The DRM on Blu-Ray was too harsh so I skipped the format entirely. If I couldn’t put a disc into my HTPC (Linux) and press “play”, I wasn’t interested.
I’ve only ever bought one single blue ray disk, and that was the final venture brothers movie, in support of Jackson & Doc
Go Team Venture!
First their phones, now this? Does LG only want to be known as the company that makes great TVs and shit appliances?
Depends on the appliance. For example, LG dishwashers have good track records.
Different manufacturers excel at making different things. Don’t shop by brand, that’s how you get stuck with a lemon. Read the product reviews and expect different brands to be better at different things.
Their washing machines are pretty decent.
They make screens on contract for many electronic devices.
They do way more than that, that’s just the consumer facing stuff.
Lol go to Korea and see all the other consumer facing stuff. LG shampoo if you want.
I genuinely believe more people would have kept uaing physical media if they made it more convenient just to pop in a movie and play it.
Everytime I put in a 4k blu Ray, there’s like 40 seconds of useless loading screens, unskippabble warnings, menu animations, and other bullshit. It feels like the old days of massively overcooked multimedia “experiences” in the worst way possible.
I ripped our physical media, and the experience is way better. I wish I could just buy and download a .mkv or .avi or whatever.
The best bit is that Blu-ray supports “online content” so they can update the forced intros and trailers to fresh ones!
And it’s a great way to make sure you get an up to date ad snuck in there.
I still like physical media, but every corner of everything just has to be jam packed with ad crap and other distractors now
4K discs are so niche that this just isn’t really true, since they simply don’t bother to add that stuff anymore with the money all going to streaming. Almost every 4K disc I have just loads right into a bland generic menu with only a skippable logo for universal or whatever at the beginning. On top of that, they’re all region free. Odd that when the consumer base for physical media is smaller than it used to be, the consumer experience is better.
Now most of these 4K discs also come with a regular (often older) Blu-ray which contains the features from previous releases or whatever, and THAT’S where the bullshit you’re talking about is - lots of trailers (with it being a crapshoot whether you can skip straight to the menu, need to skip one at a time, or have to actually fast forward them), and, worst of all, defunct BD-Live stuff that in some cases you have no way to skip loading at all, even if you completely disable network connectivity in the player. None of this junk is in any of my 4Ks. Sometimes the features are even on the 4K too, if you’re really lucky.
But yeah, modern 4K discs are mostly great and still absolutely way better video and audio quality than any streaming service I’ve used - the worst thing you usually get is maybe one dumb copyright notice. (LG’s 4K players were terrible anyway though making the experience bad for consumers for a different reason, but that’s for another comment).
40 seconds?
More like 10 minutes
For real though
Streaming only. Sign up now for your recurring subscription. You’ll own nothing and you’ll like it, or else.
Jellyfin (Or Plex if you have to deal with the “Spouse Factor”) + Radarr and Sonarr + Usenet
Perfection, no annoying physical media to worry about, but you still get to keep the data you…uhh…“acquired”
I use Stremio/Torrentio/RealDebrid, is there any practical reason to switch?
Those are dependent on the relevant torrent being available and seeded
Jellyfin/Plex and Radarr/Sonarr + Usenet, you’ll have said file once downloaded for as long as you want, but requires considerably more storage space and torrents suck for older, more obscure stuff. Usenet doesn’t depend on seeders, and the big boys have something like 15+ years retention and you’ll always download them at full speed (no tons of seeders but slow upload speeds to worry about either)
So it’s a matter of personal preference
I’ve only used Jellyfin, what does Plex do better for the non-expert user?
Biggest upside of Plex for me is the fact that you can set up secure streaming from anywhere with basically a single click. With Jellyfin, that is much more manual. Besides that, I think some people may like that Plex has its own set of TV Shows & movies to stream, though I’m certain that those are ad supported. (Haven’t used that feature & have moved to Jellyfin)
Just a more polished interface, solid stability, real good transcoding and a client on just about everything that installs an app lmao
If you and everyone you care about being on it have been fine with Jellyfin, then there’s absolutely no reason to switch
If you like Jellyfin, stick with it. Plex kept screwing up requiring me to wipe the database. And the people who run it keep adding shit nobody wants.
i dont have a desktop or a server that can run this stuff constantly yet. but is usenet still good for the “discussions?” i thought there were better free versions.
As far as I know, there’s still a strong but small community on Usenet for discussions still
As far as server/desktop stuffs, many have had decent success running them on things like old laptops and raspberry pis to decent success. Won’t be as powerful, but if it’s just you and a spouse and maybe kids or something it should be just fine
someone was actually selling some older dell blade servers on kijiji for 120. if it doesn’t go down i might buy one
You sure you don’t mean rack servers? The blade chassis is pretty expensive and power hungry.
If it’s an Rx30 or newer that’s fine. Rx20 or older is meh. M anything is the modular blades, and that needs the big chassis to be useful.
sorry i meant rack. I was looking at a blade as well and got that messed up. i have to check the post again.
Yar har, fiddle-dee-dee.
I recently bought a second PC Blu-ray writer just in case this would happen. Lucky me. I should be good for the next 10 years.
Looks like they’re still available for now in the UK but at inflated prices sent from America
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B079LTC6ML
The above supports UHD and is easy to… adapt for legitimate ripping of your Blu-ray. For backup purposes of course.
I think Panasonic still make some too but I’ve used LG ones for years.
I’m surprised that usb Blu-ray drives are as expensive as they are still, low supply and mostly only niche demand I guess? Was hoping to get one to make some copies of my physical media, but spending $100ish for a usb drive hurts haha
I guess now’s the time to pull the trigger
Get one that works with libredrive so you can rip at full quality and speed through Makemkv.
Yeah, thank you, I’ve seen the LG BP60NB10 recommended a lot for makemkv, ordered one of Amazon, but they’ve been temporarily out of stock for a few days. The article doesn’t mention usb drives, so I think those are safe for a while, at least.
It might be permanently out of stock… cries
For internal desktop drives, I have the WH16NS40. After flashing some open firmware on it, it works perfectly for playing and ripping BRs. Looks like I’ll be picking up a spare in case this one dies.
The MakeMKV forum has a lot of good tips and instructions on selecting and configuring BluRay drives.
What’s the make and model number? The link is funky if your AMZN location isn’t set to UK
BP60NB10, though that may be different by region.
Also had just as much success, including with UHD BD, with the older BP50NB40.
The format was made in such a way that you needed very specific specs to watch on PC. They killed the format themselves.
It’s the thing Sony does best.
Blu-ray wasn’t designed by Sony, they just participated in the licensing pool. Sony designed UMD, those tiny disks used by PlayStation Portable.
The end is near for physical media for video.
I wish there were more/better/good choices for streaming video. We already have decent solutions for audio, games and books/audiobooks, yet video seems to be lagging behind, hugely.
what decent solutions do we have for audio and books?
Books: a variety of ways to purchase, with products a uniform quality. Yes, the file sizes are tiny, but it’s true, they are as they should be, they are adjustable to the device you use, and have extra - useful - features because of digitalisation.
Audio: a variety of services offering pretty much the same stuff. Spotify is basic but works. Tidal is higher quality. My disappointment comes from the fact that it is still region-dependent, I cannot sign up for Tidal where I am. There is also stuff like Bandcamp for those who want to be ‘closer’.
well i’d like to buy books from a source that’s not amazon or with DRM. bandcamp is nice becuase i get the actual audio files, i dont want streaming. I avoid spotify and garbage like that. I’m looking at buying CD’s and ripping them becuase i don’t know how else to buy music where i get the audio files for me to store.
ok
lol…
That’s because there is a strong tradition of rights distribution for movies and TV being totally fucked up, and it has been since day 1 of both industries. Brought to you by the same motherfuckers who gave you Hollywood Accountingtm, where a movie that cost $100 million to make and raked in $500 million at the box office somehow “didn’t turn a profit” and magically they don’t have to pay royalties to any of their writers or actors.
Yeah, I’d buy a lot more if there was a DRM-free way to buy media. Bluray is a pain to rip and I hate having to deal with discs.
But no, media companies are intent on keeping piracy easier than legitimate purchases. I go through the effort to rip my discs, but many won’t bother.
That’s basically what I want, and what should exist. File sizes aren’t much different to modern day games, people are also willing to pay if the quality is there.
Yup, give me something like GOG, but for movies, and I’ll buy a bunch.
Especially since stuff you want to watch changes services all the time.
It’s like if your DVDs of the star wars trilogy got replaced by the Brady bunch and then told you to pay more for that privilege.
Streaming isn’t the middle ground in my opinion, rather it’s unrestricted downloadable files that you can then handle however. Streaming provides some convenience but no consistent access (see various shows being delisted or shuffled between services).
Companies would love if everyone forgot having home video, in the sense of owning copies of movies and shows they always have access to and ability to watch whenever.
Yes, I should have clarified that as non-physical/digital media. Current platforms are a rough equivalent of renting movies.
As much as I hate that this is happening, I think once you turn to digital media, it’s incredibly difficult to go back. The convenience of having your stuff at a click of a button is just too good.
That said, if you’re into movies specifically, i’d personally still go the route of buying a disk, and ripping it to your local storage, but that’s both expensive, and inconvenient in terms of space
I’d have no issue with digital media if there was a way to actually own it. Everything is either streaming only or ridden with DRM that can only be played within their app. Blurays, assuming you can decrypt its DRM bs, are the last bastion of media ownership left.
Yup, which is why I have a Bluray drive with libredrive flashed so I can rip full quality UHD and store the raw video on my NAS.
You’ve essentially described exactly what the issue is. All these companies want you to continue subscribing, so you owning anything isn’t in their interest
“If buying isn’t owning then piracy isn’t stealing.”
- A bunch of pirates, probably
Storage is cheap for what you get.
A DVD movie ripped to MKV is 3-5GB.
A 12 terabyte drive is ~ $100. That’s… 2400 movies (if my math is right). My current movie collection is about 300 movies, 500GB of storage (I’ve ripped some stuff to MP4).
Having a backup of 12TB would cost perhaps $100/yr (Im paying less than that for backup of my 4TB storage).
Alternatively you can replicate your library with friends and family, pretty simple to do. Drop a mini pc with a drive in it running Kodi/Casaos/Freedombox, whatever, behind the TV at everyone’s house, for less than 20w of power you have a replicated media player.
Sure a DVD is only 3-5GB but a UHD Blu-Ray is 50-100 GB
You’re misunderstanding. I’m not talking about drive space, i’m talking about the space the physical disk cases take up
