So I've been ripping my DVDs to a media server as well as going to used book stores and adding to the collection just so I can stop funding all this woke nonsense. From a technical standpoint its all cool and fun and I've been sharing my story with various friends (omitting the 'woke' part because many of these guys are all part of the facebook consciousness 'Landru, save us')
From 3 separate people at 3 separate times now - my talking about just using my own library for streaming purposes rather than pay the fee has led to them responding, exactly word for word, "I subscribe to Disney+ because I can't afford to buy all those Disney movies" like it's some sort of hypnotic suggestion. (and I don't even bring up Disney+, just streaming services in general)
Certainly that's true if you buy the discs new - but if you get them off of EBay or a used book store you can pick up most Disney movies on bluray for under $10 and DVD for usually $5! So, yeah, you've got some costs up front if you're a BIG Disney fan of yore but the media is YOURS, can't be edited for content behind your back and you'll always have access to it (and will eventually recoup the cost)
I had a friend last night (that spurred on this rant) then go on to say that he watched "The Black Hole" and "The Apple Dumpling Gang" which he would've never seen if he didn't have D+ - As if he's justifying the $90/year price tag to himself by saying he's watching movies he couldn't be bothered to watch without it? Don't get me wrong - I'm a spend your money as you see fit kinda guy. But none of my friends were touting how GREAT D+ was... they were all grudgingly defending their monthly tithes to the mouse (I have it because it'd be more expensive to not have it) and, more importantly, using the same verbiage...
Just an odd Sunday morning note...
The great thing about their utter wokeness is I have no issues with sailing the high seas. I can watch whatever I want, whenever I want for free and I can discover all kinds of movies and series if I feel like it.
Just about anything that gets released these days isn't worth "owning" (even if it's just a ripped copy) anyway, so some streaming website is good enough for me.
Unlike them I AM touting how GREAT it is to not give these people money!
The interesting thing for me is how Piracy went from a physical imperative (living in a rural area where most merchandise were not available), to an economic imperative (Being a broke teenager/ university student) to a moral imperative (the money almost certainly funding corruption, rather than encouraging the production of more of the product.)
All those "No excuse for piracy" screeds felt hollow at the time, but now we've reached the point where it's like attacking a fortified position.
There are so many checks things have to pass before I'd even consider paying money. Not because of any financial restraints on my part, but because at some point unless I'm paying a single person for a solo project, and sometimes even then, I'm almost certainly giving money to somebody who hates my guts, my way of life, and will almost certainly be passing that some of that money into a machine seemingly dedicated to destroying western civilization.
It's taking more and more work to convince me that it's ethical not to pirate something.
Steam remains the only platform which I use with any sort of regularity, it doesn't require a monthly subscription fee, and it makes installing games easy, and even then I feel more and more wary of it. I've been wondering if there's a good way to run Proton outside of Steam more and more.
Yea, I used to pirate as a teen because I didn't have money. Then I eventually stopped because digital distribution got more convenient than piracy, I thought creators deserved to get paid and I could afford to buy games. Then almost all of them went woke and I'm not supporting that.
Valve used to be pretty much neutral but they've been jumping on the woke shitshow bandwagon more and more. If I'm going to buy a game I'll at least make sure it's the cheapest it can be (e.g. by finding a 3rd party store via https://isthereanydeal.com/).
The only exception I make are developers who are openly anti-woke but they are few and far between.
yeah just on the gaming side, i dropped a lot of money on Steam, PS when i became able to afford it. But I now I've gone back to full independent acquisitions because of the increasing wokeness and all that. I'm only giving my money now to Sega now and then because they haven't fallen completely and make good games (but they have been showing some early signs of wokeness) & any multiplayer games that I want to play online with friends. but even then, I've only paid for games probably once or twice in the last 3 years
Ah - the age old moral dilemna!
https://givesgoodemail.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/bc_moraldilemma2.png
About Proton: Lutris just works fine, no? Not really proton as it is but wine works pretty well. I've run a couple games I've owned and "owned for a while now through lutris.
And I feel like the same argument has been had about anime. I've only ever owned the source material of a series I particularly enjoy(say Junji Ito's work or Jojo) but never actually subbed to a streaming service like Crunchyroll to see the shows. There, it always was at least to me the argument about price(depending on where you live you get more than just gourged) or the morale.
I like to support the creators of a show I really enjoy but I can't with good conscience support someone who just bought the license and uses it to bleed the anime community dry. And the streaming services I don't support because they're often times just wokies who wanna change anime(looking at you fanimation) or make woke garbo(looking at you crunchyroll). On top fo that their service sucks last I checked, no connection to anime list websites, would be a huge boon and already is with apps like Tachiyomi for manga and finally tons of series not licensed in my region etc.
So I buy the manga/LN/whatever and watch the show in other ways.
there was another step, too, where people thought copyright law in general was immoral. now it feels like we've gone from defying copyright law to denying it just for these corrupt people, and i can't help but think that that's probably healthier thinking.
You can just run wine instead, or through Lutris if you want that “point and click” GUI experience.
I need to start doing what you do.
Oh yea. I finally learned how to do that
Just make sure you use a VPN when you download torrents. Streaming sites are legal gray areas that nobody cares about because you're only downloading. However with P2P torrents you're also uploading. So make you sure you have that extra layer of obfuscation.
Operating a streaming site is definitely illegal, and not just in the hyperbolic sense that copyright infringement is illegal, the Democrats actually made it a felony. Viewing a streaming site is probably ok though.
Oh yea operating one definitely is. I was talking from the point of view of just watching stuff.
For those of us who live in BFE and have shit-tier Internet service that's only available from one provider, torrenting isn't always the easiest or fastest option. On an added point, by maintaining your own hardcopy archive of the discs in addition to the ripped version, you're protected (somewhat) from drive failure in the storage array since you can always re-rip them if you have a catastrophic failure.
But yeah, I see your point - if you have fast Internet then by all means, sail the seas and save yourself some legwork.
Totally agreed - anyone who sets up a home NAS without some sort of redundancy (in my mind, a minimum of RAID 5) is playing with fire when it comes to data loss. One doesn't necessarily have to go out and spring for a high-end Buffalo or Synology multi-drive unit, a homebrew one works fine if you know what you're doing, but one definitely needs to make sure they can source replacement drives in the event of a failure. In my mind, that's a big one, because I've worked with too many businesses in the past that didn't really understand the impact of making sure they had a good backup of their data and that RAID is not a backup. They didn't get the notion that they were responsible for making sure their RAID was in good health and that they were taking a copy of their data offsite, much less something as simple as rotating their backups. Anyone getting into hosting their own needs to make sure that they know what they're doing when it comes to keeping a copy of their data (both RAID and backup) safe so they don't end up having to go to the trouble of doing the aforementioned re-ripping in the event of catastrophe.
Want to save money?
Get a library card. Seriously. Libraries have a lot of really interesting stuff you'd figure they wouldn't have, including video games.
You can borrow a lot of shit from the library for free - it's actually pretty impressive the selection you get. Remember, some of your tax dollars are spent funding these libraries, so make use of them.
Meanwhile, I'm sitting here with my peg leg and eyepatch.
The whole "I wouldn't have seen these movies" thing holds no water. You can browse through their list on other sites and even torrent websites have these packages of multiple movies.
Most of this shit I don't even afford the bandwidth despite it being out there on the high seas.
most streaming sites like fmovies and 123movies will recommend you all the latest releases and let you pick year and genres if you want to be more selective.
Even then, I would say over 60-70% of the stuff on their subscription isn't really worth anyone's time anymore.
"Apple Dumpling Gang"? Seriously? The fact that they didn't think to watch it until they saw the title says everything about how culturally influential and important that film is. And they would rather pay $90 a year than the $4 to rent on demand from Prime? Or, you know, watch a good movie instead. Like the ones you see a million of at the thrift store or in garage sales. At least people wanted to see those enough to pay $20 a pop at the time.
I have never subscribed to a streaming service. It never sat well with me to give some company my money whilst getting nothing to physically own in return
They aren't bad bangs for your buck for limited use. Paying for a month or two, watching everything you care to watch and cancelling is great value. Especially for things you'll probably not watch a second time. Its in the same venue as movie tickets in terms of not receiving a physical ownership to watch something.
This is of course independent of any "should you give money to X" beliefs, of which Disney you certainly shouldn't nor Netflix.
Movies haven't been worth the experience for decades.
That's a fine opinion to have, but that's been the industry for over a century. Streaming didn't invent the "buy to view" system for movies.
Mix tapes are theft!!!
Check out the history of the Disney vault and how they faught really hard to not put their movies on vhs or dvd at first and even tried to make them pay per view at one point. Disney+ is something Disney has been wanting for decades. The idea you could have viewed Snow White and the seven dwarves without buying a movie ticket was something the company hated.
Funding pedophilia is addictive.
Checking yard sales has netted me Disney's back catalog. Even things they don't want you to have anymore like The Song of the South. A dollar or two per DVD or blu ray, and 50 cents to a dollar per VHS.
Taking to the high seas is great and all but I think used book stores are somewhat undervalued. Libraries are cool, and the inter-library loan system is awesome, but in the end you pretty much have curated options, with no option to own. Used book stores are wild, you really have no idea what can show up there. Sure, the contents of the store is curated by the owner or who ever is working the desk but in my experience they'll take pretty much anything. And many of them offer credit. You can show up with a stack of books, drop it off, browse around, and return to buy a new stack of books and get charged 50 cents. They are pretty much for profit libraries.
Another thing, in my own experience, is that the people that run stores like that are similar to the people who ran independent video rental stores. They have extensive knowledge and a genuine love for the media they are selling. Chat one up and they will unload a crazy amount of esoteric information about Philip José Farmer, Robert Silverberg, or EE Doc Smith and the Lensman series.
muffled sea shanty plays in the distance
I've started doing the same: ripping my movie collection and putting them on a media server. If for no other reason than discs do eventually degrade and become unplayable (and I've already found a couple that have).
Goodwill up here in the PNW is a fantastic source of used movies and CDs, with the caveat that the vast majority of movies are going to be DVDs and not blu rays.
Kids don't give a fuck.
Heard you there. Verizon packages it in with my plan (along with ESPN) and even if I didn't want it they'd still charge me for it. Sadly, there's not really any other option for cellular service in my neck of the woods, because if it isn't Verizon or one of the MVNOs that piggyback on them, then you're lucky if you get service more than half a mile away from the main highways.
HBOMax for me - but I still don't watch it. Not out of any moral cause but just because there's NOTHING on there I want to watch!
Hey ya wanna watch the new Animaniacs?!
Oh cool - I bet there's tons of stuff they can poke fun at with today's politics and virtue signaling.
Oh no - they're all in compliance with those things and support them!
I lmao at the Righteous Gemstones
To OP, most of the old good movies - many of which are not even on Disney+ - can be found on Bitchute. Watch it 1 and done. Theres lots of great old movies on Bitchute, which allows me to minimize my torrent use to 1 or 2 per year.
Just learn to pirate. A Plex server is more cheap a year than subbing to Disney+ is.
You can do the same thing with Jellyfin with zero licensing fees. Little bit of a learning curve to get it running on Linux but with the way Microsoft is going (and has been going for 20 years) it's worth sharpening up your Linux skills anyway.
Yes. I'm a big fan of jellyfin. Plex started adding more and more stuff I didn't care about, but couldn't turn off.
Jellyfin has been much more configurable and only marginally more difficult to use.
I ended up spending more on hard drives than a lifetime of netflix subscriptions, but I have movies I want to watch, they aren't going anywhere, and I learned what a reverse proxy is. Can't get any of that with netflix.
The kind of people to really want to watch Disney movies are the type that already owned a lot of Disney movies anyway.
sunken costs, they thought they have to watch it because they already paid for the monthly, it's just like the cable the streaming service replaced it's not quality/entertaining shows, they're just contents you left on when you read your social media on the phone
with high speed broadband and cheap webspace, there are tons of free movie hosting sites out there. I havent paid for a movie to see a movie in a theatre or streaming and not as part of a date with a woman or social gathering in 12 years. And even then the total has been less than $100 over the course of those 12 years.
I was never into collecting physical media except for books anyways, and I was glad when movies and music started to become web based. I think I own maybe 20 DVDs and I dont even know where they are, in a box in the garage, a few in my car because it has a DVD player.
Some coworkers have an entire room in their house filled with bookshelves of DVDs. I just dont get it. Its so tacky looking. Is like a faux Study where you get dumber instead of smarter.
Pinnochio is worthwhile (and antithetical to modern Disney)...
"The Black Hole" wasn't great in 1979, and I doubt it's aged well.
I just download
And garage sales. We have pretty much every pre-woke Disney movie in existence for probably $20 total.
Parents that have finally broomed their kids out of the house are desperate to sell all their junk. So lots of games and used game consoles out there as well.
The subject does seem to come up a lot.
Plex server on a PC with a huge hard drive and an AppleTV or similar device is as easy as it gets. Even if the internet goes down you can watch content via WiFi.
I just go borrow movies from my library, and if I like it enough I just rip it to my PC. That costs 0 dollars.
Most of the original Disney Plus stuff, outside of some of the SW content, sucks anyway, so you're not missing out on much.
Instead of watching movies, do something in the real world with your body and mind.
Even buying them brand new is doable if you only buy 1 or 2 each pay day and only buy what you want.
https://www.1377x.to/
I've been building a physical media library for a few years now. At this point I have several hundred movies. I've never subscribed to a streaming service. If people keep paying subscriptions it's only a matter of time until physical media vanishes altogether and the concept of media ownership fades, and I won't support that. We shouldn't let ourselves be at the mercy of the media corporations and their ever-changing terms.
Are they not aware of the internet? You can find pirate streaming platforms that have everything, from every platform, from every year, from every publisher, ever, for a fraction of the price if any at all. Morality? They are funding literal pedophiles and child grooming. You have moral imperative to not support D+, Pedoflix, etc.
The normies that don't understand logic will do whatever mental gymnastics necessary, however illogical, to comply with their conditioning. These monkeys can only be reached through emotional manipulation, ie you need to make their trends untrendy by essentially bullying them (in a kind way). They are herd animals so you need to take advantage of the herd mentality. You have to be a bit of a Chad to do it however because if they don't desire your approval then it won't work.
You need to consider though, that Disney owns the rights to great films that were pre-woke and some were even around before anyone at the current Disney even worked there. It would be a shame to longer experience these movies because they are now owned my a immoral corporation.