6 ms·

Yes, away with those pesky DVDs—stream everything. Give us a portion of your income every month so that you may never pay just a single time to access some piec

by teeray 3y ago

Yes, away with those pesky DVDs—stream everything. Give us a portion of your income every month so that you may never pay just a single time to access some piece of media.

PradeetPatel 3y ago
I feel like we are moving towards a service/subscription based economy. Which definitely makes some media more accessible and equitable, and might be a mutually beneficial agreement between the producer and the consumer. But that does raise the question of ownership. Given that now some game companies are looking to turn even single player games into a subscription based model...
- drewzero1 3y ago
  Besides ownership, the problem I see with that is that (most) people can only afford so many subscriptions, and with recent fragmentation in the streaming market there are a lot of subscriptions. I want to see one thing on a streaming service, but I can't afford to pay monthly for that service just to watch that one thing. I would have bought the DVD and given them some of my money, but without that option I don't get to watch that thing and they get none of my money. I suppose overall they still get somebody's money every month, so they don't mind missing out on mine... but somehow it still feels like a step backwards for digital media.
  - hcks 3y ago
    Except a single dvd back then was inflation adjusted more expensive than one month of these subscription? So how does your reasoning hold?
    - drewzero1 3y ago
      One month sure, but if I watch it more than once or take more than a month to complete a while season the subscription adds up. Plus a lot more was available to rent on DVD, which makes more sense for something I only want to watch once rather than signing up for a subscription service and hoping I remember to cancel before it renews. To be fair I bought (and buy) many of my DVDs at thrift stores and garage sales, so the media companies didn't see my money directly. But indirectly it did enable my neighbors to buy new DVDs to fill the space they cleaned from their sale. Perhaps I am being irrational, but I'm getting increasingly frustrated with the fragmented and rent-seeking streaming landscape. Some other people's comments here suggest I'm not the only one with strong feelings about this.
    - al_borland 3y ago
      Between new and bargain bin DVDs, let’s say it averages out to the price of a streaming service. I’m paying $25/month for Hulu/Disney right now, so that seems generous. Streaming started up around 2007. If I were to buy 1 DVD per month instead of going with a streaming service, I’d have a movie collection with 192 movies I probably really like. With many people now subscribing to 3 or 4 streaming services, that equivalent movie collection could be even bigger for the same cost. If I were to fall on hard times and need to cut back on spending, stopping the streaming services leaves me with nothing. At $10/month, I would have paid almost $2k and have nothing to show for it. With the DVDs, I could stop buying new ones, and still have a pretty solid library to pull from.
- steve_rambo 3y ago
  Accessible to whom? I'll bring the usual argument that most media is not available in my country, and many other countries. They simply don't sell it to us here, and services like Netflix are either unavailable (although Netflix itself works fine, most others don't), or give access to several percent of their library while expecting us to pay the same amount as any first grade consumer. It's especially bad with Japanese media. Last time I checked, crunchyroll wanted the same amount of cash every month as from Americans, while giving us access to maybe 30 or 40 old titles. And any one of those can disappear at any moment, which had already happened at least once. No, thank you.
- Hamuko 3y ago
  I have a trouble believing that everything can be a subscription when it seems like the current TV streaming subscriptions cannot even coexist with each other.
- the_third_wave 3y ago
  You'll own nothing, and you'll be happy. This is how our world could change by 2030. [1] Oddly enough the WEF removed the linked page, it now just says Sorry, but we can’t find the page you were looking for. Maybe they are on to the fact that most people are not looking forward to their vision of the future? [1] https://www.facebook.com/worldeconomicforum/videos/8-predictions-for-the-world-in-2030/10153920524981479/ https://www.facebook.com/worldeconomicforum/videos/8-predict...
  - happytiger 3y ago
    It was based on this essay. https://medium.com/world-economic-forum/welcome-to-2030-i-own-nothing-have-no-privacy-and-life-has-never-been-better-ee2eed62f710 https://medium.com/world-economic-forum/welcome-to-2030-i-ow...
    - userbinator 3y ago
      Discussed before here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25068820 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25068820 (The original article has disappeared but the archive.org doesn't forget.)
- al_borland 3y ago
  >definitely makes some media more accessible and equitable I disagree on this bit. Media is only accessible as long as the rights holders decide to play ball with the streaming service(s) the user happens to subscribe to. Constant rug pulling is going on with no sign of it stopping. Just a few months ago I was watching Suits on Amazon Prime. I was 3 seasons in, and I went to watch (after just watching an episode the previous day) and it was now listed as needing to pay per episode. Netflix bought the rights and it was over there now. Another movie, I started watching and had to pause it halfway through, when I went back to finish it, it wanted me to pay for a rental, because their rights ran out. This is a horrible customer experience. VHS, DVD, and BD were much more accessible. Region issues aside, if I buy a DVD it will play in my DVD player and no one can decide to take my rights to play it away mid-movie. The way streaming is today, it would be like needing to have a different DVD player for each studio, or if the VHS vs Betamax, or Blu-ray vs HD-DVD battles never ended. One of my big[] worries is that I will grow old and want to watch the movies from my youth and be unable to because the studio went out of business, or decided that movie wasn’t worth streaming, or one of countless other reasons why access would be lost. It’s the modern day version of the “Disney Vault”, which I always hated as a kid. They’d release VHS tapes for a limited time to create scarcity and drive up demand, then pull it and release something else. My sister’s favorite Disney movie never seemed to come out of the vault. I actually have a friend who has been messaging me pretty regularly lamenting that he wants to watch some movies from the early 2000s and can’t find them on the couple services he has. He doesn’t really know what to do. He wants to watch some movies, he is paying money every month to these companies, and he isn’t getting the content he is after. These movies are 20 years old, the studios and actors have made their money, there is no reason anyone should need to deal with these roadblocks to access. He has been talking about going back to DVD. What other option does he have? How is this accessible and equitable? [] it’s a big worry in the realm of media, I know in the grand scheme of things it’s a small theoretical problem at the moment.
  - _cenw 3y ago
    >VHS, DVD, and BD were much more accessible. Region issues aside That's a quite large thing to push aside. Physical media also suffered from "as long as rights holders play ball", with media availability varying wildly based on expected commercial success. At least streaming leads to faster and better availability outside complete legality and it is easier to argue abandonment when it's not available on streaming services vs technically available as low-run optical media.
- solatic 3y ago
  I'll contrast with other commenters here and agree with you. The notion that private ownership of the arts is a good thing is very much a modern idea born of mass production. Most people prefer paintings and sculptures to be in museums, and the notion that live performers of theater or opera could ever be "owned" is abhorrent. The best means of financing the arts has always been a membership or patronage model, which very much depends on recurring subscriptions. What streaming services have done is make patronage happen on a massive scale, the sheer volume of which ensures a stable stream of financing for content that has produced what many people call the Golden Age of Television. It's not all good; the fracturing of availability of content across streaming services impacts affordability, not to mention the return of regional releases impacts availability. Ideally copyrights would be shortened and there would be some kind of publicly funded streaming framework to provide free access to works that enter the public domain. But these are momentary challenges of what is a more widely successful model and improvement over what came before.
  - snovymgodym 3y ago
    > Most people prefer paintings and sculptures to be in museums, and the notion that live performers of theater or opera could ever be "owned" is abhorrent. People aren't talking about personally owning a Wagner opera or a painting in the Louvre. People just want to be able to watch the movie or play the game that they already paid for, without being nickel-and-dimed or having ads shoved in your face.
    - drewzero1 3y ago
      > without being nickel-and-dimed or having ads shoved in your face. Or, increasingly, both!
gamepsys 3y ago
I have to imagine that spinning a disc is awful for battery life.
- hulitu 3y ago
  Running programs is also awful for battery life. /s
  - drewzero1 3y ago
    My computer's battery lasts so much longer if I just don't use it.
skavi 3y ago
You can still buy an Apple USB “SuperDrive” today. Getting a large, rarely used part out of the laptop chassis is a good thing.
- diebeforei485 3y ago
  Except most Macs no longer have USB-A ports, so you'll need an A-to-C adapter if you do buy this.
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    I’d be shocked if there are many long-time Mac owners who own a recent model and don’t also own an adapter.
    - lostlogin 3y ago
      The dongle life, chosen for us by Apple.
      - isoprophlex 3y ago
        It's a dongle life, for us It's a dongle life, for us Chosen for us by apple 'Stead of charging, we tangle Through our dongled life No more ports to use, oh no No more ports to use, oh no USB-C, we discuss Grab a dongle, yes you must It's a dongle life! It's a dongle spree, for us A new accessory, trust us A new device, a new surprise A tangled mess, no compromise It's your dongle life! giggles
        lostlogin 3y ago
        Trust this computer? Apple forums abound with frustration at this issue [1]. [1] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254972128?=undefined&previousThread=254626281021&sortBy=best https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254972128?=undefined&pr...
    - 3y ago
tptacek 3y ago
Happily. I have more access to content now than I have ever had before; we live in a golden age of access to video content. I can't imagine a rational argument for going back to the era of physical media. The weirder thing to me is "owning" a particular movie. There are so many movies, why would I want to lock myself into a particular library of them? I read an article about John Carpenter's Lovecraft influences the other day, and that night watched The Thing for the first time. Didn't have to burn a moment's thought about whether it was likely to be worth the investment and a slot on my shelves. If I feel like watching The Thing again next year (probably with friends and some kind of drinking game attached), I'll just pay to "rent" it again. I have paid to watch episodes of The Office that I already own simply to avoid the hassle of clicking over to the other app on my Apple TV, and while I might be one of the few people to think that's funny enough to brag about, I'm confident I'm not the only person ever to have done that. Meanwhile: we're talking about... a laptop? Come on. Apple should not be selling a laptop with an optical drive in 2024.
- croes 3y ago
  Good luck watching a show that got pulled iff as a tax write off. https://www.thegamer.com/hbo-max-infinity-train-ok-ko-mao-mao-summer-camp-island/ https://www.thegamer.com/hbo-max-infinity-train-ok-ko-mao-ma...
  - tptacek 3y ago
    Good luck finding the DVD for it! Net net, the current configuration affords drastically more access than the physical media era ever did. This argument is especially ironic because the shows we're talking about would never have existed outside the streaming era.
    - happymellon 3y ago
      We watch Elf each Christmas. Before December starts it's is consistently moved off any subscription service and the price is jacked up. My DVD has been the same price to view after the initial purchase for a long time now.
nullhole 3y ago
Presumably you can still plug in an external usb HDD. That's a spinning disk, that can store movies.
jahabrewer 3y ago
... you can still buy most stuff outright? Blu-ray exists?
- wmf 3y ago
  You can buy Blu-rays but your Mac won't play them because it doesn't have a drive.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    You can get a drive for the cost of a few Blu-rays. Works well for backups of said disks.
  - jahabrewer 3y ago
    my toaster doesn't have a blu-ray drive either
xvector 3y ago
Literally just get a NAS if this is such a big deal for you. For everyone else, spinning disks are an absurd antiquity
- Hamuko 3y ago
  Sony has shipped >40 million PlayStation 5s, most of which have a disc drive.
userbinator 3y ago
You will own nothing, and be happy.
- mbudinger78 3y ago
  Hey userbinator, This comment is a little off topic (but related to Apple somewhat) but I saw in a 4 year old thread a comment from you that said you were in the cracking scene 10 years ago (I guess that would be 14 by now). Anyhow, I am trying to get into reverse engineering iOS apps / ARM64 and would kill to acquire the skillset. It's incredibly hard to find information anywhere about this niche. The discord channels I've found have a couple nice folks but ultimately no one really knowledgeable. And the game hacking forums seem totally dead on this topic. Would you happen to know any good resources or groups where I can network with the right people to get into this scene? Thanks
  - userbinator 3y ago
    ARM64 and iOS were after my time, so I wouldn't know any specifics to point you to. Those who work on jailbreaks and the like might be a good start, although not surprisingly they tend to be a very insular crowd.
qiqitori 3y ago
You could rip those streams if you really wanted to. Even an analog rip could have better quality than a DVD. (Analog rips don't really circumvent the DMCA and would be legal at least in Japan (my jurisdiction), where copying stuff (including rented stuff) is legal as long as it's for private purposes). (IANAL)
diebeforei485 3y ago
It is very annoying that I can't get a DRM-Free movie anywhere other than the high seas.
- al_borland 3y ago
  I was really hoping the movie industry would learn from the pain the music industry went through. Put all the content in every digital store, make it DRM free, and call it a day.
olliej 3y ago
I mean Apple's iTunes is at this point one of the only services that lets you "buy" TV shows and movies, and download and "archive"[1] them (for whatever that means, when the sony/playstation network is allowed to say "we couldn't agree on licensing terms so you can no longer play what we said you bought"). DVDs are super annoying, I have plenty that I can no longer play because they've physically decayed without even being used in years. Of course a bunch are also region coded so I used to have to have two players, one for my home country, and one for the US. I have no reason to believe Blu-ray is any better in those regards. [1] The iTunes DRM scheme requires your playback device to have a key, so if you don't have a device with that key you'd have to sign in, and then if apple's contracts prevent them from providing new ones maybe they get stuck in the same position.
- al_borland 3y ago
  DRM is what prevented me from buying movies on iTunes. Music I bought there, because it was DRM free. As long as DRM exists, it’s only worth renting, imo. “Buying” media with DRM is essentially an expensive long-term rental. It will last as long as the company decides to keep the servers up to support it.
  - olliej 3y ago
    iTunes music isn't drm free?
    - sgjohnson 3y ago
      It depends. In most cases, if purchased, it is DRM free.
    - al_borland 3y ago
      iTunes music is DRM free. This is for the iTunes Store, not Apple Music (which is for streaming).
      - olliej 3y ago
        It looks like DRM removal might be a post-2009 thing? (from wikipedia) Music on the iTunes Store was the original use case for the development of the FairPlay DRM scheme (such friendly naming!). It was apparently the SJ "Thoughts on Music" letter that started the end of DRM for purchased music, but my somewhat cynical opinion is that was also the point where streaming was becoming more plausible and streaming services complete undermine everything by explicitly removing the option to buy music.

by teeray 3y ago

Yes, away with those pesky DVDs—stream everything. Give us a portion of your income every month so that you may never pay just a single time to access some piece of media.

PradeetPatel 3y ago

I feel like we are moving towards a service/subscription based economy. Which definitely makes some media more accessible and equitable, and might be a mutually beneficial agreement between the producer and the consumer. But that does raise the question of ownership. Given that now some game companies are looking to turn even single player games into a subscription based model...

drewzero1 3y ago
Besides ownership, the problem I see with that is that (most) people can only afford so many subscriptions, and with recent fragmentation in the streaming market there are a lot of subscriptions. I want to see one thing on a streaming service, but I can't afford to pay monthly for that service just to watch that one thing. I would have bought the DVD and given them some of my money, but without that option I don't get to watch that thing and they get none of my money. I suppose overall they still get somebody's money every month, so they don't mind missing out on mine... but somehow it still feels like a step backwards for digital media.
- hcks 3y ago
  Except a single dvd back then was inflation adjusted more expensive than one month of these subscription? So how does your reasoning hold?
  - drewzero1 3y ago
    One month sure, but if I watch it more than once or take more than a month to complete a while season the subscription adds up. Plus a lot more was available to rent on DVD, which makes more sense for something I only want to watch once rather than signing up for a subscription service and hoping I remember to cancel before it renews. To be fair I bought (and buy) many of my DVDs at thrift stores and garage sales, so the media companies didn't see my money directly. But indirectly it did enable my neighbors to buy new DVDs to fill the space they cleaned from their sale. Perhaps I am being irrational, but I'm getting increasingly frustrated with the fragmented and rent-seeking streaming landscape. Some other people's comments here suggest I'm not the only one with strong feelings about this.
  - al_borland 3y ago
    Between new and bargain bin DVDs, let’s say it averages out to the price of a streaming service. I’m paying $25/month for Hulu/Disney right now, so that seems generous. Streaming started up around 2007. If I were to buy 1 DVD per month instead of going with a streaming service, I’d have a movie collection with 192 movies I probably really like. With many people now subscribing to 3 or 4 streaming services, that equivalent movie collection could be even bigger for the same cost. If I were to fall on hard times and need to cut back on spending, stopping the streaming services leaves me with nothing. At $10/month, I would have paid almost $2k and have nothing to show for it. With the DVDs, I could stop buying new ones, and still have a pretty solid library to pull from.
steve_rambo 3y ago
Accessible to whom? I'll bring the usual argument that most media is not available in my country, and many other countries. They simply don't sell it to us here, and services like Netflix are either unavailable (although Netflix itself works fine, most others don't), or give access to several percent of their library while expecting us to pay the same amount as any first grade consumer. It's especially bad with Japanese media. Last time I checked, crunchyroll wanted the same amount of cash every month as from Americans, while giving us access to maybe 30 or 40 old titles. And any one of those can disappear at any moment, which had already happened at least once. No, thank you.
Hamuko 3y ago
I have a trouble believing that everything can be a subscription when it seems like the current TV streaming subscriptions cannot even coexist with each other.
the_third_wave 3y ago
You'll own nothing, and you'll be happy. This is how our world could change by 2030. [1] Oddly enough the WEF removed the linked page, it now just says Sorry, but we can’t find the page you were looking for. Maybe they are on to the fact that most people are not looking forward to their vision of the future? [1] https://www.facebook.com/worldeconomicforum/videos/8-predictions-for-the-world-in-2030/10153920524981479/ https://www.facebook.com/worldeconomicforum/videos/8-predict...
- happytiger 3y ago
  It was based on this essay. https://medium.com/world-economic-forum/welcome-to-2030-i-own-nothing-have-no-privacy-and-life-has-never-been-better-ee2eed62f710 https://medium.com/world-economic-forum/welcome-to-2030-i-ow...
  - userbinator 3y ago
    Discussed before here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25068820 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25068820 (The original article has disappeared but the archive.org doesn't forget.)
al_borland 3y ago
>definitely makes some media more accessible and equitable I disagree on this bit. Media is only accessible as long as the rights holders decide to play ball with the streaming service(s) the user happens to subscribe to. Constant rug pulling is going on with no sign of it stopping. Just a few months ago I was watching Suits on Amazon Prime. I was 3 seasons in, and I went to watch (after just watching an episode the previous day) and it was now listed as needing to pay per episode. Netflix bought the rights and it was over there now. Another movie, I started watching and had to pause it halfway through, when I went back to finish it, it wanted me to pay for a rental, because their rights ran out. This is a horrible customer experience. VHS, DVD, and BD were much more accessible. Region issues aside, if I buy a DVD it will play in my DVD player and no one can decide to take my rights to play it away mid-movie. The way streaming is today, it would be like needing to have a different DVD player for each studio, or if the VHS vs Betamax, or Blu-ray vs HD-DVD battles never ended. One of my big[] worries is that I will grow old and want to watch the movies from my youth and be unable to because the studio went out of business, or decided that movie wasn’t worth streaming, or one of countless other reasons why access would be lost. It’s the modern day version of the “Disney Vault”, which I always hated as a kid. They’d release VHS tapes for a limited time to create scarcity and drive up demand, then pull it and release something else. My sister’s favorite Disney movie never seemed to come out of the vault. I actually have a friend who has been messaging me pretty regularly lamenting that he wants to watch some movies from the early 2000s and can’t find them on the couple services he has. He doesn’t really know what to do. He wants to watch some movies, he is paying money every month to these companies, and he isn’t getting the content he is after. These movies are 20 years old, the studios and actors have made their money, there is no reason anyone should need to deal with these roadblocks to access. He has been talking about going back to DVD. What other option does he have? How is this accessible and equitable? [] it’s a big worry in the realm of media, I know in the grand scheme of things it’s a small theoretical problem at the moment.
- _cenw 3y ago
  >VHS, DVD, and BD were much more accessible. Region issues aside That's a quite large thing to push aside. Physical media also suffered from "as long as rights holders play ball", with media availability varying wildly based on expected commercial success. At least streaming leads to faster and better availability outside complete legality and it is easier to argue abandonment when it's not available on streaming services vs technically available as low-run optical media.
solatic 3y ago
I'll contrast with other commenters here and agree with you. The notion that private ownership of the arts is a good thing is very much a modern idea born of mass production. Most people prefer paintings and sculptures to be in museums, and the notion that live performers of theater or opera could ever be "owned" is abhorrent. The best means of financing the arts has always been a membership or patronage model, which very much depends on recurring subscriptions. What streaming services have done is make patronage happen on a massive scale, the sheer volume of which ensures a stable stream of financing for content that has produced what many people call the Golden Age of Television. It's not all good; the fracturing of availability of content across streaming services impacts affordability, not to mention the return of regional releases impacts availability. Ideally copyrights would be shortened and there would be some kind of publicly funded streaming framework to provide free access to works that enter the public domain. But these are momentary challenges of what is a more widely successful model and improvement over what came before.
- snovymgodym 3y ago
  > Most people prefer paintings and sculptures to be in museums, and the notion that live performers of theater or opera could ever be "owned" is abhorrent. People aren't talking about personally owning a Wagner opera or a painting in the Louvre. People just want to be able to watch the movie or play the game that they already paid for, without being nickel-and-dimed or having ads shoved in your face.
  - drewzero1 3y ago
    > without being nickel-and-dimed or having ads shoved in your face. Or, increasingly, both!

gamepsys 3y ago

I have to imagine that spinning a disc is awful for battery life.

hulitu 3y ago
Running programs is also awful for battery life. /s
- drewzero1 3y ago
  My computer's battery lasts so much longer if I just don't use it.

skavi 3y ago

You can still buy an Apple USB “SuperDrive” today. Getting a large, rarely used part out of the laptop chassis is a good thing.

diebeforei485 3y ago
Except most Macs no longer have USB-A ports, so you'll need an A-to-C adapter if you do buy this.
- kstrauser 3y ago
  I’d be shocked if there are many long-time Mac owners who own a recent model and don’t also own an adapter.
  - lostlogin 3y ago
    The dongle life, chosen for us by Apple.
    - isoprophlex 3y ago
      It's a dongle life, for us It's a dongle life, for us Chosen for us by apple 'Stead of charging, we tangle Through our dongled life No more ports to use, oh no No more ports to use, oh no USB-C, we discuss Grab a dongle, yes you must It's a dongle life! It's a dongle spree, for us A new accessory, trust us A new device, a new surprise A tangled mess, no compromise It's your dongle life! giggles
      - lostlogin 3y ago
        Trust this computer? Apple forums abound with frustration at this issue [1]. [1] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254972128?=undefined&previousThread=254626281021&sortBy=best https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254972128?=undefined&pr...
  - 3y ago

tptacek 3y ago

Happily. I have more access to content now than I have ever had before; we live in a golden age of access to video content. I can't imagine a rational argument for going back to the era of physical media. The weirder thing to me is "owning" a particular movie. There are so many movies, why would I want to lock myself into a particular library of them? I read an article about John Carpenter's Lovecraft influences the other day, and that night watched The Thing for the first time. Didn't have to burn a moment's thought about whether it was likely to be worth the investment and a slot on my shelves. If I feel like watching The Thing again next year (probably with friends and some kind of drinking game attached), I'll just pay to "rent" it again. I have paid to watch episodes of The Office that I already own simply to avoid the hassle of clicking over to the other app on my Apple TV, and while I might be one of the few people to think that's funny enough to brag about, I'm confident I'm not the only person ever to have done that. Meanwhile: we're talking about... a laptop? Come on. Apple should not be selling a laptop with an optical drive in 2024.

croes 3y ago
Good luck watching a show that got pulled iff as a tax write off. https://www.thegamer.com/hbo-max-infinity-train-ok-ko-mao-mao-summer-camp-island/ https://www.thegamer.com/hbo-max-infinity-train-ok-ko-mao-ma...
- tptacek 3y ago
  Good luck finding the DVD for it! Net net, the current configuration affords drastically more access than the physical media era ever did. This argument is especially ironic because the shows we're talking about would never have existed outside the streaming era.
  - happymellon 3y ago
    We watch Elf each Christmas. Before December starts it's is consistently moved off any subscription service and the price is jacked up. My DVD has been the same price to view after the initial purchase for a long time now.

nullhole 3y ago

Presumably you can still plug in an external usb HDD. That's a spinning disk, that can store movies.

jahabrewer 3y ago

... you can still buy most stuff outright? Blu-ray exists?

wmf 3y ago
You can buy Blu-rays but your Mac won't play them because it doesn't have a drive.
- bombcar 3y ago
  You can get a drive for the cost of a few Blu-rays. Works well for backups of said disks.
- jahabrewer 3y ago
  my toaster doesn't have a blu-ray drive either

xvector 3y ago

Literally just get a NAS if this is such a big deal for you. For everyone else, spinning disks are an absurd antiquity

Hamuko 3y ago
Sony has shipped >40 million PlayStation 5s, most of which have a disc drive.

userbinator 3y ago

You will own nothing, and be happy.

mbudinger78 3y ago
Hey userbinator, This comment is a little off topic (but related to Apple somewhat) but I saw in a 4 year old thread a comment from you that said you were in the cracking scene 10 years ago (I guess that would be 14 by now). Anyhow, I am trying to get into reverse engineering iOS apps / ARM64 and would kill to acquire the skillset. It's incredibly hard to find information anywhere about this niche. The discord channels I've found have a couple nice folks but ultimately no one really knowledgeable. And the game hacking forums seem totally dead on this topic. Would you happen to know any good resources or groups where I can network with the right people to get into this scene? Thanks
- userbinator 3y ago
  ARM64 and iOS were after my time, so I wouldn't know any specifics to point you to. Those who work on jailbreaks and the like might be a good start, although not surprisingly they tend to be a very insular crowd.

qiqitori 3y ago

You could rip those streams if you really wanted to. Even an analog rip could have better quality than a DVD. (Analog rips don't really circumvent the DMCA and would be legal at least in Japan (my jurisdiction), where copying stuff (including rented stuff) is legal as long as it's for private purposes). (IANAL)

diebeforei485 3y ago

It is very annoying that I can't get a DRM-Free movie anywhere other than the high seas.

al_borland 3y ago
I was really hoping the movie industry would learn from the pain the music industry went through. Put all the content in every digital store, make it DRM free, and call it a day.

olliej 3y ago

I mean Apple's iTunes is at this point one of the only services that lets you "buy" TV shows and movies, and download and "archive"[1] them (for whatever that means, when the sony/playstation network is allowed to say "we couldn't agree on licensing terms so you can no longer play what we said you bought"). DVDs are super annoying, I have plenty that I can no longer play because they've physically decayed without even being used in years. Of course a bunch are also region coded so I used to have to have two players, one for my home country, and one for the US. I have no reason to believe Blu-ray is any better in those regards. [1] The iTunes DRM scheme requires your playback device to have a key, so if you don't have a device with that key you'd have to sign in, and then if apple's contracts prevent them from providing new ones maybe they get stuck in the same position.

al_borland 3y ago
DRM is what prevented me from buying movies on iTunes. Music I bought there, because it was DRM free. As long as DRM exists, it’s only worth renting, imo. “Buying” media with DRM is essentially an expensive long-term rental. It will last as long as the company decides to keep the servers up to support it.
- olliej 3y ago
  iTunes music isn't drm free?
  - sgjohnson 3y ago
    It depends. In most cases, if purchased, it is DRM free.
  - al_borland 3y ago
    iTunes music is DRM free. This is for the iTunes Store, not Apple Music (which is for streaming).
    - olliej 3y ago
      It looks like DRM removal might be a post-2009 thing? (from wikipedia) Music on the iTunes Store was the original use case for the development of the FairPlay DRM scheme (such friendly naming!). It was apparently the SJ "Thoughts on Music" letter that started the end of DRM for purchased music, but my somewhat cynical opinion is that was also the point where streaming was becoming more plausible and streaming services complete undermine everything by explicitly removing the option to buy music.