The key words here being "left with a library". Your media, now and forever, at no additional cost, available whenever you want. I could not go back to netflix etc.

but now you'll be not paying even more money! capitalism is great

I didn't pirate for years when Netflix was the bomb. Then it all started going to poop but I kept the subscription running while I sailed the seven seas with the thought that it was just a little bit of a reduced library, it's still good. It's just a heap of shows cancelled after one season and even more content missing, it's still good. But after a few years I had to accept that like a pig soaring over a dam, it was gone. So now no one gets my money.

Except my ISP, private indexers, a VPN company, and various hard drive manufacturers I guess.

There's just so few things that people actually watch multiple times. The things that people actually watch multiple times tend to be the same handful of movies and shows that rotates over the years. To do that you only need a very small library. Having a large media library is mostly just waste of space, even if it's digital is wasted because you're unlikely to watch 90% of it after the first time.

But, for me at least, not only having media when I'm at home is the real benefit. Not everyone wants to manage their own media server with remote access and the eventual debugging that follows with it.

And yet the cost of BitTorrent and the *arr suite has stayed the same.

I do like how all of piracy is nautical themed.

Radarr, Sonarr, Torrent, FunkWhale, subsonic, Jellyfin, etc.

I think if you're someone who really enjoys watching movies and likes watching multiple times then buying media is absolutely the way to go. But most people turn their brain off and just zone out to whatever.

For music I'd there is way more of a case for buying media to be the dominant way to consume music since your always listening to music over and over.

I signed up for one of their trials because I'm a huge EPL fan and then found out most of the games weren't even on peacock or the tier they told me def had the games. I needed a cable subscription and USA channel. Fuck em.

Peacock = pisspenis

In no way is Peacock worth $17/month.

HDD prices are up over the last several years even with greater density drives coming on the scene, but it still pales in comparison to the price increases of these streaming services.

People only liked Blockbusters business model because there were no other options. Redbox came on the scene and decimated the company and they were even sued to get the distribution model changed so that they had to wait a month before they could rent new movies out. Now both companies are relics of the past since streaming became mainstream.

I used to point this out about Hulu probably close to a decade ago on reddit and would get endless comments about how "it's just a few shows," "i never see any ads," and "it's not their fault." I wonder if those same people exist here.

There's literally nothing compelling these shitty companies to advertise these plans as ad free when they do in fact contain ads. Just like cellular ISPs have no legitimate reason to call their data plans "unlimited" when they cap you after using a predefined amount of data.

I guess that’s fair, and I had forgot going to a friends to watch their rentals together.

At least I definitely did not rip rented dvds to my hard drive.

I agree that a lot of shows and movies, especially the more recent ones, have little rewatchability. You could always replace those with an armful of whatever is current and on your watchlist after you are done though.

And personally i have a couple of evergreens and classics i enjoy watching again now and then, and it is nice to know i always have something to watch even if i cant afford the subscription any more / the stuff i like gets region locked / fucking licensing pulls the rug. It also feels a little empowering to have my own stuff that really is just mine and nobody can revoke my viewing permissions, in the face of endless enshittification.

As for the media server, i am not tech savvy enough myself to run one so i just bought a large ass external drive. When i am away from home i just bring that thing and can watch my stuff on any computer and generally also tv i plug it into.

And like clockwork, I am continuing to not subscribe.

It seems to be going the othwr way again? There was a thread the other day about new 38tb drives and how they are pretty cost efficient on a per gb level

Nah still pricey. I believe the article stated they were $800 which puts them at $20+/TB. 5 years ago I could get new drives at $12/TB but now I can only find these types of deals on used server drives or no-name brands.

These new 30+TB drives should be driving down the cost of the small to midrange drives but that doesn't appear to be the case currently.