The end is near for physical media for video.
I wish there were more/better/good choices for streaming video. We already have decent solutions for audio, games and books/audiobooks, yet video seems to be lagging behind, hugely.
That’s because there is a strong tradition of rights distribution for movies and TV being totally fucked up, and it has been since day 1 of both industries. Brought to you by the same motherfuckers who gave you Hollywood Accountingtm, where a movie that cost $100 million to make and raked in $500 million at the box office somehow “didn’t turn a profit” and magically they don’t have to pay royalties to any of their writers or actors.
Yeah, I’d buy a lot more if there was a DRM-free way to buy media. Bluray is a pain to rip and I hate having to deal with discs.
But no, media companies are intent on keeping piracy easier than legitimate purchases. I go through the effort to rip my discs, but many won’t bother.
Streaming isn’t the middle ground in my opinion, rather it’s unrestricted downloadable files that you can then handle however. Streaming provides some convenience but no consistent access (see various shows being delisted or shuffled between services).
Companies would love if everyone forgot having home video, in the sense of owning copies of movies and shows they always have access to and ability to watch whenever.
Books: a variety of ways to purchase, with products a uniform quality. Yes, the file sizes are tiny, but it’s true, they are as they should be, they are adjustable to the device you use, and have extra - useful - features because of digitalisation.
Audio: a variety of services offering pretty much the same stuff. Spotify is basic but works. Tidal is higher quality. My disappointment comes from the fact that it is still region-dependent, I cannot sign up for Tidal where I am. There is also stuff like Bandcamp for those who want to be ‘closer’.
Streaming only. Sign up now for your recurring subscription. You’ll own nothing and you’ll like it, or else.
Jellyfin (Or Plex if you have to deal with the “Spouse Factor”) + Radarr and Sonarr + Usenet
Perfection, no annoying physical media to worry about, but you still get to keep the data you…uhh…“acquired”
i dont have a desktop or a server that can run this stuff constantly yet. but is usenet still good for the “discussions?” i thought there were better free versions.
If you have the time to seed a lot then private torrent trackers can be just as effective for finding your ahem… linux ISOs without the cost. Usenet is most useful for people who are worried about repercussions from their gov for seeding (as many count this as “distribution” and it carries more weight than simply downloading)
As far as I know, there’s still a strong but small community on Usenet for discussions still
As far as server/desktop stuffs, many have had decent success running them on things like old laptops and raspberry pis to decent success. Won’t be as powerful, but if it’s just you and a spouse and maybe kids or something it should be just fine
I’ve only used Jellyfin, what does Plex do better for the non-expert user?
Biggest upside of Plex for me is the fact that you can set up secure streaming from anywhere with basically a single click. With Jellyfin, that is much more manual. Besides that, I think some people may like that Plex has its own set of TV Shows & movies to stream, though I’m certain that those are ad supported. (Haven’t used that feature & have moved to Jellyfin)
I use Stremio/Torrentio/RealDebrid, is there any practical reason to switch?
Those are dependent on the relevant torrent being available and seeded
Jellyfin/Plex and Radarr/Sonarr + Usenet, you’ll have said file once downloaded for as long as you want, but requires considerably more storage space and torrents suck for older, more obscure stuff. Usenet doesn’t depend on seeders, and the big boys have something like 15+ years retention and you’ll always download them at full speed (no tons of seeders but slow upload speeds to worry about either)
So it’s a matter of personal preference
One reason is that if you ever have an issue with RealDebrid, you can expect them to post your name and email publicly online while talking a boat load of shit about you.
I use same solution as you having tried emby and sonarr etc. the biggest problem got my family and me was searching what to watch and adding it rrr services, we wanted to have netflix but quite instant, not just to watch ( as you might have to wait a while be at 5 or 10 mins on torrent) but also browse, there is so much to watch what should I download, so streamio helped me there, now how to get there media, well debrid services gave us instant access, so it was quite a easy solution.
im torn. as someone with a massive personal library, bluray was a non-starter. they never fleshed it out to the storage densities i would have required for my library. solid state storage has come so far now, it just makes sense.
someday i’ll just be able to hand a single drive with my 100tb of content to my kids. if youre concerned about ‘owning’ shit. start powning it.
meh. i have triple redundancy including an offline set. cheap storage means cheap redundancy,
It’s $100 for 4TB right now.
But once you factor in RAID and alternating offsite backups, it’s really $400 for 4TB.
I go through all the older stuff I pulled from the internet. A lot of it can’t be found now.
As much as I hate that this is happening, I think once you turn to digital media, it’s incredibly difficult to go back. The convenience of having your stuff at a click of a button is just too good.
That said, if you’re into movies specifically, i’d personally still go the route of buying a disk, and ripping it to your local storage, but that’s both expensive, and inconvenient in terms of space
Storage is cheap for what you get.
A DVD movie ripped to MKV is 3-5GB.
A 12 terabyte drive is ~ $100. That’s… 2400 movies (if my math is right). My current movie collection is about 300 movies, 500GB of storage (I’ve ripped some stuff to MP4).
Having a backup of 12TB would cost perhaps $100/yr (Im paying less than that for backup of my 4TB storage).
Alternatively you can replicate your library with friends and family, pretty simple to do. Drop a mini pc with a drive in it running Kodi/Casaos/Freedombox, whatever, behind the TV at everyone’s house, for less than 20w of power you have a replicated media player.
But getting a DVD just to rip it is very inconvenient. Not only can there be scarcity issues with out-of-print disks, but also you’d either deal with the disks you never use lying around, throw them out or bother reselling, which I’d prefer not to do. I’d prefer having just hard drives of my media.
I’d have no issue with digital media if there was a way to actually own it. Everything is either streaming only or ridden with DRM that can only be played within their app. Blurays, assuming you can decrypt its DRM bs, are the last bastion of media ownership left.
You’ve essentially described exactly what the issue is. All these companies want you to continue subscribing, so you owning anything isn’t in their interest
The convenience of having your stuff at a click of a button is just too good.
Except when you go to find your stuff, discover it’s not there, and yearn to be able to just stuff a DVD in a player.
You can still get the best of both worlds with piracy. Click of a button to watch media and it’ll never disappear unless you want it to (or drive failures).
Oh, absolutely! But I do feel you’re trading a level of convenience for the privilege (and what a privilege!) - even something as simple as pirating one movie is already a much bigger hurdle than getting a Netflix subscription, for instance. Let alone setting up a Jellyfin server, backups, getting external connections / reverse proxying going, and so on.
I recently bought a second PC Blu-ray writer just in case this would happen. Lucky me. I should be good for the next 10 years.
Looks like they’re still available for now in the UK but at inflated prices sent from America
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B079LTC6ML
The above supports UHD and is easy to… adapt for legitimate ripping of your Blu-ray. For backup purposes of course.
I think Panasonic still make some too but I’ve used LG ones for years.
What’s the make and model number? The link is funky if your AMZN location isn’t set to UK
I’m surprised that usb Blu-ray drives are as expensive as they are still, low supply and mostly only niche demand I guess? Was hoping to get one to make some copies of my physical media, but spending $100ish for a usb drive hurts haha
I guess now’s the time to pull the trigger
Get one that works with libredrive so you can rip at full quality and speed through Makemkv.
Yeah, thank you, I’ve seen the LG BP60NB10 recommended a lot for makemkv, ordered one of Amazon, but they’ve been temporarily out of stock for a few days. The article doesn’t mention usb drives, so I think those are safe for a while, at least.
For internal desktop drives, I have the WH16NS40. After flashing some open firmware on it, it works perfectly for playing and ripping BRs. Looks like I’ll be picking up a spare in case this one dies.
The MakeMKV forum has a lot of good tips and instructions on selecting and configuring BluRay drives.
