As for Netflix I found a great alternative. Many people are selling their DVD/BluRay collections on eBay as bundles. With the rise of streaming services, there is usually not a whole lot of competition on these auctions.

I somehow managed to get 30 pretty decent movies/series on DVD and 20 on BluRay for 25€ including shipping.

Sure, these are usually not very new movies, but I like to watch older movies and its a lot better than subscribing to dozens of streaming services just to watch one specific movie.

As for comfort, sure DVDs are not as comfortable as clicking on Netflix, but if you have a decent NAS at home anyways, Plex still makes a great experience.

> As for comfort, sure DVDs are not as comfortable as clicking on Netflix

I'm starting to see this as an advantage because it forces me to get up and do something - actually move, even if not very far.

Working at home since March I've also returned to much more frequently listening on CD (I have a modestly large CD collection, with maybe 500 - 600 albums, accrued gradually and over many years, much of it second hand). A big advantage (apart from sound quality vs. streaming)? Most albums fall into the 40 - 60 minute range so I have to get up and move around to change the music at least that often, rather than sitting essentially motionless for hours on end at my desk or on the sofa.

There is definitely a huge secondhand DVD market. Also your local library has a selection of DVDs. I was just at mine yesterday and I saw lots of titles that aren't available to stream on any of the big subscription platforms.

Plex doesn't even require an NAS. I run mine off an old laptop. 100gb of storage is plenty if you have a DVD or are willing to burn one, since you don't need to keep stuff you don't watch in your library if it's backed up to optical media.

Without a NAS what is the benefit of Plex over a DVD player?

Once you get past a particular point of number of movies management becomes a problem. For awhile I was using carousels from sony. But kodi/plex have a decent interface with ease of management. You usually only need a NAS if you get past a particular size of files.

I run a Plex server. My question isn’t about the value Plex adds in general. It’s about the value it adds if you are regularly removing things (and potentially re-ripping in the future) due to limited storage.

The GUI is nice to use. Plex and it brother KODI have a nice skinning/metadata system. That metadata looks very nice. They are one of the better players out there. Even if you have to rotate. You could use something like VLC or mediacenter but the user exp is just not as good. For my setup I could get away with a VLC and a folder of stuff and just drag and drop it. But that 10ft aggregated view is why I use it. If you just want to watch stuff and then blow it away then it would not be worth the hassle of setup.

My guess is that they're talking about ripping DVDs and storing video files on the laptop HD. It's functionally equivalent to a NAS as far as Plex is concerned.

I understand that, but the process seems to be rip, watch, delete due to limited storage. I’m sure I’m missing something but I don’t know what benefit this process adds over just watching the DVD.

Truthfully, probably it would just be easier to watch the DVD for watching on the TV, but Plex lets you watch on all devices.

I really don't need instant access to tons of movies, but my kids watch a lot of the same ones over and over, so I keep those on Plex, rather than paying for Disney plus or whatever.

After ripping I usually increase the crf a little to reduce the file size to host on plex. Movies that we are watching a lot live on Plex, but if we stop watching something, or it seems like a one-time thing, then they can be removed from the library.

The burned DVDs are really more of a personal archive. Those movies could get added back to Plex someday. I don't need all of Lost or Breaking Bad on my Plex server, because I've recently watched them, so they'll live in the DVD drawer for a few years.

Ah, that makes sense, thanks. I’m past my days of the same episodes of The Wiggles over and over (although I still know all the songs), so didn’t think of that aspect.

Do DVDs in the last (~10?) few years still have non-skippable adverts at the start? That could be one potential benefit.

But otherwise, I don't see any real plus. Unless you have such a large collection that the search/recommend features are useful. You still have to take the DVD out, put it in the computer, run some program, etc.

> Do DVDs in the last (~10?) few years still have non-skippable adverts at the start?

I honestly don't know, because I rip all my content and play it on Plex. :)

This could be the answer and once you're ripping content anyway, Plex is a decent way to stream it to whichever devices.

Only tangentially related, but I recently tried Plex to see what the fuzz is about, and the UX is horrible. Both on the smart TV side and on the PC side.

It always takes me forever to find out anything in the GUI and I can never find out how to do the simple things I want - that is - put bunch of files into one end and watch them on smart TV on the other end.

It used to be a lot better. Over the past year they started to prioritize internet content, and your personal server is under a submenu instead of front & center.

I've been running Jellyfin on the side. It isn't perfect (yet!) but it matches up with what I want, which is something that can play files on my network with a TV Remote-friendly interface.

+1 for jellyfin. It is a lot of work going on and 10.7 which will be launching soon will bring a lot of more nice features.

Also, SyncPlay is sweet!

Or just engage in piracy.

Buying a used CD/DVD is usually less work, safer and costs next to nothing. Discogs is great for music CDs in particular.

Less work? It is trivial to do, trivial to do untraceably, and costs literally nothing.

$30/yr for a VPN service so your isp doesn't disconnect you for torrenting, at least in the US

Don't torrent at home. If you're going to share Linux ISOs (because that's all p2p is good for) pay for a dedicated seedbox. You don't have to worry about cutting into your own bandwidth but for downloading once. It's more expensive, but it's cheaper than Netflix.

I have no idea why a person would pay for a VPN to trickle torrents when they could pay the same to get usenet and download 1080p movies in a couple of minutes, or 4k in ~10.

> I have no idea why a person would pay for a VPN to trickle torrents when they could pay the same to get usenet and download 1080p movies in a couple of minutes, or 4k in ~10.

I don't know what services you're using, but I can download 4k in sub-10 minutes from my seedbox. My understanding was usenet did not have as many options.

I don't really watch TV anymore, but when I did my experience was that Usenet was very good for anything English-language (movies, TV shows), but I had to torrent same-day anime releases.

openvpn on a vps you already run, or some dirt cheap box. If you're buying dvds and cds every year you're more than likely spending more than you would on a vpn setup, or just use safer trackers. You could probably use nothing and any fines you eventually probably won't get would be less than the cost of the hard media anyway.

So 2 months of Netflix?

> $30/yr

so, $2.5/month and you get access to all of the content on netflix, all of the content on hulu, all of the content on amazon prime, etc.

> isp doesn't disconnect you for torrenting

in places with isp competition, they don't even disconnect you.

e: and i'm downvoted because...?

I don't know how the used market affects the creators' pockets, but let people who want to pay, pay. Enough people still need to pay to make it worthwhile for the creators to publish the content.

I only made my comment because they were already in the used market and I don't think most people who buy movies do so with an eye towards the resale value, so there is minimal impact on the creators' pockets at all.

The reason to switch from resold to infringed is that infringed is a superior substitute. However, these are not the only two substitutes in the market, and given that the consumer is consuming a stream of items over time, it is the case that by switching to infringed that the consumer will have less reason to ever buy, either at all or in the same quantity, the substitutes that make money for the creators, such as paid streaming or new discs, and so it is plausible (and for many individual consumers likely) that the impact on creators will be non-negligible.

I’m not sure that follows. Someone bought the content new. When someone else buys their old stuff, this gives them more money with which to buy new content. I suspect this is a very small effect, but I doubt it’s zero.

> I suspect this is a very small effect, but I doubt it’s zero.

As I said, minimal. If I save money by pirating content and then use that money to pay higher tips to service workers, then maybe they'll turn around and buy more content - helping content creators. These are very tenuous links.

The more clear link would be the used market shifting the demand curve for the new market outwards due to the resale value. I think this is a real effect, but a small one.

Downloading torrents isn't piracy.

Sharing torrents for free isn't piracy.

These MIGHT be illegal copyright infringement, depending on where you're located.

Piracy is ONLY selling illegal copies of content ...

... or hijacking ships ...

Isn't sharing copyrighted work illegal and thus piracy? I thought the laws about that are pretty uniform now.

This really resonates with me. I realise a lot of people will pay for individual Twitch subscriptions, YouTube memberships, and Patreon memberships, but it can be quite a hard sell in comparison to some of the things you list above.

I wish there was a better funding model as those creators. I'd like to direct more money to that category of creator. However paying one person (or team of people) around as much a year as I pay for my TV Licence just cannot compare in terms of value to me as a consumer.

YouTube Premium is apparently a reasonable compromise from what I've seen some channels report (a decent bump in income for them for each premium view and for the end-user a decent enhancement in experience across the platform), but I wish there was a similar scheme for more niche web/news publications (Apple News+ looks reasonable, but has a limited catalogue in the UK).

The better model for Creators isn't subscriptions but SuperChats, it's the digital version of "don't buy the CD, buy the concert".

It's quite common to see people drop $20 for their favorite Creator to read out their comments. It's fun and provides that direct/live link that fans crave.

This provides a unique monetization channel that's not available to regular businesses while helping Creators circumvent the pervasive "why should I give you $10/month if Spotify is $10/month" narrative.

honestly I find this kinda gross. it feels a little too close to tossing bills around in a strip club. it's not so bad on music streams (eg, here's $5 to play my song), but I also watch a stream where a law student breaks analyzes current events. it's quite incongruous when they stop explaining the legal nuances to read some inane donation message out loud.

Well it's a business model most artist used for centuries before recording and mass production was possible. Busking is still using it to this day.

I find nothing gross in it, it's actually better in many ways because you have immediate feedback so you can develop quicker (whether you want to develop in a particular direction your current audience wants is another matter).

maybe this wasn't clear, but I was referring to a live performer with "music streams". donating to make a song request doesn't have that gross feel. it's mainly the paying just to have your comment read that seems weird to me. in the first case you're paying for a performance; in the second, you are basically just paying for a human's attention.

Do you get the same impression from, say, paying for VIP tickets in order to meet-and-greet musicians at a concert?

I get the same "ick" vibes from streamers reading comments too. (FWIW, I don't feel the same way about concerts or VIP tickets).

This may not be a great explanation, but there's an element of "dance, monkey, dance!" when someone pays money to a streamer to say their message. The streamer will usually read the message (barring ToS).

It's similar to how tipping at Cold Stone Creamery (an ice cream chain in the US) means the staff have to sing a short song for you. There might be fun intentions involved but if the people who you are giving money to aren't really into it, it feels wrong.

People do that?

> in the second, you are basically just paying for a human's attention.

Or for having your question answered?

Isn't that the essential essence of all live entertainment events? Tossing money at people to entertain you? What's the difference between that and a concert: that you prepaid the concert ahead of time?

I see the value in subscribing to streamers, especially if you watch them as much as you'd watch Netflix, but there's no expectation of direct interaction at a concert. As booming of a business model as it is, very few streamers will talk about how they actively exploit their audience into thinking they're your friend. These parasocial relationships are unfortunately a sign of the times and how lonely and isolated individuals have become in the age of the Internet (the pandemic has only worsened this).

That doesn't solve the absolutely fundamental unsolvable problem that digital has marginal cost so you make 0.01x revenue if you have .01x the audience.

Something like Nebula, a group of YouTube creators coming together with their own service that costs less than Netflix, but subsidizes their content. It's mostly education/engineering/science based creators, but it seems to be a decent model.

I would really like a system where by a seller wants to make $X/m and so sells their service at a base price of $Y/m.

When they have enough customers (C) such that X/C < Y, the price (Y) for all customers drops so that Y = X/C.

Obviously, as they gain more customers they may need to increase X to pay for resources or staff which would increase the price.

I read longform articles and journalism voraciously. When I'm not pulling overtime at work, I usually read 20-50 in-depth articles a day. But the challenge is how widely I read. Sure, there's a bunch at NYT (which I subscribe to), and a bunch at open-access blogs and journals around the net, but the middle are tough.

I might normally want to read, over the course of a month, 10-15 articles from each of 15 different paywalled magazines or newspapers. Which is more than the 2-5 free articles typically allowed past their paywalls, but little enough (especially compared to 15 or more competitors) to justify $15-25+ a month per source. Maybe if I was a Wall Street trader the WSJ and Bloomberg are no-brainer expenses, but right now I wouldn't get enough value from them to justify their sky-high subscription costs, but I would like to read a decent handful of articles a month. A few publishers, like NYT or WP, have picked up on this market, and regularly discount to capture various price points, but lots have held onto a 'big subscription or none' model.

What I really want is an (expensive) subscription to something like Spotify Premium across publishers. I'd happily fund the pool to the tune of $50-100 a month, if it could get me access to my top 15-25 paywalls. Everyone gets some, some get close to standard subscription rates, but it'd just enable me not to have to worry about whether I've used up my free articles for the month at each origin. And it'd also let me contribute to lots of magazines and things I do appreciate, just not $25/mo appreciation.

Direct donations? Even if they are more hassle than paying ~1-5 USD/mo on Patreon, it likely has a much greater impact on the creator.

For Patreon, probably. But it's not so clear for twitch subs since Bezos gets his cut and they get a bump in the twitch algos.

Maybe something like an attention based token built into the browser which automatically distributes a fixed amount of money each month to creators that you watched that month. This is already implemented in the Brave browser.

Maybe you could simulate subscriptions based on the token being active in a browser or not. E.g. someone can read a paywalled article if they have at least $10 a month distributed such a way (in proportion to attention).

Patreon seems to be the best bang for the buck, because there you have the most control about what you fund.

Spotify is basically a RIAA subscription with added steps. Netflix subscription is a subsidy for series/movie production houses.

One's personal cashflow toward Amazon has less actual influence on what the Jeff channel will air than the Utah monolith's stolen shadow.

... that said, so far this seems like an improvement over Big TV. Though, maybe it's just the YouTube addiction talking.

> At the end I have to choose, so PSN may be competing with Spotify or some Patreon with Disney+...

Wasn't it during the PS2 launch, that Sony said "A girlfriend" when asked what they considered their biggest competitor?

Many decades ago, when I was a young adult, I probably spent around $30 a month purchasing music (CD's and, before that, vinyl records), $30 a month on newspapers, $30 on magazines, another $40 a month on books, $20 a month on cable TV and maybe another $30 month on video movie theaters/VCR/DVD/rentals. All up, around $150 to $200 a month on various entertainment media. With inflation, that's probably $300 or $400 a month these days. For my income range, this was not at all extreme. For this, I got much much less than what you can get for $300 a month these days.

I have a baseline expected cost for passive entertainment at probably about $2-3/hour and judge things based on that whether to keep it when I see the charge show up on my bill.

Some services I have kept for years, others I've started/cancelled several times, many I get some enjoyment from and then move on.

If you aren't afraid to cancel things, and don't sign up for things you can't cancel, I think it's a fairly efficient system that can align your money and time.

A year or so ago reed Hastings made this point on an earnings G s call when he said that fortnite was their biggest threat. Same point

Maybe if there was some sort of service that bundled all these together for one monthly fee.

one word - torrents.

Well yes, "don't pay for things" is one way to save money.

Torrents are great for previewing content but remember to financially support those that you enjoy.

They seem to have fallen out of favor with the general public.

The general public became too computer literate to use them and the paid services are really really easy to use.

Being from Eastern Europe I can assure you, people lose all their learned helplessness surrounding technical stuff and become proficient torrent users if that's what separates them from their favorite movies and TV series and music.

People are "computer illiterate" when they dont care, are lazy or think they can make someone else do the work instead of them.

Many of these are either optional or compete with one or more of the other services. Podcasts are either completely free or they should go under Spotify/Patreon. Twitch/Youtube subscriptions and Patreon are entirely optional. And I don't see how you can justify both Youtube Premium and Spotify at the same time or all three of Netflix/Disney+/Prime - I just wouldn't have the time to make any use of all these subscriptions in a month.

We subscribe to all of those things. Netflix as the primary streaming service. Disney+ because the kids love Frozen. Youtube so the kids don't get blasted by ads on their iPads. Spotify because it's the only real music streaming option. And Amazon Prime, not for entertainment but 2-day shipping and free grocery delivery.

You're talking about $52 a month. For easily 20+ hours of entertainment (or time savings in terms of Amazon Prime). In terms of quality of life, it's much more impactful than say upgrading from a Subaru to a Mercedes. Despite costing an order of magnitude less.

Yes, I think you're right. Having all of them doesn't feel redundant when we're talking about a whole family and the cost isn't that high.

If you get a pihole you can stop the ads for the kids and save a few bucks.

Yeah, that's a great point. I have a raspberry pi that I've been meaning to setup for a while now.

Though the other advantage with Youtube Premium is that you can cache videos offline in the kids app. That's super-helpful for long trips. (Not that there's been many in 2020.)

Can pihole really block YouTube ads? A quick googling suggests not.

Regrettably, it can't.

Or use YouTube Vanced.

Individual podcast creators might be via Patreon, but larger podcast networks can and do have their own donation systems. Same principle and probably a similar amount of money, they just aggregate it between multiple shows and don't want to pay a cut to Patreon.

I know Relay.fm and Radiotopia are both set up for that, presumably there are others.

All of them are optional as you don't need any of those. The thing is that at the end you have to choose, of course some combinations are better/make more sense than others, I'm not saying you should have any.

By optional I meant that you can use the service with or without paying. (Example: donating to Patreon or subbing on Twitch is optional; paying for Netflix isn't optional since you have to pay in order to watch anything on Netflix). Obviously using any of them in the first place is optional too.