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DVDs are dying right as streaming has made them appealing again (arstechnica.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

231 comments fedilink hide all child comments

It's sensible for businesses to shift from physical media sales. Per CNBC's calculations, DVD sales fell over 86 percent between 2008 and 2019. Research from the Motion Picture Association in 2021 found that physical media represented 8 percent of the home/mobile entertainment market in the US, falling behind digital (80 percent) and theatrical (12 percent).

But as physical media gets less lucrative and the shuttering of businesses makes optical discs harder to find, the streaming services that largely replaced them are getting aggravating and unreliable. And with the streaming industry becoming more competitive and profit-hungry than ever, you never know if the movie/show that most attracted you to a streaming service will still be available when you finally get a chance to sit down and watch. Even paid-for online libraries that were marketed as available "forever" have been ripped away from customers.

When someone buys or rents a DVD, they know exactly what content they're paying for and for how long they'll have it (assuming they take care of the physical media). They can also watch the content if the Internet goes out and be certain that they're getting uncompressed 4K resolution. DVD viewers are also less likely to be bombarded with ads whenever they pause and can get around an ad-riddled smart TV home screen (nothing's perfect; some DVDs have unskippable commercials).

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago (6 children)

Several tech YouTubers have talked about moving entirely to Jellyfin or similar, self-hosting their own movies and TV series from legally owned, ripped copies from their own DVD or Bluray collection.

It takes some work and time to rip, encode, and organize the files. But if you want to go this route, there has probably never been a better time. You can routinely purchase used DVDs and Bluray from thrift stores for a few bucks per disc... sometimes less. If I had a server and hard disk space I'd probably be going this route for media consumption.

Eventually the DVDs will go away entirely and then it will be impossible to create your own legal archival copies.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

Honestly, I'd rip my collection, but at the time it takes to download that quality rip I'd be quicker just typing them all into Radarr and coming back later...

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

"Self hosting their own movies and TV series from legally owned, ripped copies from their own DVD and BluRay collection"

Ngl, whenever they say that they be doing that in said videos I smirk a lil. Yeah sure, that's what you say when you're in front of the camera&recording a video pointing out what others could be doing as well. All while they likely got stuff obtained from the seven seas on there as well, just like folk that are going to replicate that setup are going to have as well. Let's not kid ourselves, a whole lot of content is only legally accessible via streaming services with no other options (shortly before it gets removed from the streaming services, leaving no legal way to access it), and that amount is becoming more each and every single day 😅

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Be careful I started down that road with a 500gb external hdd and now I've got a 40tb raid array and a homelab consuming my walk in closet.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

and now I’ve got a 40tb raid array

Um, I would like one of those.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Say this now. And you start self hosting everything and have 2 40tb raids

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I've been doing this since 2008 - although I only recently setup Plex in 2017, before that I just ran a web server and played movies in a browser on various smart TVs, but around 2017 was when my main TV got an update that rendered its browser mostly useless... Fuck Sony by the way. And before smart TVs I just had a video card with TV out and long cables... Or burning VCDs, I still have my 5-disc DVD changer that could play VCDs as long as they were burned to CD-RW discs, though it's just gathering dust now.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I've had enough movies and shows unavailable to me that I'm doing exactly this. I bought a PC just to use as a media server, set up Plex, and started ripping all my DVDs to the computer and I can stream them to my Chromecast. No ads, available permanently. I can buy movies from thrift shops and garage sales, and at least for now DVDs are super cheap. It's not high quality video but I don't really care too much.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Ok someone explain Jellyfin. I tried to figure it out and it just wasn't clicking.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

It's your personal netflix with your stuff on it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If you know plex it's the same thing just open source.

But they are just video player front ends for your media libray

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I mean I have VLC. I have no issues with most media. I was under the impression it was a source for the media. Thanks.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Plex and Jellyfin organize your media using metadata and it's pretty much your own Netflix, Hulu type thing.

However, if you get a Plex pass you can stream your media outside of your network to friends and family. Or just yourself when you're out of the house. But your PC would need to stay on, unless you have a NAS bay with the hard drives in it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I didn't see any channels. Is it like Kodi? Maybe I'm just using it wrong.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Not like kodi. There are channels to watch stuff for free, kinda like Pluto TV. However, I do think you can stream your own content from your PC using kodi, not sure though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

It's basically a gallery for all your downloaded movies/shows, that you can just click play on whatever you have downloaded.