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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

#201

Post by IncreasePosts »

_Turk_ wrote: post #121
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

I am tech savvy but hate toil. I just launched Gemini cli and ask it to install the *arr stack and it did everything for me to my satisfaction. Heck, it even recommended a few cool plugins I didn't know about. My only problem is I'm not a member of any private torrent sites :(

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

#202

Post by danielodievich »

My wife was talking to someone in her early 20ies and mentioned DVD player and apparently that's considered ancient now. Ahh to be young and blithe about it.

We have a 4K Blu-Ray that gets used every once in a while and the 4K Dune and few other titles looks absolutely stupendous. Local 4k streamed from Plex is pertty close. but nothing supposedly 4k streamed from Youtube or Netflix really compares, the blacks show artifacts and stuttering, even through gigabit fiber. can't beat local playback!

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

#204

Post by tracker1 »

kllrnohj wrote: post #86
commandlinefan wrote: post #22

My father passed away last year from complications due to Alzheimer's, but for years before he died, he struggled to work streaming services and modern "smart" TVs. We got him one of the few models of DVD players that we could actually still find and a lot of used DVDs because he _could_ use those. OP here might be misremembering DVDs, here: the physical media skipped or froze intermittently and the players themselve…

> OP here might be misremembering DVDs, here: the physical media skipped or froze intermittently and the players themselves were finicky In my teens my friends and I watched probably hundreds of DVDs, and they almost never had a problem. Skips & freezes were almost only ever a factor for highly scratched copies, more typical of those from Blockbuster than anything we picked up in the $5 bargain bins. I don't think I'…

I started just ripping everything when the studios started adding unskippable ads... I had a rental copy of Friday, still have never actually seen it, there was a bad scratch and it froze after 30+ minutes of unskippable previews.

I've never had a really bad player though... I have seen players that had issues with burned disks, but not mfg (unless scratched rentals).

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

#205

Post by wombat-man »

BirAdam wrote: post #111
wombat-man wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, 4k blu rays especially are real nice.

Players for those are kind of pricey tho.

Ps5 can play them, but the drive is a little noisy. There's a fix but I haven't tried it yet

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

#206

Post by fhn »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #192
bisby wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Own" the movie in quotes is interesting. Because you own the physical medium, but the data encoded on it is still copyrighted and can be treated in some ways like a license still. It is possible to obtain a legal copy of physical media and not be legally allowed to view it in certain ways. Backups are legal (assuming you keep the physical DVD, like youve said, and dont just "make a backup" and then sell the original…

>Because you own the physical medium, but the data encoded on it is still copyrighted Yes, and it turns out I also own the hard drives that it's stored on. The thumb drives. The SSDs. And there is no copyright police in my utility room. But there is a Plex server. The "Netflix sucks and I don't have enough control over my shows" problem was solved years ago. Seriously, you can stream this to any device you own, wheth…

So if I rent out the device that I own, I can make $$? Also, the everybody is my friend. $$$$.

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

#207

Post by tracker1 »

joshfraser wrote: post #73
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there's a service that subscribes on demand and unsubscribes automatically. I'm picturing something that lets me browse shows and movies and pick them, with a little 'playing this will trigger a Disney+ subscription for one month, for $12'

Bet Claude could build that for you in 5 mins

Wouldn't necessarily bet on it... would likely need to use puppeteer or playwright and change the user agent to match the desktop browser. And even then, the various services likely change pretty regularly.

That said... could maybe setup a mitm service that does this for even $5/yr to manage various services... where that service takes care of updating their signon/cancel scripts. Maybe even a semi-trusted mechanical turk as necessary.

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

#208

Post by BizarroLand »

fhn wrote: post #206
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Because you own the physical medium, but the data encoded on it is still copyrighted Yes, and it turns out I also own the hard drives that it's stored on. The thumb drives. The SSDs. And there is no copyright police in my utility room. But there is a Plex server. The "Netflix sucks and I don't have enough control over my shows" problem was solved years ago. Seriously, you can stream this to any device you own, wheth…

So if I rent out the device that I own, I can make $$? Also, the everybody is my friend. $$$$.

I have seen, quite recently, on sites like Amazon and Ebay, 4-26tb refurbished hard drives filled with digital media for sale.

So, yes, you can. Is it legal? No. But neither is selling cocaine in a nightclub yet many people fund their entire lifestyle doing just that.

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

#209

Post by jjulius »

BeetleB wrote: post #188
_Turk_ wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The *arr stack was a pain. You'll need prowlarr for downloading. And a Bittorrent client that works with it (e.g. Ktorrent doesn't). Then you'll set up radarr/sonarr, and ensure they can talk to prowlarr. Setting up Plex is straightforward. But I think you do need to make it visible to radarr/sonarr. It was definitely a pain, but once I had it set up it's been fine.

>But I think you do need to make it visible to radarr/sonarr.

Sort of. You tell Plex where your directories are for movies and TV shows. All you have to do with Sonarr/Radarr is have them dump the finished downloads into their respective directories.

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

#210

Post by tracker1 »

apparent wrote: post #62
dylan604 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been doing the "pause" option not just for Netflix but multiple streamers. Adding up all of the streaming subs totaled as much monthly as the cable bill I did away with which made sense when everything was on Netflix. Now each studio has their own platform with similar per month fees. There's not enough content to justify that much monthly expense.

I have tried to get my wife to pause some of our subs but she absolutely refuses. She says "we're not poor" (we are not) and apparently just wants to spend $70/mo on these damn things. Even if costs were lower, I still think we should not have so many, since it spoils our kids. I don't want them to see TV as "we have access to everything all the time". I want them to see that there are tradeoffs, and understand that…

I remember as a kid, mostly having access to HBO/Showtime etc during their "free" week/month that came along about once a year or so. I think my dad subbed for a couple months once, but that was it. Otherwise it was just basic cable and nothing else.

Even then, 90% of the time was watching local/broadcast networks via cable.

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