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.

A hand full of VHS as well.

I'm sure there's other "old" people here that never stopped sailing the seas. I started to use a computer in the mid 90ies and internet a few years later. From the start, there has been attempts at streaming. I remember using RealPlayer trying to stream some video while on dial-up, only to be just a bunch of pixels in a very tiny window. So you downloaded everything, and kept it because you didn't want to spend 45 minutes to download the very same song once again.

And I never stopped this practise. I still have my MP3 collection that I started 25 years ago. I still have .rm files from movies that I captured myself. I can't believe how much bandwidth we just waste on streaming stuff again and again.

Once, the zoomer trying to sell my a data plan for my phone couldn't believe I didn't need more than a few gigs a month. No, I don't stream music. No, I don't stream movies nor series. I download them once, store them, and enjoy them whenever I want. No censored episodes, no missing episodes, no ads, just the content.

Although I do buy some of my MP3s now if possible. If I can straight up pay to download MP3 files, like on Bandcamp, I will. I wish we could do the same for series and movies, but since we're absolutely not there, I'll just continue to sail the seas and fill up my hard drives.

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

The live-action redo is terribly tropified and shockingly bad in comparison.

There was auto tracking towards the end. It was the rewind that done it for me.

Nebula isn't really even in the same ballpark, super weird to include it there. Not sure when YouTubers started minting blu-rays and DVDs...

While some of the cited services have done some egregious stuff all on there own, I was taking it as mostly about how you have just so many of them and you have to keep track of what content is available via what service and how that changes over time.

Curiosity isn't part of the content shuffling part of it, but it is still a reminder of just how fractured the general experience is.

Don't forget S-VHS, D-VHS, and HD-DVD...

I'll only watch a VHS, if it's a weird Japanese anime OVA from the 80s.

I'll edit. I would have sworn I mentioned the title. Silly me

Funny thing.

I did a quick search of 'robert downey jr stays in character in dvd extras' and got the result instantly.

Yes, but there's no reason why Nebula wouldn't enshittify in the future. At least they dare to offer a lifetime account so it's not just one more subscription. And I just want google to loose.

I’ve bought a lot of physical media over the last couple of years and it can be great, but there’s a lot of pitfalls

The quality of, particularly, DVDs is all over the place and the transition from NTSC to digital is handled in so many different ways that each require special handling.

PAL and European releases can be terrible in all kinds of ways including speeding up the content and optionally pitch correcting the audio.

A lot of content you’d want isn’t available or is only available at exorbitant prices.

UHD discs have tons of read errors that make ripping perfectly difficult and the quality (and this price) of the drive makes a big difference in how well you can do this.

Drives don’t last if you’re ripping lots of stuff.

Just some things off the top of my head, nowhere near a complete list.

It’s still worth it, though, and new releases are easier if that’s what you’re looking for.

Toss Betamax in there and you've got me. I miss those little tapes.

Good to know. I’m not picky on subtitles but my wife needs them. A friend of mine is very familiar with the high seas so I may consider getting his help instead.

I’ll look into it, I appreciate it.

I'm anticipating a crackdown on piracy in the near future. Even if you use a VPN that could get you flagged and traffic analyzed maybe even dropped from your ISP.

If companies are allowed unlicensed access (AI training) to media en masse I don't see a reason everyone else shouldn't have that either.

Buy one that can also burn m-disc