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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

#191

Post by BeetleB »

binsquare wrote: post #14
WCSTombs wrote: post #4

Public libraries can also be a great source for DVDs and Blu-Rays!

They also have video games now

Libraries are the single reason I got back into video games after a multi-decade hiatus.

I played very few games from 2002 to 2017. Didn't want to keep buying new computers, and did not want to bother with consoles (graphics was better on PC than a non-HD TV).

In 2010 I bought a PS3, but only to watch Blu-Ray, Netflix and stream from my PC to TV. Did not play games on it.

Then in 2016/2017, on a whim, I decided to check out a game from the library. I Googled some good games, and picked Telltale's The Living Dead.

Oh wow. One of the best games I've ever played. For the next 2 months I kept checking out games and playing them.

Then for some reason I stopped. I started again in 2022 and haven't looked back. Seriously cut down my TV watching so I can play the games. I don't use the library any more - I just buy the games.

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

#192

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

bisby wrote: post #90
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…

"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, whether you're at home or in some hotel a continent away. You can stream it for your friends.

>I spent 3 years personally backing up my wife's 1400 DVDs, because with that many of them, at some point the discs are bound to go bad.

I made a list of our DVDs, then gave them away and spend a few weeks downloading those. In many cases, like Star Trek TNG, I ended up getting improved versions... god help me, interlace comb.

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

#193

Post by BeetleB »

dylan604 wrote: post #28
sergiotapia wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Libraries are one the most beloved things america really got right. Such a great value and use of tax money.

If everyone used the library as much as people say they are great, their shelves would be empty. Libraries have to be some of the most underutilized services.

When it comes to recent popular movies, the wait times can be over 6 months. I'm usually number 480 on the waitlist or something.

I wouldn't call that underutilized. :-)

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

#194

Post by some-guy »

rustyhancock wrote: post #123
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.

Not to be "that guy that just says to use LLMs", but writing out how you want these things to work on your computer to something like Claude, or heck even Google AI mode without logging in with an account, allows you to describe your ideal "home server as a docker-compose.yml file" and for me it did a damn fine job doing it. I had done this all with a previous server manually, and with a new server I simply had provided that I was a Fedora Linux box, with these hard drives, with these containers, and these are the locations of the files, etc. It worked the first try.

This wasn't something that I didn't want to learn myself, but I have so little time with children and gardening on top of my super busy work at this point that I didn't have time to simply google everything. I did know enough about it beforehand to provide a general idea of what I want, so YMMV.

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

#195

Post by abdusco »

lelandbatey wrote: post #175
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.

Do note that there's a ton of media that is not very available via sailing the seas. For example, reality TV has very low availability, typically only currently airing seasons at best. Thus if you're trying to convince a family to cancel all the big streaming platforms, you may have a hard time when they learn that they can't watch old episodes of "The Real Housewives of the middle of nowhere" from 2012.

> can't watch reality TV

And nothing of value was lost.

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

#197

Post by mrec »

prmoustache wrote: post #170
to11mtm wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bitra…

I am watching DVDs on a 1080p projector to the large wall of my living room. It is a 10y old cheap aliexpress one so it is not the sharpest you can get and it actually makes the DVD enjoyable as it smoothen a bit the whole thing. I don't really know what is at play but I can only say it seems to blur the image in a pleasant "optical way", not like if I was applying a gaussian blur and was watching it on an high dpi s…

Makes perfect sense; old CRT TVs had the same kind of effect in making low resolutions bearable. (If you think DVD is bad, you'd have loved long-play VHS at around 230p...)

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

#198

Post by nipperkinfeet »

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.

16+ years with my setup. Seedbox + Private tracker + RSS plugin + SyncThing + Dell MFF

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

#199

Post by dlcarrier »

I never gave up on Blu-Ray discs, or really I never adopted digital distribution. When I buy a Blu-Ray disc, the rights to watch it are perpetual and transferable, which means I can watch the movie all I want, then when I'm done with it I can sell it, relinquishing all of my rights to the new owner, making it just as valuable to the new owners as it was to me, meaning that the resale value will be pretty constant.

With digital distribution, the license to watch it will eventually terminate, and it cannot be transferred, so without a resale market it is much more expensive.

The best part is that I can go to my local flea market, and buy Blu-Ray discs for a tiny fraction of the retail price. Multiple vendors sell them for well under $1 each. Last weekend, I bought the Avengers 3D bundle and Pacific Rim, for 50¢ each.

Blu-Ray players, in a modern small form factor, are often under $10 at thrift stores, although they rarely come with a remote, but usually do have CEC, so the remote isn't always needed.

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

#200

Post by dlcarrier »

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…

The only problem I've ever had with Blu-Ray players is that as the player gets older the trays eventually start having trouble ejecting. Other than that, I've never had one have any play trouble, even with scuffs on the discs.

Meanwhile, my streaming box randomly loses network connectivity, despite having a wired connection, and I have to restart it, before I can stream anything.

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