I was watching Blu-rays for awhile (mostly borrowing them from a nearby public library branch, and also occasionally buying a boxed set of a good series I wante

I was watching Blu-rays for awhile (mostly borrowing them from a nearby public library branch, and also occasionally buying a boxed set of a good series I wanted to watch), and had a few problems: 1. The Blu-ray software/data design itself is a monstrosity, seemingly designed for hostility towards users, and otherwise indifferent to user experience and reliability. (DVD wasn't too bad by comparison, with the only offenses being DRM and the obnoxious unskippables mainly used for threatening police-state messages at the start of your entertainment.) 2. Even with a better recent Sony Blu-ray player, I frequently had problems playing, which slams the brakes on whatever entertainment you were having, and turns it into a work task or frustration. I guess causes probably mostly from library disc wear, but also a few discs that just wouldn't play due to to what appeared to be software problems. 3. Modern surveillance capitalism behavior by devices. Virtually all companies, and some non-companies, will spy on you and then sell/give the data to sketchy other parties, with how normalized this has gotten. Just finding a modern player console that was airgappable but should work with all/most discs was difficult, and it wasn't a great ergonomic solution. 4. Assembling a better media player with Linux (despite being very familiar with Linux tinkering) looked time-consuming, duct-tape-ish, and legally questionable. Out-of-box solutions I tried seemed piracy-oriented, with disc-playing an afterthought. And search hits would overwhelming be SEO pages full of BS-ing sales pitches to sell sketchy VPN services or occasionally trick people into installing malware. (Streaming, OTOH, has gotten ridiculous, with the services I've tried recently having mostly disposable content, and sometimes user-hostile UI. I canceled Amazon Prime mainly because Prime Video had gotten blatantly user-hostile in such ways that I think Bezos would've picked up that customer's chair in a meeting, and thrown it at people pitching the changes. But Netflix does some anti-user things too.) More generally, my current mode as a consumer who doesn't like to be violated is to pick up tablescraps of value while minimizing harm. While wistfully keeping an eye out for the elusive collaborations of people who aren't just expending their energy towards extracting money by making the world worse for everyone else.