<story><title>A Return to Blu-ray as Streaming Value Evaporates</title><url>https://www.audioholics.com/news/a-return-to-blu-ray-as-streaming-value-evaporates</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tombert</author><text>I have a pretty extensive blu-ray collection (almost 500 movies now, about 40 complete series). I almost never &lt;i&gt;watch&lt;/i&gt; blu-rays directly, because I don&amp;#x27;t want to muck with physical discs.  Immediately after buying a movie, I remove the DRM with MakeMKV, and put it onto a Jellyfin server.&lt;p&gt;I know it&amp;#x27;s (probably) not strictly legal for me to break the DRM of my movies, but I think I&amp;#x27;m ethically in the clear; I&amp;#x27;m not distributing the movies on ThePirateBay or anything, I just watch them within my home network...I think it would be pretty hard for anyone to demonstrate any &lt;i&gt;damages&lt;/i&gt; from my habits.&lt;p&gt;Streaming is absolutely more convenient than physical discs, but it&amp;#x27;s also objectively horrible for a company to be able to arbitrarily remove my media.  With my discs, I always have a physical copy, so it&amp;#x27;s more failure-proof.&lt;p&gt;That said, maintaining a server is a huge pain in the ass, and it&amp;#x27;s something that really is limited to geeky people. Sure, as a software engineer I know enough to install NixOS and Jellyfin and I even get some kind of masochistic enjoyment from fixing things when they inevitably break, but I cannot imagine my mom going through anything like this, so for her the media landscape has gotten &lt;i&gt;only worse&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Blu-rays really aren&amp;#x27;t being produced anymore, so I suspect that the only sustainable preservation effort will end up being piracy, and this has been an issue long enough that the large media companies cannot pretend to not understand that.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rakoo</author><text>&amp;gt; I cannot imagine my mom going through anything like this,&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s why we have to post individualistically and learn that everything is social, that solutions are societal. Your mom might never be able to self-host, and you might never be able to make the wine that you drink. That&amp;#x27;s fine, and that&amp;#x27;s why we share responsibilities as a group. Be the one that &amp;quot;knows how to do that king of things&amp;quot; for your group, host services for you, your mom, your friends... It&amp;#x27;s fun to do and a very good way to collectively re-appropriate our digital lives. You&amp;#x27;ll be the technical person, but all governance, directions, values can be decided collectively: that&amp;#x27;s what democratic societies are, after all. If you can&amp;#x27;t&amp;#x2F;don&amp;#x27;t want to be there 24&amp;#x2F;7, let the group know that it might break but maybe the group will decide that it&amp;#x27;s fine enough.</text></comment>
<story><title>A Return to Blu-ray as Streaming Value Evaporates</title><url>https://www.audioholics.com/news/a-return-to-blu-ray-as-streaming-value-evaporates</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tombert</author><text>I have a pretty extensive blu-ray collection (almost 500 movies now, about 40 complete series). I almost never &lt;i&gt;watch&lt;/i&gt; blu-rays directly, because I don&amp;#x27;t want to muck with physical discs.  Immediately after buying a movie, I remove the DRM with MakeMKV, and put it onto a Jellyfin server.&lt;p&gt;I know it&amp;#x27;s (probably) not strictly legal for me to break the DRM of my movies, but I think I&amp;#x27;m ethically in the clear; I&amp;#x27;m not distributing the movies on ThePirateBay or anything, I just watch them within my home network...I think it would be pretty hard for anyone to demonstrate any &lt;i&gt;damages&lt;/i&gt; from my habits.&lt;p&gt;Streaming is absolutely more convenient than physical discs, but it&amp;#x27;s also objectively horrible for a company to be able to arbitrarily remove my media.  With my discs, I always have a physical copy, so it&amp;#x27;s more failure-proof.&lt;p&gt;That said, maintaining a server is a huge pain in the ass, and it&amp;#x27;s something that really is limited to geeky people. Sure, as a software engineer I know enough to install NixOS and Jellyfin and I even get some kind of masochistic enjoyment from fixing things when they inevitably break, but I cannot imagine my mom going through anything like this, so for her the media landscape has gotten &lt;i&gt;only worse&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Blu-rays really aren&amp;#x27;t being produced anymore, so I suspect that the only sustainable preservation effort will end up being piracy, and this has been an issue long enough that the large media companies cannot pretend to not understand that.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>screamingninja</author><text>Do you watch those movies &amp;#x2F; series more than once? I have always thought of Blu-ray disks like books. You consume it and then lend it to a friend. I get that this is not what the media companies would want, but purchasing media&amp;#x2F;books and not using them more than once just feels wrong.</text></comment>