality media, a lot of which is not on any streaming platform. I even have a lot of Disney titles as well!
I can watch it wherever, whenever and I can download it to devices.
Not if you move countries. I moved from the UK to Canada, updated my payment method and all UK purchased content was gone from my itunes account
And yes, there is some elaborate workaround to create a brand new account and share the original with the new but fundamentally I could no longer access what I purchased because I moved. And no, I didn't get a refund for the years of purchased content.
Geez, I feel like the default behavior for that move should be to refund the content that is removed, does the content become available if you move back?
I have a little "dance" I have to do to change my store back to the UK (I'm British) and you need a valid british credit/debit card and address to switch stores to the UK store...
I live in Sweden now and I got a bit bent out of shape when I moved and discovered this was the case.
I have recently started doing this too - I prefer r/iTunesMovieDeals for discovering stuff on sale. What I have been trying to optimize for is a low cost per hour and a high critical rating.
For example, I recently got the entire bundle for HBO's Rome for $9.99. That is ~50 minutes per episode (22 episodes), or $0.54/hour, which is not a bad deal! For a casual viewer like me, who might spend <6 hours each week watching TV, this should last a little more than 3 weeks. Recently, The Sopranos went on sale for $29.99, or $0.38/hour.
For streaming vs. buying to work, you just have to be patient about nabbing ~1-2 purchases per month and not be tempted to buy every single day.
The best part is the reduced cognitive load - you don't have to spend time browsing for content every day, and there are no ads, too.
Yeah, my iTunes library is over 20 years old and it's more valuable to me now than ever. The iPod halo effect lives on.
Once or twice a year during the holiday sales season I'll buy some new shows/seasons from iTunes. These are always downloaded and backed up, so I never have to worry about license changes, etc.
For old shows (20+ years) I will either rip the old DVDs or torrent guilt free.
When I travel, I load up my iPad or an SD card with my latest queue of shows so I can stick to my weekly TV schedule..
iTunes is more trustworthy for this, but keep in mind not every service where you can buy things will be. Sony did just revoke movies this year and I wouldn't really rely on Google or Amazon for it at least
> buying Movies and TV on iTunes. Yes you don't "own it" and yes there are the rare occasional license revocations but it's not often enough for me to care about that--They still remain in your library anyways.
agreed : have been doing that since 15ish years ago, works fine, no time squandered on stupid ass "ask your doctor about ___" ads, and that time saved is hugely valuable.
The underlying principle is also more important than ever.
Laws and morals are not the same thing. What is legal may be immoral. What is illegal may be moral.
More and more I'm politically frustrated by government leaders and society just openly ignoring the law--although, I guess I did sort of argue that's sometimes okay in the last paragraph...
I guess it comes down to this. What laws do you elevate above others? What laws do you consider acceptable to ignore, and what laws do you consider morally valid?
There are some who commit moral atrocities because it's the law, we know it's sad but the law is really important and must be enforced, and then in the next breath they start an illegal war of aggression and bomb hundreds of kids. I guess the law was never really their greatest concern. Sorry if I'm being a bit too on the nose.
Yes, somehow moral, ethics and fairness aspects are absent in many laws. In my opinion a constitutional law needs to be there to mandatorily list what each particular law is trying to achieve as its objective. Then people should be allowed to list any unfairness or ethical or moral concerns about each law, which is also recorded as a journal entry.
Democractic laws needs a guiding framework that considers these moral and ethical aspects, as these kind of things can be easily missed or overlooked if not documented as a mandatory tests for legality of law. Otherwise people have to constantly be on the lookout for sneaky laws that takes away the core values that may not be immediately apparent. Laws should be entirely written and modified only be legislature, and courts cannot be allowed to interpret it in any different way or apply it out of context or allowed to edit or delete laws, which is what legislative body is for.
Yes and on top of that governments don't care enough about my personal information, so until this is fixed I'm not going to care about any IP or copyright laws either.
Further, big AI companies don't care about copyright laws, so I assume this is the current reality.
Laws only make sense if they are fair and applied equally.
jerf 1 day ago
Assuming you even care about legality, of course.
Yeah, it's harder. But you can get a lot of "harder" things done in the amount of time you otherwise spend watching ads, after all. Because to me one of the worst things about ads is they're stealing dollars from me to make cents, if not fractions of a cent. This makes them on the dumb end of the bandit classification by the Basic Laws of Human Stupidity metric: https://harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic-laws-of-human-stupidi... It's so dumb.
And as long as we keep letting them give us an option to buy out the ads, but then they get to stick ads on that option anyhow, we can never get our way out of ads on these things. I don't mind buying them out because they make so little money anyhow but by simple game theory "buy out ads + put ads on anyhow" is always > "buy out ads". You need to cancel if they do this to you. I can't, because I don't have a Disney+ subscription. But you really need to. You need to turn the option into either "let us buy out the ads" or "lose the subscription" for them.
dylan604 1 day ago
I've already been pausing subscriptions left and right as my trends have been focusing on one platform's content that I'm not even using the others that I'm paying for that month. After dumping Prime, I eventually dumped Disney+/Hulu bundle for being the most expensive. I then got yet another notice from Netflix for increase rates which was already paused so I just went ahead and canceled it as well.
I wonder how much physical media I could acquire if I was to spend the same money that is not being spent on streaming platforms. I bet within a year, I could build up a pretty decent back catalog from used and $5 bins.
revolvingthrow 1 day ago
This has been the play for a while. I remember when the xbox game pass dropped for the first time. All the younger people were going crazy about how good of a deal it was, and all the tech-weary people could instantly tell that the price will get jacked up again and again and by the time you bail you'll own precisely nothing.
It's not necessarily wrong to take advantage of VC subsidizing you in a bid to gather an audience, but you should always keep in mind that the goal is to have the captive audience so you best have an escape plan, once the prices rise beyond any reasonable point. For movies in particular I struggle how the super-fragmented streaming landscape is worth a damn even if you don't want to sail the seas.
coldpie 1 day ago
dylan604 1 day ago
unrented7977 1 day ago
AngryData 1 day ago
fn-mote 1 day ago
Once you’re talking about ripping library materials, why not just skip the library and download the same items without touching the physical. How is that worse?
watercast 1 day ago
dylan604 1 day ago
ipaddr 1 day ago
dylan604 1 day ago
jjkaczor 1 day ago
(Or both... here in Canada, Rogers is a "wonderful" mix of both...)
plorkyeran 1 day ago
hsuduebc2 1 day ago
genxy 1 day ago
SoftTalker 1 day ago
dylan604 1 day ago
However, "own a share of their media" means what, that I can have a legit claim to 30s worth of the content? How is that calculated? Divide the number of tax payers in the city by the number of seconds of each bit of content to see how much of it I "own"? You're really bending the concept of tax payer funding here. If that's how you want to go through life, then you do you
SoftTalker 1 day ago
dylan604 1 day ago
jasomill 21 hours ago
srmatto 1 day ago
Using CheapCharts and buying Movies and TV on iTunes. Yes you don't "own it" and yes there are the rare occasional license revocations but it's not often enough for me to care about that--They still remain in your library anyways.
I have been diligently collecting quality, fun, and beloved movies over the past 2 years when they go on sale. That or buying bundles when they go on sale. I've amassed a solid collection of quality media, a lot of which is not on any streaming platform. I even have a lot of Disney titles as well!
I can watch it wherever, whenever and I can download it to devices.
Eat your heart out Disney, Netflix, etc...
8by3 1 day ago
And yes, there is some elaborate workaround to create a brand new account and share the original with the new but fundamentally I could no longer access what I purchased because I moved. And no, I didn't get a refund for the years of purchased content.
bel_marinaio 1 day ago
They have been ffffing around for way too long. I can not wait for find out arrive and I hope it's excessive and very harsh.
sellmesoap 1 day ago
dijit 1 day ago
I have a little "dance" I have to do to change my store back to the UK (I'm British) and you need a valid british credit/debit card and address to switch stores to the UK store...
I live in Sweden now and I got a bit bent out of shape when I moved and discovered this was the case.
Btw, buying things doesn't mean they won't remove it: https://blog.dijit.sh/importance-of-self-hosted-backups/
srmatto 21 hours ago
pncnmnp 1 day ago
For example, I recently got the entire bundle for HBO's Rome for $9.99. That is ~50 minutes per episode (22 episodes), or $0.54/hour, which is not a bad deal! For a casual viewer like me, who might spend <6 hours each week watching TV, this should last a little more than 3 weeks. Recently, The Sopranos went on sale for $29.99, or $0.38/hour.
For streaming vs. buying to work, you just have to be patient about nabbing ~1-2 purchases per month and not be tempted to buy every single day.
The best part is the reduced cognitive load - you don't have to spend time browsing for content every day, and there are no ads, too.
thought_alarm 1 day ago
Once or twice a year during the holiday sales season I'll buy some new shows/seasons from iTunes. These are always downloaded and backed up, so I never have to worry about license changes, etc.
For old shows (20+ years) I will either rip the old DVDs or torrent guilt free.
When I travel, I load up my iPad or an SD card with my latest queue of shows so I can stick to my weekly TV schedule..
And I spend nothing on streaming.
reactordev 1 day ago
nemomarx 1 day ago
jjtheblunt 1 day ago
agreed : have been doing that since 15ish years ago, works fine, no time squandered on stupid ass "ask your doctor about ___" ads, and that time saved is hugely valuable.
drnick1 1 day ago
If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing.
Buttons840 1 day ago
Laws and morals are not the same thing. What is legal may be immoral. What is illegal may be moral.
More and more I'm politically frustrated by government leaders and society just openly ignoring the law--although, I guess I did sort of argue that's sometimes okay in the last paragraph...
I guess it comes down to this. What laws do you elevate above others? What laws do you consider acceptable to ignore, and what laws do you consider morally valid?
There are some who commit moral atrocities because it's the law, we know it's sad but the law is really important and must be enforced, and then in the next breath they start an illegal war of aggression and bomb hundreds of kids. I guess the law was never really their greatest concern. Sorry if I'm being a bit too on the nose.
rubberstamp 1 day ago
Democractic laws needs a guiding framework that considers these moral and ethical aspects, as these kind of things can be easily missed or overlooked if not documented as a mandatory tests for legality of law. Otherwise people have to constantly be on the lookout for sneaky laws that takes away the core values that may not be immediately apparent. Laws should be entirely written and modified only be legislature, and courts cannot be allowed to interpret it in any different way or apply it out of context or allowed to edit or delete laws, which is what legislative body is for.
amelius 1 day ago
Further, big AI companies don't care about copyright laws, so I assume this is the current reality.
Laws only make sense if they are fair and applied equally.
Macha 1 day ago
Which of course is why physical media will increasingly rarely be offered as an option going forward
javcasas 1 day ago
win311fwg 1 day ago
SlimyHog 1 day ago