[HN Gopher] My husband was right about DVDs
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       My husband was right about DVDs
        
       Author : tekdude
       Score  : 245 points
       Date   : 2023-01-21 16:22 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (slate.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (slate.com)
        
       | schmichael wrote:
       | I wish this article had mentioned the greatest thing about DVDs:
       | 
       | You can _lend_ them. Have a friend over and find out they have
       | never seen  <insert meaningful show or movie here> before?! No
       | need to quick search and figure out if it's on a streaming
       | service they have, just walk over and snatch it off your shelf
       | and hand it to them.
       | 
       | In the 00s the trade in media lending was so brisk my friends and
       | I would keep spreadsheets and little databases of who-borrowed-
       | what-from-whom. There's even a DVD little lending library in my
       | neighborhood. Not to mention the public library system has tons
       | of physical media to choose from.
       | 
       | I love streaming and rarely turn to physical media these days,
       | but as my kids get older and want to watch the same things over-
       | and-over-and-over... building that DVD collection out again is
       | looking really appealing.
        
         | dieselgate wrote:
         | For sure! Assuming anyone still has a method of playing them
         | that is
        
         | bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
         | In this day and age and that day and age, I've had friends
         | offer me ripped DVDs or nowadays a single thumb drive with
         | their entire former DVD collection and then some.
        
         | Dalewyn wrote:
         | I lent almost none of my DVDs and VHS tapes(!) back in the day
         | because the fact of the matter is /people never gave them
         | back/. Not even good friends.
         | 
         | It's one of those lessons I learned early in life. If you're
         | going to lend something to someone, do so with the expectation
         | you're never getting it back.
        
           | alar44 wrote:
           | Yup, tools too. I'll come over and help ya, but nobody is
           | going to borrow my tools.
        
           | lowbloodsugar wrote:
           | One cannot lend books or DVDs, one can only gift them.
        
         | belugacat wrote:
         | This is also true of DRM-free files on thumbdrives. More of my
         | friends have devices with USB ports that can run VLC than
         | optical drives these days (not to mention the whole zone thing,
         | which is quickly a pain when you're a movie nerd)... thankfully
         | generating a DRM-free file from a DVD is trivial.
         | 
         | - signed, someone who also owns lots of CDs and DVDs, mostly
         | old non US-produced things that are close to unfindable on
         | streaming services :)
        
           | LarryMullins wrote:
           | In my family we swap around portable hard drives loaded up
           | with movies. Mostly orchestrated by my aunt who started the
           | tradition. Before then, it was burned DVDs and before then it
           | was copied VHS tapes. When I was a kid my mother showed me
           | how to circumvent copy protection on VHS by connecting a VCR
           | to a VHS camcorder, although I forget which was doing the
           | playback and which was doing the recording. It was a neat way
           | to circumvent macrovision though.
        
         | Scoundreller wrote:
         | I need some automated streaming-service ripper that will burn
         | DVDs whenever I pop in a blank disk. And maybe generate nice
         | sticker label PDFs from some intermediate scene with the title.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | derefr wrote:
           | Consider instead: a Plex library backed by a "disk drive"
           | that's actually a DVD/Blu-Ray jukebox. You can fish the disks
           | out if you really want, but most of the time they're just
           | "online" as part of your library. Buy a new one? Feed it to
           | the jukebox. Ideally, rip one "into the library" and the
           | jukebox will consume a blank disk to burn it, then file it.
           | 
           | (AFAIK, this last bit is how Amazon Glacier works--just with
           | some online disk drives in between to buffer content up into
           | Blu-Ray-sized chunks.)
        
             | bradknowles wrote:
             | I'd be real surprised if it was anything beyond tape
             | drives, plus a local cache. Check out the storage capacity
             | on the latest LTO tapes, and the tape storage capacities of
             | the large room-size tape robots.
        
         | comprev wrote:
         | One added bonus of having a limited selection to pick from was
         | the quicker decision making time.
         | 
         | With thousands of options via streaming services some of us
         | become paralysed by choice!
        
           | lotsofpulp wrote:
           | I keep a list of media that I have heard enough good things
           | about in my notes to prevent this.
        
             | jamiek88 wrote:
             | great idea!
             | 
             | I think I'll make a reminder list so I can just get siri to
             | add them as I hear about them.
             | 
             | I have a terrible memory but a large ego that doesn't let
             | me admit it so I often forget about recommendations.
        
       | ThrowawayTestr wrote:
       | In a similar vein, once you pirate something you also own it
       | forever. Netflix is never gonna delete Bojack Horseman off my
       | hard drive.
        
         | Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
         | You say 'never' but I see the capacity for companies to
         | remotely delete things on users drives that _feel like_ may be
         | in copyright violation as a foregone conclusion at this point.
         | It is an inevitability. Since both TVs and computers are
         | usually internet enabled, you 'd have to super careful to never
         | expose that drive to the net. I mean who is going to stop them?
         | Lawmakers? chuckle-snort. The supreme court? giggle.
        
           | thatguy0900 wrote:
           | You would either download the content encrypted or use Linux,
           | I suppose.
        
           | derwiki wrote:
           | How is Netflix getting root on my box?
        
             | dylan604 wrote:
             | You'll give it to them when click the Accept button
        
         | sdflhasjd wrote:
         | In 2035, your hard drive will have firmware with built-in CSAM
         | filtering, which - after a legal battle in the high court -
         | will get hijacked for copyright enforcement.
        
           | Karsteski wrote:
           | Guess I'll be relegated to living in a cabin in the woods if
           | we ever get to that point...
        
             | EvanAnderson wrote:
             | That's eerie. I say almost exactly the same thing. I don't
             | know if I feel fortunate to have lived thru the period of
             | people having access to personal computers that they
             | actually owned or sad because I will know the pain of
             | having had it.
        
               | Karsteski wrote:
               | Yea I feel that. I honestly think that the only reason my
               | goals aren't to just buy a piece of land in rural Canada
               | and live life in peace is because it's not the lifestyle
               | my girlfriend wants. That being said, we still want rural
               | living, just not as extreme as I sometimes dream about
        
             | BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
             | >" I'll be relegated to living in a cabin in the woods"
             | 
             | Welcome to my Ted Talk...
        
             | meindnoch wrote:
             | ...and will pick up the hobby of making ingenous mail
             | bombs?
        
               | Karsteski wrote:
               | Probably not, although I did used to be a chemist...
        
           | Sholmesy wrote:
           | If you have the physical hardware, there will be people able
           | to produce their own firmware that disables built in
           | filtering, or at least, disables the internet connecting that
           | reports said filtering. You'll have a server that is
           | disconnected from the internet with all your DRM free
           | content.
           | 
           | They would have to outlaw personal computing, and not allow
           | you to build your own servers with no firmware-enforced
           | filtering, which given the current direction, is not
           | particularly farfetched, but at that point battle is lost
           | anyway and your DVD rips are the least of your problems.
        
             | EvanAnderson wrote:
             | RoHS and lead-free solder insures that the relatively open
             | hardware we have today won't function in the future, post-
             | personal computing being outlawed. I don't think it's a
             | vast conspiracy, but rather a happy accident.
        
         | kvetching wrote:
         | But a strong solar flare might.
        
           | saghm wrote:
           | That's the other benefit of offline backups; you can have as
           | many as you want. If a solar flare wipes out every hard drive
           | I own simultaneously, I think I might have bigger problems
           | than a lack of TV shows to watch.
        
             | reureu wrote:
             | Quick plug for "Mr. Burns: a Post-Electric play", where an
             | event wipes out the electric grid and people start trying
             | to recreate an old Simpsons episode.
             | 
             | There are multiple productions on YouTube, such as:
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuL7EbjFBBw
             | 
             | Description on wikipedia:
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Burns,_a_Post-
             | Electric_Pla...
        
         | Freak_NL wrote:
         | That sounds like the onset of a Cory Doctorow story. Armed
         | autonomous Netflix' bots bearing down on your residence to
         | physically delete your Bojack Horseman copies -- all legalities
         | taken care of by the newly amended copyright protection laws.
        
           | 082349872349872 wrote:
           | The sequel to Fahrenheit 451: Oersted 5000.
        
       | jedberg wrote:
       | This is silly. Just rip them and give them away. You'll spend
       | less on mirrored hard drives than storage for the disks. And you
       | can always BitTorrent movies you already own on DVD/BluRay guilt
       | free.
       | 
       | The only reason I still have my stack of disks is because I
       | haven't had time to rip them and their special features yet. That
       | and we keep the disks for kids movies because the van doesn't
       | have streaming support or AppleTV yet. :)
        
         | agiacalone wrote:
         | Ripped all my DVDs in 2010, donated them, and haven't looked
         | back. Nowadays with Plex, I see no reason to ever use physical
         | media again
        
       | npteljes wrote:
       | A hard drive with movie rips goes much further than a bunch of
       | disks. Copies don't have the adverts, unskippable anti-piracy
       | bullshit, or region locking. And letting go, and adapting to new
       | media goes even further.
       | 
       | On the other hand, when I look something up from my past, I'm
       | always thankful for the random archivist who still has a copy.
        
       | claviska wrote:
       | Years ago, I stupidly got rid of my entire South Park DVD
       | collection because they were on Netflix. Until they eventually
       | weren't. Chris was right.
        
       | friend_and_foe wrote:
       | If you want to save physical space, you can rip them all and
       | store them on a drive that's smaller then the DVD player you use
       | to play your DVDs. That's what I do.
        
         | mrweasel wrote:
         | The DVDs actually doesn't take up a ton of space. What we did
         | was buying the cheapest version of a movie and just throw away
         | the cover. You can get DVD/BluRay binders that will hold 200 -
         | 400 discs in the space of a few large books.
         | 
         | I find ripping movies a little tiresome. Getting the quality,
         | sound and subtitles right can be challenging.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | sublinear wrote:
       | > I still don't actually use our DVDs and Blu-rays all that
       | often. But every time I see them lining the shelves, I feel a bit
       | of comfort. Because when I do need them, they'll be there.
       | 
       | Hey how about you just stop watching junk and live your life?
       | 
       | I'm absolutely making a lifestyle judgment here. Hoarding can
       | become a serious problem.
        
         | BirAdam wrote:
         | Humans used to gather around fires and listen story tellers at
         | night. Now we gather around our glowing screens to watch
         | stories unfold. You can take humans out of the woods and plains
         | and put them in houses, but we don't actually change much. It
         | ain't hoarding. It's keeping stories around.
        
         | humanistbot wrote:
         | Are you also the kind of person who won't stop calling all
         | sports "sportsball" when they come up in a conversation?
        
           | AnimalMuppet wrote:
           | Do you have an actual point? If so, maybe you could state it,
           | because this sounds like 1) speculation, 2) completely
           | unrelated, and 3) gratuitously insulting.
        
           | skcusgnad wrote:
           | [dead]
        
         | skcusgnad wrote:
         | [dead]
        
         | InCityDreams wrote:
         | I've been hoarding every bit of music I've composed since the
         | eighties. What advice would you give, before it becomes a
         | serious problem? I'd also like to ask: how old is the oldest
         | thing you own? And, additionally, what are the two oldest
         | things you own? At what point does having more than one of
         | something become hoarding?
        
           | AnimalMuppet wrote:
           | Keeping _your own work_ is completely different from keeping
           | everything you 've ever watched on Netflix.
           | 
           | Michael W. Smith tells about being in the studio, and not
           | being able to get something to sound right. He went back to
           | listen to an old work tape, and realized "OK, nobody should
           | be playing but the piano. That's what's wrong right now in
           | the studio." If that's what you do, keep it all, even the "in
           | process" stuff.
           | 
           | But as I said, stuff you _watched_ is different from stuff
           | you _made_.
        
       | a13o wrote:
       | I did a physical media purge a few years back, and kept just a
       | drawer-ful of my absolute favorites. This past Christmas I
       | thought I'd watch one of them - but then I realized I don't even
       | own a DVD player. I don't think I ever did. Some game console
       | would play it, or my PC. But now the PC has no 5.25" bays, and
       | the game consoles are all-digital.
       | 
       | My conclusion is not that the author's husband is right. But
       | rather that I should get rid of these remaining DVDs. I've never
       | thought much about digital nomadism, but I suppose I practice it.
       | There's always something new to watch.
        
       | taeric wrote:
       | I'm somewhat sympathetic to this, but media is a ridiculous money
       | pit for folks. Don't get me wrong, I've done it. And I'll
       | probably continue to buy some physical media for a while. But I
       | have a hard time justifying the cost of giant personal libraries.
       | They are almost certainly destined for a landfill after an estate
       | sell.
        
       | marmetio wrote:
       | I put all my old disks in sleeves or stacked on spindles,
       | organized alphabetically. They take up almost no space and it's
       | practical enough for infrequent use.
        
       | adamgordonbell wrote:
       | We just got a DVD player again, because my wife wanted to watch
       | 'The Wonder Years' and because of all the music in it (which is
       | great, btw) my understanding is it can't stream anywhere anymore.
       | 
       | (Or that is the theory I heard why no one is streaming it.)
       | 
       | Other shows got redone with other music so they could release it,
       | but music is pretty heavily used in the wonder years.
        
         | chriscjcj wrote:
         | > Other shows got redone with other music so they could release
         | it
         | 
         | WKRP in Cincinnati is another example. I don't know if they
         | still exist, but there used to be torrents of VHS rips of WKRP
         | so that it could be viewed with the original music.
        
       | efficax wrote:
       | although i love the cinema and watch a lot of tv, i'm kind of
       | indifferent to the problem of streaming content disappearing.
       | before streaming content i watched a lot less and read a lot
       | more, and i think i was better for it. so if they took it all
       | away and made it harder to find it might be to my benefit
        
       | causality0 wrote:
       | In my opinion the true advantage of discs is all the extra
       | content. Sure, I can download or stream a copy of any movie I
       | want but it's pretty damned hard to get it with the commentary
       | track without buying a disc.
        
       | christkv wrote:
       | I've started browsing second hand blue rays and picking up some
       | every week. Lots of special editions and other extra material you
       | don't get on streaming and tons of movies I can not even find on
       | either Netflix, HBO or Prime.
        
       | photochemsyn wrote:
       | One real danger of putting all historical video media on
       | streaming sites is that it makes it far too easy to introduce an
       | Orwellian Ministry of Truth that is empowered to rewrite the past
       | to make it conform to today's acceptable social norms, academic
       | ideologies, government agendas and so on.
       | 
       | For example, one could make the argument that Alfred Hitchcock's
       | entire library promotes negative stereotypes of women - and it's
       | true, women in Hitchcock films are not the strong types, they're
       | more often helpless victims who have to be rescued by male
       | characters. This clearly, one could say, promotes negative female
       | stereotypes which are damaging to young women so all those movies
       | should be removed from streaming services.
       | 
       | One could continue in this manner, selectively pulling anime
       | movies because they promote excessive violence and sexuality to a
       | teenage audience, or war movies like Apocalypse Now and Dr
       | Strangelove that portray military generals as clueless maniacs,
       | or if the pendulum swings back to the social conservative end,
       | pulling all horror movies that don't portray Christianity in a
       | positive light or have too many Satanic themes, and on and on.
       | 
       | Keeping hard copies in your personal possession is one way around
       | this, but since the copyrights and hence distribution rights are
       | held by these conglomerates that don't want to get in trouble
       | with some political group or other by making them available,
       | nobody else can view them without going through pirate sites - a
       | very unfortunate situation.
        
         | culi wrote:
         | Or you can torrent them...
         | 
         | One person's collection serves that one person, but there are
         | some really cool groups out there like DocuWiki[0] that try to
         | archive every documentary out there and serve them on the
         | eDonkey network. There's been numerous times I've failed to
         | find a documentary by even the original publisher. Like I
         | literally couldn't give them my money no matter how much I
         | tried. And even libraries didn't have it. But good old DocuWiki
         | always had my back
         | 
         | Torrents are kind of like a community archive
         | 
         | [0] https://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=Special:Newpages
        
           | lrvick wrote:
           | Who knew dirty pirates would become the worlds archivists of
           | culture.
        
         | jimbob45 wrote:
         | https://medium.com/everything-80s/why-are-streaming-services...
         | 
         | They already do this frequently. 4chan has been tracking it for
         | ages now.
        
           | enriquto wrote:
           | Heh. This is like medieval illuminators who painted fig
           | leaves over the nude drawings made by their predecessors.
        
             | readthenotes1 wrote:
             | Or the prudes went around whacking the Johnsons off all the
             | statues
        
               | klyrs wrote:
               | Always gotta ask, is that prudish or kinky?
        
               | qbrass wrote:
               | 1 in 3 think it's prudish, 1 in 5 think it's kinky, and 1
               | in 15 think it's kinky when prudish people do it.
        
           | snickerbockers wrote:
           | Netflix actually removed a segment from an early 90s bill Nye
           | episode because it said there are two genders.
        
             | neuronic wrote:
             | This seems weird. No one disagrees that there are 2
             | biological (genetic) genders. Gender identity is something
             | entirely else that is being actively researched.
             | 
             | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6677266/
        
               | fear_and_coffee wrote:
               | [dead]
        
               | LawTalkingGuy wrote:
               | The United States Assistant Secretary for Health, who is
               | male, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Levine is
               | listed as female on Wikipedia and participates in White
               | House panels on women's health, as a woman. Levine
               | participated in the panel with Dylan Mulvaney, another
               | male, who talks about using Tampons now that they've got
               | a "girl's body".
               | 
               | They're pretty clear about the message, and this is
               | literally at the highest level.
               | 
               | At a lower level, the school board and nursing union in
               | my area both say that children can be born in the wrong
               | bodies and may need medical adjustment to be comfortable
               | "as themselves". That sounds a lot like saying that their
               | sex is wrong, not their identity.
               | 
               | Here is a link about current medical school practice:
               | https://www.plebity.org/article/gender-ideology-is-
               | wreaking-...
               | 
               | Flagged for posting truth. Obviously you people aren't
               | fathers and do not care one fucking iota about women.
        
               | chownie wrote:
               | This is a pretty disingenuous take isn't it? Dylan
               | Mulvaney carries tampons as a service to others who might
               | need them because she was once asked for one in a
               | bathroom.
        
               | LawTalkingGuy wrote:
               | No, because while Dylan sometimes says that, the rest of
               | the time they talk about the miraculous changes to their
               | body, etc, and participate in _female sexual health_
               | panels. They 're trying to have it both ways as
               | convenient.
               | 
               | If you feel that this is incorrect, go to Wiki and try to
               | edit Rachel Levine's entry to remove the word female and
               | you can personally see how the community views this.
        
               | Godel_unicode wrote:
               | This is incorrect. According to NIH there is no such
               | thing as "biological (genetic) gender". You're thinking
               | of biological sex.
               | 
               | https://orwh.od.nih.gov/sex-gender
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | schroeding wrote:
               | In many languages, like German (which may be GPs native
               | language), those two things share the same exact word,
               | requiring modifier words like "biological" to
               | differentiate between the two, making everything a bit
               | confusing when crossing the language barrier.
        
               | pcthrowaway wrote:
               | Even that's not really cut-and-dry. I don't normally like
               | linking to twitter, but this thread is amazing
               | (scientific) content: https://twitter.com/rebeccarhelm/st
               | atus/1207834357639139328?...
        
               | Godel_unicode wrote:
               | Totally agree, I was responding to the twin assertions
               | that gender is based in genetics and that there only
               | being two is widely accepted.
        
               | fullmoon wrote:
               | It appears that way, but skirts around the gametic model
               | of discerning biological sex that is the golden standard
               | for other species, while elevating the status of
               | chromosomal defects.
               | 
               | It's a good example how selective presentation of
               | scientific realities can be abused to mislead.
               | 
               | Chromosomal defects in a binary system don't constitute a
               | new or between-state, and it also isn't commonly
               | described that way: XXY (Kleinfeltner) affecting males is
               | the mainstream position.
        
               | shuntress wrote:
               | You are incorrect in two ways. First, you are conflating
               | sex and gender. Second, sex is a bimodal distribution
               | rather than a fixed binary.
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex
        
               | fullmoon wrote:
               | Intersex is about characteristics, not biological sex.
        
               | arockwell wrote:
               | It really isn't quite that simple. There are Intersex
               | people who have ambiguous genitalia and there are several
               | viable chromosome combos besides XX and XY.
        
               | DoneWithAllThat wrote:
               | [flagged]
        
               | shrimp_emoji wrote:
               | Stop what?
               | 
               | Using accurate information? Not ignoring the complexities
               | of the world?
               | 
               | That comment is absolutely correct; to make things more
               | confusing, people whose sex appears female can turn out
               | to have XY allosomes in some, or all[0], of their cells.
               | 
               | 0: https://www.invitra.com/en/morris-syndrome/
        
               | fullmoon wrote:
               | As the article you've linked states this syndrome affects
               | males, makes them resistant to androgens, so they have an
               | appearance of females.
               | 
               | It doesn't state anywhere that the patients are either
               | female or belong to a novel category.
        
               | evandale wrote:
               | From your own link Morris syndrome affects males. In
               | fact, the presence of a Y chromosome by definition means
               | the person is of male sex and it really is as simple as
               | that. One's appearance has no effect on their sex.
        
               | fullmoon wrote:
               | In sexually dimorphic mammalian species sex is most
               | commonly by the ability to produce either the small or
               | big gametes, not chromosomes.
               | 
               | In humans syndromes that lead to ambiguous ("intersex")
               | presentation and/or chromosomes are still operating in a
               | binary system, eh Klinefelter affects boys.
               | 
               | The same is true for (very) rare hermaphroditism: in this
               | case both gametes could in theory be produced, in
               | practice though individuals are sterile.
        
               | yucky wrote:
               | Those are birth defects though. For instance, we still
               | understand humans as being bipedal despite anomalies that
               | prevent a tiny fraction of humans from being bipedal.
        
               | inetknght wrote:
               | `XXY` is a valid combination of sex chromosomes. The
               | person has two `X` chromosomes so is female. The person
               | also has one `Y` chromosome so is male. Which sex is the
               | person? Is it a birth defect?
        
               | evandale wrote:
               | XXY is Klinefelter syndrome. By definition it's a
               | condition where boys and men are born with an extra X
               | chromosome. Their sex is male because, also by
               | definition, the presence of a Y chromosome means male.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | fullmoon wrote:
               | The term "birth defect" fell out of use because of its
               | stigmatizing word construction.
               | 
               | Chromosomal abnormalities would be the modern term, it
               | applies to both sexual as well as other chromosomal
               | abnormalities like Down.
               | 
               | But to answer the question as asked: Yes, it fulfills the
               | definition of the older term.
        
         | shuntress wrote:
         | It's more nuanced than you are presenting here. The obvious
         | middle ground is the use of "Poison Cabinets" where certain
         | works are deliberately and explicitly separated from their
         | contemporaries with obvious labels explaining that they express
         | ideas or opinions known now to be harmful. This way they are
         | not lost or erased but also not treated as if they are
         | perfectly normal and acceptable.
         | 
         | For another thing, there is also at least some element here of
         | the right to be forgotten. It's obviously different for groups
         | vs individuals but our systems should allow some amount of
         | agency to people who regret things they have produced in the
         | past and wish for them to be forgotten.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | eggy wrote:
         | Sort of like the anniversary edition of ET where Spielberg
         | replaced the guns with walkie talkies, and other digital edits.
         | Ironically he was criticized for too much smoking in the West
         | Side Story remake. And sometimes a film I want is nowhere to be
         | found, even a mainstream, older hit. I keep a few boxes of DVDs
         | to make sure I can show them to the people stuck in the Matrix
         | in the future!
        
           | 56friends wrote:
           | This fact always reminds me of that funny video cut of
           | Stallone where his machine gun is edited out so it looks like
           | he is thumbs up-ing relentlessly.
        
           | cgh wrote:
           | The lack of smoking is something to ponder. It's always so
           | glaring to me when TV shows that take place in the '80s and
           | '90s show almost no one smoking, when in fact if you went
           | into any public place, probably 30-50% (or more, if it's eg a
           | pub) would be smoking, including in people's homes, offices
           | and so forth. I wonder if the huge and realistic amounts of
           | smoking seen in shows like Mad Men will be edited out one
           | day.
        
             | zeroonetwothree wrote:
             | Growing up in CA in the 90s I didn't see that much smoking.
             | It was even banned in 1998, which means probably it wasn't
             | that popular by then.
        
             | nhtsamera wrote:
             | Rail travel is one of the last places that you still see
             | this in the US.
             | 
             | I took a cross-country Amtrak trip right before the
             | pandemic, and most of the conductor's announcements were
             | just to tell us when the next smoke break would be.
             | 
             | When the train got stuck waiting for cross traffic at a
             | freight yard in rural North Dakota, an incipient passenger
             | mutiny forced them to break the rules and let everyone pop
             | out for some light trespassing and nicotine consumption.
             | 
             | It felt strange in a similar, but opposite way to what
             | you're describing.
        
             | eggy wrote:
             | I grew up when there was a smoking section on the plane
             | (BTW, why do modern aircraft still have ashtrays? Are there
             | any airlines that allow smoking?). I miss All in the
             | Family. Is it even available anymore?
        
               | 542458 wrote:
               | The ashtray is actually _mandatory_ even in new planes
               | per FAA rules.
               | 
               | Modern aircraft still have ashtrays in the washrooms
               | because they'd much prefer that somebody choosing to
               | sneak a smoke puts their cigarette somewhere other than
               | the washroom trash bin where there's a history of them
               | starting fires.
        
         | naveen99 wrote:
         | Maybe limit the actual truth to the top 1-5% , and leave the
         | masses to the sanitized version of history... which is
         | basically the status quo in the west with mainstream media /
         | Hollywood, and CCP in the east with China.
        
         | iambateman wrote:
         | This is like keeping a shotgun in your house to protect against
         | the government. If the government is ready to conduct
         | systematic disinformation campaigns, your DVD's probably won't
         | help.
        
           | 15155 wrote:
           | How did Vietnam and Afghanistan fare against "the
           | government?"
        
             | garbagecoder wrote:
             | Better than the Confederacy my cherry picking cliche
             | replyguy.
        
               | harvey9 wrote:
               | Can someone clarify this chain for me? Keeping a gun to
               | defend your home against the government is probably
               | futile because the government always has more weapons and
               | more fighters than you.
               | 
               | The other three cases were all wars - an apples to
               | oranges comparison.
        
               | maxwell wrote:
               | You think members of the U.S. military would side with
               | the government and execute orders against American
               | citizens on American soil?
        
               | lrvick wrote:
               | They are trained to do anything they are told. Anything.
               | 
               | Remember the Chinese military had no problem mowing down
               | protestors if their bosses give the order.
               | 
               | That said, it is easier and safer to defend yourself from
               | a government in modern society with information and free
               | uncensored communication than with guns.
        
         | still_grokking wrote:
         | > One real danger of putting all historical video media on
         | streaming sites is that it makes it far too easy to introduce
         | an Orwellian Ministry of Truth that is empowered to rewrite the
         | past to make it conform to today's acceptable social norms,
         | academic ideologies, government agendas and so on.
         | 
         | I see such rewriting of the past, or at least attempts of that,
         | on Wikipedia. It's not really hidden as there is a (hopefully!)
         | integer edit history, but who reads the edit history anyway?
         | Usually you just look at articles as they are at the current
         | moment.
         | 
         | As we don't have much "hard copies" of a lot of stuff any more
         | around the possibility to "rewrite the past" for significant
         | amounts of people becomes a real thread as we rely more and
         | more on digital and purely online data.
         | 
         | Given how "durable" our digital data is future historians will
         | have a very hard time. Maybe our time will become a dark age
         | when seen form the future. Have you tried lately to open some
         | files from the 80'es that reside on some storage medium form
         | that time? And that's only a few years in the past. Imagine 500
         | yeas in the future. What will be left of all the cat videos on
         | YouTube (and maybe some more important data)?
        
           | veltas wrote:
           | >but who reads the edit history anyway?
           | 
           | Every time I look at a controversial article, and I'm
           | unconvinced by the implicit narratives, I will look at the
           | history, and more often than not there are interesting
           | details lurking in the past versions.
           | 
           | And sometimes it's just fascinating looking at how details on
           | a situation unrolled over time. Like for instance, go look at
           | Jeffrey Epstein's Wikipedia history: there was an article on
           | him preceding the publicity of his abuse.
           | 
           | I am under the impression right now that Wikipedia history is
           | quite permanent unless an article is totally deleted, and
           | that people do not prune the history of content they wish to
           | censor. I hope it remains this way, cynically I don't think
           | this will always be so, prove me wrong Wikipedia!
        
           | expensive_news wrote:
           | Could you give some examples of a page on Wikipedia being
           | rewritten? I'm familiar with the incident of redefining what
           | a 'recession' is but I'm always curious for more examples.
        
         | zdw wrote:
         | There are already incidences of this:
         | 
         | The TV show Community is missing an episode on Netflix for some
         | reason (edit: reason was Ken Jeong in what could be interpreted
         | as blackface).
         | 
         | The IT Crowd is missing one in some geos because it was
         | considered anti-Trans by some - that episode also has the
         | unrelated and hilarious plot where Roy and Moss convince Jen
         | that they're loaning her a "black box that holds the entire
         | internet".
        
           | at_a_remove wrote:
           | Mustn't forget tidying up the wrist-slitting in 13 Reasons
           | Why.
        
             | klyrs wrote:
             | Nor should we forget the social contagion risk of suicide
             | 
             | > After the series' release, a study published in the
             | Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent
             | Psychiatry found that suicide among teenagers rose by 28.9%
             | in the month after Netflix launched the show.
        
               | rajin444 wrote:
               | Nor should we forget to beware the man of one study.
        
               | Sinidir wrote:
               | The Werther Effect is thoroughly studied effect. There
               | are plenty of studies on the issue.
        
               | klyrs wrote:
               | Who's the "man" in this case? Not me. Not a man, and I
               | see that study as a single data point associated with a
               | single event. There are _many_ studies on the social
               | contagion effect of suicide, enough that it 's worth
               | considering the possible impact of how suicide is
               | depicted in media.
        
               | ac29 wrote:
               | While 28.9% sounds like a shocking number, it was only a
               | few dozen additional deaths.
               | 
               | A few additional concerns with the paper:
               | 
               | -The authors made no effort to try and determine if any
               | of the people who died had seen the show, or even had
               | heard of it.
               | 
               | -Suicides were up the month _before_ the show was
               | released as well.
               | 
               | -In fact, suicides in that age group had been trending up
               | for years according to their data, which is not mentioned
               | in the discussion of results at all.
        
           | garbagecoder wrote:
           | That's not an instance of the Ministry of Truth. My brother
           | in Christ, that's a corporation doing that.
        
             | Spooky23 wrote:
             | It's worse than a government censorship org, because it's
             | all backroom pressure. It enables right-wing idiots to
             | invent conspiracy.
             | 
             | 60s cartoons are contraband. Stupid.
        
           | cbm-vic-20 wrote:
           | If a streaming service is concerned about this, instead of
           | dissappearing an episode, they could put a disclaimer slide
           | at the beginning: "<Streaming Service> does not approve of
           | the views made within this episode. Click <here> to skip to
           | the next episode."
        
           | zikduruqe wrote:
           | Or the SpongeBob SquarePants "Panty Raid" episode.
        
             | gjsman-1000 wrote:
             | There are some episodes like that where... like, I am
             | against censorship in general especially considering the
             | state of our world right now, but it is still weird to me
             | that a cadre of writers thought that would be a good idea
             | to make - and network executives agreed!
        
           | klipklop wrote:
           | I bought a copy of 'Tropic Thunder' for exactly this reason.
           | One day it will be pulled from all streaming platforms due to
           | RDJ playing a black man.
        
             | yellow_lead wrote:
             | There really isn't another movie like tropic thunder Imo
        
             | Gemoto wrote:
             | I mean it's tropic thunder. What would be really lost here?
        
               | mdp2021 wrote:
               | Some academicians insist in seeing Art even in "popular"
               | works. But also beside that, well, you would lose a
               | popular work - if somebody did it, they probably "put
               | something in it".
        
           | TheCondor wrote:
           | That episode of Community also explicitly referred to the
           | black face as a "hate crime." I don't think it's so much a
           | matter of interpretation as that was the direct gag they were
           | going for.
           | 
           | Do we know who actually pulled the content? Netflix clearly
           | doesn't have a policy against streaming partial amount of
           | content when they can't get it all from a provider but it's
           | not clear to me if Netflix pulled a single episode of
           | Community or if the licensers maybe refused to license that
           | episode. I think I read that Sony was supportive of the
           | episode being pulled.
           | 
           | I think most of this content will come back once the industry
           | as a whole sort of figures out the positioning. There are
           | something the creators are embarrassed by and it might never
           | come back but I expect there to be a new rating or something
           | similar (Disney+ does this already) where they'll indicate
           | before the media plays that it may be offensive or
           | insensitive. News shows do this when covering certain types
           | of crimes.
        
           | kingforaday wrote:
           | I wonder if the reverse is true. Anyone remember the Wayans
           | Bros. Movie "White Chicks"?
        
             | maxwell wrote:
             | https://www.bet.com/article/hk8s72/shawn-wayans-on-people-
             | wh...
        
               | ethbr0 wrote:
               | My overriding memory of Shawn and Marlon Wayans will
               | always be an MTV Movie Awards (or some such) from the
               | 90s, where they were hosting.
               | 
               | Some smart-ass comic gets up on the stage and leads with
               | "I always said you were the two talented ones in the
               | family."
               | 
               | Ouch. And double-ouch at the big laugh it got from the
               | audience.
        
             | dehrmann wrote:
             | How can you forget the bit with Terry Crews singing
             | Thousand Miles?
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | selimthegrim wrote:
           | Frank Zappa's albums had one particular song removed from
           | their track list on Google's search results.
        
           | TMWNN wrote:
           | I've heard that the official clips of _Saturday Night Live_
           | on YouTube are routinely posted with edits in which
           | significant chunks are excised for  "problematic" jokes,
           | without any notice.
        
           | kawsper wrote:
           | The story about the pulled IT Crowd episode is covered here:
           | https://screenrant.com/it-crowd-controversy-graham-
           | linehan-a...
        
             | mdp2021 wrote:
             | With a very heavy perspective. Among the recurrent signs,
             | the following suffices:
             | 
             | > _inviting laughter and derision toward the... community_
             | 
             | No. Just finding an occasion for the selected direction in
             | creativity. Which the writer of the article seems to want
             | to make ideological, with the exception of one use of the
             | expression "<<cheap laugh>>" (which, for that matter, may
             | bring attention to the other "celebrated" subplot of "the
             | elders of the Internet" - using the same perspective, it
             | would be as if "making cheap laughs through a sort of
             | "ableism"").
        
               | pxc wrote:
               | Nah dude. I recently re-watched the whole show, and while
               | I liked certain parts of it... it's a very transphobic
               | show. And it's not just that episode; that episode gets
               | callbacks in future episodes all the time.
               | 
               | It's a mean spirited gag, and the mere fact of being
               | transgender is the punch line, over and over. It sucks.
               | It makes revisiting the show more cringey and less fun.
        
               | mdp2021 wrote:
               | Since you raised your doubts, I just re-watched it -
               | series 3, episode 4. And I confirm the view.
               | 
               | The whole episode is about the clumsiness of living,
               | consistently with the project idea ("the IT crowd",
               | outcast specialists with little interface to the public,
               | which is a mass of people thrown into some role "<<not
               | doing much work but constantly having affairs>>" -
               | confused humans -, with a link which is the portrait of
               | incompetence trying to make a living - trying to live -
               | into something she does not understand). All the
               | characters do is "attempting", trying to fit a role. The
               | difficulties of living roles could be a trigger for the
               | development of the substory involving Douglas Reynholm
               | and April (and the gender instrumental to that). The
               | whole idea climaxes in the "collapse of civilization"
               | when the "stakeholders", as "topmost layer of the role-
               | players", are in front of the catastrophic loss of the
               | Internet, and the "punchline from above" is that of Moss:
               | <<It really isn't that funny>> - of course, because it is
               | tragic.
               | 
               | While I could see that the "It's over" scene could be to
               | some extent insensitive, given that the writers may have
               | supposed that it would be something lived by a number in
               | such group, it was instrumental to the fight scene, which
               | is a consolidated topos. And the "victory" seems to be on
               | the other side, since the "punchline from inside" is that
               | of Douglas, which ends the episode crying, going "It's
               | not the same!" (It's not the same without her, or him -
               | as she was both the "other half" and the "pal"). So, not
               | only I do not see a phobia, but on the contrary, I see
               | the opposite message, towards seeing people for what they
               | are, and to love that whatever they are (also since the
               | premise of the whole is, as said, that they will be
               | confused imperfect players) - Douglas could not and he is
               | alone crying.
        
           | anigbrowl wrote:
           | _The IT Crowd is missing one in some geos because it was
           | considered anti-Trans by some_
           | 
           | I have a lot of mixed feelings about this one; though I don't
           | think the ep should be removed, it is in poor taste and
           | arguably defeats its own comic intentions. I suspect the
           | deeper objection is not to the content _per se_ but how it
           | reads in the context of Graham Linehan subsequently aligning
           | himself as a massive transphobe and making it into a
           | political cause.
           | 
           | I don't know Linehan personally, but grew up near him and
           | followed his career since long before he went into
           | television, when he was writing film and TV reviews in an
           | alt-weekly paper for beer money. He has always been a comic
           | genius, able to turn excruciating social pain into hilarious
           | farce, while also being willing to cheer on success. I
           | remember he once opened a movie review for a film called _Eat
           | the Peach_ with  'At last, an Irish movie that does not make
           | me want to run to the toilets and lick all four walls.'
           | 
           | That kind of self-criticality and emotional nakedness has
           | deep roots in the Irish identity, and it is what makes Roy,
           | an Irish man working for an incomprehensible and irrational
           | corporation in London, such a compelling character. I find
           | the show especially entertaining because I've been that
           | person, doing that exact job, working for those kind of
           | companies in London, often under bosses like Jen or
           | Denholm/Douglas Reynholm. Linehan's character portraits, even
           | for a single episode or scene, are incredibly sharp and
           | truthful. In _The Work Outing_ , where Roy and Moss
           | unwillingly accompany Jen to the theater, there's a scene
           | where Jerome, an extroverted PR guy, is introduced to Roy &
           | Moss. No sooner has Roy diffidently said hello than Jerome
           | exclaims 'Oh my god you're _Irish!_ I _love_ Irish people!
           | They 're all mad aren't they! They're just _mad!_ ' and the
           | exchange spirals downward into cringe. The whole episode is a
           | comic masterpiece, but this brief scene has a special place
           | in my heart as I've had that conversation _hundreds_ of times
           | in my life.
           | 
           | In this scene but also in general, the engine of comedy is
           | the mismatch between characters who are quirky and self-
           | conscious (like Roy and Jen) and those who are quirky but
           | oblivious (like Moss, Douglas Reynholm, and here, Jerome).
           | When characters go against their 'natural' type they get
           | punished in hilarious ways, by being stuck with the baggage
           | of their transgression which then multiplies itself
           | exponentially. The plot frame for this episode is that Jen
           | tries to be oblivious in pursuit of a date with another
           | oblivious-seeming person, who turns out to be even more
           | painfully self-aware than she is. As in all restorative
           | comedies, the characters who transgress end up feeling worse
           | but wiser, nothing really bad happens, and everything returns
           | to normal.
           | 
           | In _The Speech_ (the  'banned' episode), hopelessly
           | insensitive CEO Douglas Reynholm meets an attractive lady
           | journalist, April, and romance blossoms. Despite her repeated
           | advisories that she used to be a man, Douglas thinks he's
           | found the perfect woman who not just tolerates but admires
           | and enjoys his shallow hyper-masculinity, sharing and even
           | exceeding his love of bad action movies, heavy drinking, and
           | competitive sports. But gradually reality gets through even
           | his dense skull and he ends the relationship - briefly taking
           | responsibility for the situation, before reverting to type
           | and deflecting blame back onto April. Mutual recriminations
           | quickly escalate into a fist fight straight out of a bad
           | action movie, with Douglas wins - thereby regaining his
           | 'boss' status - by knocking April out. He is subsequently
           | shown as being vilified in the press and sobbing over the
           | loss of his erstwhile companion, with whom he was actually
           | compatible.
           | 
           | (Roy, Moss, and Jen are relegated to the less-important plot
           | frame story in this episode, which sets up but is peripheral
           | to the emotional conflict of the main story. In dramatic and
           | thriller forms, the emotional conflict sets up but is
           | peripheral to the main plot action; _John Wick_ is the purest
           | distillation of this.)
           | 
           |  _The Speech_ breaks two comedy rules in that the climactic
           | suffering is not just emotional but physical, and something
           | really bad does happen (the knockout). While it 's implied
           | that April recovers (going on to write a negative magazine
           | article about Douglas) and Douglas actually feels bad, the
           | comedically awkward social conflict of incongruous gender
           | expectations crosses a line into physical violence which
           | writers normally avoid. The violence is also intense; while
           | this is meant to parody the bad action movies both Douglas
           | and April enjoy, most comedy violence involves characters
           | either flailing around, missing their punches, and blundering
           | into the furniture or escalating quickly to absurd extremes
           | like explosions or natural disasters. Though there are
           | multiple comic touches in the fight scene, it's choreographed
           | as a conventional aggressive fistfight, with a lot of punches
           | to the head in both directions.
           | 
           | This was a bit too close to reality for a lot of people,
           | because transgender women _do_ suffer a disproportionate
           | amount of physical violence up to and including murder, and
           | this often takes place in the context of relationships.
           | Perpetrators often defend themselves in court by insisting
           | that they were deceived by a transgender romantic or sexual
           | partner and acted violently out of fear and panic, which many
           | find wildly implausible. Complaints gradually mounted over a
           | 12 year period and in 2020 the UK broadcaster of the show
           | announced they were dropping the episode from reruns.
           | 
           | Graham Linehan, who wrote and directed the episode, reacted
           | badly, announced he was cutting ties with the broadcaster
           | (after years of fruitful partnership), and went on a vicious
           | tirade on social which eventually led to the suspension of
           | his Twitter account - strangely parallel to the trajectory of
           | the fictional Douglas. Rather than compromising or de-
           | escalating, he raised it to the level of a political issue
           | asserting that his civil rights (of free speech) were under
           | attack and going on to attack transgender people in general
           | in the most vituperative terms. In the context of an ongoing
           | trend of escalating violence towards trans people (nearly
           | doubling in the last year) his increasingly strident position
           | has alienated a great many of his former fans.
        
           | legitster wrote:
           | A couple of episodes of 30 Rock as well.
        
             | Klonoar wrote:
             | Doesn't Always Sunny have this issue as well?
        
               | nickthegreek wrote:
               | I think about 4 or 5 episodes.
        
               | oliveshell wrote:
               | Yes [1], mostly the episodes that involve Kaitlin Olson's
               | character, Dee Reynolds, who aspires to a career in
               | comedy, _herself_ inventing and portraying racially
               | insensitive characters within the story of the show.
               | 
               | I'm not the type to rail against such things generally,
               | but IMO it was unnecessary and misguided to remove these
               | episodes: their humor came deliberately from how
               | oblivious Dee was to the offensiveness of her act.
               | 
               | Indeed, her portrayals are usually immediately and
               | explicitly critiqued by her fellow characters as being
               | racist and insane.
               | 
               | [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/IASIP/comments/hflb6t/list_o
               | f_its_a...
        
               | legitster wrote:
               | This is somehow the most mindnumbing. It's a show about
               | terrible people doing terrible things. Like, they can
               | only display certain, acceptable, forms of terribleness?
        
           | InvaderFizz wrote:
           | That's sad. That internet black box plot line is one of the
           | best known and most beloved about the series.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | asddubs wrote:
           | I mean, "was considered anti-Trans by some" is pretty
           | charitable for that episode. It is pretty overtly anti-trans,
           | and the show as a whole was written by grahan linnehan who
           | has also been vocally anti-trans
        
             | gjsman-1000 wrote:
             | The classic issue with censorship. "I don't enjoy it,
             | therefore, _nobody_ should be allowed to enjoy it. And I
             | won 't be happy _until_ nobody else can enjoy it. If you
             | enjoy it, that makes you  <insert moral judgement here>.
             | And because I am not that, and nobody who is <insert moral
             | judgement here> is for that content, it should be removed."
             | 
             | Now... I will admit, it isn't always wrong (CP). But it
             | often is the fruit of an unwitting narcissism.
        
               | pcthrowaway wrote:
               | The person you're engaging with wasn't making an argument
               | about whether it should be censored, just that the pulled
               | episode was clearly anti-trans
        
               | mdp2021 wrote:
               | There is also a possibility that the poster subtly
               | willingly replaced 'anti-' with "[all that in actual
               | evidence from this side appears is that apparently,] you
               | don't enjoy it", and on that basis returned to (an
               | argument about) the original point of censorship.
        
             | mdp2021 wrote:
             | A very "semantically open" use of 'anti-', as some may be
             | surprised to know that there are people who watched that
             | episode and did not judge it the least deprecatory towards
             | any category.
             | 
             | "I mean", as if Douglas Reynholm (the "phobic" - finally, a
             | literal case - in the episode) was drawn as an exemplary
             | character, a model of a human being... "I mean II", I
             | checked on a search engine for the spelling of the surname,
             | and the first under-link stub that resulted is << _Douglas
             | Reynholm was an incredibly arrogant, self-righteous,
             | pompous, cruel and elitist egomaniac who considered himself
             | to be somewhat above everybody else. He viewed women as
             | objects to feel and manipulate to his incredible sexual
             | mania_ >>...
             | 
             | --
             | 
             | Edit: Furthermore. As "everyone" knows, Graham was a humble
             | watchman in the hospital where Dr. Rick Dagless worked (the
             | "Darkplace"), and probably does not even speak TCP today.
             | So, when he wrote the scene of the people who believe they
             | have in front of them "the Internet" - like the one called
             | "<<stupid cow>>" by an adlibber because she did not realize
             | "the internet is weightless" (and so also must be "the box
             | which is the Internet" in the scene) -, when he wrote that,
             | did he mean to diminish and elicit contempt for all the non
             | technically inclined, probably including himself?
        
             | gnarbarian wrote:
             | so don't watch it.
             | 
             | with censorship nobody can watch it.
        
               | zeroonetwothree wrote:
               | Right, why is it I can stream Hitler's speeches as much
               | as I want, but this one episode is apparently too
               | dangerous?
        
           | birdyrooster wrote:
           | BBC is notorious for black face on their programs even in
           | recent decades.
        
             | werdnapk wrote:
             | The main character in Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy is a
             | black face, but do people honestly say any face painted in
             | black is racist? Noel is clearly using a black face in his
             | show for artistic reasons and isn't racist in the
             | slightest... IMO.
        
               | mdp2021 wrote:
               | In fact, there had been censorship of the Mighty Boosh
               | episode with "the Spirit of Jazz".
        
             | birdyrooster wrote:
             | In particular the one that frustrates me frequently is
             | Mitchell and Webb. Why in **s name did they have to lean on
             | blackface?
        
         | js8 wrote:
         | You don't have public libraries in the U.S.? In my country,
         | it's government-mandated job of public libraries to collect
         | historical media.
        
           | xeromal wrote:
           | We do have that. It's the library of congress that ensures
           | the safety of culturally important media in the US.
           | 
           | And of course we have public libraries with all kinds of good
           | media.
           | 
           | I don't think the comment your replying to is even talking
           | about public libraries. I believe they're saying if society
           | determines a person is cancelled and it's on a streaming
           | service, it can instantly disappear from most streaming
           | media.
        
             | wyre wrote:
             | I don't think it's about individuals getting canceled. It's
             | about how the streaming service has carte blanche power to
             | decide the material on the service, regardless of what
             | society wants.
        
               | js8 wrote:
               | My point was this. Maybe they have that carte blanche
               | power. Isn't a good public library system (where the work
               | is also accessible) a good enough counterweight to that
               | power?
        
               | lrvick wrote:
               | An original streaming-only movie or tv show will never be
               | on a DVD at a library. I would say it is almost an
               | -service- to society to continue to torrent content that
               | has been edited or purged by major platforms.
        
           | rolenthedeep wrote:
           | Our public libraries are underfunded and used as a punching
           | bag by conservatives. Libraries have very limited shelf space
           | and must constantly prune items from the collection. If a
           | movie isn't checked out for a few months, it gets sold for
           | like 50 cents and replaced with whatever is currently in
           | demand.
           | 
           | Most public libraries don't have the resources to _archive_
           | materials. That 's mostly down to academic and specialist
           | libraries, and the library of congress.
        
             | Kon-Peki wrote:
             | That's sad, where do you live?
             | 
             | I'm in Illinois; under state law libraries exist as
             | independent taxing bodies - the only way to underfund or
             | otherwise interfere with them is at the ballot box, and it
             | would take years of concerted effort by at least 60% of the
             | local population (indicating that this is _really_ what
             | they want).
             | 
             | I have some family in Indiana; their libraries are funded
             | and controlled at the county level to maximize what they
             | can do cost-wise and to ensure that rural farmers also have
             | access to all the resources. That structure also makes it
             | much harder for goofballs to interfere.
        
             | convolvatron wrote:
             | does LOC archive content that was never put on a physical
             | format?
        
               | rolenthedeep wrote:
               | Yes. I don't know a whole lot about their system, but I
               | do know they tried to keep an archive of all public
               | Twitter posts for a long time
        
               | chimeracoder wrote:
               | > I do know they tried to keep an archive of all public
               | Twitter posts for a long time
               | 
               | That was the result of a specific deal Twitter made early
               | on (itself a marketing stunt, of sorts). It doesn't mean
               | the Library of Congress is generally in the business of
               | archiving DRM-ed media on streaming services.
        
             | yucky wrote:
             | The US has _by far_ the largest public library system in
             | the world, and it 's not close. So by what metric would you
             | consider it underfunded?
        
               | divided wrote:
               | Comparing size without considering population will only
               | lead to bad conclusions. Could you imagine someone
               | claiming cancer deaths in Germany aren't a problem
               | because it doesn't have near as many deaths as the US,
               | it's not even close? Sounds silly, right?
               | 
               | The US is reportedly 62nd in the world in libraries per
               | capita. [1] Given the US has more wealth per capita than
               | most of the world as well, I think claiming we underfund
               | our public library system is fairly obvious.
               | 
               | [1] https://onlinegrad.syracuse.edu/blog/best-countries-
               | book-lov...
        
               | cnelsenmilt wrote:
               | What measure are you using for "largest"? The US is 3rd
               | in the world by population and 1st by GDP, so in
               | _absolute_ terms it 's to be expected that they would be
               | "large" in many categories, simply by having more people
               | and money. (And then there's geographical extent.) The
               | relative (per capita, perhaps) measure is more salient.
        
               | mynameisnull wrote:
               | If you mean the library of Congress sure. If you mean the
               | most libraries not based on a quick google
               | (https://www.quora.com/Which-country-in-the-world-has-
               | the-mos...). But I guess it depends on what you mean. I
               | am genuinely curious as there are several ways of looking
               | at this.
               | 
               | Also, the person above could have been talking about
               | compared to days past. I can tell you the libraries I had
               | access to when and where I grew are less funded (many
               | closed), but again depends on where and what you're
               | comparing against.
        
               | [deleted]
        
         | mgarfias wrote:
         | What George Lucas did to Star Wars over the years is all the
         | lesson I need about Orwellian changes to the past being
         | possible (and likely)
        
           | cb504 wrote:
           | "Han Solo shot first." ... Sorry, I had to do it.
        
             | dehrmann wrote:
             | Maybe he'll make the pronunciation of "Han" consistent
             | someday.
        
         | RajT88 wrote:
         | A related, but different phenomena: Streaming episodes have
         | been edited to inject product placement.
         | 
         | I read an article a while back about how old Friends episodes
         | have movie posters in the background of films which were
         | released after 2010.
        
           | deadbunny wrote:
           | [citation needed]
           | 
           | Can't find any evidence of this at all.
        
             | RajT88 wrote:
             | It was probably 10ish years ago I read about it. Most
             | likely on BoingBoing.
             | 
             | Will see if I can find it. Indeed it is not easily dug up.
             | 
             | There are many ads about the coming trend of "Virtual
             | Product Placement" but none that I can find which
             | acknowledge the early attempts at it which I read about way
             | back.
        
               | bentley wrote:
               | Maybe you were thinking of _How I Met Your Mother_?
               | 
               | https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/iiay9/digitally_in
               | ser...
        
               | RajT88 wrote:
               | Nailed it. That was it 100%. Thank you!
        
             | RajT88 wrote:
             | Not the article I was looking for, but this talks about a
             | company doing this exact thing as a service for media
             | companies:
             | 
             | https://www.outsourcemarketing.com/blog/help-product-
             | placeme...
        
             | bentley wrote:
             | There was a case of it just recently--the Amazon Jack
             | Reacher series was released in February (around tax time)
             | and had a TurboTax ad edited onto the side of a building
             | when viewed in America.
             | 
             | https://gizmodo.com/digital-ads-streaming-netflix-amazon-
             | nbc...
        
           | czx4f4bd wrote:
           | I would be interested to see that article. I tried googling
           | for it but could only find some articles about censorship on
           | Chinese streaming sites and Netflix missing some scenes from
           | the DVD release due to issues with the master copies.
        
       | ksec wrote:
       | > Y: X was right.
       | 
       | Why are we always in the cycle where X is the contrarian and
       | minority but was pushed aside while Y enjoy all the frames and
       | glories but is fundamentally wrong.
       | 
       | I am putting X and Y here simply because this observation hold
       | true not just in tech, in streaming but everywhere else.
       | 
       | It is not like they were not warned.
       | 
       | Back to the subject. We really something better than BluRay.
       | Smaller but also much higher in storage capacity, and when stored
       | properly that could last a hundred year. While being cheap to
       | produce.
        
         | suprfnk wrote:
         | Because 1. most ideas start as fringe hypotheses, and 2.
         | survivorship bias.
         | 
         | People will have 1001 ideas and hypotheses, ranging from "hey,
         | smoking might be unhealthy" to "the government is controlling
         | us with 5g" and "aliens walk among us".
         | 
         | For the ones that make it through, like smoking, people can say
         | "see, I told you so, we warned you". The other 999, you will,
         | mostly, never hear from again.
        
       | snapplebobapple wrote:
       | Her husband ian't right about dvds, the government is wrong about
       | how they are regulating streaming services. The government needs
       | to enforce reasonable content licencing across all the services
       | like they did with music and radio stations decades ago so all
       | content is on all services and the services start competing on
       | vectors that actually matter to consumers like interface design
       | and fast content delivery networks.
        
         | Terretta wrote:
         | It's crazy that you can go to a grocery store as distribution
         | aggregator and buy any type and brand of food in one place.
         | 
         | You should have to go to a Kellog's store or a Quaker store
         | depending what you want to eat next week.
         | 
         | At least, that's what studios and labels think.
        
           | layer8 wrote:
           | If food was infinitely replicable at basically no cost, you'd
           | only be allowed to eat your cereals at the respective store.
        
             | undersuit wrote:
             | Like a restaurant almost.
        
           | harvey9 wrote:
           | There have been disputes between food brands and UK
           | supermarkets recently that resulted in specific products
           | being unavailable in specific supermarkets.
        
           | phpisthebest wrote:
           | Retail exclusives including in grocery do exist. They are
           | rare and limited to "high end" brands that are normally low
           | volume, but there are things that I can buy at a Kroger that
           | Walmart does not sell, and things I can buy at a Walmart that
           | Kroger does not sell.
        
         | dageshi wrote:
         | Radio and streaming isn't equivalent though, streaming is the
         | end product, radio was basically advertising for the music.
         | 
         | We live in pretty much the golden age of content where more is
         | produced than ever before and more is being spent on it than
         | ever before I cannot see how what you're proposing doesn't end
         | up with a decline in both of those things because there would
         | no longer be competition in content.
        
         | andrewflnr wrote:
         | That would only make her husband wrong if it was reasonable to
         | plan on the government being right (even eventually) about
         | streaming. It's not.
        
       | deergomoo wrote:
       | Availability and ownership aside, Blu-ray is far better quality
       | than what you'll get on most streaming services. If I really care
       | about a movie or show, I always get it on Blu-ray.
       | 
       | That said, if they could shift 1080 BDs down to DVD pricing and
       | UHD BD down to what BD costs now I would buy a lot more. I'm
       | starting to build up a collection of UHD Blu-rays but Jesus,
       | PS20-30 per movie really adds up. Definitely paying the
       | enthusiast tax there.
        
         | expensive_news wrote:
         | I started buying UHDs (mostly Criterions) recently. I mostly
         | don't like owning too many things (and even buy most of my 4Ks
         | on iTunes when they go on sale for $5) but for some films the
         | extra quality is worth it (plus you can't get the Criterions
         | films in 4K anywhere else, and I like having the access to the
         | features).
         | 
         | I always am wondering if I'll regret it in 10 years when you
         | may be able to stream super high bitrates, but as always, the
         | future is uncertain anyways.
        
         | chungy wrote:
         | 1080p Blu-rays are very often single-digit dollars, at least
         | here in the US. UHD does come with a higher price point,
         | especially for new releases; it goes down, but it can take many
         | months for it to do so.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | hbarka wrote:
       | Our legal department has stores of blank DVDs. It turns out that
       | some legal artifacts must be stored in a permanent medium.
        
         | cogman10 wrote:
         | Yikes, Writable DVDs/CDs are not permanent, far from it! The
         | dyes in writable DVDs degrades over time. If your storage
         | requirements are more than a couple of years you might have
         | already experienced some pretty major data losses.
        
           | jjav wrote:
           | > Yikes, Writable DVDs/CDs are not permanent, far from it!
           | The dyes in writable DVDs degrades over time.
           | 
           | They do degrade, but a "couple of years" is pessimistic. My
           | earliest CD-Rs are from 1994 and they're still good.
        
             | cogman10 wrote:
             | CD-Rs will last longer than DVDs because the pits being
             | written are larger. Further, audio can experience more
             | degradation without perceptible impact.
             | 
             | I've had DVD-Rs fail in 2 years.
             | 
             | The type of DVD matters, of course. Here's a handy guide:
             | 
             | https://www.canada.ca/en/conservation-
             | institute/services/con...
        
       | drewcoo wrote:
       | Does is bother anyone else that a column named "future tense" has
       | story titles, none of which seem to be in the future tense? Talk
       | about bait and switch . . .
        
       | galleywest200 wrote:
       | I have been buying DVDs at the thrift store and ripping them to
       | my personal Plex server. I do not feel bad, I paid for the media
       | and I am the only person with access to this server -- its pretty
       | much the same as me watching that DVD alone.
        
       | stackedinserter wrote:
       | > But I also wish that streamers would create Blu-rays of their
       | original content. I should be able to purchase the complete
       | Bojack Horseman on Blu-ray to hold on to it forever--what if
       | something happens to Netflix?
       | 
       | Like you or not, MKV files on your own hard drive and piracy in
       | general is the answer.
        
       | mihaaly wrote:
       | Same with music streaming. I went back to my offline collection
       | just recently, keeping one service for the occasional discovery
       | of something new or to me unknown. Too many favourites
       | disappeared, or just reuploaded corrupting my playlist. Too much
       | garbage flow at us (mostly means the video streaming where they
       | decide for you what to list in the prime space of the interface,
       | what you want is unimportant) to be comfortable. The quality of
       | the players are decreasing due to bugs and eroding user
       | friendliness. It is not fun anymore.
        
       | asfarley wrote:
       | In the genre of "Stallman was right"
        
       | sergiotapia wrote:
       | It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia was butchered on streaming
       | platforms, so I agree with you OP! Taiwan Tammy? GONE! Martina
       | Martinez? GONE! Santa asking: "Is he retarded?" when Charlie just
       | stares at him frozen in rage? GONE! Lots of funny moments missed
       | by new fans unfortunately.
       | 
       | Related: Why have hard drive sizes stagnated? It feels like 8TB
       | has been the golden standard going on 8 years now.
       | 
       | I'm very close to doing the following: Putting 6 drives in a
       | portable RAID device, and ripping my movies to 720p x265 for
       | storage. I can store a near limitless amount of movies and TV
       | shows this way, and honestly I don't notice 720p. At least not
       | enough to trade a 1GB movie for a 45GB 4k Remux. And I own a
       | latest brand new 65 inch LG OLED and Sony OLED.
       | 
       | Added benefit is that its trivial to stream this anywhere at home
       | or remotely. The files are so small that even scanning around the
       | movie is instant.
       | 
       | The only thing holding me back is 8TB hard drives. So I wait
       | patiently and continue to pay for a plexserver some guy manages
       | for me.
        
         | at_a_remove wrote:
         | Here's the real question: why have backup disc sizes stagnated?
         | We went from CD to slightly larger CDs, to DVDs, then double-
         | layer DVDs, but BD-Rs haven't really taken off and we _ought_
         | to be at something much, much larger by now.
        
         | andrewmackrodt wrote:
         | I'm not sure of prices in your region, but I see 20TB drives
         | priced competitively to 8TB drives in terms of price/terabyte.
         | I've been thinking of building a new media array to replace my
         | existing 8TB drives and similar storage capacity would cost me
         | less now than 3 years ago, for arguably better drives too. I've
         | been thinking of using the Seagate Exos X18 (18TB drives) but
         | haven't made the purchase yet to form an opinion.
        
       | mumblemumble wrote:
       | I have a hard time agreeing.
       | 
       | We live in a world of media superabundance, and life only goes on
       | for so long. I can't possibly consume even a tiny fraction of
       | what's out there in my time on this world. I find that to be an
       | incredible relief: I will _always_ be able to find something
       | interesting to read, watch, or listen to, regardless of whether I
       | choose to fill my living space with shelves full of media. It 's
       | just not something I need to worry about.
       | 
       | If anything, I find I have the opposite problem: too many options
       | makes it hard to decide. A year or two ago I got rid of almost
       | all my books, including many dearly loved favorites. My personal
       | library would now fit in a laundry basket. (Still too many, but I
       | have a sizable backlog of books I haven't read yet and that would
       | be difficult or expensive to replace.) And the most notable
       | consequence is that I now spend more time actually reading, and
       | less time trying to decide what to read.
        
       | fijiaarone wrote:
       | Still need a VHS to watch Star Wars
        
         | hprotagonist wrote:
         | laserdisc will do.
        
           | dylan604 wrote:
           | why would anyone choose VHS over laserdisc I'll never
           | understand
        
         | Apreche wrote:
         | Looks like someone never heard of Harmy's Despecialized.
        
           | 986aignan wrote:
           | Or 4K77: https://www.thestarwarstrilogy.com/project-4k77/
        
             | 56friends wrote:
             | I didn't realize how many small changes were added to the
             | BluRay version. The worst part for me is the re-
             | colorization into cooler tones to make it look more modern.
             | 4K77 version looks more goofy - just like I remember it
             | from my childhood!
        
         | haunter wrote:
         | 2006 Limited Edition DVD [0], it has the original theatrical
         | versions on bonus discs (Yes, Han shot first).
         | 
         | 0, https://savestarwars.com/images/goutboxes.jpg
        
           | chungy wrote:
           | Which are transferred from the 1993 LaserDisc release, aside
           | from the text crawl of A New Hope. The 1993 LD did use the
           | subtitle "Episode IV: A New Hope", the 2006 DVDs took it from
           | the original film again, but the rest of the movie is a
           | LaserDisc transfer.
        
             | haunter wrote:
             | Yeah I have the DVDs here right next to me. What I always
             | disliked though is the butchered format, they letterboxed
             | the 2.39:1 original into a non-anamorphic 4:3 frame. Wasted
             | quality and you have to auto-crop by your video player.
             | Maybe one day we will get a proper digital scan from the
             | original cinema reel.
        
       | chad_strategic wrote:
       | I have a completely different perspective.
       | 
       | I rarely watch anything twice.
       | 
       | I have also found there are many things to occupy my time other
       | than watching things I have already seen.
        
       | nvr219 wrote:
       | This goes back to the classic backup calculation. Never spend
       | more to protect the data than the data is worth, right? That
       | means the husband will be right or wrong on a user by user basis.
       | If you have room to keep binders and binders of DVDs in your
       | house, you need to calculate - is that space worth it for the
       | data on there? Me, personally, once I've seen a movie or a TV
       | show I rarely watch it again. There are a few that I do repeat
       | watch, enough that I have a backup of those movies or shows even
       | though I can get it on my streaming subscription today. But I'm
       | not keeping binders or DVDs because that data is not important
       | enough for me to back up.
        
       | jzellis wrote:
       | If only there were some way to download anything you wanted even
       | if it was never released on DVD or Blu-ray and isn't on streaming
       | anymore....
        
         | dylan604 wrote:
         | So if it was never released on DVD or Blu-ray, then where did
         | the source for the torrents come from? If I saw a file with the
         | name of something I knew wasn't available on a shiny round
         | disc, I would be very skeptical and hesitant to download it
         | from fear of it not being what it said it was.
         | 
         | I damn sure don't want to go to the hassle of downloading a VHS
         | transfer
        
           | fabianhjr wrote:
           | For example Final Space got cancelled and while the last
           | season was available on streaming services the physical copy
           | hadn't been released and was also cancelled. (So it is a
           | webrip, got pulled from streaming services)
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | 082349872349872 wrote:
           | > _downloading a VHS transfer_
           | 
           | you kids with your universal formats; we used to have to make
           | camera copies to watch PAL shows on NTSC...
        
             | ghusto wrote:
             | You remember when pirate copies were literally some guy
             | with a camcorder in a cinema? Sometimes you'd get unlucky
             | and the guy had to turn it off because the usher was
             | coming, and you'd miss a random chunk of the film :)
             | 
             | "Good" times.
        
           | deadbunny wrote:
           | > So if it was never released on DVD or Blu-ray, then where
           | did the source for the torrents come from?
           | 
           | If it's something old without a DVD/BluRay release these will
           | usually be a WEBRip (literally a screen recording of DRM'd
           | content) or a WEB-DL (someone has cracked the DRM, or it was
           | DRM free).
           | 
           | You'll only find VHS rips on highly specialized trackers
           | (usually).
        
           | myself248 wrote:
           | If a VHS transfer is the only way to re-experience something
           | that blew me away as kid, you bet I'll be happier with a VHS
           | transfer than with nothing at all.
           | 
           | Not everything needs to be pixel-perfect.
        
             | causality0 wrote:
             | What's really nice are the heroes who take those VHS
             | transfers and SD DVD copies and release AI-upscaled
             | versions. Particularly cartoons that never had blu-ray
             | releases look glorious upscaled.
        
         | harvey9 wrote:
         | If you're alluding to torrents, it's common that obscure stuff
         | is not being seeded.
        
           | zirgs wrote:
           | What's the point of seeding content on public trackers?
        
           | dns_snek wrote:
           | Private trackers and usenet generally don't suffer from this
           | issue but it requires a few hours of work upfront, less if
           | you know someone who can help you.
        
         | CoastalCoder wrote:
         | I think public discussion has moved beyond making people aware
         | of illegal copying / streaming, and how to do it. So the people
         | who don't engage in that probably have their reasons.
         | 
         | If you're trying to move some readers to start doing that,
         | you'll probably need to engage with their reasons.
        
       | tpmx wrote:
       | People tend to shit on Spotify (while still using it), but they
       | did manage something that we all want: Access to (almost
       | everything), for a nominal monthly fee.
       | 
       | We need the same, but for movies and tv shows. Globally. It's an
       | economical problem that currently has a suboptimal solution.
        
         | 56friends wrote:
         | I think the era of Spotify dominance and music availability is
         | coming to an end. Not sure what the next stage is going to look
         | like - but I personally just canceled my subscription after
         | over a decade of using Spotify exclusively. There is a lot of
         | music that has never been available on Spotify, plus some music
         | is disappearing due to artists and labels realizing they are
         | not making any money from Spotify streaming. Plus no lossless,
         | plus the relentless upsell of podcasts and now audio books.
         | 
         | I would be fine subscribing to a specialized streaming music
         | service, or two.
        
           | tpmx wrote:
           | I'm super happy with my Spotify subscription. Sure, maybe 5%
           | of the things I want are missing, but 95% is pretty good.
        
             | 56friends wrote:
             | I left for 2 reasons:
             | 
             | 1. Their recommendations became unbearable. I love
             | discovering music but Spotify is not the right service for
             | that anymore. Daily playlists are just several of my
             | favorite artists shuffled. Genre playlists are just several
             | of my favorite artists shuffled. Track radio is just
             | several of my favorite artists shuffled. "Best of techno"
             | playlist? Floating Points and Four Tet - both artists I
             | listen to a lot, but they are not techno, and are not "best
             | techno" - a genre that spans decades.
             | 
             | I don't know if they overfitted their models and at this
             | point I don't care.
             | 
             | 2. I am fed up with the podcast and audio book push. Not
             | interested in either, don't want to see it anywhere.
        
               | tpmx wrote:
               | So you didn't primarily leave for the lack of catalog
               | coverage. Ok.
        
               | 56friends wrote:
               | I never said I did. Spotify doesn't have some of my
               | favorite music but I have it in either lossless format or
               | on vinyl.
        
               | [deleted]
        
         | wintermutestwin wrote:
         | >We need the same, but for movies and tv shows.
         | 
         | And audiobooks! Audible is stupid.
        
           | tpmx wrote:
           | How is it stupid? I haven't paid attention, but I thought
           | audiobooks were now on a Spotify-like system?
        
         | pilotneko wrote:
         | There is a ton of stuff not on Spotify. It might align well
         | with your tastes, but they are subject to licensing issues. I'm
         | not even talking about live versions or sessions, but bog-
         | standard albums.
        
           | zirgs wrote:
           | But if they are not on spotify then where are they? I don't
           | know anyone who buys CDs these days and torrent sites
           | definitely don't pay artists anything.
        
       | j45 wrote:
       | Similar to music whether steamed or downloads to your device, the
       | issues are similar for kindle books that you think you've
       | purchased and owned at anytime but that can also disappear at any
       | time.
        
       | ubermonkey wrote:
       | I'm a very happy Apple Music subscriber, but I'm also 52 and so
       | own thousands of CDs and hundreds of LPs.
       | 
       | I subscribed to AM for a possibly non-intuitive reason: for me,
       | the "all you can eat" aspect is secondary. The driver was "stop
       | syncing my phone." My library is too large to carry on my main
       | computer, so the "music computer" had to be the one running
       | iTunes and whatnot. Getting something new on there was a hassle,
       | and couldn't be done on the move.
       | 
       | Moreover, while this scenario made sense to ME, my wife found it
       | so off-putting that I discovered she was just not listening to
       | music on her phone at all.
       | 
       | AM solved this problem pretty well. PLUS, AM has a feature where
       | it will give you access via Apple Music to weird, indie, or out
       | of print stuff in your library that might not exist in Apple
       | Music's library.
       | 
       | A case in point is the 1990 Wendy & Lisa record Eroica. It's one
       | of my favorites, and has always been part of my library -- it's
       | even been re-ripped, because the first time I digitized it I only
       | used 128Kbps MP3, and I wanted it at 256Kbps AAC. But it's also
       | 100% not available via any streaming service because of rights
       | issues of some kind.
       | 
       | YOU can't get it from Apple Music, but _I_ can because Apple
       | Music sees it in the library on my music server. That 's pretty
       | cool.
        
         | npteljes wrote:
         | YouTube Music also has this adding your own files feature.
        
         | 56friends wrote:
         | Interesting. Do you know if this extends to basically all
         | digitized music regardless of the specifics of artist/label
         | streaming preferences? Eg King Crimson's catalog was never
         | added to Spotify, if I link my ripped CDs to AM, would it make
         | it available for me to stream on my phone?
        
           | ubermonkey wrote:
           | Yes. Indie stuff given to me on CD-R and ripped to my iTunes
           | library is available to me via Apple Music, which I think
           | would be the acid test.
        
           | jonathantf2 wrote:
           | I believe, yes. I have various live versions of albums that
           | have been ripped from streams and radio, Apple tries to match
           | them to their library to save space and then just lets you
           | wifi sync them. Shows up right next to the other music in
           | your library.
        
           | mrkstu wrote:
           | The feature is called iTunes Match- you can actually get it
           | standalone from Apple Music (at least you could, not sure if
           | they have changed anything recently,) but AM includes it:
           | 
           | Links:
           | 
           | https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204146 https://discussions.
           | apple.com/thread/253762018#:~:text=Yes%2....
        
       | ericyd wrote:
       | I don't relate to the author's sentiments at all. If something
       | isn't available for streaming, then that's my cue to watch
       | something different
        
       | plusminusplus wrote:
       | My understanding was there's a risk of disc degradation, is this
       | a concern?
       | 
       | How do you "back up" a CD/DVD?
        
         | derwiki wrote:
         | Rip it to a hard drive or S3 bucket. Hard drive bonus is you
         | can use Plex or Jellyfin to stream.
        
         | dsr_ wrote:
         | For a CD, you need a program that uses libcdparanoia. Luckily,
         | there are many.
         | 
         | DVDs contain a proper filesystem, so you can just mount and
         | copy that.
        
         | ThrowawayTestr wrote:
         | Handbrake makes it easy.
        
         | toast0 wrote:
         | DVDs are easy to backup. Lots of software out there, and
         | there's nothing low level to worry about. Audio CDs also have
         | lots of software out there, but you have to be a bit more picky
         | if you're concerned about getting a bit for bit copy rather
         | than just a sounds the same copy. If your discs have hidden
         | tracks and all that kind of weird stuff, care is needed.
         | 
         | Once you have things onto your filesystem, the usual rules of
         | backups apply.
        
           | dylan604 wrote:
           | >the usual rules of backups apply.
           | 
           | which would include keeping the original disc ripped to make
           | this new copy that needs backing up. more than one copy. more
           | than one format. more than one location.
        
         | haunter wrote:
         | For Audio CDs you want to rip it lossless with something that
         | support AccurateRip so you can be sure that others made the
         | same copy byte-to-byte. Fortunately there are several options
         | https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=AccurateRip#Soft...
         | 
         | For DVDs you can use the infamous DVD Decrypter to make ISO
         | files https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_Decrypter
         | 
         | or MakeMKV which straight copies the MPEG2 files (.vob) into a
         | nice MKV container https://www.makemkv.com/
        
       | dkarter wrote:
       | You can have both hard copies and streaming by ripping your DVDs
       | and putting them on a NAS with Jellyfin.
       | https://youtu.be/RZ8ijmy3qPo
        
       | distantsounds wrote:
       | no, you were both wrong. rip the discs to an external drive and
       | play it over your local network. or even better, over the
       | internet with plex/emby/jellyfin.
       | 
       | how are these articles getting up voted? what boomers are reading
       | HN on a Saturday and going 'yeah I miss my DVD collection'?
        
       | BaseballPhysics wrote:
       | And this is why I've rebuilt my digital music, tv, and movie
       | collections. For the media I care about, I want to own it, not
       | license it, thank you very much.
       | 
       | When streaming first came out I ended this practice. Then, the
       | licensing disputes started and content started moving or
       | disappearing. That's a trust they won't earn back.
        
         | cogman10 wrote:
         | I recently went through this. Every TV channel having a
         | streaming service is just nuts.
         | 
         | Particularly flagrant is the likes of Disney, who owns Hulu,
         | Disney+, ESPN+ and will happily sell subscriptions to all 3 +
         | addons throughout.
         | 
         | Also abhorrent is the fact that these slimy companies are
         | constantly moving content around the services, trying to get
         | you subscribe to everything under the sun just to follow a
         | favorite TV show. "Oh, it's on amazon, now netflix, now hulu,
         | now disney+, now paramount+, now peacock, now britbox, now
         | acorn"
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | nixpulvis wrote:
       | Music too! Oh god my music...
        
       | pkdpic wrote:
       | I completely agree but one unfortunate reality I've noticed as a
       | still-active dvd collector / aficionado is where the heck to buy
       | them.
       | 
       | $4+ on ebay for an 80% chance low-res bootleg stopped working for
       | me 3ish years ago and I still haven't found a preferable method
       | without resorting to full on pirating which feels like a little
       | too time-consuming of a hobby for more mainstream titles at
       | least.
        
       | midasuni wrote:
       | We're watching Harry Potter with the kids, probably haven't
       | watched the blu rays since they were born (now 10)
       | 
       | Popped in deathly hallows part 2 this very evening a few minutes
       | before everyone was ready. Couple of kites later I turn on the tv
       | and it's playing some advert for some rom com or some sort
       | 
       | It reminded me why I stopped buying dvds. They aren't happy with
       | selling me a product for a cost, they have to double dip by
       | advertising stuff.
       | 
       | Eventually I'm sure streaming will go that way, and once again
       | The High Seas will be the only way to get the product. If there
       | one thing the entertainment industry can be counted on it's
       | killing the goose.
        
       | amelius wrote:
       | In the old days it was legal to record shows on your VCR.
       | 
       | What happened to the laws around that?
        
         | theandrewbailey wrote:
         | The laws didn't change, but what happened is almost everybody
         | threw out their VCRs. Or never had them.
        
           | amelius wrote:
           | Surely the laws are more general than VCRs? Or should I add a
           | tape drive to my computer to make it legally a VCR?
        
       | jsz0 wrote:
       | Alternatively consider reducing your addiction to
       | television/movies and stop worrying about where your next fix is
       | coming from. In the golden era of piracy I used to be a huge
       | media pack rat spending hours a day obtaining more media to stash
       | away. One day my ZFS array puked and I lost almost everything. I
       | wasn't even upset. It was a blessing in disguise to be liberated
       | from caring about hoarding media. Never seeing your favorite
       | television/movies again is going to have almost zero impact on
       | your life. It's not worth wasting much of your time and money on.
        
         | Sakos wrote:
         | I have terabytes of movies and series. I've spent like 1 hour
         | in the past 12 months adding some stuff to my collection. HDD
         | space is extremely cheap and keeping a local copy is such low
         | effort that I don't see why I should get rid of my collection.
         | Some of it is also so rare as to be impossible to find unless
         | you're a member of some private sharing sites (try finding a
         | complete archive of Jon Stewart on The Daily Show).
         | 
         | I've also lost terabytes of shows/movies before and wasn't
         | affected by it at all. Shit happens. But I prefer having high
         | quality copies immediately available. I've had a complete rip
         | of the animated show "Hey, Arnold!" for like 3 years and only
         | just started watching the whole thing now, and I'm thankful to
         | my past self for giving me such convenient access to something
         | I enjoyed so much as a kid.
        
           | jsz0 wrote:
           | If you're able to horde in a healthy way it's no problem. I
           | just think for a lot of people it tends to become an
           | unhealthy obsession of relying on obtaining media to self
           | medicate. Chasing the dragon trying to obtain more and more
           | media. Then ultimately facing the disappointment when it
           | doesn't provide the dopamine fix or childhood nostalgia
           | you're hoping for. I vividly remember the terrible feeling of
           | opening up Plex with countless terabytes of data and
           | realizing nothing here is going to actually make me feel
           | better. Media is a powerful stimulant and I've reached the
           | conclusion for myself at least it has to be used in
           | moderation.
        
         | abandonliberty wrote:
         | Our brains prioritize looking for fixes more than enjoying
         | them. It's the same for most collections, or modding Skyrim.
        
         | meindnoch wrote:
         | >One day my ZFS array puked
         | 
         | How does that happen? No redundancy?
        
           | jsz0 wrote:
           | Totally self inflicted. I was using a beta version of OpenZFS
           | on a beta version of OSX. Begging for problems and I finally
           | found one. Maybe I was subconsciously looking for an off-ramp
           | of the burden of managing my horde of data. All my personal
           | data was backed up so I just restored that and let the media
           | horde go.
        
       | tracker1 wrote:
       | And this is why I have a NAS with a dozen 12tb drives on two raid
       | 6 arrays. Most of it is h265 encoded, which is smaller, and the
       | blur of h265 doesn't annoy me like the blockiness of h264.
       | 
       | I am only using about 22tb currently, upgraded about two years
       | ago.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | satysin wrote:
       | I get the point the author is making but keeping all the DVDs
       | also isn't the answer IMHO. At least it wasn't for me, it was
       | just annoying to find a place to store it all, to move it when we
       | moved country would have cost money for basically nothing of
       | value.
       | 
       | I had a purge of pretty much all my physical media a bit over a
       | decade ago. I had a little over 1000 DVDs and Blu-rays. Probably
       | 200 VHS too. God knows how many CDs and tapes.
       | 
       | Rather than ditch them and say "I will just use streaming to
       | watch/listen when I want to" which is _very_ naive IMHO I ripped
       | them all to hard disks and archived them to some LTO tapes I had.
       | Granted not everyone has access to this kind of equipment but
       | these days there are other options anyway. I don 't use LTO
       | anymore.
       | 
       | Today I have full access to my entire movie, music, photo, and
       | software collection near instantly from my NAS. Some stuff isn't
       | online (as in not powered up) as it would just be a waste of
       | power but I can switch it on if I ever feel the need to watch
       | something I haven't watched in two decades but don't want to
       | delete forever :)
       | 
       | I have some redundancy via RAID as well as on site/offline
       | duplication should something really go wrong. Plus I have an off
       | site backup. It isn't actually as much space as you would think
       | even for a pretty huge number of movies as old stuff is pretty
       | small. It is only recently with 4K HDR movies that we are looking
       | at ~90GB for some movies. Storage isn't very expensive these
       | days. When I did a quick comparison a while back I worked out it
       | was less for the HDDs than it was to ship them all from one
       | country to another let alone the non-quantifiable cost of my time
       | packing, moving, unpacking, and physical storage space.
       | 
       | Ideally I would share the cost with others as it is kinda stupid
       | for there to be multiple copies of the same movies and TV shows
       | for no reason but sadly there isn't a solution for this and with
       | the copyright laws and all that it is unlikely there ever will be
       | something as reliable as doing it yourself.
        
         | layer8 wrote:
         | You can store them in CD wallets like this one:
         | https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/388541-REG/Case_Logic...
         | 
         | I have ~1500 DVDs stored that way in less than a meter of shelf
         | space.
        
           | satysin wrote:
           | That is a good compromise however most people I know that
           | collect physical media like to keep the whole package not
           | just the disc in a wallet like that. It is a good alternative
           | to mine though and a lot cheaper :D
        
           | tzfld wrote:
           | This may be space saving, but not a recommended way to store
           | discs for long periods.
        
             | layer8 wrote:
             | Why? They are stored vertically, same orientation as in a
             | DVD case on a bookshelf.
        
               | bentley wrote:
               | I recently migrated my disc collection from cases.
               | Initially I got binder pages like you linked, but I
               | returned them and got paper sleeves instead, because (1)
               | paper cases are cheaper and more compact, and (2) when I
               | put discs in binders, they rub against the (admittedly
               | soft) backing material, whereas when I put them in paper
               | sleeves, I naturally hold the sleeve such that the discs
               | don't rub the sleeve when being inserted, and that seems
               | a bit safer.
               | 
               | I do still use a binder for the papers from the cases.
        
       | jasode wrote:
       | _> I still don't actually use our DVDs and Blu-rays all that
       | often. But every time I see them lining the shelves, I feel a bit
       | of comfort. Because when I do need them, they'll be there._
       | 
       | The importance of that type of redundancy depends on the viewing
       | habits of a particular person. In the case of my friend, the _"
       | don't actually use our DVDs all that often"_ really was _" never
       | re-watched the DVDs she owned"_. She had a DVD collection with
       | all the X-Files seasons, James Bond movies, etc.
       | 
       | But she inadvertently learned her _true viewing habits_ when
       | Amazon Prime included video streaming for free. She realized she
       | always preferred watching _something new_ on Amazon rather than
       | play an old X-Files DVD.
       | 
       | But what if Netflix and Amazon Prime Video lets their streaming
       | licenses expire for "X-Files" and it's no longer available?
       | Wouldn't that make the X-Files DVDs a great backup?!? It would,
       | if she actually re-watched the X-Files -- but she never did.
       | Owning DVDs was a waste of money for her particular viewing
       | preferences (new stuff instead of reruns) and she was happy to
       | get rid of the clutter.
        
         | agumonkey wrote:
         | I'd be curious in a few years. I don't watch old things anymore
         | and keep consuming youtube stuff, but honestly I don't like it
         | anymore. It's not the same somehow.
         | 
         | ps: I just bought a dvd from CL
        
         | zirgs wrote:
         | This is why I don't have a DVD/BD player and only use streaming
         | services. I almost never watch the same movie more than once.
        
           | Gigachad wrote:
           | I'll rewatch when it's been long enough that I have mostly
           | forgotten what happened. Not at all worth keeping DVDs around
           | for that.
        
           | Fnoord wrote:
           | Me neither, but there are some exceptions. The original Star
           | Wars trilogy, LOTR, Dune, ...
           | 
           | My wife loves Harry Potter.
           | 
           | So we got these ripped. We ditched her DVD collection after
           | ripping everything. Legal copies, saving space. Don't even
           | think we brought them to some second hand store.
        
           | Existenceblinks wrote:
           | Same type. It's urgggg feeling to re-watch a movie. I can say
           | that I _never_ , but I don't remember exactly so _almost
           | never_ is accurate.
        
         | stanleydrew wrote:
         | > But what if Netflix and Amazon Prime Video lets their
         | streaming licenses expire for "X-Files" and it's no longer
         | available? Wouldn't that make the X-Files DVDs a great
         | backup?!? It would, if she actually re-watched the X-Files --
         | but she never did.
         | 
         | The problem is that the future is uncertain. It's always
         | possible that she _might_ want to rewatch the X-Files at some
         | point, even if she never actually does.
        
           | irrational wrote:
           | Or, she might recommend that someone else watch them. If they
           | are no longer on streaming services, she could loan them her
           | DVDs. It is either that or pirate them.
        
           | Terretta wrote:
           | > _... the future is uncertain. It 's always possible that
           | she might want to ... even if she never actually does._
           | 
           | True, although ...
           | 
           |  _" Difficulty discarding possessions is characterized by a
           | perceived need to save items and distress associated with
           | discarding them. Accumulation of possessions can result in
           | living spaces becoming cluttered to the point that their use
           | or safety is compromised. Compulsive hoarding is recognized
           | by the eleventh revision of the International Classification
           | of Diseases (ICD-11) and the Diagnostic and Statistical
           | Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5)."_
        
             | mattkrause wrote:
             | Don't read _too_ much into the DSM definitions. There's an
             | (often explicit) caveat that they apply iff the condition
             | distresses the patient or seriously affects their life.
             | 
             | It's healthy to hang onto a few ratty t-shirts because you
             | might need them to mow the lawn or because they remind you
             | of good times; you can even be a bit bummed when you
             | eventually do throw them out. It's compulsive hoarding when
             | you do it even though it seriously bothers you or turns
             | your place into a death trap.
        
           | travisjungroth wrote:
           | There is absolutely no way to have so much that you will
           | never want something you don't have.
        
         | 13415 wrote:
         | I thought the layers separate and they are not a good long-term
         | storage medium. Aren't DVDs supposed to decompose after some
         | time? Or is that only true for CDs?
         | 
         | I'd rip them and put them on new hard disks from time to time.
         | AFAIK, that's the best long-term storage strategy for most
         | people.
        
         | vidarh wrote:
         | I rarely get DVDs any more, for much that reason, but I'm just
         | finishing up stripping the liners and archiving the last of
         | ~1000 DVD's I bought over the years. They now take up one and a
         | half shelf in a book case.
         | 
         | In terms of cost, it wasn't a waste of money to me: I spent the
         | money to watch them that once. With a few exceptions I never
         | bought with the expectation of rewatching in mind. That was a
         | nice bonus. And now I have an archival copy, and while there
         | are many I haven't rewatched, there are are plenty I have, and
         | some I've rewatched many times, and it wasn't always
         | predictable ahead of time. There are series I loved a lot I
         | never rewatched, and movies I didn't know I'd like that I've
         | rewatched half a dozen times.
         | 
         | These days, I don't buy if it's something really mainstream,
         | but I still buy if it's a bit more niche and something I
         | consider might not always remain available. Quite a lot of the
         | DVD's I have are of things that are not available on the
         | streaming services I have.
         | 
         | But separate to all of this, even for a lot of the movies
         | people might never watch again, don't underestimate the value
         | of that feeling of comfort to a lot of people, and the value of
         | the physical artefact as a memento.
        
         | edu wrote:
         | This is my same conclusion. With books, movies, series and
         | music I like to own physically only my personal favorites that
         | I know will use many times. But that's less than 10% of my
         | media consumption.
        
           | JuettnerDistrib wrote:
           | > With books, movies, series and music I like to own
           | physically only my personal favorites that I know will use
           | many times.
           | 
           | I don't own many DVDs, but when I see them in my bookshelf
           | they remind of the story the tell, the context when I watched
           | them, and my theories about society, sci-fi, and utopias that
           | those movies inspired.
           | 
           | With books it's even more extreme. I get the physical copy
           | sometimes more to have a physical representation of an idea
           | than to read the book.
        
             | vidarh wrote:
             | I have books I've never opened since I read them that is
             | just a marker like that. I have one copy I've never opened:
             | I read it as an e-book but got the physical copy just to
             | complete my set and have it on my shelf.
             | 
             | I also have books I've suddenly taken down to reference 20+
             | years after I read it, and where the text was not online,
             | so I also like to have physical copies of books where the
             | idea mattered because I know that some day I'll want to
             | pass that idea on and will need a refresher.
        
             | angelbar wrote:
             | Like a... Antilibrary
        
         | danaris wrote:
         | And there's even a third option:
         | 
         | Rip the DVDs, keep the digital copies somewhere safe, and
         | discard the physical discs.
         | 
         | If you want to ensure that this _remains_ safe, you 'll need to
         | both back up and periodically transfer the digital copies to
         | new physical storage devices (in my case, I just upgraded from
         | the ~4-yr-old 4TB HDD that was holding all my media to a new
         | 16TB HDD). This is, however, kind of a necessity in any case;
         | _especially_ for burned DVDs, for instance of home movies,
         | ripping them and storing the media fully digitally with a plan
         | for long-term archival will have _much_ better longevity. Even
         | pressed DVDs don 't last forever (especially if they _are_ used
         | sometimes--scratches happen!), and burned DVDs can have a
         | lifetime of less than 5 years in some cases.
         | 
         |  _Data_ , however, if properly treated, can be perfectly saved
         | forever. (Well, barring cosmic ray bit-flips, I guess.)
        
           | bluGill wrote:
           | I keep the originals in a box. That way if someone finds put
           | I can prove i'm morally right even though the law doesn't
           | allow it.
        
             | Johnny555 wrote:
             | Me too, I have a few big cd wallets (like 12 by 12 by 6
             | inches thick) where I put my dvds as I rip them and discard
             | the cases. They don't take up much room and prove that I
             | own all of the movies I ripped.
             | 
             | I converted them to mid quality mp4s so can keep a copy on
             | a 512gb usb flash drive so I can take my movie collection
             | anywhere I travel.
        
           | trelane wrote:
           | DVDs, sure. Is it possible to back up or store Blu-Ray media
           | on hard drives?
        
             | chungy wrote:
             | MakeMKV is the easiest option.
        
             | zargon wrote:
             | Of course.
        
               | trelane wrote:
               | Looks like _maybe_ , depending on several factors: https:
               | //help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats/BluRayAn...
        
               | deadbunny wrote:
               | Who is trying to store DRM'd content locally? If you're
               | ripping your DVDs/BluRays/HDDVDs striping copy protection
               | and that's a solved issue. See AnyDVD HD, MakeMKV, etc.
               | 
               | Also note that page is referencing releases of Ubuntu
               | from 2008. Maybe take it's information with a pinch of
               | salt.
        
               | trelane wrote:
               | Do you have better references on how to rip bluray?
        
               | deadbunny wrote:
               | For the BluRay drive itself I have a "Pioneer BDR-
               | XD07TB"[1]. For great compatibility and can do HD/UHD
               | (and DVD obviously).
               | 
               | For a purely Linux way (as you linked to an Ubuntu Page)
               | this[2] is a reasonable guide (giving it a quick skim)
               | using MakeMKV. This should also work on Windows. (Ignore
               | the Haandbrake steps here).
               | 
               | If you're on Windows (or know how to setup a VM with USB
               | passthru for the Bluray drive) and don't mind paying for
               | a license AnyDVD HD[2] is very good.
               | 
               | Both of the above will strip the DRM and leave you with
               | the raw files from the disk (AnyDVDHD also gives the
               | option to make an ISO). You can keep there as a 1:1
               | backup of the disk or you can further refine.
               | 
               | Without going to a massive rabbit hole and reproducing
               | some (unfortunately private) guides verbatim you have 3
               | main things you can do from here if you don't want the
               | raw source files.
               | 
               | 1. Straight Remuxing: Take the video/audio as is from the
               | `m2ts` container and stick it in an MKV, this won't save
               | you any real space but makes archiving the film alone
               | easier, you'll save some space from extras etc. by
               | deleting the raw source files here. Takes about as long
               | as a copy operation would. You can do this with ffmpeg on
               | the cli in a single command.
               | 
               | 2. Audio transcode remuxing. Take the raw video,
               | transcode the audio to something smaller. You use a bunch
               | of tools to strip the Audio[4][5], then transcode it
               | using eac3to, then remux everything[6]. Realistically
               | you've saving maybe a gig here if you're just transcoding
               | the main audio track and dumping the rest. Some time
               | spend recompressing the audio, then remuxing maybe an
               | hour once you know what you're doing. This is usually
               | what you'll see as a "Remux" on the high seas.
               | 
               | 3. Compress Audio/Video: This is where you'd use
               | something like Handbrake[7] to recompress the video, you
               | can use the presets and get a watchable file but not the
               | best quality but usually a significant size reduction.
               | You can also tweak a lot of knobs here for excellent
               | quality with little to no visual fidelity loss (a
               | transparent encode) but this will take a lot of time. If
               | you're using a preset you're probably looking at roughly
               | the film's length encoding (more with slower processors).
               | This is usually what you'll see tagged as a "BluRay"
               | release on the high seas.
               | 
               | Obviously this is all for backing up your legitimately
               | owned media in jurisdictions which allow it.
               | 
               | 1. https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19634
               | 2. https://www.howtogeek.com/161498/HOW-TO-BACKUP-YOUR-
               | DVD-AND-... 3. https://www.redfox.bz/en/anydvdhd.html 4.
               | https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=125966 5.
               | http://haali.net/mkv/ 6. https://mkvtoolnix.download/ 7.
               | https://handbrake.fr/
        
             | cogman10 wrote:
             | It's possible, but I have concerns with blu-rays.
             | 
             | 1. Bluray drives are becoming increasingly rare. Few people
             | are buying them (because many stream) which is slowly
             | killing the market.
             | 
             | 2. Blurays tend to be much more finichy with read errors
             | (unfortunately). A little dust or a bad pressed disk and
             | the entire episode is lost :(
             | 
             | 3. Blurays aren't being produced. Sure, you can get bluray
             | movies still, but for tv series it's becoming REALLY rare
             | for a bluray to be produced. Funnily, you'll often find
             | DVDs for tv series before blurays (even for brand new
             | shows).
        
               | bloomingeek wrote:
               | Have you noticed yet that playing most blu-rays in a
               | regular player requires an internet connection for
               | encryption purposes?
        
               | MrVandemar wrote:
               | Touch wood, but I have never, ever needed to do this. I
               | don't know why. Every time I get something from the video
               | library (yes, we still have one) or buy a new movie I'm
               | worried it'll complain about no internet and want to
               | update ...
               | 
               | ... but it never has.
        
               | cogman10 wrote:
               | I don't use a bluray player, I use bluray computer drives
               | and rip my media.
        
           | layer8 wrote:
           | That's much more work though than just keeping the DVDs in
           | the basement.
        
             | kragen wrote:
             | only until you move
        
               | layer8 wrote:
               | See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34468436 for how
               | to avoid that problem.
        
             | danaris wrote:
             | It is. It happens to fit my use case better, though--my
             | viewing habits are very impulse-oriented, and the place I
             | keep the media is my Plex library, so I can just fire up a
             | web browser and watch anything I keep in there any time I
             | want, from anywhere in the house. (I could probably set it
             | up to be able to watch it from other places, too, but I'm
             | working from home, so I'm usually there anyway.)
             | 
             | So if I just kept the DVDs, any time I wanted to watch
             | something on one, I would have to:
             | 
             | 1) Physically go to where the DVDs are
             | 
             | 2) Locate the specific DVD I'm looking for (can be tricky
             | if I'm looking for a specific episode of a show--I might
             | not always remember what season it's from, and the Plex
             | interface makes it pretty easy to scan through)
             | 
             | 3) Get the DVD out
             | 
             | 4) Go to the living room, where the DVD player is
             | 
             | 5) Take exclusive control of the living room, and also bind
             | myself to being there, for the duration of watching it
             | 
             | 6) Put it all back when I'm done
             | 
             | So yes: for simple _storage_ , as long as the DVDs you have
             | will last the length of time you want to keep them, and you
             | have enough physical space to keep them in comfortably,
             | just keeping the DVDs is easier. But for actually using
             | them on a regular basis, for places with less available
             | space, for people who expect to be moving frequently (or
             | just soon), and for collections where the longevity of the
             | physical media is in doubt, digitizing is a better way to
             | go.
        
         | sebzim4500 wrote:
         | Pirate bay is that backup option, at least for me. To use your
         | example of the X-Files, you can currently download a 75 GB
         | torrent with every season + extras and it will only take a few
         | hours.
         | 
         | I think people continue seeding torrents for longer than DVDs
         | reliably last.
        
           | pointlessone wrote:
           | Someone has to have it on DVD/BD first for it to get on the
           | Pirate Bay.
        
           | andrewstuart wrote:
           | I've never understood the appeal of downloading pirate
           | movies.
           | 
           | Feels dodgy, always a hassle trying to fight your way through
           | all the scams and malware and porn and when you get the movie
           | it's of questionable quality.
           | 
           | If I buy a DVD then I get perfect quality in a nice case in a
           | day or two without having to visit the seedy red light
           | district of the Internet only to get dud contraband.
        
             | driverdan wrote:
             | Literally none of these things are true.
        
             | swexbe wrote:
             | Private trackers solve all of those problems.
        
             | ajsnigrutin wrote:
             | Or you live outside of USA and there is no store that has X
             | files dvds. Also no streaming service offers that here.
             | Also due to copyright and region locking, I cannot import
             | them from USA.
             | 
             | But somehow if I pirate that, i cause them 'damage'.
             | 
             | Luckily on most sites, pirated videos have keywords in
             | filename (720p, 1080p, 4k,... x264, x265,... ) so you can
             | see the quality and choose what filetype you want/need.
        
             | rakoo wrote:
             | The only reason you see scams, malware and porn is because
             | you don't have an adblocker. Install uBlock Origin. It's
             | mandatory not just for pirating, but even for normal
             | browsing.
             | 
             | It does take a but of time to spot fakes, and you need to
             | give the community time to aggregate good content and weed
             | out the fakes, but it's definitely not the experience you
             | describe. It sounds like you last tried a decade or two
             | ago.
        
             | moralestapia wrote:
             | >I've never understood the appeal of downloading pirate
             | movies.
             | 
             | Oh, that's easy! You want to see <movie>, so you search for
             | "<movie> 1080p" (or better) and after a few minutes you
             | have it on your PC and can watch it 1,000 of times if you
             | want; even when offline (!). It's also free. This is why
             | people like pirate movies.
             | 
             | >in a day or two ...
             | 
             | LOL
        
             | LarryMullins wrote:
             | > _Feels dodgy, always a hassle trying to fight your way
             | through all the scams and malware and porn and when you get
             | the movie it 's of questionable quality._
             | 
             | Its actually really easy, it only takes seconds to get the
             | right torrent going. I've never accidentally torrented
             | anything I didn't intend to.
        
             | denkmoon wrote:
             | None of those apply if you put a modicum of effort into it,
             | and then you get access to almost all media in human
             | history unencumbered by the copyright "people". Without
             | having shelves filled with plastic crap.
        
             | [deleted]
        
       | baxtr wrote:
       | I have started ordering Kindle books that I really like as
       | hardcopies. You never know...
        
       | rektide wrote:
       | And now it feels like 2/3rds of media doesnt have a dvd or blu-
       | ray release! So awful.
       | 
       | This has been such an ever enmissserating situation. Started as a
       | high & mighty &bgood convenience, but we're ending up worse than
       | where we started; fragmented & ephemeral.
        
         | dylan604 wrote:
         | I remember the middle section of shelves at Blockbuster. I'm
         | quite content not having access to a lot of that schlock any
         | more. A lot of it didn't deserve to be put on DVD!
         | 
         | I'm reading the "so awful" within the context of this thread
         | more of an accusation for someone making the decision to not
         | allow content vs I just wish it were on DVD for my convenience.
         | It's not all conspiracy theories. Sometimes, it's just
         | financial. Some older content was done on such a cheap budget
         | and companies that we'll just call fly by night. These types of
         | places might not be able to remaster their content for blu-ray
         | either because they no longer exist, don't have the funding to
         | re-transfer the film to a higher scan, or just physically no
         | longer have the materials.
        
       | rcme wrote:
       | Lots of comments here about whether or not the author's husband
       | is right or wrong. What about the author herself?
       | 
       | > My beloved Beforeigners--a deeply weird and delightful show in
       | which suddenly people from the Stone Age, Viking era, and 19th
       | century begin appearing around the world--is gone.
       | 
       | You can still watch this on Apple TV. You just need to pay a few
       | dollars to rent it. How much is shelf space worth?
        
       | LinuxBender wrote:
       | Not just DVD's but also music CD's. Plenty of music from the
       | 1960's through early 2000's is no longer online for either
       | contractual disputes, or cultural cancellation and other reasons
       | I have yet to figure out. I assume some of this transition must
       | be the cost issues of producing physical CD's vs. delivering
       | online _or renting_ the music online. When it is only available
       | as a stream online I call it renting and every day that passes
       | there is a risk that some of the music vanishes.
       | 
       | When I moved I compressed my CD collection down from their hard
       | cases to soft cases and kept all the inserts in one of the old
       | hard-case bags minus the hard case plastic holders and I have no
       | regrets.
       | 
       | I assume there may be a similar risk in renting e-Books online
       | vs. having a non-DRM copy of it.
        
         | adamm255 wrote:
         | Has this with an album recently. Released in 2012, one day it
         | was just gone from all streaming services.
        
         | 56friends wrote:
         | I know it doesn't replace old recordings, but _moving forward_
         | there is a lot of great music on Bandcamp, usually available to
         | download in several lossless formats like wav and flac.
        
         | beej71 wrote:
         | A friend of mine refuses streaming. He buys CDs in bulk from
         | the flea market and rips them to FLAC.
         | 
         | I was just thinking of doing the same for my collection in the
         | attic, assuming the CDs have survived a couple thousand
         | freeze/thaw cycles. :)
         | 
         | I like the idea of ditching the hard cases for space.
        
           | Johnny555 wrote:
           | I went the other way... back in the day, I ripped my ~400 cds
           | to MP3's. I still have them on my file server hard drive, but
           | am happy paying Spotify $10/month for the convenience of
           | having access to pretty much any album I want on any device,
           | so I haven't listened to my own MP3s in years.
           | 
           | I thought by now I'd be doing the same thing with movies, but
           | obviously that hasn't happened.
        
           | justinlloyd wrote:
           | I did the same thing with DVDs, Blurays and CDs. Everything
           | got pulled out of the hardcase unless the hardcase was a
           | special design or unique in some way. Kept the inserts for
           | each media type in a couple of small shoebox sized storage
           | boxes, put each disc in to a soft sleeve that I bought in
           | bulk for about two cents each, and then put all that into two
           | banker's boxes. Reduced from eight or nine banker's boxes to
           | nothing at all. The digital contents are stored on my local
           | server and I can stream it to any local device or over the
           | internet to my laptop or phone.
        
           | ghusto wrote:
           | Yup, I do the same, and can recommend it.
           | 
           | You get the benefits of both physical media, and convenience
           | of soft storage availability. That music is mine, and can
           | never be sold to me again.
           | 
           | In case some might be wondering what the "benefits" of
           | physical media are; it's my belief that having to _commit_ to
           | listening to a CD (not being able to flick through different
           | albums and artists easily on Spotify, as the whim comes) is
           | psychologically sound, and the alternative is damaging.
           | 
           | This goes for films too. Those old enough to remember renting
           | DVDs -- or even VHS! -- may remember the excitement of
           | getting that film back to their place to watch. The whole
           | thing was an experience, and whether the film was good or
           | bad, you had a good time with whoever you were with, because
           | you had an _experience_. More often than not though, you
           | enjoyed the film, because you wanted to. You invested, so it
           | was worth more to you.
           | 
           | Actually this is more than "my belief", but I can't be
           | bothered to find the research.
        
             | cgh wrote:
             | My personal best example of this is tape-trading (which
             | were mostly CD-Rs, but whatever) underground metal back in
             | the '90s. The sheer amount of work it took to find people
             | to trade with, burn the music, send it through the mail
             | and, best of all, get their package in return made it seem
             | so significant. And it was the best way to find out about
             | new bands. Even bands that eventually became huge, like
             | Metallica after they changed their sound, built their
             | initial fanbase via the trading scene.
        
         | tomxor wrote:
         | Same here, although I no longer have a CD player which is kinda
         | worrying. On my TODO list to convert them all to lossless FLAC
         | or something to replace my previously more conservative lossy
         | settings from when $/GB was far greater. Bookmarked the article
         | posted on HN the other day about doing this in a reliable way.
         | 
         | The other thing about music is it has a far higher re-play
         | value than Film/TV... some specific albums I've listened to
         | thousands of times, and there is simply no way I would rely on
         | some streaming service for that. I'm not sure what the younger
         | generations do for their favourites... or maybe it's not like
         | that any-more, maybe their music is more ephemeral and
         | "trending". Pretty much all of my music with replay value is
         | from way before 2000, back to 80s - I'm not even that old.
        
       | legitster wrote:
       | Paramount+ was kind of the last straw for me on streaming. A
       | streaming platform entirely made from licenses they ripped back
       | from existing platforms. And the new shows are trashy and lazily
       | written.
       | 
       | I don't need to be on the zeitgeist any more. For all the old
       | shows I want to catch up on, DVD box sets cost less than the
       | streaming services to watch them on.
        
       | prepend wrote:
       | My husband was right about piracy.
        
       | whartung wrote:
       | I strongly suggest that if DVDs are important to you, that you
       | find some convenient mechanic to rip them.
       | 
       | DVDs are durable, but not immortal. I have several that have
       | failed.
       | 
       | I appreciate the ask. Ripping DVDs is just a lot of work, time,
       | storage, and fiddling. I don't wish ripping 15 seasons of ER on
       | anyone.
       | 
       | But, the truth is, the things break down.
        
       | andrewstuart wrote:
       | Every time I want to watch a specific movie I have to search all
       | the streaming services I have access to and often its not there.
       | 
       | So these days I just buy the DVD from ebay from a few bucks, it
       | arrives in a couple of days. Feels no different to the 1980's
       | when I went to the video shop and brought home a VHS.
       | 
       | I've gone back to physical media. Streaming has shot itself in
       | the foot.
       | 
       | I've cancelled most of my streaming services cause in Australia
       | the free to air streaming services are really great anyway.
       | 
       | I do pay for Britbox for the classic Doctor Who, Blakes Seven and
       | other dorky delights.
        
       | LesZedCB wrote:
       | Agreed. We have small number of movies and TV shows which is
       | growing.
       | 
       | Pro tip: thrift store DVDs and "friends of the library" sales.
       | 
       | I got every season of ST:TNG for about $40 ($1/disk)
        
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