You have to be really careful trying to buy physical copies nowadays, too, since bootlegs are absolutely everywhere. Especially on Ebay.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’m all for this, but acquiring the media outside of streaming services in the first place is difficult, likely by design. There’s no GOG for movies and TV; there’s not even a Steam. My wife is basically permanently subscribed to Peacock because she loves Law and Order: SVU, to the point that she basically has the whole series on loop while she knits. I started looking this time last year into how to self-host all that, but I didn’t even get to the point of finding out what Jellyfin is before I realized that it was impossible to legally acquire all the seasons on Blu Ray or even DVD. They want me to either subscribe to Peacock or buy a “digital copy”, which is just rental streaming by another name. I’m not a skilled enough pirate to know that my ISP isn’t going to mind my activity, and being a skilled pirate isn’t even something I’m interested in being. Plus, my past experiences with piracy is that beggars can’t be choosers, and the bit rate could be awful, or it would have huge watermarks from whatever Canadian channel the pirate recorded from, and that’s not a great experience when it’s supposed to be a gift anyway.
Unlike the video author, I’m not even bothered by algorithmic recommendations for media. I actually like it. The main reason I want to self host my media is because I don’t watch so much of it that a subscription price makes sense very often. If my wife and I are just watching the same couple of things over and over again, why do I need a buffet of content I’m not going to watch at monthly subscription prices?
DigDoug@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Oh, I forgot the other part of my rant when it comes to acquiring the content. Brick and mortar doesn’t carry Blu Rays anymore. Maybe Walmart does, but I don’t have one near me. Target and Best Buy stopped. I have a functional mall near me, but not one store in it sells movies, and when I asked, they looked at me like I had two heads.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
So bizarrely the best experience is to self host and pirate. That’s what you get when the entire entertainment industry is hostile to consumers.
When Netflix first became big, it was popular because it was a one-stop shop for almost all your content. It was like a big library of content in one place, you pay a reasonable monthly fee and it’s all there. Piracy dipped as a result.
Now all the content is fragmented into numerous walled gardens you have to pay separate fees to access. People can only consume the same amount but now they have to pay 4 or 5 fees as the content is spread out.
Unsurprisingly piracy is booming again.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I don’t even mind that there are so many different streaming services. It’s still a far better version of cable, where I can opt into ad-free for a few more dollars and sign up for or cancel a given service at will without having to have all of them. What sucks is when it’s the only legal distribution channel and I can’t make the choice that’s right for me based on my consumption, like buying just the movies and shows I want and playing them how I want. Demonstrated in the video, we still need what can most accurately be categorized as a workaround or a hack to even rip our own Blu Rays. All that plus the streaming services have raised their prices beyond the point where it’s an attractive deal.
TurdBurgler@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
This is why the seedbox SaaS market exists. Providing turn key hosted solutions, the only heavily lifting is the configuration which takes some reading to understand.
Check out the Servarr Wiki, Ombi, Syncthing as a starting point for media discovery and curration tooling.
kilgore_trout@feddit.it 2 weeks ago
Steam attempted to distribute movies between 2014 and 2019.
GOG gave up at the beginning of 2025.ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yeah, I’m aware. This is a problem that the movie and TV industry don’t appear to be interested in solving. And they seemingly operate as a massive cartel, so one studio isn’t about to break out on its own and innovate with a DRM free movie store.
bluemoon@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
yeah okay well your watchparties are increasingly going to get worse until you too hit your threshold: such is the business.
the rest of the world uses a VPN like MullvadVPN and qBittorrent to “digitally back up media we’ve already bought”. without ads, in better quality, without telemetry, without serfdom-subscriptions. you may like AI offloading your decisionmaking, but keep doing it and you will be codependent on authority for choosing anything in life. what do you want in a cozy moment away from work? it frustrates me to read people are too anxioys to begin to do otherwise and accept the way things are. that’s a rant in return
have a nice day, i won’t make this into a chain of replies.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
My watch parties already basically dried up. The movie industry is crumbling in front of us for not being able to adapt to what their audience actually wants, and I end up just spending my time in other ways, because they’re offering me poor value and too much friction (VPNs and torrents) to get what I want, and that’s what my rant is. They’ll adapt or die. Right now, it’s looking like the movie industry will die. You’re making a lot of assumptions there about offloading my decision making to AI though…
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
People still have watchparties?
SpookyBogMonster@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Some friends and I got together and watched Weapons for Halloween (on a friend’s jellyfin server) and we had a great time