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Missed opportunity IMO there should totally be a piracy product or site called VHS

they are what your torrents evolved from.

Because I'm uncreative, I'm just going to steal the joke from Sseth.

Because the vehicle in From Software's game, Elden Ring, is called "Torrent", I can't wait for the next From Soft character "Punjabi Codex Denuvo, pre-cracked Novirus [MeGusta]".

Have you heard of doing both? (^_-)

Only if you pay for them 🏴‍☠️

Perhaps even a crime.

where owning media is considered a luxury.

Much more likely that it will simply be impossible to legally own any media.

Back when people bought analog media, I don't know if it was fully spelled out what you did and didn't actually own. Obviously you didn't own the copyright to whatever it is you were buying. But, you did own the physical item. What rights were transferred to you when you bought the record in the record store? Probably an unlimited right to play the record at home, but not the right to play it in a dance club. I wonder if the "copyright license" was ever actually spelled out though.

In the digital era there is no longer any physical item to own, and since you never did own the "information" encoded into the physical medium, ownership of digital files is already on shaky ground. In the past you could buy MP3s, and these days it's still occasionally possible to buy DRM-free e-books. But I wouldn't be surprised if in the future just having media stored locally will be presumed to be illegal.

Bluray was always luxury.

oh man I used to have (way long ago, the statue of limitations has crumbled) the most extensive collection of early simpsons. then my family started buying me plastic simpson head collections for birthdays and holidays, so I stopped downloading. still have a great collection.

now instead my hard drive is filled with so much music. more music than games, which my wife refuses to believe (but half of it is hers).

and we have an entire cd collection, and vinyl collection to rip if I ever get bored.

there was this old blues program on the local npr station that I'd listen to religiously in high school. I was trying to learn sax. I kind of did, but I've got a stack of those tapes taller than me. I just right now found out the guy who ran the program died last month so I'm trying to dig out a cassette deck. here's a song i got off his program.

and fill up my hard drives.

This is the real cost of your method. Luckily hard drive costs halve every 2 years or so.

I watched my first anime, Tenchi Muyo, by streaming it on Real Player at like 90p.

not everyone lives in countries with local libraries that have videos

My local torrent site has them without getting off the couch.

Not in all countries.

I've got no way to play DVDs though I'd have to go and buy a DVD player. Streaming content is much more convenient I would like to be able to do it legally and without hassle. But the content creating companies don't seem to be interested in providing me an option to do that.

Anyway my local library isn't really that local it's a 25-minute drive and probably an hour plus walk up a really steep hill.

Workin' on it! Got me a used laptop that's about as recent as possible to still have a slim bluray slot built in. Learning all the things.

I highly suggest that you make ripped backups. I learned the hard way, I digitised my grandfather's CD collection and some of his DVDs, some of which were already damaged beyond repair. Some of his broken DVDs are less than 20 years old. They are not scratched, they are in mint condition.

I just don't have nearly the amount of places to get them anymore. Still, I have a small wall worth of DVDs and Blu-ray.

I’d still rather have on demand streaming over broadcast. Having to time-shift by recording live shows was super annoying.

instructions unclear, set fire to my entire DVD collection

Or save them redundantly to several archive-quality hdds. Why have 20 blu-ray dvds for one copy of a collection when you could have 3 complete copies on 3 hdd. Both are life limited media, both will eventually require re-archiving. One has potential for mechanical failure, the other more likely to physically degrade. Pick your poison, or do one of each.

Genuinely curious how are publishers limiting physical media? I haven't bought a blu-ray in a long while.

"The powers that be" aren't doing some kind of nefarious thing here. Physical media is only worth producing if they're doing it at incredibly high volumes. The smaller the run, the more expensive it is for each individual unit. Fewer and fewer people are buying, and there are fewer and fewer physical devices out there capable of playing the media.

For them, it's a simple calculation of the cost of producing physical media, getting it from the factory to stores, paying the stores to shelve it, etc. vs. simply having a website with media files on it.

While there are some people who still prefer physical media, for the most part consumers also prefer just going to a website and clicking a button vs. driving to a store, parking, searching the shelves in the hope they have what they're looking for, and so-on. In addition, as fewer companies put out physical media, it's harder to find the physical media you want in the stores, so more people prefer to go online, which leads to less demand for physical media, fewer choices on the shelves, and more demand for streaming.

I'm sure the bonus of consumers rarely having a way to view a movie or listen to a song an unlimited number of times without paying is something the media companies also enjoy. But, the main reason physical media is disappearing isn't some kind of conspiracy by the mysterious "powers that be", it's a simple profit calculation by accountants at Sony and Disney.

That must mean you have the original Lilo & Stitch.

Excellent.

Disney has always been shit, especially their business practices.