5 ms·
From a practical perspective I feel like we are right back in the 1990s in terms of how easy it is for me to obtain access to movies I want to watch. The big s
by sho 2y ago
From a practical perspective I feel like we are right back in the 1990s in terms of how easy it is for me to obtain access to movies I want to watch.
The big streaming players just seem to get worse every day - it's probably not an exaggeration that 80% of movies I search for simply aren't available, at all.
Especially classics, double especially foreign. You just can't get them. But there's no video stores any more, and I'm not paying $30+ to order a physical disk from another country, wait a week, only to watch it once and put it in a pile to rot.
So I find myself, just like I did in the '90s, downloading and playing them off a computer. And saying the same things to anyone who'll listen - I'd pay to watch this, but no-one will sell it to me for a reasonable price, so I'll just pirate it and enjoy it with a clear conscience.
- steve1977 2y agoYou were already downloading movies in the 90s? What kind of bandwidth did you have?
- mixmastamyk 2y agoMore likely music. I do remember a few people with dsl or isdn at home, t1 at work.
- elzbardico 2y agoI think that he meant that pirating nowadays is as easy as it was to rent a physical tape or disc in a rental shop in the 90s.
- 47282847 2y agoIt took a week or so on 56k and later ISDN, but, sure. :)
- wmf 2y agoThere weren't any movies to download (besides porn clips) in the ISDN days and your hard drive probably wasn't big enough to hold a movie.
- _AzMoo 2y agoThere were in the very late 90's, and lots of us were still on dial-up/ISDN at that time. They were usually in asf, rm, avi, or mov format, and were incredibly low quality. This is around the time we were using invite-only FTP servers to share stuff.
- steve1977 2y agoI remember downloading the Star Wars Phantom Menace trailer in QuickTime format (because the RealPlayer version was so bad) and even that took quite a while, even though it was only a trailer.
- sho 2y ago> invite-only FTP servers The PC plebs might have been, but us Mac people had the glorious hotline community..
- CuriouslyC 2y agoI downloaded movies in the late 90s on a 56k modem. The movies were generally compressed to fit on one or two writable CDs, you can download 700MB easily overnight (about 3.5 hours if your ISP is good). The quality was much worse than what we're used to now though.
- steve1977 2y ago700 MB with 56K would be closer to something like 30 hours. But yeah, doable.
- sho 2y agoI was lucky to have symmetric 512KB/sec from about 1997 on, but even before that the most dedicated sort of nerd could definitely download ~700MB movies over 56K with some effort..
- steve1977 2y agook that is pretty fast for that time (I assume it’s kbps, not kBps), I still remember feeling like on a highway when I got my 128 kbps with ISDN
- dangus 2y agoAre you searching subscription streaming services or digital movie rental/purchase services? You can basically find any movie for rent/purchase on Apple TV Store (formerly iTunes Movies) or Vudu or whatever other similar service you want to choose from. They’re just not included with your Netflix/Max/Hulu subscription, which are the modern equivalent to basic cable. They may be on streaming services but only included on a rotating basis. This “no one will sell it to me for a reasonable price” thing is kind of BS. You’re just not willing to pay at all, or you’re only willing to pay basic cable price for access to a catalog with a size that doesn’t fit that price. It’s fitting then that the rental and physical media market collapsing now stops entire genres of movies from being made. As an example, people don’t rent comedies anymore, so they don’t get made and put into theaters.
- Rinzler89 2y ago>people don’t rent comedies anymore, so they don’t get made and put into theaters What an odd spin. People don't rent comedies anymore because there are no comedies made anymore for you to rent. And nobody's making comedies anymore because present day people are too easily offended by everything and raise hell on Twitter out of every joke.
- davkan 2y ago> And nobody's making comedies anymore because present day people are too easily offended by everything and raise hell on Twitter out of every stereotype joke. This is such a tired line. Comedies did not stop getting made because woke mobs were flaming them on Twitter, despite what Joe Rogan might have told you in his latest special plastered all over Netflix. There is a confluence of actual reasons why comedies aren’t prominent in theaters anymore. Studios stopped making mid budget movies. Studios consider international audiences more than ever before and comedy doesn’t transcend cultures easily. Comedies that performed poorly in theaters often broke even in vhs/dvd sales and rentals. Without that it’s more risky to make them. Movie goers don’t want to pay $30 for tickets and popcorn to see a comedy. Low budget comedies are saturated on streaming. High budget action/comedy movies are being made instead e.g. fall guy. And there’s certainly additional reasons more relevant than twitter users cancelling movies.