Whilst I agree, there’s (currently) nothing stopping you from buying the DVDs?
I have a ridiculous number of DVDs. (Blu-Ray on the other hand can fuck off and die.) A ton of content is just not practically available as DVDs.
Checking Amazon just now for some stuff that was absolutely impossible to find at all a few years ago when I was looking for it, there seem to be non-US releases now (e.g. region 2, region 4…) for some of them at not insane prices. Others want $300 for “only 1 in stock” from a nonsense bot account with a last purchase comment from ~2015… i.e. they probably aren’t real listings even if I was willing to pay that insane amount. A few others look like they might be commercial pirate offerings with only subsets of episodes and strange packaging. (I might just be OOTL on some marketing gimmick with those though.)
Honestly, I’ve largely given up on anime since COVID hit. I still like the art, but I don’t really watch new shows any more. The inability to get legit copies in a timely fashion is the main reason why. The shift to Blu-Ray really alienated me. Yes, I can work around its bullshit up a point. No, I am not going to pay ~$60 for half a show from years ago and then have to do quasi-illegal shit just to get it to maybe play on my computer – without menus. Fuck that.
Brewchin@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
The situation definitely sucks.
What’s the saying about piracy? It’s not a morality problem - it’s a service (business model) problem.
“The easiest way to stop piracy… is to give those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.” -Gabe Newell
Disagree with you on the BD issue, though. Much more capacity, higher quality video and audio, and drives are dirt cheap. I have a BDROM in an external enclosure, and it handles DVD and BD perfectly. 🤷♂️
e0qdk@reddthat.com 4 weeks ago
Yep – although even there, I have 5x as many games on GOG as Steam because they’re mine and I don’t have to worry about dealing with forced updates ever. That was a BIG deal for me when I had crappy internet access – a single game’s forced update could tank my entire month’s quota… I still get nervous putting Steam in online mode to this day even though I don’t have to deal with that shit any more.
My complaint there’s about Blu-Ray’s DRM. Better quality video means nothing to me if I can’t actually get the damned thing to even play.