Discussion
Netflix Prices Went Up Again – I Bought a DVD Player Instead
donohoe: I am thinking the same thing. Most recent movies are available for under $20 per DVD - and there are tons of deals. You can get the 4 lego movies for $5 on DVD on Amazon right now.Get the DVD. Make a legal backup to your media server. Keep the physical DVD in storage.In my neighborhood in Brooklyn you will often see people selling DVD collections where you get 10-20 discs for $10 or less - varies. I'm sure that is the case elsewhere.NAS + Apple TV with Infuse app installed = Better than Netflix (and others) imho.(Note: I do recommend the one-time lifetime license for Infuse app = $99.99)
bko: I was wondering if there is a DVD service similar to Netflix when it first came out. And of course there is, but pricing seems high!DVD Inbox and Cafe DVD is $20/mo for 2 discs at a time, with unlimited discs and a 5 day guarantee. 5 days to get your DVD doesn't seem great. They have cheaper plans but limit the number of DVDs you can take out.Netflix was revolutionary because they shipped very eagerly and they charge $15/mo for 2 DVDs unlimited. And I think their shipping took 2 days. They shipped as soon as you shipped yours back so if you were diligent you could prob have close to a movie every night. Incredible service.I guess the economics just isn't there.
an0malous: There’s nothing to watch anyway since movies and shows have been enshittified as well
gfody: 720x480 4:2:0 YCbCr doesn't look great on modern screens
geoffeg: Good point, buy an old CRT in addition to the DVD player!
atum47: I gave up on Netflix years ago, never looked back. Went back to my old reliable external HD which I can plug directly to my TV.
sergiotapia: How do you get around the terrible fbi screens? :( That's the only thing preventing me from starting a collection.
profdevloper: Using MakeMKV to digitize these skips these intro screens by default (< 120 seconds), so I don't see them.
tombert: > if you have the DVD its legal to make a backup digital copy.Is this actually true? I thought there was inherently illegality to cracking the DRM on DVDs.Granted, I doubt anyone is going to come after you for making a backup of a legitimate copy, but I think strictly speaking it's still illegal.I am also not a lawyer.
tonyponydong: plex is still cool, right?
platevoltage: It's awful. I use Emby now, and have been for years. They even get 5 bucks a month from me. Apparently Jellyfin is good too, but I've had no reason to try it.
hamdingers: I'd happily sacrifice some pixels to avoid the aggressive DNR and hack 16:9 crop treatments typical of streaming re-releases.
mikestew: Rip 'em to a NAS and put the DVD in the attic?
MangoCoffee: DVD discs is not good for long term storage. it can get scratch and became unusable. you want a NAS/PC then rip the dvd and use plex or Jellyfin to watch your collection.
joshfraser: Just cancel your subscription. Resubscribe for a month if there's something you really want to watch. You won't miss it.
CobrastanJorji: I wonder if there's a service that subscribes on demand and unsubscribes automatically. I'm picturing something that lets me browse shows and movies and pick them, with a little 'playing this will trigger a Disney+ subscription for one month, for $12'
WCSTombs: Public libraries can also be a great source for DVDs and Blu-Rays!
sergiotapia: Libraries are one the most beloved things america really got right. Such a great value and use of tax money.
apparent: Some of the services end up being very expensive, like ebook lending. Some publishers basically charge libraries per loan ($X for an ebook that lasts Y loans), so while it is nice for residents it's not clear that it's a good value, or that it's a good use of tax money.I once heard from a knowledgeable source that most of library lending is bodice rippers. These are available from Amazon/etc. pretty cheaply, which undercuts the value argument. And of course, there's practically no social value of providing the public with free bodice rippers...I'd be interested to know more about the economics of lending DVDs and Blu-rays. Hopefully libraries get a better deal on these.
chaseadam17: Best strategy is to subscribe to one streaming service, watch everything good over a few months, then cancel and switch to another.
mapontosevenths: In TFA they specify that it was also blu ray. This person was using DVD as an (incorrect) term meaning "some kind of plastic disc."Though they don't say 4k/UHD blu-ray which would be a big miss if not. UHD blu-ray is superior to any other format in terms of quality. Perhaps excepting a few very niches streaming services that are tied to expensive hardware.
vel0city: > And I think their shipping took 2 days.Their shipping was pretty incredible. I'd drop one off early morning pickup at my college campus and have another DVD the next day aternoon in my mailbox sometimes. It was crazy how fast I could turn over discs.
craftkiller: At this point, I'm surprised the streaming services aren't grandfathering people into their current plan+rate like the cellular networks do. It would encourage people to keep their subscription active rather than cancelling it and signing up again when there is a specific show they want to watch, while also avoiding the price increase frustrations.PS: Thanks for the reminder about the price increase, just cancelled my netflix.
dylan604: I've been doing the "pause" option not just for Netflix but multiple streamers. Adding up all of the streaming subs totaled as much monthly as the cable bill I did away with which made sense when everything was on Netflix. Now each studio has their own platform with similar per month fees. There's not enough content to justify that much monthly expense.
stratts: Beyond the pricing part of it, just having media that isn't dependent on an external device is so nice.But for TV series in particular, watching on disc is quite clunky after a decade+ of streaming services, and DVR boxes prior to that. I'll buy them in principle, but ultimately they end up ripped and viewed via Jellyfin.
benoliver999: We did this with Jeremy Brett Sherlock. Boxed set is of some sentimental value, but we tired of loading the disc, finding the episode etc. Even worse if you have to stop half way.They ended up ripped and played on kodi
commandlinefan: My father passed away last year from complications due to Alzheimer's, but for years before he died, he struggled to work streaming services and modern "smart" TVs. We got him one of the few models of DVD players that we could actually still find and a lot of used DVDs because he _could_ use those.OP here might be misremembering DVDs, here: the physical media skipped or froze intermittently and the players themselves were finicky; we ended up replacing it about three times in just as many years. Streaming services are overpriced, but they do _work_ consistently.
whycome: Okay I have dvd players that work fine even still. DVDs need care - scratches and fingerprints are bad (though the error correction on a good player will make it less noticeable). I think the lifespan of a dvd player may be in its design (where dust may get to the laser?) or the environment (humidity or temp may play a role?)
yellottyellott: TrueNAS + AppleTV + Infuse + Tailscale is my setup.Also iTunes has Movies for $5, but it has DRM, which bit me since I always remembered their mp3s being DRM-free back in the day being a big deal.
kllrnohj: > OP here might be misremembering DVDs, here: the physical media skipped or froze intermittently and the players themselves were finickyIn my teens my friends and I watched probably hundreds of DVDs, and they almost never had a problem. Skips & freezes were almost only ever a factor for highly scratched copies, more typical of those from Blockbuster than anything we picked up in the $5 bargain bins.I don't think I've ever encountered a "finicky" player, either. I don't even know what that'd mean.
giancarlostoro: If you buy one that has a VUDU code, and go on moviesanywhere.com you can now link your VUDU account, your Apple iTunes account and your Google Movies account, and whoever else, and the movie unlocks on all those other streaming services. So if you buy a BluRay movie, you can stream it on your favorite streaming service provider thanks to MovisAnywhere (run by the movie industry - the one rare good thing they did).I buy movies only when its one I really want and there's either an iTunes code or a VUDU code.
surround: Yes, DMCA made the mere act of breaking DRM illegal, even if what you do with the media is legal.
renegade-otter: I used to pay $30 a month for HBO. Premium cable wasn't cheap, but you had primo shows and there was a big movie release almost every Saturday night. Netflix is disposable background TV. This money will buy you two DVDs a month and 6-8 rentals. I just don't see the point unless you are wasting hours in front of the TV.
alecco: For the past 10 years I found most movies to be unwatchable and not worth the time. Last one I saw was Project Hail Mary at a cinema and it was really bad in spite of a huge budget (more than Interstellar!).So long, Hollywood.
platevoltage: There is still good stuff coming out. I think people look at the past with rose colored glasses. We've always had to sift through a sea of shit to find good stuff.
dylan604: The amount of trash released to VHS during the heyday of Blockbuster is something most people forget about. Most people browsed along the walls for the new releases, but all of those shelves in the middle of the store were full of straight to home video releases that were really really not good. Think Hallmark channel content but with even less talent. Think Troma again, with less talent. Think Jack Black recreating movies bad, but without meaning to be that bad
babypuncher: I've been doing this since 2009. Regular 1080p blu-rays still usually provide better image quality than streaming services. It's not even a contest between streaming and 4k discs.I've bought and watched hundreds of movies and TV shows on disc, but can count the number of times I've used an actual disc player to do so on one hand.
genxy: https://scarecrowvideo.org/ has thousands of videos you could never get on netflix.
rahimnathwani: In San Francisco, the annual library budget is ~$200,000,000. That's about $10/month for each San Francisco resident (including babies, elderly people etc.).
rahimnathwani: The vertical resolution of a DVD is either 480 (NTSC) or 576 (PAL). This usually matched the visible vertical resolution of the TV you were using.A 1080p screen has 6 times as many pixels as an NTSC DVD.A 4k screen has 24 times as many pixels as an NTSC DVD.
mschild: Most movies and tv shows are available for similar prices on blue rays, often in 4k versions.While the resolution may be higher on streaming, the bitrate is often significantly worse. Beyond that Netflix has done upscaling in the past with middling success.Nevermind the horrendous AI upscaling they tried last year. https://futurism.com/netflix-ai-upscaling-old-shows-horrific
triceratops: > And of course, there's practically no social value of providing the public with free bodice rippers...Why not?> Some of the services end up being very expensive, like ebook lendingWe need something like a first-sale doctrine for electronic media. Blockchains would be ideal for tracking ownership.
platevoltage: People do this with music too. People forget that for every Fiona Apple there was 10 other studio manufactured slop artists just shoved out there by the industry, and these have largely been forgotten about.
triceratops: Incredible value for money then.
jerlam: It's possible that DVD players are extremely low quality now, since there are very few people still buying them.
midtake: Project Hail Mary was not bad.
babypuncher: I am also NAL, but it almost certainly is legal to make backups for personal use. Breaking the encryption is the usual legal hangup, though there is no real enforcement on this front and nobody is stopping you from using Handbrake or MakeMKV.More importantly however, is the fact that there isn't a meaningful argument that making backups of physical media you own is ethically wrong.
tombert: Oh I don’t think it’s ethically wrong in the slightest. If you own the DVD you have given the copyright holder due compensation; I think it’s ethically fine to make a backup of media that you legally purchased.I was just saying that I don’t think it’s actually legal to do so for a DVD since those usually have CSS encryption.
mrazomor: I did the same after Netflix dropped movies I cared about.First I tried playing DVDs straight from PC which is connected to TV. That was horrible quality and UX.Then I bought a good quality DVD player with hardware upscaling. It provided better image quality and slightly better UX. But you still had to deal with the menus and buch of other slow loading stuff that comes with DVDs... Gave up on it.
tracker1: It's also worth looking into if your local library offers Kanopy services.
ynac: Big ups on that! Not to mention your local library's collection of DVDs. Or, their inter-library loan system for the ultra weird and rare.One note on Kanopy - they use a ticket system (10-15 tickets per library customer). So if you have a couple people in your household, all of your library card numbers contribute tickets to the login. And, if you have two library systems like we do here (KCLS and SPL) you can double dip on all the cards again. No hack required - Kanopy actually has a very nice way of failing over to other cards as your quota is used up.And if that's not enough, try Scarecrow Video out of Seattle. They are the masters of physical digital film media right now. It's fun to try to stump them. And they provide mailorder system similar to the old red envelopes of NetFlix.eBay has DVD collections go up for sale all the time. Fun to buy the "box of movies" for $100 and see what you get.Another big haul for me is from local thrift stores - usually 50 cents to 2 bucks a disc.
tehwebguy: I don’t think DVDs look bad on a 1080p TV, others that assume they will may be surprised!
to11mtm: I think too many people remember DVDs but mostly remember them on Interlaced displays.Or hooked their DVD player to the HDTV with an RCA cable and were disappointed.On the flipside, if you had a DVD player capable of progressive scan and Component or HDMI-out, it's fine for couch viewing.That said, there are plenty of DVDs out there (extreme case, single layer DVD with extras on same disc as movie) where the bitrate can show, but that's not a fault of the format.
bilekas: Spotify, Netflix, HBO, Paramount, HULU, MUBI, etc etc etc and a couple of Video Game publishers are making a very strong case to revert back to piracy.
toddmorey: Also with this approach, you actually have a real collection and it's fun to collect things.My son has autism and viewed his Netflix homepage as his personal curated collection. But then, of course, Netflix renegotiates licensing deals and entire seasons or shows just go away. And it really crushes him because it's like they were stolen from his personal collection.So now when I hear him play, the super villain trying to destroy the world is always named Reed Hastings.
adamors: I cancelled all my streaming, and replaced it with a €20 seed box w/ Plex + radarr/sonarr etc. Have everything I want (and nothing else) and movies/shows don't get pulled without me doing it. Won't be turning back anytime soon.Physical still has the downside of needing space. I have space for books, but not much else.
rustyhancock: Gosh config of radarr and sonarr seemed impenetrable to me.I've given up my streaming box because I find passive watching so draining and trying to focus on educational content/ course and exercise.I was finding myself wallowing away hours per day passively watching endless episodes of the current biggest show.
mapontosevenths: That's ok if you don't care about sound much. Apple prevents local playback apps from playing back Atmos audio. It's fine if you only want 5.1 though.There used to be some limitations with Dolby Vision as well, but I think those have mostly been straightened out now.
maayank: wait. If I use VLC (for example) on AppleTV to play something from my network using SMB or DLNA, I cannot get Dolby Atmos?
torben-friis: It just dawned on me the other day that if I add up what I've already spent on apple music/Spotify over the years, it's very likely well above the amount it would have taken to buy a physical copy of all the music I listen to (I'm an album guy, as opposed to playlist people).Certainly there's some convenience advantages for discovering new music, but it turns out I don't really do that often.
mapontosevenths: Right. I'm under the impression that it's a licensing thing. It also can't do TrueHD Atmos in general. Just lossy Dolby DD+.It CAN do Atmos for E-AC3 audio, but e-ac3 is meant for streaming, so it's really rare to have that in a file you're playing back locally.Basically, it just falls back to whatever the next best thing it can support is at the hardware level.https://community.firecore.com/t/help-get-more-dolby-atmos-o...
swader999: There is so so little to watch.
RiverCrochet: My cousin's friend used to rip DVDs with DVD Shrink back in the day. It would automatically remove the "Prohibited User Operation" flags or whatever that told the DVD player to ignore your skip commands.
tombert: I’ve noticed that a lot of newer releases, particularly TV shows, are not getting Blu-ray releases.
airstrike: [delayed]
jldugger: > DVD Inbox and Cafe DVD is $20/mo for 2 discs at a time, with unlimited discs and a 5 day guarantee.This is about what we paid for Netflix in 2006. Especially after accounting for inflation.
dev_l1x_be: My problem is not the price but the amount of garbage you get. Instead of getting access to a vast amount of mediocre at best content I would like to have access to a small amount of good content. Netflix is just not that.
jfengel: My BluRay player automatically upsamples DVDs. It's far from perfect but it looks pretty good most of the time.Not sure if that's common to BluRay players or not.
dawnerd: It's also fairly trivial these days to backup 4k blurays. You can also buy them very cheap second hand. The quality difference between streaming and 4k BR is nuts.
to11mtm: Possibly in some countries...But at least in the US, it is a DMCA violation.DMCA gets a little weird; Basically unless you're distributing it is a civil penalty (which, I could be wrong but would mean you'd get a Jury trial, even assuming it ever came up) and I doubt you would ever run into legal issues so long as you were only backing up for personal use.It's where you get into distribution that anyone starts to care, and it's when you do distribution on a large scale that criminal penalties come into play.However there may be countries where possession of an 'illegal number' or 'DRM Breaking software' is considered legal for personal use.
layman51: I am not a lawyer, but yeah I think there seems to be like a distinction in the United States between copying a "protected DVD" versus an unprotected one.It's still sort of confusing to me because would that mean then that if you are making a personal backup in the United States, would it technically be allowed if you pointed a video camera at your own TV screen?
HWR_14: It is interesting that Netflix alone gets blamed, as opposed to the parties they are negotiating with.
autoexec: Netflix is ultimately responsible for what they put on the platform, for delivering a consistent product to their users, and for setting expectations.Netflix is exceptionally shitty at letting people what is leaving their platform and when, and even letting them know when the shows they saved or were in the middle of watching have been removed. Netflix has been around for ages but we still have to depend on third party websites to tell us what's coming/leaving. Some items will have a "leaving soon" banner on the thumbnail, but that's only good for shows netflix decides to push at you. There's no section or search that will find all that stuff (searching for "leaving soon" will show you some of them)
mapontosevenths: I use store-3d-blurayrental.com. They do more than 3d. It's expensive, compared to streaming, but the quality of 4k bluray can't be beat. I have a 120" screen. You notice the difference between 1080p or even high and low bitrates at that size. I think physical media might make a bit of a comeback as screen sizes increase unless streaming services up their bitrates.
KK7NIL: > I think physical media might make a bit of a comeback as screen sizes increase unless streaming services up their bitrates.The latter sure seems a lot more likely than the former, my man.
mapontosevenths: You would think so, but the prices keep going up and the bitrate keeps going down. Some of that is up to codec and encoding improvements, but I think a lot of it is just that they know they can get away with it.If you'd have asked me 20 years to bet on whether streaming or shiny disks would be producing better quality audio/video in 20 years my money would NOT have been on disks but here we are. Ye Olden Plastic Disk's are still kicking streaming's butt even though I have 2.5Gbps fiber now.
KK7NIL: Prices keep going up and bitrates down because most streaming services (except for Netflix and YouTube) have been basically break-even or money losing for years now, and the appetite for that is cooling.Also, display resolution is not scaling like it used to. The move up from 4k to 8k is far more expensive and less worthwhile than the previous jumps.So, I think your assumptions about the business side of streaming and the way the hardware is scaling are wrong and we will, in fact, not see physical media make a comeback.
kllrnohj: > You can get the 4 lego movies for $5 on DVD on Amazon right now. A "Tom Cruise 10-Movie Collection" is $12. You get the idea.The image quality on these is also quite bad, especially with cost cutting resulting in these being compressed further to fit on a single-layer DVD. Often without any indication that it happened, as well. Whether or not you find it acceptable is definitely a matter of personal taste, but it's very much apples & oranges vs. Netflix. Blu-ray by contrast is generally better quality than what you'll get from streaming services.
altairprime: [delayed]
ddtaylor: I have a 4TB hard drive that contains thousands of movies and tens of thousands of TV episodes. It feeds into a Jellyfin server.
prmoustache: On paper yes it feels like a downside. Practically if the movie/show is good, you don't really mind.I have been watching a number of french and mexican movies from the 50's and 60's these last few weeks and video resolution was not an issue. Sound quality and mixing on the other hand was more of a problem if I didn't wanted to turn the volume too high, especially the mexican ones (Cantinflas).I don't know what is it with mexican movies, even movies to this day tend to have a terrible sound mixing. It is annoying because actors tend to speak in a much more natural and pleasant way than their US counterparts and their ugly vocal fry (women) or ridiculous mumbling (men).
solfox: > I think their shipping took 2 daysYeah, it was fast. And yet, for it to work financially, they were still using plain old USPS. The trick (which required the levels of volume they had at the time) was to have a bunch of distribution centers positioned all throughout their service area. For a modern day service trying to do the same with significantly less volume, they won't be able to afford the extra distribution centers.
bombcar: They also had an agreement with the post office to register the disk as returned the moment USPS scanned it.
binsquare: They also have video games now
fortyseven: Just recently beat Super Mario Wonder thanks to my local library lending Switch titles.
bombcar: They also often have a huge backlog of older titles and consoles, I'm going to check out a Wii soon.
lelandbatey: Do note that there's a ton of media that is not very available via sailing the seas. For example, reality TV has very low availability, typically only currently airing seasons at best. Thus if you're trying to convince a family to cancel all the big streaming platforms, you may have a hard time when they learn that they can't watch old episodes of "The Real Housewives of the middle of nowhere" from 2012.
benoliver999: I run jellyfin and on iOS infuse is the only player that seems to work with all codecs
bombcar: I've had some luck with Swiftfin though the UI is no where near as polished as Infuse.
dylan604: If everyone used the library as much as people say they are great, their shelves would be empty. Libraries have to be some of the most underutilized services.
WCSTombs: In my experience, there can be pretty high contention for certain items, so you need to be on the ball or make use of the "place hold" feature judiciously. Yeah, people are using the service.
hapticmonkey: Dolby TrueHD and DTS:X audio tracks (from Bluray) are played as lossless 7.1 PCM.Only Dolby Atmos from WEB-DLs will play, and you need to use a supported player (like Infuse or VidHub).It’s a tvOS limitation.
nashashmi: [delayed]
jedberg: We also (I worked there at the time) had software that basically said, "Joe watches all of his disks every weekend and drops them in the mail on Tuesdays, let's just assume he's going to do that and ship his new disks Monday morning". And other such predictions.If you had a very regular viewing behavior you could have your new disks the same day as you shipped your old ones. To the customer, it was magical.
dylan604: Not quite the same though. If you picked up a dud from Blockbuster, it's no big as it was a cheap rental. For music, you had to buy it and then be stuck with it if you didn't like it. There was no music rental business. A lot of that has been forgotten because most people didn't buy it.Even the Fiona Apples of the world had duds on their albums. Most albums had a few choice tracks and then filler. This is why so many people were happy for the $0.99 per track of the tracks you wanted instead of the $19.99 for the full album with songs you will forever hit skip.
