My favorite platform is iTunes, because it lets you download the files for offline viewing, and removing the DRM is trivially simple.
You guys are buying shows and movies?
Well, an EU study a few years back found that online piracy has little affect on actual legal sales, except for newly released movies which took like a 4.4% knock on their box-office sales.
Games apparently see an increase in sales, with 100 illegal downloads spurring 24 additional legal transactions than would have otherwise occurred.
Here’s a link to the study itself for anyone interested in getting into the weeds.
That said, I support studios/musicians/devs that I care about by buying their stuff.
I refuse to subscribe to the 10+ mainstream streaming services, though. I’m voting with my money, and the current streaming landscape is just as anti-consumer as cable TV was before it.
Literally this. And buying content outright actually sends money to the people who made the show, unlike watching it on streaming.
If the recent strike is any indication, the creators see none of this money.
Until the streaming services can come together to create an open, decentralized protocol, they don’t get my money.
Piracy is an accessibility issue.
🏴☠️🏴☠️Real debrid with Kodi. 🏴☠️🏴☠️
I recently got into Real-Debrid and I’ve used it via Stremio. Works wonderfully but I still am uneasy about needing an account where all my activity and very likely IP addresses and all are centralised. All it takes is a single VPN fail to compromise the whole account and myself too. I guess people use the service by constantly creating new accounts and scrapping the old ones?
Need to refigure out how to do this on my roku TV since everything is going up in price next month
Plex server is my recommendation. There is a Roku TV app and I have yet to come across a device that there isn’t a Plex app for. I have personally had no issues with my Plex server in the year+ I’ve been using it.
Fair warning, the Roku client for PLEX doesn’t seem to support HDR, at least from my own testing
Sorry for the rant but I only buy music from Bandcamp because it’s DRM-free. I don’t want to rely on obscure proprietary programs to remove DRM, and also most of the shows I would buy are region-restricted which means that I cannot legally buy them.
But yes, since I’m an Apple user, I go to iTunes when I want to rent a movie (maybe twice a year).
Nice. Yeah nowadays I get something on 4K UHD Blu-Ray if it’s in 4K, and if not, I get it in Blu-Ray if I can.
The only case in which I’ll get something on iTunes is if iTunes has it in HD and there’s no Blu-Ray release yet (like 9-1-1), or there’s no physical release at all (like The Carmichael Show). The vast majority of what I buy is still physical media.
What’s going on with the UHD disc?
Yeah what annoys me most is when there’s an HD copy I can buy digitally, but no Blu-Ray release.
I use Amazon prime to buy movies. Mostly because I have a fire stick and it is convenient. Also, I like having all need digital stuff in one places.
Lastly, I think prime uses the movies anywhere features when allowed by the distributor, which means I should be able to watch them with other services.
Nowhere, because you can’t buy them, you buy a revocable license to access them.