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It's sad that we cannot own titles but are forced to rent them from these streaming services that can't seem to get their shit together. (Not blaming Netflix per se; this is a pox on all their houses). Used to be nice in the DVD days. I built myself a nice collection then.

This was the idea behind digital rights lockers: UltraViolet, which Disney refused to participate in and which closed down in 2019, and its successor Movies Anywhere, in which Paramount, MGM, and Lions Gate are not participating.

[Old HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19046108]

16 comments

I still buy hard media (which makes me a Luddite apparently) because I consider it art and refuse to pay for digital media that is allegedly perpetual and then one day it goes missing because the wokes decided it should be memory holed.

One of many, many examples: https://screenrant.com/its-always-sunny-blackface-episodes-m...

Even things like iTunes Music Store which once claimed that all your past purchases are available for download from iCloud forever quietly became untrue when I discovered parts of my music library went missing. Come to find out the record company decided to pull licensing from Apple which made that media forever unavailable. So don't forget your backups..... rule of thumb is that you can never trust any company with your media no matter how much bullshit they sell you.

I have had 4 different shows have content cut from them that I noticed this year, for a variety of woke factors.

- Peep Show (Jeremy & Nancy "taboo" breaking episode)

- 30 Rock (Jenna & Tracy "role reversal" episode)

- Community (Chang D&D)

- Always Sunny

In these instances, the character that is doing the "deplorable" act is the villian or idiot. It's not like these shows are promoting those views, they're actually doing the opposite.

It's so bizarre.

Do you have any little disc destroying demons around... oh wait, did I say that out loud? I meant little kids.

Discs are good for ripping then straight to storage (or mailing back to Netflix?) but that's about it.

It would be cool to have a shared database of binaries+commands to recreate scene rips from the discs. Or just following along with someone who knows what they're doing and doesn't go for one-size-fits-all compression.

The majority of the media I bought on iTunes from about 2006 onwards is gone. Some of the music is still there, but every music video, show, and movie is gone. If I hadn't had the common sense in high school to back it all up to my hard drive, it would be gone forever. that was a tough wake up call that I don't own any media I "buy" from Apple/Amazon/etc. I'm renting it until they're done hosting it.

Yo ho yo ho, back to my old life I go.

>then one day it goes missing because the wokes decided it should be memory holed.

[EDIT: yeah, I can't read. Sorry for missing the example that immediately followed. ]

/ignore: Curious, can you provide any examples of this actually happening?

The next line in his comment was an example

They linked to one in the following sentence.

>because the wokes decided it should be memory holes

You truly believe that’s the driving force behind the problem? That “wokes” are the primary reason some content is hard to get and/or keeps getting pulled from streaming services?

It’s licensing increasingly becoming the core product and everyone and their mother trying to launch their own streaming services. We’ve been slowly backsliding into this situation for the better part of a decade.

But how do you actually find content that you like?

Sometimes I have to go though 4-5 different shows/movies on various streaming networks before I find something worth watching and even then, the shows usually get really bad by season 2-3. I can't imagine how wasteful it would be to have to buy all these bad shows instead of just streaming them.

But how do you actually find content that you like?

Recommendations from friends. Reviews by trusted critics. The same ways we've always found other things we like really.

I can't imagine how wasteful it would be to have to buy all these bad shows instead of just streaming them.

I have a significant disc collection of movies and TV shows I enjoy. I have almost nothing I haven't rewatched at least once and enjoyed again and/or lent to friends or family at some point for them to enjoy as well. I don't really know how that happened but I can tell you that almost none of those discs were bought as new releases other than big names that I was already fairly sure I'd enjoy or sequels/spin-offs of things I'd previously enjoyed.

I'm in your camp, but I think you used the antonym of the word you intended to: "ephemeral" vs. "eternal" :)

Almost a decent comment.

The cost is part of the reasons those never really caught on, not just participation. The number of titles I (and I assume, most people) will watch enough to warrant paying $20 for is vanishingly small. Even $4 a rental is a hard bar to pass at this point with streaming competing.

$1-2 to rent though? I'd be all over that. Weirdly, that's the cost to rent a physical disk at Redbox...but an on demand title anywhere is higher than that. Despite a streaming solution being cheaper to distribute, the fact it's more convenient/desirable, I guess, means it costs enough to price it outside of what I want to pay.

This feels like a really inefficient market.

I would do a whole lot more digital rentals if the prices weren't so damn high. How is it that it can be significantly cheaper to rent the physical disk than to stream the movie once? How can I watch 20 hours of stuff on HBO in 4k for like $10 or $12 or whatever that runs now for a month, but a single 2-hour movie is $5?

It'd also help a lot if I didn't need a different "app" for every store, with its own player UI. Learning how to use yet another designer's cute "experience" just to do the same thing I used to do with a few buttons on the front of a VCR that were the same for every single movie, isn't my idea of fun.

The problem with pay per item is that they try to stretch and tretch the amount of items/movies/episodes you watch.

Netflix overdid it with making everything a serie. It's super annoying, and I simply don' have the energie to start another serie simply because Netflix's analytics say that it's better for engagement that you have use the serie format instead of a simple movie. It has very little to do with the actual story telling.

Netflix used to be an unlimited dvd rental service. It turned into the same thing without the mail step, so of course we stopped using it. I think if we had known what streaming would look like today, a lot of people including myself would have held on tighter.

used dvd stores can be fun

I don't know about movies, but music streaming is awesome. I have a couple thousand CDs that are sitting in a closet somewhere. For a while I kept them as mp3s on a hardrive, copied other people's mp3s to build up my collection. But its still so limited. I love going through my favorite artists on spotify, listening to the less popular albums I never would have bought and discovering new artists.

Isn't it because it differs so much from movie streaming? On major music streaming platforms you can find most of the popular music artists. I don't have any numbers to back it, but my gut feeling tells me a-number-so-close-to-100 percent that it doesn't even matter anymore it may not be actually 100. Movies? You can't get Disney on Netflix, you can't get Apple on HBO, you can't get... you just can't. Imagine having Metallica on Netflix, Madonna on Apple, Beatles on Sony and Silent Poets on Amazon.

Music streaming doesn’t suffer nearly the fragmentation issues film and television streaming services have, though.

If I want to listen to something as common as Kanye or something as obscure as MSTRKRFT, I can do it on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, pretty much anything. And I only need to subscribe to one service.

If I want to watch something as common as ‘Inception’ or as indie as ‘Twin Peaks’, there’s virtually no chance I’d be using the same services.

The experience with video streaming is literally just some of the worst ever in terms of finding content. You pretty much have to just pick whichever one seems the best and pirate whatever else you need, which begs the question of why not to just pirate in the first place. That’s just not the case with music.

I did the same thing. I used to put a lot of effort into getting a perfect FLAC rip of everything I ever listened to, having them on my devices, or setting up streaming from a home server. I threw that shit out a long time ago, partly because I don't listen to the garbage that I used to, and partly because I've got better things to fuss over now. The amount of time worrying about file integrity, backups, server being up (and updated)...sorry, 90‰ of it is music I'll just get tired of soon. It wasn't worth it. Spotify makes more sense for me.

Same with movies. As I've gotten older, I can name about a dozen movies I'd like to watch again. I can afford to buy the next "highest quality release ever" when the time comes.

That works until UMG etc start their own streaming services and take their content off spotify for this or any other reason.

Could you listen to the song Cop Killer by Body Count?

I pay for a handful of streaming services but that's only because they're decent for content discovery and ease of use. If there's ever anything on there that I genuinely like I just pirate it (Arcane most recently) because the UX of having files that just work everywhere is so much better than the alternative. I would happily pay for unencumbered .mkv downloads if my recent buying trends wrt bandcamp .flacs are any indication.

The only way to stop me from pirating the media I like is if you actually let me buy the superior experience I can have as a pirate.

P.S. copyright and IP law in general need severe reform if we want to serve creatives and not executives

Blockbuster had web rental service for console games, which probably decreased piracy; Netflix used to have such a huge library with working subtitles it was pointless to pirate (nearly) anything.

Now, though?

Not just that but it's sad we can't even just rent the titles we used to be able to rent from videos stores. There is no much content that is just not available and I fear it never will be. If you were fortunate enough to have lived near a cinephile type rental place then you probably remember how directors often had their own sections. You could browse Kurasowa, Orson Welles, Robert Altman, Godard ...

I remember looking at the Criterion Collection streaming channel not that long ago and what struck me was just how much of the Criterion Collection was not even available on their streaming channel.

I don’t think the service is doing too hot subscriber wise

I'm not sure what you mean about being forced to rent content, even some Netflix original shows are available for purchase.

https://www.amazon.com/Stranger-Things-Complete-Blu-ray-Orig...

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07DNZHV3M/

If only there were a way to get a file of the same movie from a different site and then make a copy of it to save to your personal archive of movie files, ensuring you never need to worry about paying for multiple streaming services that will probably remove titles you like and never carry others in the first place...

I have been rebuilding my DVD collection through thrift stores. It’s incredibly cheap to do so now, and pretty fun to see what you find.

I think an issue for me that prevents me from collecting DVD’s, to; say - collecting CD’s - is that while a CD from the 1980’s is pretty much the best quality of audio you can still get today, DVD’s unfortunately suffer from an issue where the SD quality has aged very poorly, and the difference in resolution and image quality is insanely noticeable on, especially 4K, TV’s.

Of course, since CD’s are uncompressed audio, it doesn’t matter if you play them on the most modern sound systems, they’re still going to sound great.

Streaming allows me to find a nice balance between quality and bandwidth, unfortunately while DVD’s are neat for bonus features, the quality unfortunately makes it rather unpalatable on even semi-modern (1080p) TV’s.

those DVDs come with an EULA backed by a dozen laws, which, if they were universally enforced and followed to the letter, would put you in jail for the criminal act of making a backup copy, among a myriad other possible violations

What people don't realize is that part of the pricing model for various physical media is that the media wouldn't last. VHS tapes, CDs, DVDs, etc all age, get lost, break, get scratches, whatever. They're not "forever".

Now you can say "I can make a digital backup of my DVD". Depending on your jurisdiction you may have the rights to do that. But your own backup of that is unlikely to be durable.

A cloud copy of something on Google, Apple, Amazon or Netflix is essentially forever.

People don't realize what they're effectively asking for is digital rights to something in perpetuity. And you can't really price that realistically.

Streaming services actually far better match what users actually want (in general). There's no issues of storing media or keeping digital copies safe. The limited time you can view something is what makes it economical.

Remember too that most things tend to only ever be watched once. The satisfaction for collection isn't relaly about repeat viewing at for the most part.

Streaming services would match what I want if the content I want was on all services and the services competed on service quality.

Instead I want to watch “The Expanse” and I dont know if it’s a Netflix special or HBO or Hulu or Amazon or what. I logged into three of them and it wasn’t there.

Oh look, it’s on the Pirate Bay. Also, it’s not throttled / forcibly downgraded to 720p or whatever.

> They're not "forever".

I personally possess CDs from the 1980s and vinyl records from as early as the 1940s. Meanwhile I can’t access digital purchases made in the last few years. Perhaps not “forever”, but frankly close enough.

I have friends who work in media archiving. Properly stored physical media can last a LONG time, like hundreds of years.

And, there was no concept of temporary when physical media were produced. A completed sale of physical items is legally a permanent condition. That’s why physical items can be resold. Also, physical media did not come with a time-limited license. Again: both sides considered the sale permanent. It was in fact forever.

The point of view in your comment might make logical sense to you today, but it does not reflect the actual history or legal status of physical media. People “don’t realize” these things because they are not actually real.

I rely on the NSA for my forever backups.

I don't know, I feel like my physical copies are much more "forever" than the censored and "improved" versions available for streaming. In my copy of Star Wars, Han shots first.

> It's sad that we cannot own titles but are forced to rent them from these streaming services that can't seem to get their shit together.

It's sad that the general public cannot get its shit together and every man jack keep and use his own library.

I know because I'm one of the sad sacks that owns hundreds of original LPs, CDs, VHSs, DVDs, and also has a couple TB of HDD worth of borrowed series, and hasn't touched the damn pile of 'precious' in ages.

"Give me Convenience or Give me Death", as those 1980s punks so neatly summed it up.

For better or worse, half way through realizing it was stupid, I've bought myself a massive collection that I don't "own" on iTunes. Technically, it is tied to my Apple account, but there isn't a way to transfer ownership, or etc outside of Apple even for e.g.if I die.

I think though there will be some laws passed hopefully that will allow us to own digital content outright in the near future, hopefully in a decentralized way.

Doesn’t apple still allow you to buy movies on their service? I only bought two (the iron giant and the bucket list) but i am pretty sure iron giant i bought close to 15 years ago. I can still download it from their service without any problems(just went to the tv app on my phone to confirm and just started to download them right now)

Yes, lots of services do. Apple is unique though in that a purchase entitles you to all versions of a film, including future versions. I bought 3:10 to Yuma on iTunes in 2008 and I can watch it in 4K/HDR today without spending another cent.

I still prefer buying and ripping Blu-Rays though.

Yes many online services do but there is little to no interoperability.

It would be much worse if we were forced to buy the rights to watch a TV show or movie before we know if we even like it. I'd have a massive virtual library of half garbage.

I don’t want to own movies. I watch them once. I’d rather have the selection any day.

What stops you buying on iTunes for example?

And did anyone ever use those UltraViolet codes? I never tried them. What did they even do?

I guess streaming won out because consumers prefer it - I know I do.

> What stops you buying on iTunes for example?

DRM. If it's DRM your still don't own anything