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Netflix Prices Went Up Again – I Bought a DVD Player Instead

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Re: Netflix Prices Went Up Again – I Bought a DVD Player Instead

#121

Post by _Turk_ »

adamors wrote: post #63

I cancelled all my streaming, and replaced it with a €20 seed box w/ Plex + radarr/sonarr etc. Have everything I want (and nothing else) and movies/shows don't get pulled without me doing it. Won't be turning back anytime soon. Physical still has the downside of needing space. I have space for books, but not much else.

I've seen a few guides to setting this up but maybe you can refer to what you used to set your own system up? Right now I'm utilizing streamio plus debridio but I've read the plex + radarr/sonarr is much superior... I"m not too tech savvy so kind of hestiant to set up

Re: Netflix Prices Went Up Again – I Bought a DVD Player Instead

#122

Post by maayank »

mapontosevenths wrote: post #66
yellottyellott wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TrueNAS + AppleTV + Infuse + Tailscale is my setup. Also iTunes has Movies for $5, but it has DRM, which bit me since I always remembered their mp3s being DRM-free back in the day being a big deal.

That's ok if you don't care about sound much. Apple prevents local playback apps from playing back Atmos audio. It's fine if you only want 5.1 though. There used to be some limitations with Dolby Vision as well, but I think those have mostly been straightened out now.

wait. If I use VLC (for example) on AppleTV to play something from my network using SMB or DLNA, I cannot get Dolby Atmos?

Re: Netflix Prices Went Up Again – I Bought a DVD Player Instead

#123

Post by rustyhancock »

adamors wrote: post #63

I cancelled all my streaming, and replaced it with a €20 seed box w/ Plex + radarr/sonarr etc. Have everything I want (and nothing else) and movies/shows don't get pulled without me doing it. Won't be turning back anytime soon. Physical still has the downside of needing space. I have space for books, but not much else.

Gosh config of radarr and sonarr seemed impenetrable to me.

I've given up my streaming box because I find passive watching so draining and trying to focus on educational content/ course and exercise.

I was finding myself wallowing away hours per day passively watching endless episodes of the current biggest show.

Re: Netflix Prices Went Up Again – I Bought a DVD Player Instead

#124

Post by toddmorey »

donohoe wrote: post #21

Not a lawyer but... if you have the DVD its legal to make a backup digital copy. I am thinking the same thing. Most recent movies are available for under $20 per DVD - and there are tons of deals. You can get the 4 lego movies for $5 on DVD on Amazon right now. A "Tom Cruise 10-Movie Collection" is $12. You get the idea. Get the DVD. Make a legal backup. Keep the physical DVD in storage. You now "own" the movie (or T…

Also with this approach, you actually have a real collection and it's fun to collect things.

My son has autism and viewed his Netflix homepage as his personal curated collection. But then, of course, Netflix renegotiates licensing deals and entire seasons or shows just go away. And it really crushes him because it's like they were stolen from his personal collection.

So now when I hear him play, the super villain trying to destroy the world is always named Reed Hastings.

Re: Netflix Prices Went Up Again – I Bought a DVD Player Instead

#126

Post by to11mtm »

tehwebguy wrote: post #100
rahimnathwani wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vertical resolution of a DVD is either 480 (NTSC) or 576 (PAL). This usually matched the visible vertical resolution of the TV you were using. A 1080p screen has 6 times as many pixels as an NTSC DVD. A 4k screen has 24 times as many pixels as an NTSC DVD.

I don’t think DVDs look bad on a 1080p TV, others that assume they will may be surprised!

I think too many people remember DVDs but mostly remember them on Interlaced displays.

Or hooked their DVD player to the HDTV with an RCA cable and were disappointed.

On the flipside, if you had a DVD player capable of progressive scan and Component or HDMI-out, it's fine for couch viewing.

That said, there are plenty of DVDs out there (extreme case, single layer DVD with extras on same disc as movie) where the bitrate can show, but that's not a fault of the format.

Re: Netflix Prices Went Up Again – I Bought a DVD Player Instead

#127

Post by ynac »

tracker1 wrote: post #96
giancarlostoro wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you buy one that has a VUDU code, and go on moviesanywhere.com you can now link your VUDU account, your Apple iTunes account and your Google Movies account, and whoever else, and the movie unlocks on all those other streaming services. So if you buy a BluRay movie, you can stream it on your favorite streaming service provider thanks to MovisAnywhere (run by the movie industry - the one rare good thing they did). I…

It's also worth looking into if your local library offers Kanopy services.

Big ups on that! Not to mention your local library's collection of DVDs. Or, their inter-library loan system for the ultra weird and rare.

One note on Kanopy - they use a ticket system (10-15 tickets per library customer). So if you have a couple people in your household, all of your library card numbers contribute tickets to the login. And, if you have two library systems like we do here (KCLS and SPL) you can double dip on all the cards again. No hack required - Kanopy actually has a very nice way of failing over to other cards as your quota is used up.

And if that's not enough, try Scarecrow Video out of Seattle. They are the masters of physical digital film media right now. It's fun to try to stump them. And they provide mailorder system similar to the old red envelopes of NetFlix.

eBay has DVD collections go up for sale all the time. Fun to buy the "box of movies" for $100 and see what you get.

Another big haul for me is from local thrift stores - usually 50 cents to 2 bucks a disc.

Re: Netflix Prices Went Up Again – I Bought a DVD Player Instead

#128

Post by mrazomor »

I did the same after Netflix dropped movies I cared about.

First I tried playing DVDs straight from PC which is connected to TV. That was horrible quality and UX.

Then I bought a good quality DVD player with hardware upscaling. It provided better image quality and slightly better UX. But you still had to deal with the menus and buch of other slow loading stuff that comes with DVDs... Gave up on it.

Re: Netflix Prices Went Up Again – I Bought a DVD Player Instead

#129

Post by tombert »

babypuncher wrote: post #97
tombert wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you have the DVD its legal to make a backup digital copy. Is this actually true? I thought there was inherent illegality to cracking the DRM on DVDs. Granted, I doubt anyone is going to come after you for making a backup of a legitimate copy, but I think strictly speaking it's still illegal. I am also not a lawyer.

I am also NAL, but it almost certainly is legal to make backups for personal use. Breaking the encryption is the usual legal hangup, though there is no real enforcement on this front and nobody is stopping you from using Handbrake or MakeMKV. More importantly however, is the fact that there isn't a meaningful argument that making backups of physical media you own is ethically wrong.

Oh I don’t think it’s ethically wrong in the slightest. If you own the DVD you have given the copyright holder due compensation; I think it’s ethically fine to make a backup of media that you legally purchased.

I was just saying that I don’t think it’s actually legal to do so for a DVD since those usually have CSS encryption.

Re: Netflix Prices Went Up Again – I Bought a DVD Player Instead

#130

Post by oojuliuso »

Netflix made a lot of money off me in the early 2000s, the pre-streaming days (and MacOS X, and 10.1 days), when discs were sent out by mail. One could go queue up everything you wanted to watch, have a couple discs out at a time, and get new ones sent to you as watched discs were returned. There was never enough time in the day to watch them, with unwatched discs in my possession for weeks, turning into months. Yet the idea of the all-you-can-eat buffet monthly subscription kept me hooked, kept me paying. The other hook was that you had a curated list of stuff to watch, and the queue would manage itself, as fast as one could watch them.

It's possible I could've saved money just renting 1 movie at a time, no different from how online rentals are now.

I think disc rentals over mail and Redbox machines still has some relevance even today. You never have to worry if a movie's taken off the streaming catalog, then having to research what other streamer has it, then contemplating if you want to go through signing-up just for 1 movie. You found the movie, you requested it, and it's getting mailed to you in hardcopy. It won't suddenly disappear in transit due to rights-holder issues.

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