this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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Warner Bros. Discovery is on the eve of launching Max, its new streaming service that combines the already-existing platforms of HBO Max and Discovery+. But don’t expect Aubrey Plaza to be am…

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago (2 children)

iTunes is literally the same as streaming though.

You rent access to the content for as long as the platform wants.

DVD/Bluray are the solution to this... except not everything is released like that...

In the end, piracy wins... again... like it always has...

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In the end, piracy wins… again… like it always has…

Ain't that the truth. And honestly I don't want to pirate media. I'd rather pay so I could support content creators, but I don't want to support this "you don't own anything, you're only licensing it out temporarily from corporations and they can fuck you over any time they feel like it" bullshit either.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I really wish there was a way to just buy a digital file of a movie I want so I can have it on my plex

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Right? That doesn't sound like it's a lot to ask

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It makes sharing the media easier and the more media is shared, the less people have to buy it or pay to stream it. It's just an attempt to throw a wrench into a situation that is gonna happen anyway.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You rent access to the content for as long as the platform wants

Yeah I've had movies I "bought" on Apple disappear and they just offer a free rental when you finally notice and complain. They expect you to download everything you buy when you buy it and sync it between devices if you want to keep it.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (3 children)

We're at the stage where owning media is a news-worthy concept. (and no, iTunes is not owning your media either, it's licensed, but how crazy would the headlines be if she bought physical media)

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

„they” could have “solved” the necessity for owning a pirate hat. but they fucked up too many times.

even if you’re ok with just streaming and owning nothing for your money… you need like 6 subscriptions to listen and watch the stuff you want. I’m not willing nor able to spend hundreds for nothing. I used that money to purchase a large hard drive and some cool tshirts from my favorite bands.

greed is an ugly removed and I am wearing yet again my trusty old pirate hat.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Gave up on Netflix a good 10 years ago when they first started quiet rumours about stopping people from accessing other countries catalogues. Immediately spun up an install of Plex and today am sitting on 30+TB of everything-I-ever-wanna-have and won't be going back. Only access to any paid streaming service I have is D+ via a friends account, and I've used it 4x in 2 years lol.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What level of quality do you store your content at? 1080p? 4K?

I want to build my own catalog of Movies also, but I'm afraid of not getting enough Storage for 4K because it costs so much. I mean, sure, I can get 4TB HDDs for 59.99, but how much 4K Content is that?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'd guesstimate something like 100 movies. 4k Movies can be massive depending on the bitrate, HDR, etc...

My smaller 4k files are ~20GB and my biggest ones are 87GB(3 hour movie, high bitrate)...

Seems that "typical" is closer to 40... so 100 movies is probably about right.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

100 movies per 4TB? If that's true, that's pretty reasonable! Id probably get 4 drives and do 3+1 Parity

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

That's my guess... I have majority 1080p content, with a sprinkling of 4k stuff. I'm at 27TB for 6062 movies. 160 of which are 4k at varying bitrates.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I store almost everything but my few favorite movies in 1080p. but I also let friends request content and I have automatic lists setup to add new stuff as it comes out so I try not to keep 4k, plus watching 4k outside of the house can be stressful on the server so 1080p is good for me, I have about 60tb of 1080p shows movies and youtube series

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Got tired of trying to figure out what service to watch a show on this week. Back to sailing the 7 seas…

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

That’s what justwatch.com is for

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The thing is…a lot of media will never hit physical copies.

Has anything from Apple TV+ been released on DVD?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

She's going to be appearing in a Disney+ show for Marvel. None of those have ever been released for purchase either (and probably never will be).

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Apparently, according to the article at least, she and her husband wanted to watch ~~The Sopranos~~ Top Chef season 20, they couldn't figure out how to get Hulu+Live to work, so they ended up buying the Sopranos on iTunes.

But I'm pretty sure The Sopranos had a physical release.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

For a brief time I used Netflix, I was not impressed with the fluctuations of encoding/streaming quality.(yep, I know it's early days.) Fast forward to this year, I visited my friend's place to have a get together, one pick something to watch and yet with gigabit fibre internet it still looks shit and pixelated until it "catches up".

I'd buy downloads instead cause I can zoom around the show without worrying the quality.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

A bunch of things from Apple TV+ actually did get put on Blu-Ray, but they're British/European discs

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If you download it and crack the DRM you own that file, at least

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Which in some jurisdictions is also illegal. So I might as well skip the "payment" part as well then.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Are there good DRM removal tools for iTunes? Googling for it gives the expected result, ie. pages and pages of scammy bullshit that I really don't have the energy to sort through

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

A good DRM removal tool would be to purchase the media wherever you like to feel morally good. After that you torrent the media so you can actually own a copy.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago

I can't believe someone considers this news

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

When you're a millionaire+ it's certainly a lot easier to say "eh, guess I'll just buy everything I ever want to watch outright." This hardly seems like news imo.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Oh no!.. In other news...

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I just want to say, fuck the shift to Max. Ignoring that making me download a new app for no reason for the same thing with basically the same UI is bullshit, especially for the worst rebrand of all time, the new version of the app doesn't work and crashes constantly.

All to add a bunch of absolute dogshit content a five year old should be embarrassed to host on their personal YouTube channel. HBO was my single constant for multiple years, and I cancelled. On the plus side they put me in a survey on the switch I got to comment a lot on.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What's really REALLY annoying is that the new version of the app has ALL The same bugs HBO max had when it launched. The audio desync when skipping intros, the timeouts on resuming paused content, the out of sync subtitles, the glitchy UI. It's like they just reskinned the 1.0 launch of the old app from four years ago and called it a day.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I have it giving me some generic "please try again" error almost every time it does autoplay. The audio will keep going all night on my HomePod with the error up, too. I'm just done. I'm not wading through the trash content and just as bad software for them to take away the good HBO shows.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

She should get a VPN and a pirate hat

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

iTunes isn't much different from any of the "streamers". They still license media to you while reserving the right to withdraw it from you at any time, and stream it to you on-demand. The only thing that's different is the pricing model.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

To be fair, it's the only platform that lets you download the media AFAIK, and you can use ViWizard to remove DRM from the files once you've downloaded them.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

The article mentions that Plaza doesn’t like streaming services because she can’t figure them out. It has nothing to do with ideology.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

You also know where the content is.

It's not just the cost of the 20 subscriptions you need to watch the top 20 shows or whatever. It's also the "which platform actually has it?" Digital purchases, for the most part, are generally not platform exclusive. You don't have to say "I need HBO (I mean Max) to watch this show and CBS (I mean paramount?) to watch this one", with 10 different watch lists and each app being fundamentally broken in a slightly different way. It's not self hosting, but the difference in convenience between buying digital content (even with DRM) and streaming libraries is huge.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Wow this is some great and exciting technology on display!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I buy my films and TV shows from.. wait no I don't

Raw files and/or physical copies > anything else

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I like to buy stuff from iTunes and remove the DRM if I can't get a physical copy

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It was a bit unclear for me, but does this article say that HBO Max will become merged with Discovery+? I really hope that's not true. I have HBO because of the relatively high quality, and I would be willing to pay more just to keep the braindead shit from Discovery from polluting the catalog.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Remember when Discovery was an oasis of informative content in a desert of reality TV? I wonder how long before curiosity stream goes the same way

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

And History Channel being about history. I miss Doscovery Wings the most though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Wow this is some great and exciting technology on display!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

The article itself is clickbaity, but actually does bring up the point of how ridiculously fractured these streaming services have made access to TV and film media. Combining a couple to form Max is a step in the right direction.

We went from a small number of sources for everything to an unmanageably large number. I mean really, do they expect a consumer to maintain upwards of twenty subscriptions to get full access to TV and film media. It's insanity.

At this point I don't have any at all except for Amazon Prime which I mainly carry for online shopping, but I still use the streaming on occasion. My apt comes with free cable TV so I use that with a DVR for some stuff. Otherwise there's a lot of stuff I just don't have legit access to.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I remember asking years ago "how can I watch movies ethically, both supporting FOSS formats, owning my copy of the content, and paying the creators for their work?" I think the answer has gotten even more elusive now than ever.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Indeed, iTunes is even more powerful than some streaming platforms. But iTunes music is also protected by DRM like other videos. I recommend you to take a look at these five best apple music drm removal tools.

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