11–20 of 415 posts
I haven't torrented or paid for content in years. If I want to watch something and it's not on the server, I message the admin in Bangalore and he adds it.
Sure I don't "have" the content in the sense it's not sitting on spinning disks, but I don't care. Life is too short to try to collect widely available digital media.
They made it dead-easy to sign up, there was no pushy retention teams or hoops to jump through if you wanted to cancel. That's why I paid them.
Amazon Video launched here, and they had some content that I was interested in, but their UX from day one has been awful. They insist on adding pre-roll ads, despite that I'm paying them. The video quality was pretty awful and was quite regularly at something like 480p quality on my (4k) TV. Yes their X-Ray tech is neat, but the ads just drive me up the wall.
There was a time that I would've happily paid for HBO - they had/have some really great content (at least in the US), but they are or were not available in AU outside of a $120+/month PayTV device that I really didn't want.
Now there are dozens of streaming services, with their own $15-30/month fees, which will have (or not) selections of some of the content I want, each with their own uniquely awful and annoying interfaces or quirks of whether they will or won't play on my TV or device.
I haven't paid for 90-95% of the content I consumed in the past 12 years. I've never spent a cent on it.(and I used to spend many hours watching new movies/shows every single day+Music+AAA games) Maybe try not hoarding all the half-decent movies on earth in 4K bluray version? at this point you have more data than a small piracy site...
I also appreciate local copies and created a seedbox recently. Torrents still seems better for TV. But I delete shows after I watch them so no need to have such a large amount of space for media.
I deal w/ software all day at work. As I've gotten older, the less I want to also deal w/ software at home.
Why do you need 30TB? You can always download again if you need to watch again.
0. US ISPs are capped but in the TB range so most people never reach the cap.
Piracy and data-hoarding are two different hobbies. One cost next to nothing, the cost of the other one you are quite familiar with.. Jokes aside, would you consider deleting your entire collection and then also cancel subscriptions and possibly give away or sell any tech equipment you do not use for work? And then find something else to do with the newly-freed time? Can you do it for 6 or 12 months? If not, why not?…
Streaming services have a similar issue (re-encoding, bad rereleases due to licensing issues, delistings, crappy format choices in the first place) but generally a bit better SLA-like and a longer timeframe to watch certain content.