4 ms·

> Netflix's bitrates [...] max out at above 17500kbps as of 2023 That's great, but I haven't ever seen anything close to that in real-world measurements. Not e

> Netflix's bitrates [...] max out at above 17500kbps as of 2023 That's great, but I haven't ever seen anything close to that in real-world measurements. Not even with shows like Altered Carbon. That said, even at 17.5Mbps, that'd still fit on a DVD and would be a far cry from the 90-120Mbps seen on blu-rays. > But you still are talking about $300 up-front investment plus untold amount of unpaid time spent learning how to set up and operate such a thing. Plus cost of content. Oh I absolutely agree that it's expensive and annoying today. I was arguing that in a world without DRM, recording your own media would be popular and affordable. I was only referring to current-day technology to show that the tech exists. In a world without DRM, with an actual market for it, recording your own media would likely be as common, affordable and popular as VHS had been.

dangus 2y ago
17.5Mbps is one episode on a DVD. Asking "getting up and switching your DVD every episode" to compete with streaming is laughable. Nobody would accept that today. In a world without DRM, streaming would be even more attractive. Just look at music as a real example. There wasn't any DRM for the majority of the digital music purchasing era (only a brief window of AAC protection from iTunes, but Apple took it DRM-free afterward and for the majority of the iPod era). We already had completely DRM-free media with the iPod that was far smaller in file size and less cumbersome to store and manage than video. Despite that ease and convenience, locally stored digital music was eaten completely alive by streaming subscriptions because the convenience was so much better. [1] Nothing about losing DRM makes managing terabytes of media simple for the average person. Let's say I wanted to store my favorite show, which for the purpose of this argument is Seinfeld. I need to be able to pick any episode at any time and just play it with no waiting. It's in really nice HD quality (thanks film!), so I store it at 10 Mbps. I will need 297GB of storage to store the entire show. That's just one show!! It's also somewhat of a misnomer that VHS was affordable, at least not in the same sense as streaming. VHS tapes started out very expensive and were initially only practical for recording and re-using since each tape cost double digits of dollars. Video rental stores became popular especially because owning home video in the beginning was somewhat expensive. The technology really only became cost-practical for read-only media in its last 10 years. You would buy a movie once for ~$20-25 and that's it, you'd have your single copy of one movie. That costs more before inflation than a digital movie purchase today! VHS as you describe it is a recording technology (home movies, recording your own content, etc). As a consumption medium, streaming would demolish it, just like it demolished the digital purchase market for movies, TV, and music. Again, use digital music as your practical example: in a world without DRM, recording your own media suffocates under the convenience and pricing pressure of streaming. [1] https://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/2023-Year-End-Revenue-Statistics.pdf https://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/2023-Year-En...

dangus 2y ago

17.5Mbps is one episode on a DVD. Asking "getting up and switching your DVD every episode" to compete with streaming is laughable. Nobody would accept that today. In a world without DRM, streaming would be even more attractive. Just look at music as a real example. There wasn't any DRM for the majority of the digital music purchasing era (only a brief window of AAC protection from iTunes, but Apple took it DRM-free afterward and for the majority of the iPod era). We already had completely DRM-free media with the iPod that was far smaller in file size and less cumbersome to store and manage than video. Despite that ease and convenience, locally stored digital music was eaten completely alive by streaming subscriptions because the convenience was so much better. [1] Nothing about losing DRM makes managing terabytes of media simple for the average person. Let's say I wanted to store my favorite show, which for the purpose of this argument is Seinfeld. I need to be able to pick any episode at any time and just play it with no waiting. It's in really nice HD quality (thanks film!), so I store it at 10 Mbps. I will need 297GB of storage to store the entire show. That's just one show!! It's also somewhat of a misnomer that VHS was affordable, at least not in the same sense as streaming. VHS tapes started out very expensive and were initially only practical for recording and re-using since each tape cost double digits of dollars. Video rental stores became popular especially because owning home video in the beginning was somewhat expensive. The technology really only became cost-practical for read-only media in its last 10 years. You would buy a movie once for ~$20-25 and that's it, you'd have your single copy of one movie. That costs more before inflation than a digital movie purchase today! VHS as you describe it is a recording technology (home movies, recording your own content, etc). As a consumption medium, streaming would demolish it, just like it demolished the digital purchase market for movies, TV, and music. Again, use digital music as your practical example: in a world without DRM, recording your own media suffocates under the convenience and pricing pressure of streaming. [1] https://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/2023-Year-End-Revenue-Statistics.pdf https://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/2023-Year-En...