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'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming

theguardian.com

41–50 of 88 posts

Re: 'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming

#41
post #26

One of the things that I will miss about physical medium is the permanence of the data. A famous movie from 2006 had a racist joke. I remember it very clearly because of an argument at the time with my friends watching it. In 2021, I bought the movie on google. I looked for clips, but I couldn't find a copy of that racist joke. Its as if it never happened. No public mentions of editing the movie or clip to be more "i…

The Office took out a shot of a character is in blackface https://deadline.com/2020/06/the-office-blackface-scene-crea...

of Montreal edited out a line "I’m just a black she-male" from Women's Studies Victims https://www.reddit.com/r/ofMontreal/comments/j0kqqn/what_do_...

This goes back to radio edits, https://genius.com/Zager-and-evans-mr-turnkey-lyrics has the line "Mister Turnkey, I forced that girl in Wichita Falls" but the version I have is "Mister Turnkey, there's been a rape in Wichita Falls"

I'm sure this would've been happening in the past too with books having editions. Streaming just moves towards consumption sticking to the latest editions. Like you say, not really a bad thing, but where it goes we'll see

Re: 'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming

#42
post #26

One of the things that I will miss about physical medium is the permanence of the data. A famous movie from 2006 had a racist joke. I remember it very clearly because of an argument at the time with my friends watching it. In 2021, I bought the movie on google. I looked for clips, but I couldn't find a copy of that racist joke. Its as if it never happened. No public mentions of editing the movie or clip to be more "i…

When the Betty White is being censored for blackface, which wasn't blackface, it was obvious we are in trouble. It's modern book burning, just less dramatic without the pyres.

https://www.jacksonville.com/story/entertainment/2020/06/29/...

Re: 'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming

#43
post #38
post #26

One of the things that I will miss about physical medium is the permanence of the data. A famous movie from 2006 had a racist joke. I remember it very clearly because of an argument at the time with my friends watching it. In 2021, I bought the movie on google. I looked for clips, but I couldn't find a copy of that racist joke. Its as if it never happened. No public mentions of editing the movie or clip to be more "i…

At the rate that Suno, Sora, etc are advancing, there won't even be a deliberate editorial act to report on. All streaming media content could pass through a newspeak software layer for JIT censorship that propagates the values of whoever owns the service.

At some point, all communications (movies, shows, email, text, live voice and videoconferencing) will also go through JIT AI management.

What we see, hear, think, and feel about the world, ourselves, and other people will be managed and guided by whoever (government, corporations) ends up controlling the technology.

Combine this with the continued fragmentation of social groups and personal interactions - families, relationships, workplaces.

Re: 'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming

#44
post #24

I have fiber internet at my apartment with a mesh network, and I've found myself missing physical media a bit more lately. Inevitably at some point while watching any 4K media. The buffering will fail or speeds just simply drop? and I start getting visibly lower resolution, this really kills the immersion for me. Maybe I just don't have the right combination of devices, and/or I absolutely need a wired connection. Re…

>I absolutely need a wired connection You do.

Depending on who you ask, requirements per 4K UHD stream are about 25-30Mb/s. This is not a number that any kind of modern wifi should have difficulty keeping up with. I have absolutely no problems with 4K UHD streaming over wifi; mixture of Wifi 6 and 6E throughout. In fact, Wifi 6E is usually faster than wired GigE.

Re: 'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming

#45

I borrow DVDs from the library. Great selection.

The library selection in Omaha, Nebraska is definitely lacking in both old films and foreign films. They have a handful of these titles, but I am always looking for stuff they don't have.

Blockbuster of course was even worse in that department though (and RedBox is essentially worthless).

Re: 'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming

#46
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I absolutely need a wired connection You do.

Depending on who you ask, requirements per 4K UHD stream are about 25-30Mb/s. This is not a number that any kind of modern wifi should have difficulty keeping up with. I have absolutely no problems with 4K UHD streaming over wifi; mixture of Wifi 6 and 6E throughout. In fact, Wifi 6E is usually faster than wired GigE.

I routinely cap out at ~10MB/s over 5GHz Wifi 6 (wireless AX). This obviously depends on your hardware and environment, but needless to say I always just connect good old copper if I need speed.

Also: Do not trust those " mbps over wifi!" claims on marketing, they're all worthless horseshit. The numbers are derived from ideal conditions you would never find in the real world.

Re: 'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming

#47
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on who you ask, requirements per 4K UHD stream are about 25-30Mb/s. This is not a number that any kind of modern wifi should have difficulty keeping up with. I have absolutely no problems with 4K UHD streaming over wifi; mixture of Wifi 6 and 6E throughout. In fact, Wifi 6E is usually faster than wired GigE.

I routinely cap out at ~10MB/s over 5GHz Wifi 6 (wireless AX). This obviously depends on your hardware and environment, but needless to say I always just connect good old copper if I need speed. Also: Do not trust those " mbps over wifi!" claims on marketing, they're all worthless horseshit. The numbers are derived from ideal conditions you would never find in the real world.

I mean, I literally see 1.2Gb/s over Wifi 6E from my MacBook Air M3 to my NAS, which is more than I get over wired GigE. So that's not marketing, that's (very-micro) real-world benchmarking.

I do live in a house on a 1.5 acre parcel, so I'm not getting much congestion on the Wifi bands. Even so, I would regularly get 400Mb/s on Wifi 6 in our condo in NY where you could see 30 or more networks.

Re: 'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming

#48
post #26

One of the things that I will miss about physical medium is the permanence of the data. A famous movie from 2006 had a racist joke. I remember it very clearly because of an argument at the time with my friends watching it. In 2021, I bought the movie on google. I looked for clips, but I couldn't find a copy of that racist joke. Its as if it never happened. No public mentions of editing the movie or clip to be more "i…

Same problem with physical books disappearing. History doesn't change if you read a book. If you read Wikipedia, who knows? Not picking on Wikipedia, same could be with any online source.

Can't you just download a Wikipedia archive?

Re: 'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming

#49
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, storing and arranging physical media is a pain, as is dealing with scratches. I find it roughly equal as things go. The buffering thing genuinely confuses me. I get why it happens at a technical level, but the failure mode is odd. None of the content is live, just buffer the next 5 or 10 minutes to disk and have the player read from the disk buffer. That should never buffer unless the network is degraded for a lo…

I remember when YouTube switched from it's original method of streaming to DASH. The old method was to basically pick a file and buffer up to N time in advance (I think it was based on the media length). But the original DASH implementation was very aggressive about keeping a minimal buffer size and downgrading quality at the slightest hiccup. I was also on a not particularly great internet connection at the time, so…

>YouTube's changes meant that just buffered like 15s and then shifted down to 360p.

If you're using the web player and manually set the quality, it should never downgrade the quality during playback. If your connection is too slow it'll just pause while it tries to buffer

Re: 'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming

#50
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I routinely cap out at ~10MB/s over 5GHz Wifi 6 (wireless AX). This obviously depends on your hardware and environment, but needless to say I always just connect good old copper if I need speed. Also: Do not trust those " mbps over wifi!" claims on marketing, they're all worthless horseshit. The numbers are derived from ideal conditions you would never find in the real world.

I mean, I literally see 1.2Gb/s over Wifi 6E from my MacBook Air M3 to my NAS, which is more than I get over wired GigE. So that's not marketing, that's (very-micro) real-world benchmarking. I do live in a house on a 1.5 acre parcel, so I'm not getting much congestion on the Wifi bands. Even so, I would regularly get 400Mb/s on Wifi 6 in our condo in NY where you could see 30 or more networks.

I do nightly backups of my critical machines to a central server, some are connected wirelessly. The server is obviously hard wired.

Whereas the wired ones upload their backups at full gigabit speed (~100MB/s including overhead), the wireless ones only ever upload at ~10MB/s. I might see it go up to ~30MB/s if I'm lucky, but we're talking pigs flying over blue moons.

The wireless machines range from "one wall away" to "other side of the bloody house", but they're all the same. Even if I get one one sitting right next to the router it won't do more than ~10MB/s. I'm also located in the middle of nowhere in terms of EMI, so the air is clear.

Wireless is bullshit. If you need speed, just run copper and save yourself the grief. You only use wireless when the convenience of not running copper and/or being mobile trumps the lack of speed and reliability.

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