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Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

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Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't speak directly to this of course but some kind of Plex/Sonarr/Radarr/NzbDrone/NzbHydra/Deluge/Jackett running in docker containers with a GPU or Intel QuickSync for transcoding is something... Maybe throw in Tautilli for monitoring and something like Ombi (There is probably something better now) to make requesting easier and you are off the races. I mean, in theory of course.

This. And do yourself a favour and rent a seedbox where you can run all the above and stream from anywhere. Costs less monthly than the electricity costs for running them in your home.

this probably adds complexity for non-savvy users. for instance, my TV can handle a ~20mbps unencrypted stream. turn on encryption in plex, and that drops down to ~8mbps. I'm fine with routing an unencrypted stream through my LAN, but I'd rather not do that with pirated media through my ISP.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#554

Dear Amazon, the Prime menu is fairly awful - especially trying to find a way back to a previously watched series.

couldn't agree more. who the hell made it. Its a mess. With separate seasons in different places.

This might depend on the device, I'm using the Fire stick and I think it bundles the seasons under one show.

I'm not praising that app at all btw, that's just why I think the award for worst app goes to CBC gem on the Fire stick. It shows you which episodes you watched. Past tense. To watch the next one you have to search for the show again and navigate to the episode. Why on earth would anyone want that?!

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#555
post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hopefully you can shop around i.e., if you're lucky enough to have more than one alternative (if any).

There may be places that have only one provider with only one option in that provider, but are those places really $135/month with all the TV channels? The issue might be paying for things that are already free over the Internet.

> There may be places that have only one provider with only one option in that provider, but are those places really $135/month with all the TV channels?

Yes, I've lived in places where there is one cable company and they abuse their monopoly position with predatory pricing like this. When you're a new customer, they offer you a deal at maybe ~$60/mo and then over the course of a couple years raise the price to over $120/mo, with price increases every year or two after that, as well.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#556
post #26

This makes it very likely that the beloved Stargate franchise will return as an Amazon Prime exclusive franchise, which will be great news for those of us like myself with appetite for 60+ more seasons of that show (after the 17 seasons that have already been made). I watched the sci-fi show "The Expanse" on Amazon Prime Video. Season 4 (the one made by Amazon Prime Video) felt like it had a tenth of the budget compa…

I started watching SG1 again (I saw it incomplete as a kid). It’s incredibly good. It pushes rationalism and feminism in a sane way that I’m not sure would happen in today’s environment. It’s incredibly rich in historical references and concepts. It’s rarely dumb and often preempts cliches. It’s still worth watching imho (and is much less known that Star Trek in US).

Like you I also recently restarted watching SG-1 for the first time since I was a kid. It holds up a lot better than I expected it to. There's the occasional eyerolling cliche (and Carter's dialog about internal vs external gonads is kinda ridiculous) but like you said the cliches are also lampshaded pretty often. I just watched an episode where the Stargate broke and there was an exchange that went something like this—

General Hammond: How long will it take to fix the Stargate?

Technician: It'll be about 24 hours sir

Hammond: You have 12 hours

Technician. Sir, that's not how this works... it'll take about 24 hours

Hammond: Oh, okay then

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#557
post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've had a regular "bad movie night" throughout the pandemic, and there are a lot of these that are available to pirate up to about the 90s on Youtube (or occasionally dailymotion) simply because their distributors no longer care about them.

I do the "bad movie night" with family too. I suggest Titanic 2 on Tubi. It's amazing in sheer awfulness.

Why do you spend time watching bad movies?

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#558
post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blockbusters used to be really good for this. You could even get a movie for a whole week for less than YouTube will rent it to you for 24 hours. Maybe they'll make a comeback?

This. I don't understand why streaming a movie is so much more expensive than renting a physical DVD or VHS from a brick-and-morter store. If I want to watch a new movie, it is generally much cheaper to rent a DVD from redbox than watching it from any of the streaming services that allow you to rent it online.

Depends on your cost priorities.

If you're basically just walking by the box anyway while doing something you'd be doing otherwise, sure it's cheaper to drop $2 for a disc.

If you have to make a deliberate trip, you've transportation & opportunity costs. 2 round trips to the box, just to get/return the disc, is 6 miles total (1.5 miles one-way by road & parking lot) for me; at >$3/gal gas (wear/maintenance not included) that's >$1.50 plus the $2 rental. Then there's the time spent getting the disc, as several people wait around for someone to fetch it; if we're already at cumulative $4 cost, I'll pay the extra $1 (right now with a mere wiggling my thumb and not wait around half an hour.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#559

So what we're seeing is a repeat of the film industry from 1930's-1950's. You want to see a Paramount movie, you must go to a Paramount theater. Today you want to watch an Apple show you must go to Apple's VOD. We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem.

> We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Piracy is competition to bad content behavior. It's a meaningful consumer response to monopoly, balkanization and other anti-consumer practices.

Came here to say this, I avoid giving money to Amazon like the plague. I will go out of my way and invest my personal time as long as Amazon gets nothing. Don't give them your money.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#560

Dear Amazon, the Prime menu is fairly awful - especially trying to find a way back to a previously watched series.

I found myself going to Netflix by default because its UI is so much smoother in every platform. Amazon does have things I want to see, but I don't want to put up with the slowness and jank.
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