10 ms·

It's sad that we cannot own titles but are forced to rent them from these streaming services that can't seem to get their shit together. (Not blaming Netflix pe

by ripe 5y ago

It's sad that we cannot own titles but are forced to rent them from these streaming services that can't seem to get their shit together. (Not blaming Netflix per se; this is a pox on all their houses). Used to be nice in the DVD days. I built myself a nice collection then. This was the idea behind digital rights lockers: UltraViolet, which Disney refused to participate in and which closed down in 2019, and its successor Movies Anywhere, in which Paramount, MGM, and Lions Gate are not participating. [Old HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19046108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19046108]

odshoifsdhfs 5y ago
Doesn’t apple still allow you to buy movies on their service? I only bought two (the iron giant and the bucket list) but i am pretty sure iron giant i bought close to 15 years ago. I can still download it from their service without any problems(just went to the tv app on my phone to confirm and just started to download them right now)
- bognition 5y ago
  Yes many online services do but there is little to no interoperability.
- babypuncher 5y ago
  Yes, lots of services do. Apple is unique though in that a purchase entitles you to all versions of a film, including future versions. I bought 3:10 to Yuma on iTunes in 2008 and I can watch it in 4K/HDR today without spending another cent. I still prefer buying and ripping Blu-Rays though.
j4yav 5y ago
I have been rebuilding my DVD collection through thrift stores. It’s incredibly cheap to do so now, and pretty fun to see what you find.
- lostgame 5y ago
  I think an issue for me that prevents me from collecting DVD’s, to; say - collecting CD’s - is that while a CD from the 1980’s is pretty much the best quality of audio you can still get today, DVD’s unfortunately suffer from an issue where the SD quality has aged very poorly, and the difference in resolution and image quality is insanely noticeable on, especially 4K, TV’s. Of course, since CD’s are uncompressed audio, it doesn’t matter if you play them on the most modern sound systems, they’re still going to sound great. Streaming allows me to find a nice balance between quality and bandwidth, unfortunately while DVD’s are neat for bonus features, the quality unfortunately makes it rather unpalatable on even semi-modern (1080p) TV’s.
  - gramie 5y ago
    Surprise, the physical layers in your DVDs and CDs is also decaying, so a CD from the 1980s may well be unplayable now. I've found that with many of my old commercial disks, let alone the ones I've burned myself.
    - lostgame 5y ago
      Unfortunately as a SEGA Saturn collector, this is no surprise, and disc rot has taken claim to games that could otherwise be worth hundreds of dollars today. :( Weirdly, almost all of even my much older audio CD’s - stored in the same bin away from heat and moisture - don’t have this issue. I have to wonder what effect the specifics of the manufacturing process have on how likely a disc is to experience disc rot, as actually even within the SEGA community it’s widely accepted that Saturn discs have an unusually high rate of failure compared to other compact disc collectables. However - importantly - my original point about quality also applies to backups of these mediums as well - so, assuming any copy of that audio CD has been properly archived and backed up, it will pretty much always be the best quality it can possibly be. Backing up a DVD these days - when there is a majority of the time a superior Blu-Ray or streaming release, is frankly pretty pointless, except for, unusually - the much more abundant amount of special features often found on DVD’s. I never understood why special features pretty much went the way of the Dodo when Blu-Ray became the standard.
chrisseaton 5y ago
What stops you buying on iTunes for example? And did anyone ever use those UltraViolet codes? I never tried them. What did they even do? I guess streaming won out because consumers prefer it - I know I do.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  > What stops you buying on iTunes for example? DRM. If it's DRM your still don't own anything
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    You never ‘owned’ any copy - you only had a licence.
    - brimble 5y ago
      Try selling a Blu Ray. Now try selling a movie you bought on iTunes.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
lostcolony 5y ago
The cost is part of the reasons those never really caught on, not just participation. The number of titles I (and I assume, most people) will watch enough to warrant paying $20 for is vanishingly small. Even $4 a rental is a hard bar to pass at this point with streaming competing. $1-2 to rent though? I'd be all over that. Weirdly, that's the cost to rent a physical disk at Redbox...but an on demand title anywhere is higher than that. Despite a streaming solution being cheaper to distribute, the fact it's more convenient/desirable, I guess, means it costs enough to price it outside of what I want to pay. This feels like a really inefficient market.
- svachalek 5y ago
  Netflix used to be an unlimited dvd rental service. It turned into the same thing without the mail step, so of course we stopped using it. I think if we had known what streaming would look like today, a lot of people including myself would have held on tighter.
  - gh02t 5y ago
    Except back in the DVD rental days, Netflix could rent out basically everything instead of having to fight for exclusive content rights. You could subscribe to Netflix or go to Blockbuster but you could get the same selection more or less at either.
  - LVB 5y ago
    I let go of DVDs for quite some time but have re-enabled https://dvd.netflix.com https://dvd.netflix.com recently. Good selection, plus the much slower act of selecting, receiving and exchanging is sort of a welcome restricted diet compared to the endless buffet over the past decade.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      It's OK although the back catalog has rotted a lot. I suspect that they repurchase a lot fewer disks that have been reported as defective for older films. I agree in general that most people dismiss this as an option--or even consider it weird--but many people I know who are much more into films than TV find this a good option. I do off-and-on myself.
eweise 5y ago
I don't know about movies, but music streaming is awesome. I have a couple thousand CDs that are sitting in a closet somewhere. For a while I kept them as mp3s on a hardrive, copied other people's mp3s to build up my collection. But its still so limited. I love going through my favorite artists on spotify, listening to the less popular albums I never would have bought and discovering new artists.
- s3233323 5y ago
- lostgame 5y ago
  Music streaming doesn’t suffer nearly the fragmentation issues film and television streaming services have, though. If I want to listen to something as common as Kanye or something as obscure as MSTRKRFT, I can do it on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, pretty much anything. And I only need to subscribe to one service. If I want to watch something as common as ‘Inception’ or as indie as ‘Twin Peaks’, there’s virtually no chance I’d be using the same services. The experience with video streaming is literally just some of the worst ever in terms of finding content. You pretty much have to just pick whichever one seems the best and pirate whatever else you need, which begs the question of why not to just pirate in the first place. That’s just not the case with music.
  - heavenlyblue 5y ago
    > MSTRKRFT 17 million listens. I would not call that obscure. As a matter of fact a lot of truly obscure stuff barely gets to SoundCloud, let alone Spotify.
    - lostgame 5y ago
      I don’t think this really affects my point that the fragmentation situation is infinitely better with streaming music than it is with video. Here’s - perhaps - a better explanation as to why. The majority of major music labels - Sony/BMG, Columbia, EMI, etc - have the majority of their music available on the majority of the available streaming services. This situation is unfortunately worsening on video streaming platforms as every major studio and their brother wants to completely commit to their own service. It’s even worse as the result of this weird licensing moving around is series and films being removed from services you’d previously subscribed too mainly for those particular shows or films. The only result of this is value loss and confusion presented to the consumer - as the recent CNN+ disaster shows, along with Netflix’s flailing subscriber count. The music streaming world is exponentially better. Like - subscribing to a music streaming service is actually worthwhile. Video streaming services decrease in value with every new one that is introduced.
thot_experiment 5y ago
I pay for a handful of streaming services but that's only because they're decent for content discovery and ease of use. If there's ever anything on there that I genuinely like I just pirate it (Arcane most recently) because the UX of having files that just work everywhere is so much better than the alternative. I would happily pay for unencumbered .mkv downloads if my recent buying trends wrt bandcamp .flacs are any indication. The only way to stop me from pirating the media I like is if you actually let me buy the superior experience I can have as a pirate. P.S. copyright and IP law in general need severe reform if we want to serve creatives and not executives
- genewitch 5y ago
  Blockbuster had web rental service for console games, which probably decreased piracy; Netflix used to have such a huge library with working subtitles it was pointless to pirate (nearly) anything. Now, though?
throwaway0x7E6 5y ago
those DVDs come with an EULA backed by a dozen laws, which, if they were universally enforced and followed to the letter, would put you in jail for the criminal act of making a backup copy, among a myriad other possible violations
flyinglizard 5y ago
I don’t want to own movies. I watch them once. I’d rather have the selection any day.
assttoasstmgr 5y ago
I still buy hard media (which makes me a Luddite apparently) because I consider it art and refuse to pay for digital media that is allegedly perpetual and then one day it goes missing because the wokes decided it should be memory holed. One of many, many examples: https://screenrant.com/its-always-sunny-blackface-episodes-missing-hulu-netflix/ https://screenrant.com/its-always-sunny-blackface-episodes-m... Even things like iTunes Music Store which once claimed that all your past purchases are available for download from iCloud forever quietly became untrue when I discovered parts of my music library went missing. Come to find out the record company decided to pull licensing from Apple which made that media forever unavailable. So don't forget your backups..... rule of thumb is that you can never trust any company with your media no matter how much bullshit they sell you.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  >then one day it goes missing because the wokes decided it should be memory holed. [EDIT: yeah, I can't read. Sorry for missing the example that immediately followed. ] /ignore: Curious, can you provide any examples of this actually happening?
  - SturgeonsLaw 5y ago
    The next line in his comment was an example
    - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
      More examples: There is at least one Disney film that is not available anywhere (Song of the South; even eBay banned sale of used dvds. I saw this film as a child on I guess VHS). There are other Disney films and WB cartoons with large sequences removed.
      - alsetmusic 5y ago
        Song of the South is apologist towards slavery. It should rot.
numbchuckskills 5y ago
bogomipz 5y ago
Not just that but it's sad we can't even just rent the titles we used to be able to rent from videos stores. There is no much content that is just not available and I fear it never will be. If you were fortunate enough to have lived near a cinephile type rental place then you probably remember how directors often had their own sections. You could browse Kurasowa, Orson Welles, Robert Altman, Godard ... I remember looking at the Criterion Collection streaming channel not that long ago and what struck me was just how much of the Criterion Collection was not even available on their streaming channel.
- selimthegrim 5y ago
  I don’t think the service is doing too hot subscriber wise
standardUser 5y ago
It would be much worse if we were forced to buy the rights to watch a TV show or movie before we know if we even like it. I'd have a massive virtual library of half garbage.
jmyeet 5y ago
What people don't realize is that part of the pricing model for various physical media is that the media wouldn't last. VHS tapes, CDs, DVDs, etc all age, get lost, break, get scratches, whatever. They're not "forever". Now you can say "I can make a digital backup of my DVD". Depending on your jurisdiction you may have the rights to do that. But your own backup of that is unlikely to be durable. A cloud copy of something on Google, Apple, Amazon or Netflix is essentially forever. People don't realize what they're effectively asking for is digital rights to something in perpetuity. And you can't really price that realistically. Streaming services actually far better match what users actually want (in general). There's no issues of storing media or keeping digital copies safe. The limited time you can view something is what makes it economical. Remember too that most things tend to only ever be watched once. The satisfaction for collection isn't relaly about repeat viewing at for the most part.
- runnerup 5y ago
  Streaming services would match what I want if the content I want was on all services and the services competed on service quality. Instead I want to watch “The Expanse” and I dont know if it’s a Netflix special or HBO or Hulu or Amazon or what. I logged into three of them and it wasn’t there. Oh look, it’s on the Pirate Bay. Also, it’s not throttled / forcibly downgraded to 720p or whatever.
  - mrexroad 5y ago
    Either way… Amazon canceled The Expanse. Frustrating.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  I rely on the NSA for my forever backups.
  - DonHopkins 5y ago
    Do you use FOIAFS to let the NSA do all of your archiving for you? Just post your digital content you want to save along with a unique token, then when you need a copy, FOIAFS automatically issues a FOIA request for all documents the government has with that unique token. It's kind of slow and unreliable, though.
Godel_unicode 5y ago
I'm not sure what you mean about being forced to rent content, even some Netflix original shows are available for purchase. https://www.amazon.com/Stranger-Things-Complete-Blu-ray-Original/dp/B07Z883LMJ/ https://www.amazon.com/Stranger-Things-Complete-Blu-ray-Orig... https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07DNZHV3M/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07DNZHV3M/
nyx_land 5y ago
If only there were a way to get a file of the same movie from a different site and then make a copy of it to save to your personal archive of movie files, ensuring you never need to worry about paying for multiple streaming services that will probably remove titles you like and never carry others in the first place...
B1FF_PSUVM 5y ago
> It's sad that we cannot own titles but are forced to rent them from these streaming services that can't seem to get their shit together. It's sad that the general public cannot get its shit together and every man jack keep and use his own library. I know because I'm one of the sad sacks that owns hundreds of original LPs, CDs, VHSs, DVDs, and also has a couple TB of HDD worth of borrowed series, and hasn't touched the damn pile of 'precious' in ages. "Give me Convenience or Give me Death", as those 1980s punks so neatly summed it up.
deepzn 5y ago
For better or worse, half way through realizing it was stupid, I've bought myself a massive collection that I don't "own" on iTunes. Technically, it is tied to my Apple account, but there isn't a way to transfer ownership, or etc outside of Apple even for e.g.if I die. I think though there will be some laws passed hopefully that will allow us to own digital content outright in the near future, hopefully in a decentralized way.

by ripe 5y ago

odshoifsdhfs 5y ago

Doesn’t apple still allow you to buy movies on their service? I only bought two (the iron giant and the bucket list) but i am pretty sure iron giant i bought close to 15 years ago. I can still download it from their service without any problems(just went to the tv app on my phone to confirm and just started to download them right now)

bognition 5y ago
Yes many online services do but there is little to no interoperability.
babypuncher 5y ago
Yes, lots of services do. Apple is unique though in that a purchase entitles you to all versions of a film, including future versions. I bought 3:10 to Yuma on iTunes in 2008 and I can watch it in 4K/HDR today without spending another cent. I still prefer buying and ripping Blu-Rays though.

j4yav 5y ago

I have been rebuilding my DVD collection through thrift stores. It’s incredibly cheap to do so now, and pretty fun to see what you find.

lostgame 5y ago
I think an issue for me that prevents me from collecting DVD’s, to; say - collecting CD’s - is that while a CD from the 1980’s is pretty much the best quality of audio you can still get today, DVD’s unfortunately suffer from an issue where the SD quality has aged very poorly, and the difference in resolution and image quality is insanely noticeable on, especially 4K, TV’s. Of course, since CD’s are uncompressed audio, it doesn’t matter if you play them on the most modern sound systems, they’re still going to sound great. Streaming allows me to find a nice balance between quality and bandwidth, unfortunately while DVD’s are neat for bonus features, the quality unfortunately makes it rather unpalatable on even semi-modern (1080p) TV’s.
- gramie 5y ago
  Surprise, the physical layers in your DVDs and CDs is also decaying, so a CD from the 1980s may well be unplayable now. I've found that with many of my old commercial disks, let alone the ones I've burned myself.
  - lostgame 5y ago
    Unfortunately as a SEGA Saturn collector, this is no surprise, and disc rot has taken claim to games that could otherwise be worth hundreds of dollars today. :( Weirdly, almost all of even my much older audio CD’s - stored in the same bin away from heat and moisture - don’t have this issue. I have to wonder what effect the specifics of the manufacturing process have on how likely a disc is to experience disc rot, as actually even within the SEGA community it’s widely accepted that Saturn discs have an unusually high rate of failure compared to other compact disc collectables. However - importantly - my original point about quality also applies to backups of these mediums as well - so, assuming any copy of that audio CD has been properly archived and backed up, it will pretty much always be the best quality it can possibly be. Backing up a DVD these days - when there is a majority of the time a superior Blu-Ray or streaming release, is frankly pretty pointless, except for, unusually - the much more abundant amount of special features often found on DVD’s. I never understood why special features pretty much went the way of the Dodo when Blu-Ray became the standard.

chrisseaton 5y ago

What stops you buying on iTunes for example? And did anyone ever use those UltraViolet codes? I never tried them. What did they even do? I guess streaming won out because consumers prefer it - I know I do.

GekkePrutser 5y ago
> What stops you buying on iTunes for example? DRM. If it's DRM your still don't own anything
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  You never ‘owned’ any copy - you only had a licence.
  - brimble 5y ago
    Try selling a Blu Ray. Now try selling a movie you bought on iTunes.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]

lostcolony 5y ago

The cost is part of the reasons those never really caught on, not just participation. The number of titles I (and I assume, most people) will watch enough to warrant paying $20 for is vanishingly small. Even $4 a rental is a hard bar to pass at this point with streaming competing. $1-2 to rent though? I'd be all over that. Weirdly, that's the cost to rent a physical disk at Redbox...but an on demand title anywhere is higher than that. Despite a streaming solution being cheaper to distribute, the fact it's more convenient/desirable, I guess, means it costs enough to price it outside of what I want to pay. This feels like a really inefficient market.

svachalek 5y ago
Netflix used to be an unlimited dvd rental service. It turned into the same thing without the mail step, so of course we stopped using it. I think if we had known what streaming would look like today, a lot of people including myself would have held on tighter.
- gh02t 5y ago
  Except back in the DVD rental days, Netflix could rent out basically everything instead of having to fight for exclusive content rights. You could subscribe to Netflix or go to Blockbuster but you could get the same selection more or less at either.
- LVB 5y ago
  I let go of DVDs for quite some time but have re-enabled https://dvd.netflix.com https://dvd.netflix.com recently. Good selection, plus the much slower act of selecting, receiving and exchanging is sort of a welcome restricted diet compared to the endless buffet over the past decade.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    It's OK although the back catalog has rotted a lot. I suspect that they repurchase a lot fewer disks that have been reported as defective for older films. I agree in general that most people dismiss this as an option--or even consider it weird--but many people I know who are much more into films than TV find this a good option. I do off-and-on myself.

eweise 5y ago

I don't know about movies, but music streaming is awesome. I have a couple thousand CDs that are sitting in a closet somewhere. For a while I kept them as mp3s on a hardrive, copied other people's mp3s to build up my collection. But its still so limited. I love going through my favorite artists on spotify, listening to the less popular albums I never would have bought and discovering new artists.

s3233323 5y ago
lostgame 5y ago
Music streaming doesn’t suffer nearly the fragmentation issues film and television streaming services have, though. If I want to listen to something as common as Kanye or something as obscure as MSTRKRFT, I can do it on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, pretty much anything. And I only need to subscribe to one service. If I want to watch something as common as ‘Inception’ or as indie as ‘Twin Peaks’, there’s virtually no chance I’d be using the same services. The experience with video streaming is literally just some of the worst ever in terms of finding content. You pretty much have to just pick whichever one seems the best and pirate whatever else you need, which begs the question of why not to just pirate in the first place. That’s just not the case with music.
- heavenlyblue 5y ago
  > MSTRKRFT 17 million listens. I would not call that obscure. As a matter of fact a lot of truly obscure stuff barely gets to SoundCloud, let alone Spotify.
  - lostgame 5y ago
    I don’t think this really affects my point that the fragmentation situation is infinitely better with streaming music than it is with video. Here’s - perhaps - a better explanation as to why. The majority of major music labels - Sony/BMG, Columbia, EMI, etc - have the majority of their music available on the majority of the available streaming services. This situation is unfortunately worsening on video streaming platforms as every major studio and their brother wants to completely commit to their own service. It’s even worse as the result of this weird licensing moving around is series and films being removed from services you’d previously subscribed too mainly for those particular shows or films. The only result of this is value loss and confusion presented to the consumer - as the recent CNN+ disaster shows, along with Netflix’s flailing subscriber count. The music streaming world is exponentially better. Like - subscribing to a music streaming service is actually worthwhile. Video streaming services decrease in value with every new one that is introduced.

thot_experiment 5y ago

I pay for a handful of streaming services but that's only because they're decent for content discovery and ease of use. If there's ever anything on there that I genuinely like I just pirate it (Arcane most recently) because the UX of having files that just work everywhere is so much better than the alternative. I would happily pay for unencumbered .mkv downloads if my recent buying trends wrt bandcamp .flacs are any indication. The only way to stop me from pirating the media I like is if you actually let me buy the superior experience I can have as a pirate. P.S. copyright and IP law in general need severe reform if we want to serve creatives and not executives

genewitch 5y ago
Blockbuster had web rental service for console games, which probably decreased piracy; Netflix used to have such a huge library with working subtitles it was pointless to pirate (nearly) anything. Now, though?

throwaway0x7E6 5y ago

those DVDs come with an EULA backed by a dozen laws, which, if they were universally enforced and followed to the letter, would put you in jail for the criminal act of making a backup copy, among a myriad other possible violations

flyinglizard 5y ago

I don’t want to own movies. I watch them once. I’d rather have the selection any day.

assttoasstmgr 5y ago

I still buy hard media (which makes me a Luddite apparently) because I consider it art and refuse to pay for digital media that is allegedly perpetual and then one day it goes missing because the wokes decided it should be memory holed. One of many, many examples: https://screenrant.com/its-always-sunny-blackface-episodes-missing-hulu-netflix/ https://screenrant.com/its-always-sunny-blackface-episodes-m... Even things like iTunes Music Store which once claimed that all your past purchases are available for download from iCloud forever quietly became untrue when I discovered parts of my music library went missing. Come to find out the record company decided to pull licensing from Apple which made that media forever unavailable. So don't forget your backups..... rule of thumb is that you can never trust any company with your media no matter how much bullshit they sell you.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
>then one day it goes missing because the wokes decided it should be memory holed. [EDIT: yeah, I can't read. Sorry for missing the example that immediately followed. ] /ignore: Curious, can you provide any examples of this actually happening?
- SturgeonsLaw 5y ago
  The next line in his comment was an example
  - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
    More examples: There is at least one Disney film that is not available anywhere (Song of the South; even eBay banned sale of used dvds. I saw this film as a child on I guess VHS). There are other Disney films and WB cartoons with large sequences removed.
    - alsetmusic 5y ago
      Song of the South is apologist towards slavery. It should rot.

numbchuckskills 5y ago

bogomipz 5y ago

Not just that but it's sad we can't even just rent the titles we used to be able to rent from videos stores. There is no much content that is just not available and I fear it never will be. If you were fortunate enough to have lived near a cinephile type rental place then you probably remember how directors often had their own sections. You could browse Kurasowa, Orson Welles, Robert Altman, Godard ... I remember looking at the Criterion Collection streaming channel not that long ago and what struck me was just how much of the Criterion Collection was not even available on their streaming channel.

selimthegrim 5y ago
I don’t think the service is doing too hot subscriber wise

standardUser 5y ago

It would be much worse if we were forced to buy the rights to watch a TV show or movie before we know if we even like it. I'd have a massive virtual library of half garbage.

jmyeet 5y ago

What people don't realize is that part of the pricing model for various physical media is that the media wouldn't last. VHS tapes, CDs, DVDs, etc all age, get lost, break, get scratches, whatever. They're not "forever". Now you can say "I can make a digital backup of my DVD". Depending on your jurisdiction you may have the rights to do that. But your own backup of that is unlikely to be durable. A cloud copy of something on Google, Apple, Amazon or Netflix is essentially forever. People don't realize what they're effectively asking for is digital rights to something in perpetuity. And you can't really price that realistically. Streaming services actually far better match what users actually want (in general). There's no issues of storing media or keeping digital copies safe. The limited time you can view something is what makes it economical. Remember too that most things tend to only ever be watched once. The satisfaction for collection isn't relaly about repeat viewing at for the most part.

runnerup 5y ago
Streaming services would match what I want if the content I want was on all services and the services competed on service quality. Instead I want to watch “The Expanse” and I dont know if it’s a Netflix special or HBO or Hulu or Amazon or what. I logged into three of them and it wasn’t there. Oh look, it’s on the Pirate Bay. Also, it’s not throttled / forcibly downgraded to 720p or whatever.
- mrexroad 5y ago
  Either way… Amazon canceled The Expanse. Frustrating.
WalterBright 5y ago
I rely on the NSA for my forever backups.
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  Do you use FOIAFS to let the NSA do all of your archiving for you? Just post your digital content you want to save along with a unique token, then when you need a copy, FOIAFS automatically issues a FOIA request for all documents the government has with that unique token. It's kind of slow and unreliable, though.

Godel_unicode 5y ago

I'm not sure what you mean about being forced to rent content, even some Netflix original shows are available for purchase. https://www.amazon.com/Stranger-Things-Complete-Blu-ray-Original/dp/B07Z883LMJ/ https://www.amazon.com/Stranger-Things-Complete-Blu-ray-Orig... https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07DNZHV3M/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07DNZHV3M/

nyx_land 5y ago

If only there were a way to get a file of the same movie from a different site and then make a copy of it to save to your personal archive of movie files, ensuring you never need to worry about paying for multiple streaming services that will probably remove titles you like and never carry others in the first place...

B1FF_PSUVM 5y ago

> It's sad that we cannot own titles but are forced to rent them from these streaming services that can't seem to get their shit together. It's sad that the general public cannot get its shit together and every man jack keep and use his own library. I know because I'm one of the sad sacks that owns hundreds of original LPs, CDs, VHSs, DVDs, and also has a couple TB of HDD worth of borrowed series, and hasn't touched the damn pile of 'precious' in ages. "Give me Convenience or Give me Death", as those 1980s punks so neatly summed it up.

deepzn 5y ago

For better or worse, half way through realizing it was stupid, I've bought myself a massive collection that I don't "own" on iTunes. Technically, it is tied to my Apple account, but there isn't a way to transfer ownership, or etc outside of Apple even for e.g.if I die. I think though there will be some laws passed hopefully that will allow us to own digital content outright in the near future, hopefully in a decentralized way.