Not-quite cord cutting... damming up the stream?
February 12, 2024 8:02 AM Subscribe
How feasible is it right now to eliminate streaming services and start owning media again?
I need to get my digital backup system in order, and as part of that project I'm thinking of putting together a server running TrueNAS and Plex. We subscribe to a handful of streaming services, and I'm thinking about trying to cancel some or all of them and start owning media again. Is this even possible nowadays in the current media environment? I have a variety of questions about this scheme:
-On the tech side, it seems like TrueNAS and Plex will work together pretty nicely. How hard is this to set up? I refuse to learn Linux to do this.
-How do I actually... buy media these days? I want files that are "mine," that won't magically disappear despite buying them outright, that I can store at home and serve off the Plex. I do not want physical discs.
-Are streaming service "originals" even available for purchase anywhere?
-I have a small number of movies that I have purchased (as in, I should "own" them) through Prime, is it possible to take them out of the Amazon ecosystem? Can Plex play things purchased through Prime if not? (We'll probably keep Prime for other reasons.)
-Are there other pitfalls I'm missing?
I need to get my digital backup system in order, and as part of that project I'm thinking of putting together a server running TrueNAS and Plex. We subscribe to a handful of streaming services, and I'm thinking about trying to cancel some or all of them and start owning media again. Is this even possible nowadays in the current media environment? I have a variety of questions about this scheme:
-On the tech side, it seems like TrueNAS and Plex will work together pretty nicely. How hard is this to set up? I refuse to learn Linux to do this.
-How do I actually... buy media these days? I want files that are "mine," that won't magically disappear despite buying them outright, that I can store at home and serve off the Plex. I do not want physical discs.
-Are streaming service "originals" even available for purchase anywhere?
-I have a small number of movies that I have purchased (as in, I should "own" them) through Prime, is it possible to take them out of the Amazon ecosystem? Can Plex play things purchased through Prime if not? (We'll probably keep Prime for other reasons.)
-Are there other pitfalls I'm missing?
Buy physical copies (which usually come packaged with a digital code) for conscience's sake, dispose of them, and sail the high seas.
posted by praemunire at 8:17 AM on February 12 [6 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 8:17 AM on February 12 [6 favorites]
I think the OP knows this, but the "digital copies" with discs are delivered via walled garden services. You don't get files, you get authorization to watch via Google, Apple, Vudu, or whatever. So that doesn't really work for the goal. They're "yours" as long as those companies say they're yours. Ask a person who had a library on Funimation if "forever" promises for media libraries are always kept. The companies that distribute movies and TV shows on video do not want to simplify piracy by making downloadable, non-DRM files of their stuff available.
If digital files on your storage is the way you want to do it, and you want to do it legally, you'll need to be buying or borrowing discs and ripping the files yourself. No way around it. Learn to love Handbrake, I guess. You'll need a constantly increasing amount of storage. A NAS will help, but you'll outgrow that, too, if you keep acquiring movies/shows.
I tried to do what you're aiming to do now, made a go of it. I was a dedicated XBMC/Kodi/Plex person for years and I had a helluva library. Storage got to be a huge hassle, so I quit. First I lived within the streaming/digital purchase ecosystem, but I'm disenchanted with that now and back to physical media.
Still, storage has gotten cheaper and will continue to do so, so you're at a different point on that continuum than I was. But I can see where the declining cost and increased reliability of storage makes the all-digital model a better deal than it was fifteen or so years ago. I will be interested to see what you end up doing.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:52 AM on February 12 [1 favorite]
If digital files on your storage is the way you want to do it, and you want to do it legally, you'll need to be buying or borrowing discs and ripping the files yourself. No way around it. Learn to love Handbrake, I guess. You'll need a constantly increasing amount of storage. A NAS will help, but you'll outgrow that, too, if you keep acquiring movies/shows.
I tried to do what you're aiming to do now, made a go of it. I was a dedicated XBMC/Kodi/Plex person for years and I had a helluva library. Storage got to be a huge hassle, so I quit. First I lived within the streaming/digital purchase ecosystem, but I'm disenchanted with that now and back to physical media.
Still, storage has gotten cheaper and will continue to do so, so you're at a different point on that continuum than I was. But I can see where the declining cost and increased reliability of storage makes the all-digital model a better deal than it was fifteen or so years ago. I will be interested to see what you end up doing.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:52 AM on February 12 [1 favorite]
Since the others are apparently too cowardly to say it in a straight forward manner: there is no real way of effectively doing this without stealing content. So if you can get over that roadblock, then it’s doable.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 8:53 AM on February 12 [10 favorites]
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 8:53 AM on February 12 [10 favorites]
This is now harder than it was a few years ago. Most digital "sales" of tv and movies now are just paying for the right to access the file on the seller's server, not the right or ability to download your own permanent digital copy, and many sellers will just revoke that right when they get bored. And many (many!) things are no longer being released on physical DVDs.
posted by hydropsyche at 8:54 AM on February 12 [2 favorites]
posted by hydropsyche at 8:54 AM on February 12 [2 favorites]
I don't know about TrueNAS but Plex is very easy to set up and run, though be warned it can be buggy (I have problems playing very large files on some of their app services, for instance, but not others). There are known bugs in the system that are just part of the experience and don't seem to be on the way to getting fixed. But if you can tolerate those and have a good and stable home network, it's great.
Are streaming service "originals" even available for purchase anywhere?
Not in a format you can "own" unless you're willing to torrent them. Streaming services will revoke your access once you're not paying the subscription and they make it generally difficult to rip the files from their service (for obvious reasons).
I have a small number of movies that I have purchased (as in, I should "own" them) through Prime, is it possible to take them out of the Amazon ecosystem? Can Plex play things purchased through Prime if not?
No and no, sadly.
These days the best way to do this is by doing it illegally. As hydropsyche says, many new movies and TV shows aren't even releasing on DVD or Blu-Ray any more. They go straight to digital services and then they disappear. However, most if not all of them will have someone, somewhere, who is dedicated enough to wanting to watch them that they'll rip the files and stick them on a server for torrenting or download. I've managed to get a pretty sizable library of media this way. A 5TB hard drive will set you back about $140 these days and that will store a decent amount of stuff.
posted by fight or flight at 9:01 AM on February 12 [1 favorite]
Are streaming service "originals" even available for purchase anywhere?
Not in a format you can "own" unless you're willing to torrent them. Streaming services will revoke your access once you're not paying the subscription and they make it generally difficult to rip the files from their service (for obvious reasons).
I have a small number of movies that I have purchased (as in, I should "own" them) through Prime, is it possible to take them out of the Amazon ecosystem? Can Plex play things purchased through Prime if not?
No and no, sadly.
These days the best way to do this is by doing it illegally. As hydropsyche says, many new movies and TV shows aren't even releasing on DVD or Blu-Ray any more. They go straight to digital services and then they disappear. However, most if not all of them will have someone, somewhere, who is dedicated enough to wanting to watch them that they'll rip the files and stick them on a server for torrenting or download. I've managed to get a pretty sizable library of media this way. A 5TB hard drive will set you back about $140 these days and that will store a decent amount of stuff.
posted by fight or flight at 9:01 AM on February 12 [1 favorite]
Since the others are apparently too cowardly to say it in a straight forward manner: there is no real way of effectively doing this without stealing content.
Nope. If you buy physical media + digital copy, it's absurd to say you're "stealing" it if you then also acquire a permanent digital copy. You've paid for the film. You've even bought a digital copy! And there are no additional costs to the seller of your permanent digital copy. There's no sensible world in which that constitutes theft.
posted by praemunire at 9:01 AM on February 12 [17 favorites]
Nope. If you buy physical media + digital copy, it's absurd to say you're "stealing" it if you then also acquire a permanent digital copy. You've paid for the film. You've even bought a digital copy! And there are no additional costs to the seller of your permanent digital copy. There's no sensible world in which that constitutes theft.
posted by praemunire at 9:01 AM on February 12 [17 favorites]
(And if the content is literally not available for sale, just because the company doesn't want to incur the costs of keeping it available, it is difficult to identify what the economic loss or other injury to the company is.)
posted by praemunire at 9:03 AM on February 12 [5 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 9:03 AM on February 12 [5 favorites]
Yeah, for obvious profit motive reasons, copyright owners have an interest in making this difficult-to-impossible to do via both license terms and legislation. My personal take is that current bandwidth, storage and compression/encoding methods make it possible for consumers to own a personal copy with close-enough-to-perfect fidelity to the original that there is no longer a future release format which could offer a compelling quality or format upgrade (as there was for videodisc, VHS/Betamax, DVD, and maybe pre-4K BluRay, etc.). So, to maximize the ability to re-sell legacy content, you need to be locked in to a service or platform that charges ongoing service fees for access, can itself become "obsolete," or can eventually be killed off by its owner. This sort of thing is already happening: witness the debacle subsequent to Sony's acquisition of Funimation and its consolidation into their Crunchyroll platform.
Nope. If you buy physical media + digital copy, it's absurd to say you're "stealing" it if you then also acquire a permanent digital copy. You've paid for the film...There's no sensible world in which that constitutes theft
I agree, but in the US I believe it's still techically illegal under the DCMA to break the encryption on your physical media so you can extract that permanent digital copy yourself. Legally, you need to leave what you "own" on its (fragile, subject to obsolescence) physical medium. Is there enforcement that would put you at risk if you're doing this in the privacy of your own home? I don't think there is, practically. But the ability to purchase the "+ digital copy" is the rub. If you're trying to be absolutely scrupulous about this you need to find a vendor that will actually sell you a DRM-free digital file, which usually not possible.
posted by pullayup at 9:12 AM on February 12 [2 favorites]
Nope. If you buy physical media + digital copy, it's absurd to say you're "stealing" it if you then also acquire a permanent digital copy. You've paid for the film...There's no sensible world in which that constitutes theft
I agree, but in the US I believe it's still techically illegal under the DCMA to break the encryption on your physical media so you can extract that permanent digital copy yourself. Legally, you need to leave what you "own" on its (fragile, subject to obsolescence) physical medium. Is there enforcement that would put you at risk if you're doing this in the privacy of your own home? I don't think there is, practically. But the ability to purchase the "+ digital copy" is the rub. If you're trying to be absolutely scrupulous about this you need to find a vendor that will actually sell you a DRM-free digital file, which usually not possible.
posted by pullayup at 9:12 AM on February 12 [2 favorites]
Breaking this down into smaller answers:
1) Can you buy media files that are "yours" that you can store at home and serve off the Plex?
No.
2) Are streaming service "originals" even available for purchase anywhere?
Often times, no. There are actual groups online who bootleg some of this stuff, though.
3) Can movies purchased digitally via services like Prime be moved out of those ecosystems?
No.
4) Can Plex play things purchased through Prime if not?
No.
And also, regarding some other points in the thread:
1) Are the digital copies of movies that come with along physical discs files that you can put on your computer?
No. They are walled garden stuff like you get via Prime.
2) Is it still possible to get digital files of movies onto my server/personal storage?
Yes. But only if you create them yoursrelf by ripping the files from discs. Or pirate them via [waves hands in a yadda yadda way]. There is no other way.
3) Is that illegal?
The latter of those, piracy is.
The former option, ripping digital copies of movies is not something rights holders love, but if you bought physical copies to do this from, it is also not something they would likely go after you for. But then you get into weird questions like, "Do you need to save proof that you used to own the discs before you sell them? "What about stuff you borrowed, from the library or a friend?" This is all still mostly academic, because unless a copyright holder had a specific reason to go after you, how would they ever know what is on your NAS? I mean, as long as you didn't share the files online or anything.
In the end, this is why I went back to physical media. The walled garden stuff is weird bullshit. Piracy is a crime. Ripping things and maintaining them on your own servers is a fiddly and time-consuming hobby and is still not more than "basically, generally legal." It also results in you either giving up all of the cool extras that can come with physical discs (commentaries, docs, deleted scenes) or having to rip the entire discs in such a way that you blow through storage comically fast.
We're at a weird moment where physical media is both a) dying, where standard consumers are concerned (see the end of disc sales at Best Buy) and b) stronger than ever via specialty/boutique editions sold online. It's like when CD's started to become irrelevant but vinyl was also growing.
I'd also point out that 4K Blu Ray has a huge advantage over all of its predecessors: it is not likely to be bested in any meaningful way for home viewing. DVD looked much better than VHS. HD Blu Ray looked substantially better than DVD. 4 K Blu Ray can look markedly better than HD Blu Ray, but not for all movies and not for all transfers. And if you get a player that handles upscaling well, the difference for most films drops from wow! to sure, I can see it, I guess. I don't know any home video enthusiasts who think 8K will ever take off.
We're getting to the point where physically buying the latest edition of a film can actually possibly be the last time you buy it.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:24 AM on February 12 [5 favorites]
1) Can you buy media files that are "yours" that you can store at home and serve off the Plex?
No.
2) Are streaming service "originals" even available for purchase anywhere?
Often times, no. There are actual groups online who bootleg some of this stuff, though.
3) Can movies purchased digitally via services like Prime be moved out of those ecosystems?
No.
4) Can Plex play things purchased through Prime if not?
No.
And also, regarding some other points in the thread:
1) Are the digital copies of movies that come with along physical discs files that you can put on your computer?
No. They are walled garden stuff like you get via Prime.
2) Is it still possible to get digital files of movies onto my server/personal storage?
Yes. But only if you create them yoursrelf by ripping the files from discs. Or pirate them via [waves hands in a yadda yadda way]. There is no other way.
3) Is that illegal?
The latter of those, piracy is.
The former option, ripping digital copies of movies is not something rights holders love, but if you bought physical copies to do this from, it is also not something they would likely go after you for. But then you get into weird questions like, "Do you need to save proof that you used to own the discs before you sell them? "What about stuff you borrowed, from the library or a friend?" This is all still mostly academic, because unless a copyright holder had a specific reason to go after you, how would they ever know what is on your NAS? I mean, as long as you didn't share the files online or anything.
In the end, this is why I went back to physical media. The walled garden stuff is weird bullshit. Piracy is a crime. Ripping things and maintaining them on your own servers is a fiddly and time-consuming hobby and is still not more than "basically, generally legal." It also results in you either giving up all of the cool extras that can come with physical discs (commentaries, docs, deleted scenes) or having to rip the entire discs in such a way that you blow through storage comically fast.
We're at a weird moment where physical media is both a) dying, where standard consumers are concerned (see the end of disc sales at Best Buy) and b) stronger than ever via specialty/boutique editions sold online. It's like when CD's started to become irrelevant but vinyl was also growing.
I'd also point out that 4K Blu Ray has a huge advantage over all of its predecessors: it is not likely to be bested in any meaningful way for home viewing. DVD looked much better than VHS. HD Blu Ray looked substantially better than DVD. 4 K Blu Ray can look markedly better than HD Blu Ray, but not for all movies and not for all transfers. And if you get a player that handles upscaling well, the difference for most films drops from wow! to sure, I can see it, I guess. I don't know any home video enthusiasts who think 8K will ever take off.
We're getting to the point where physically buying the latest edition of a film can actually possibly be the last time you buy it.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:24 AM on February 12 [5 favorites]
I was listening to an archivist talk about the legality of this on a panel lately, and in the US it actually depends on who you are. Basically if you are some sort of museum/library/archive, you are legally allowed to break specific DMCA provisions for the purposes of archiving material you have purchased. The general public is very explicitly NOT legally allowed to break DMCA to make digital copies of DVDs/BluRays that you purchase. There is no legal way to purchase permanent digital copies of Hollywood movies. As for morality, it's kind of up to you as there are many interpretations. My personal view is that purchasing new copies of media that I want to enjoy is important because that money will support the creators and encourage creation of similar media (although often not in practice due to Hollywood movie finance). But, purchasing used copies does not support the original creator in any way so I only do that if the seller is someone like Goodwill that I want to support, or if it is more convenient.
Ignoring the legality, my understanding is that it is trivial to scan and keep copies of DVDs if you buy a decent external drive. BluRays are harder to make perfect copies of, and making copies of 4k BluRays require very specific drives that you can read about on sketchy forums. If you're not interested in doing this (I am not), then you have two options:
1. If the media is available for purchase because the creator/rights owner explicitly says it is (such as music on Bandcamp), then you can legally purchase it and keep it however you wish
2. Everything else is some form of illegal, and you can choose how you deal with this. I've started taking the route of just downloading things and then supporting the relevant artists in some other way when possible. For example, you could choose to rent a movie and then pirate it afterwards
posted by JZig at 9:30 AM on February 12 [1 favorite]
Ignoring the legality, my understanding is that it is trivial to scan and keep copies of DVDs if you buy a decent external drive. BluRays are harder to make perfect copies of, and making copies of 4k BluRays require very specific drives that you can read about on sketchy forums. If you're not interested in doing this (I am not), then you have two options:
1. If the media is available for purchase because the creator/rights owner explicitly says it is (such as music on Bandcamp), then you can legally purchase it and keep it however you wish
2. Everything else is some form of illegal, and you can choose how you deal with this. I've started taking the route of just downloading things and then supporting the relevant artists in some other way when possible. For example, you could choose to rent a movie and then pirate it afterwards
posted by JZig at 9:30 AM on February 12 [1 favorite]
If you want to do this legally, you have to buy physical discs. There is zero way around this, by design.
posted by rhymedirective at 9:36 AM on February 12 [1 favorite]
posted by rhymedirective at 9:36 AM on February 12 [1 favorite]
I agree, but in the US I believe it's still techically illegal under the DCMA to break the encryption on your physical media
You're right (although there are certain exceptions unlikely to apply to the average person, unless they are making fanvids). My point is just that (assuming that a purchase has occurred at some point or is simply not possible) moral opprobrium on this point about "stealing" is silly. On a practical level, enforcement against this type of "piracy" is essentially nonexistent, though as the surveillance state grows...who knows?
posted by praemunire at 9:38 AM on February 12 [2 favorites]
You're right (although there are certain exceptions unlikely to apply to the average person, unless they are making fanvids). My point is just that (assuming that a purchase has occurred at some point or is simply not possible) moral opprobrium on this point about "stealing" is silly. On a practical level, enforcement against this type of "piracy" is essentially nonexistent, though as the surveillance state grows...who knows?
posted by praemunire at 9:38 AM on February 12 [2 favorites]
On a practical level, enforcement against this type of "piracy" is essentially nonexistent, though as the surveillance state grows...who knows?
That's really the thing, isn't it? Having grown up in the Gen X heyday of copying cassettes, it feels like something that could never actually be realistically prosecuted. But honestly, I won't surprised if someday, someone rips a Marvel movie and the resulting file connects to the internet and lets Disney know piracy has occurred.
it sounds crazy, but then, everything is crazy now.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:45 AM on February 12 [2 favorites]
That's really the thing, isn't it? Having grown up in the Gen X heyday of copying cassettes, it feels like something that could never actually be realistically prosecuted. But honestly, I won't surprised if someday, someone rips a Marvel movie and the resulting file connects to the internet and lets Disney know piracy has occurred.
it sounds crazy, but then, everything is crazy now.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:45 AM on February 12 [2 favorites]
certain exceptions unlikely to apply to the average person
Yeah, the exceptions are for "fair use" which would, broadly, apply if you're using the material in a transformative way (your fanvid example, but also in a documentary or another original work of your own), or an academic context, which is considered to have more leeway with copyright.
I'd also note that while there are commonly agreed upon guardrails around what is and isn't fair use, fair use cannot be unequivocally determined to be so in advance. Basically, the only way to know if your use is fair use is if you are sued and prevail in a court of law.
posted by pullayup at 9:46 AM on February 12 [1 favorite]
Yeah, the exceptions are for "fair use" which would, broadly, apply if you're using the material in a transformative way (your fanvid example, but also in a documentary or another original work of your own), or an academic context, which is considered to have more leeway with copyright.
I'd also note that while there are commonly agreed upon guardrails around what is and isn't fair use, fair use cannot be unequivocally determined to be so in advance. Basically, the only way to know if your use is fair use is if you are sued and prevail in a court of law.
posted by pullayup at 9:46 AM on February 12 [1 favorite]
But honestly, I won't surprised if someday, someone rips a Marvel movie and the resulting file connects to the internet and lets Disney know piracy has occurred.
FWIW, and to avoid a derail I'll suggest that this might be something to think about OP, over the many years I've been torrenting media, I've only ever received one fairly mild "please stop this" letter from my ISP because I torrented a few seasons of The Simpsons. I ignored it and nothing happened. They can't functionally prove that I've done anything, since I can always just say it was a neighbour stealing my wifi (for instance), so they rely on being able to scare people away. I also don't seed my files (sorry!) which cuts down on the likelihood of getting caught.
Morally, it's a personal choice. Personally speaking, I do things like invest in subscriptions to cinemas and digital catalogs by production companies I like. I still go to the cinema. I donate to acting/production union fundraisers. When I really love a movie or a TV show, I buy the digital version and just don't bother downloading it. There are ways to "pay back" for the media you're pirating that aren't limited to putting money in the pockets of Amazon or streaming services.
posted by fight or flight at 9:50 AM on February 12
FWIW, and to avoid a derail I'll suggest that this might be something to think about OP, over the many years I've been torrenting media, I've only ever received one fairly mild "please stop this" letter from my ISP because I torrented a few seasons of The Simpsons. I ignored it and nothing happened. They can't functionally prove that I've done anything, since I can always just say it was a neighbour stealing my wifi (for instance), so they rely on being able to scare people away. I also don't seed my files (sorry!) which cuts down on the likelihood of getting caught.
Morally, it's a personal choice. Personally speaking, I do things like invest in subscriptions to cinemas and digital catalogs by production companies I like. I still go to the cinema. I donate to acting/production union fundraisers. When I really love a movie or a TV show, I buy the digital version and just don't bother downloading it. There are ways to "pay back" for the media you're pirating that aren't limited to putting money in the pockets of Amazon or streaming services.
posted by fight or flight at 9:50 AM on February 12
purchasing used copies does not support the original creator in any way
There is an argument to be made that by giving second-hand media some monetary value, you are still (indirectly) supporting the creators.
If I buy a book/CD for $10 and later sell it for $3, that is $3 extra I can spend on the next book/CD. Also I'm more likely to buy a book for $10 in the first place knowing it can be sold on.
You will notice this effect particularly in vinyl records, how many people would still drop $100 on a Mobile Fidelity or Analogue Productions release if they didn't tend to have a high resale value.
posted by Lanark at 9:55 AM on February 12 [3 favorites]
There is an argument to be made that by giving second-hand media some monetary value, you are still (indirectly) supporting the creators.
If I buy a book/CD for $10 and later sell it for $3, that is $3 extra I can spend on the next book/CD. Also I'm more likely to buy a book for $10 in the first place knowing it can be sold on.
You will notice this effect particularly in vinyl records, how many people would still drop $100 on a Mobile Fidelity or Analogue Productions release if they didn't tend to have a high resale value.
posted by Lanark at 9:55 AM on February 12 [3 favorites]
N-thing that you cannot purchase actual movie files from any company, anywhere. All that "purchase" is is an authorization to stream them.
Unless you need to keep your nose *EXTREMELY* clean because you work for the NSA or something, the closest you'll be able to get to what you want to do is
(1) Buy some kind of legal copy of it, whether that means an online "purchase" or buying a disc either new or used.
(2) Pirate the material for storage on a media server to actually watch. It's virtually certain that just pirating a file will be waaaay easier than ripping from disc.
Where would you get the files? Usenet is probably better/easier to deal with than torrents these days. Someone let me know if you want a "THIS IS HOW TO USENET" spiel.
How would you store the files? Probably unraid or truenas, but you can make most anything work. Right now my server is an old box running windows 10 with 3 8tb drives in a "raid5" storage space. It craves the sweet embrace of death! There are lots of videos comparing unraid and truenas, but for a machine that's just going to store relatively-easily-replaced files like starwars.mkv and not actually precious memories / important documents, the short answer is that unraid probably makes more sense for most people.
How would you watch the files? Everyone says plex because plex is the kleenex or xerox of this world, but be aware that plex is a for-profit company that seems to be seeking the almighty dollar in ways that inconvenience users. Jellyfin is the current just-about-clone that's open source. Or you can just have files sitting on an smb share and point kodi, which is just a media player, at it. Likewise if you're very fussy about video quality you might end up with one of the dune players pointed at smb shares.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 10:06 AM on February 12 [8 favorites]
Unless you need to keep your nose *EXTREMELY* clean because you work for the NSA or something, the closest you'll be able to get to what you want to do is
(1) Buy some kind of legal copy of it, whether that means an online "purchase" or buying a disc either new or used.
(2) Pirate the material for storage on a media server to actually watch. It's virtually certain that just pirating a file will be waaaay easier than ripping from disc.
Where would you get the files? Usenet is probably better/easier to deal with than torrents these days. Someone let me know if you want a "THIS IS HOW TO USENET" spiel.
How would you store the files? Probably unraid or truenas, but you can make most anything work. Right now my server is an old box running windows 10 with 3 8tb drives in a "raid5" storage space. It craves the sweet embrace of death! There are lots of videos comparing unraid and truenas, but for a machine that's just going to store relatively-easily-replaced files like starwars.mkv and not actually precious memories / important documents, the short answer is that unraid probably makes more sense for most people.
How would you watch the files? Everyone says plex because plex is the kleenex or xerox of this world, but be aware that plex is a for-profit company that seems to be seeking the almighty dollar in ways that inconvenience users. Jellyfin is the current just-about-clone that's open source. Or you can just have files sitting on an smb share and point kodi, which is just a media player, at it. Likewise if you're very fussy about video quality you might end up with one of the dune players pointed at smb shares.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 10:06 AM on February 12 [8 favorites]
How do I actually... buy media these days? I want files that are "mine," that won't magically disappear despite buying them outright, that I can store at home and serve off the Plex. I do not want physical discs.
Just piling on to agree with everyone who's said you can't have both of these things. If you want to own something as permanently as it's currently possible* to do, you will need to make peace with storing physical media. Funimation is only the most recent example of "forever" access going away, and it's not even the first time Sony has done this sort of thing. Amazon has claimed you don't own purchased content on Prime, too.
* Asterisks and qualifications on this include decay or physical damage to the media, ongoing availability of hardware to play the media you own, or weird problems like HDCP handshake errors between your player and your TV/monitor. In the most extreme case, I've got some HD-DVDs and an HD-DVD player that theoretically should keep working even though the format is abandoned. Even though I take care of my media I can't play all my discs because some of them skip or error out. If I connect my HD-DVD player into my TV using an HDMI cable, the TV now just pops up an "incorrect format" error message, so I've resorted to connecting it via component just to allow me to watch the discs that haven't failed. I can't buy a new HD-DVD player to replace what I have, and even if I could it would be good money after bad.
posted by fedward at 10:42 AM on February 12
Just piling on to agree with everyone who's said you can't have both of these things. If you want to own something as permanently as it's currently possible* to do, you will need to make peace with storing physical media. Funimation is only the most recent example of "forever" access going away, and it's not even the first time Sony has done this sort of thing. Amazon has claimed you don't own purchased content on Prime, too.
* Asterisks and qualifications on this include decay or physical damage to the media, ongoing availability of hardware to play the media you own, or weird problems like HDCP handshake errors between your player and your TV/monitor. In the most extreme case, I've got some HD-DVDs and an HD-DVD player that theoretically should keep working even though the format is abandoned. Even though I take care of my media I can't play all my discs because some of them skip or error out. If I connect my HD-DVD player into my TV using an HDMI cable, the TV now just pops up an "incorrect format" error message, so I've resorted to connecting it via component just to allow me to watch the discs that haven't failed. I can't buy a new HD-DVD player to replace what I have, and even if I could it would be good money after bad.
posted by fedward at 10:42 AM on February 12
I wonder how something like PlayOn fits into the legal landscape. The self-hosted one basically plays the video and screen records it in a hidden window, kinda like VCR recording a pay-per-view movie.
posted by Anonymous Function at 11:13 AM on February 12
posted by Anonymous Function at 11:13 AM on February 12
The Lancer plan at ultra.cc can be had for five bucks per month. For that you get a terabyte of storage (more than enough if most of what you're storing is going to end up stored at your house rather than staying permanently at ultra.cc), unlimited downloads into your ultra.cc slot, a terabyte per month of uploads from that slot (which counts all torrent seeding and all downloads to your house), and a web control panel that lets you install the Transmission BitTorrent client (among other things) in a few easy clicks.
Having done that, install the Transmitter extension into your web browser and configure it to talk to your Lancer instance's Transmission web interface. Clicking on a magnet or .torrent file link on any web page will then start pulling content into your Lancer instance, usually at ridiculous speeds. I regularly see mine peak at over 50 megabytes per second on well-seeded torrents.
You can download your collected content using any of several standard protocols, some of which I'm sure TrueNAS will support. These downloads appear to be speed capped at about 5 megabytes/s per TCP connection, which is more than fast enough to stream most content if you want to do it that way. You can use something like rclone to pull stuff into your own media archive over multiple simultaneous connections. I've saturated my own Starlink while experimenting with this, but these days I never bother; even the throttled speed is plenty high enough for me and it's actually good not to have to do anything special at my end to avoid bogging down my Internet connection with media downloading.
Because all the actual BitTorrent activity is happening in the Netherlands, you won't get nastygrams from your ISP for doing any of this.
If your ISP is one of the pain-in-the-arse kind that implements DNS blocking on popular torrent indexing sites like The Pirate Bay and EZTV, you can work around that by taking advantage of your Lancer plan's included VPN (exit node is in the Netherlands) or just use the Tor Browser instead (Transmitter installs into that just fine, because it's Firefox based).
you can just have files sitting on an smb share and point kodi, which is just a media player, at it.
For me, any tiny extra convenience edge in running a media server, as opposed to a plain vanilla file server, is just not worth the extra setup complexity so I agree with this recommendation.
I use a Linux-based storage box and couldn't even be arsed setting up Samba on it, so my own Kodi instances just pull files via sftp, which comes baked into the same OpenSSH service I use to control those Linux boxes with and therefore needs no additional setting up. SMB will probably be the easiest option with TrueNAS and has the advantage of being supported out-of-the-box by pretty much any device that's capable of talking to any kind of file server.
I also couldn't be arsed setting up an OS and then installing Kodi on top of that, so on my various Raspberry Pi media players I just use OSMC and on my Odroid N2 players I use CoreELEC. Both are super easy to set up (download an SD card image, flash to micro SD card with Etcher, plug card into player box, turn on).
posted by flabdablet at 11:17 AM on February 12 [7 favorites]
Having done that, install the Transmitter extension into your web browser and configure it to talk to your Lancer instance's Transmission web interface. Clicking on a magnet or .torrent file link on any web page will then start pulling content into your Lancer instance, usually at ridiculous speeds. I regularly see mine peak at over 50 megabytes per second on well-seeded torrents.
You can download your collected content using any of several standard protocols, some of which I'm sure TrueNAS will support. These downloads appear to be speed capped at about 5 megabytes/s per TCP connection, which is more than fast enough to stream most content if you want to do it that way. You can use something like rclone to pull stuff into your own media archive over multiple simultaneous connections. I've saturated my own Starlink while experimenting with this, but these days I never bother; even the throttled speed is plenty high enough for me and it's actually good not to have to do anything special at my end to avoid bogging down my Internet connection with media downloading.
Because all the actual BitTorrent activity is happening in the Netherlands, you won't get nastygrams from your ISP for doing any of this.
If your ISP is one of the pain-in-the-arse kind that implements DNS blocking on popular torrent indexing sites like The Pirate Bay and EZTV, you can work around that by taking advantage of your Lancer plan's included VPN (exit node is in the Netherlands) or just use the Tor Browser instead (Transmitter installs into that just fine, because it's Firefox based).
you can just have files sitting on an smb share and point kodi, which is just a media player, at it.
For me, any tiny extra convenience edge in running a media server, as opposed to a plain vanilla file server, is just not worth the extra setup complexity so I agree with this recommendation.
I use a Linux-based storage box and couldn't even be arsed setting up Samba on it, so my own Kodi instances just pull files via sftp, which comes baked into the same OpenSSH service I use to control those Linux boxes with and therefore needs no additional setting up. SMB will probably be the easiest option with TrueNAS and has the advantage of being supported out-of-the-box by pretty much any device that's capable of talking to any kind of file server.
I also couldn't be arsed setting up an OS and then installing Kodi on top of that, so on my various Raspberry Pi media players I just use OSMC and on my Odroid N2 players I use CoreELEC. Both are super easy to set up (download an SD card image, flash to micro SD card with Etcher, plug card into player box, turn on).
posted by flabdablet at 11:17 AM on February 12 [7 favorites]
The companies that distribute movies and TV shows on video do not want to simplify piracy by making downloadable, non-DRM files of their stuff available.
Which is really really stupid of them, because all that does is create this massive disincentive for everybody who doesn't enjoy being jerked around at the whim of every asshole DRM-encumbered-content provider to have anything to do with any of them.
File sharing persists not mainly because it costs less, but because it doesn't have a decades-long history of fucking everybody over. Shared content is better than anything the DRM jerks offer for sale because you can play it on whatever the fuck you want whenever the fuck you want wherever the fuck you want for as long as you can be bothered maintaining your own copy.
Bandcamp is pretty much the only popular content provider that actually works like they all should. They'll happily sell you unencumbered digital downloads in standard formats with which you can then do as you please and they'll also store your purchases indefinitely and stream them on demand as well and they take only a modest cut from their stable of artists instead of fucking them over as well like all the mainstreamers do.
If the entire industry worked like Bandcamp does, The Pirate Bay would wither and die from lack of interested participants. But they don't, because their executives are all crabs in a bucket who can't see past their own clicky little claws.
posted by flabdablet at 11:37 AM on February 12 [4 favorites]
Which is really really stupid of them, because all that does is create this massive disincentive for everybody who doesn't enjoy being jerked around at the whim of every asshole DRM-encumbered-content provider to have anything to do with any of them.
File sharing persists not mainly because it costs less, but because it doesn't have a decades-long history of fucking everybody over. Shared content is better than anything the DRM jerks offer for sale because you can play it on whatever the fuck you want whenever the fuck you want wherever the fuck you want for as long as you can be bothered maintaining your own copy.
Bandcamp is pretty much the only popular content provider that actually works like they all should. They'll happily sell you unencumbered digital downloads in standard formats with which you can then do as you please and they'll also store your purchases indefinitely and stream them on demand as well and they take only a modest cut from their stable of artists instead of fucking them over as well like all the mainstreamers do.
If the entire industry worked like Bandcamp does, The Pirate Bay would wither and die from lack of interested participants. But they don't, because their executives are all crabs in a bucket who can't see past their own clicky little claws.
posted by flabdablet at 11:37 AM on February 12 [4 favorites]
1) Can you buy media files that are "yours" that you can store at home and serve off the Plex?
Nope. That's it.
But you can go to your local library's Friends Of The Library sale and buy all the DVDs you want for a buck apiece, and then rip them to your NAS on a cheap, external DVD drive. Plex will serve up the videos nicely, with not too much tinkering. You own the media, you can watch the video. With PlexPass, I think you can even log in via www.plex.tv and stream it over the Internet if you are on the road. So good!
(Finding a place to store all the damn DVDs is a separate issue...)
posted by wenestvedt at 12:07 PM on February 12 [2 favorites]
Nope. That's it.
But you can go to your local library's Friends Of The Library sale and buy all the DVDs you want for a buck apiece, and then rip them to your NAS on a cheap, external DVD drive. Plex will serve up the videos nicely, with not too much tinkering. You own the media, you can watch the video. With PlexPass, I think you can even log in via www.plex.tv and stream it over the Internet if you are on the road. So good!
(Finding a place to store all the damn DVDs is a separate issue...)
posted by wenestvedt at 12:07 PM on February 12 [2 favorites]
You can probably do this with iTunes. It's worth a try, anyway: iTunes is free, and you can buy one thing and then figure out how to move the files to another machine and play them. Video might be more difficult than audio, but again it's worth a try.
iTunes lets you purchase things. Those are stored in digital files on your local computer if you specify that in iTunes.
Then you should move or copy those files elsewhere in your local file system so iTunes doesn't delete them when you accidentally tell it to compress or clear space or whatever.
I don't know for sure how the rest of the system works currently, but I do have a bunch of saved content that I think I can listen to whenever I want, outside of iTunes (I did have to convert audio file formats using other free software).
posted by amtho at 12:51 PM on February 12
iTunes lets you purchase things. Those are stored in digital files on your local computer if you specify that in iTunes.
Then you should move or copy those files elsewhere in your local file system so iTunes doesn't delete them when you accidentally tell it to compress or clear space or whatever.
I don't know for sure how the rest of the system works currently, but I do have a bunch of saved content that I think I can listen to whenever I want, outside of iTunes (I did have to convert audio file formats using other free software).
posted by amtho at 12:51 PM on February 12
Pirate the material for storage on a media server to actually watch. It's virtually certain that just pirating a file will be waaaay easier than ripping from disc.
The one exception to this is fairly obscure media. I wanted a copy of the 1974 BBC TV adaptation of The Pallisers, and couldn't find an easy online source*. Ripping DVDs (and OCRing the subtitle tracks, ugh) turned out to be easier than trying to find them online.
*Youtube has them, but there's something very weird about Youtube's version. The original series was 26 fifty-minute videos (1300 minutes); Youtube has 18 videos of variable length, totalling 1760 minutes. Maybe some day I'll look at the Youtube version and figure out what the deal is there, but the bottom line is that I don't trust it.
posted by jackbishop at 12:56 PM on February 12 [2 favorites]
The one exception to this is fairly obscure media. I wanted a copy of the 1974 BBC TV adaptation of The Pallisers, and couldn't find an easy online source*. Ripping DVDs (and OCRing the subtitle tracks, ugh) turned out to be easier than trying to find them online.
*Youtube has them, but there's something very weird about Youtube's version. The original series was 26 fifty-minute videos (1300 minutes); Youtube has 18 videos of variable length, totalling 1760 minutes. Maybe some day I'll look at the Youtube version and figure out what the deal is there, but the bottom line is that I don't trust it.
posted by jackbishop at 12:56 PM on February 12 [2 favorites]
You can probably do this with iTunes. It's worth a try, anyway: iTunes is free, and you can buy one thing and then figure out how to move the files to another machine and play them. Video might be more difficult than audio, but again it's worth a try.
iTunes lets you purchase things. Those are stored in digital files on your local computer if you specify that in iTunes.
iTunes is no longer supported and you can no longer buy television shows or movies through iTunes. It's all through the "TV" app now. You can download them, but they have DRM and thus if Apple ever loses the rights to "sell" what you've bought, they can delete them.
You could, I suppose, strip the DRM off the Apple copies so Apple can't reach through the internet and delete them if that ever happens, but a cursory search appears to indicate that this was patched out of existence a few years ago and no one has figured out a way around it.
This is why it's always, always, always a bad idea to "buy" digital files with the expectation that they are yours to do with what you want for all time--they very much are not. They're an expensive rental.
posted by rhymedirective at 1:11 PM on February 12 [2 favorites]
iTunes lets you purchase things. Those are stored in digital files on your local computer if you specify that in iTunes.
iTunes is no longer supported and you can no longer buy television shows or movies through iTunes. It's all through the "TV" app now. You can download them, but they have DRM and thus if Apple ever loses the rights to "sell" what you've bought, they can delete them.
You could, I suppose, strip the DRM off the Apple copies so Apple can't reach through the internet and delete them if that ever happens, but a cursory search appears to indicate that this was patched out of existence a few years ago and no one has figured out a way around it.
This is why it's always, always, always a bad idea to "buy" digital files with the expectation that they are yours to do with what you want for all time--they very much are not. They're an expensive rental.
posted by rhymedirective at 1:11 PM on February 12 [2 favorites]
No one has addressed audio specifically however this is much more doable if you are looking for things to listen to rather than watch. Bandcamp soldiers on somehow and record companies may also directly offer DRM free downloads. There are probably other sources but I'm middle aged and don't have the time I used to, so that's what I know at the moment. The increase in quality over streaming is often quite noticeable, especially compared to YouTube.
posted by deadwax at 2:56 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]
posted by deadwax at 2:56 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]
Tangential, but Molly White just published an article titled We need to talk about digital ownership, in which she breaks down what exactly we mean when we talk about owning digital media. Worth a read.
posted by adamrice at 4:59 PM on February 12 [3 favorites]
posted by adamrice at 4:59 PM on February 12 [3 favorites]
Leaving aside ethics, the part that stood out to me as a roadblock is this one:
I refuse to learn Linux to do this.
If that’s truly the case, like you never want to see a terminal, sticking with a combination of physical media and streaming services is probably your best bet.
I’m super invested in my Plex library, and i’m heavily considering starting to switch back into physical media because 4k Blu Ray is just that much better than anything i can stream, even over gigabit internet, and the storage and network needs for really high-quality video is more than i want to deal with.
posted by supercres at 6:20 PM on February 12 [2 favorites]
I refuse to learn Linux to do this.
If that’s truly the case, like you never want to see a terminal, sticking with a combination of physical media and streaming services is probably your best bet.
I’m super invested in my Plex library, and i’m heavily considering starting to switch back into physical media because 4k Blu Ray is just that much better than anything i can stream, even over gigabit internet, and the storage and network needs for really high-quality video is more than i want to deal with.
posted by supercres at 6:20 PM on February 12 [2 favorites]
But you can go to your local library's Friends Of The Library sale and buy all the DVDs you want for a buck apiece, and then rip them to your NAS on a cheap, external DVD drive.
Sure you can, if your viewing pleasure is not impeded by having to look at blurry upscaled 480i complete with interlace-induced motion combing.
My own eyesight is no longer good enough to tell the difference between 720p and 1080p, so my own video archive is mostly 720p. But there's a world of difference between that and the lower resolutions, especially the interlaced variants used on DVD.
1080p has been the most popular resolution for file sharing for quite some while, but 2160p is increasingly common for rips of newly released streaming content; and any Blu-Ray release will be quickly followed by the appearance of a full-size Blu-Ray rip on the torrent indexing sites (can't speak to Usenet, haven't needed it yet).
If you have an Internet connection that's even halfway decent by modern standards, renting even the cheapest available Dutch seedbox really does make pulling in somebody else's rip via BitTorrent easier and faster than backing up a Blu-Ray disc locally. And if your Internet connection is shit enough that you get buffering and stuttering during peak streaming hours, downloading whole episodes beforehand from a seedbox to a NAS insulates you from all that aggravation as well.
File sharing is technically superior to commercial streaming by pretty much every measure. Which reflects very, very badly on the streamers.
posted by flabdablet at 9:03 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]
Sure you can, if your viewing pleasure is not impeded by having to look at blurry upscaled 480i complete with interlace-induced motion combing.
My own eyesight is no longer good enough to tell the difference between 720p and 1080p, so my own video archive is mostly 720p. But there's a world of difference between that and the lower resolutions, especially the interlaced variants used on DVD.
1080p has been the most popular resolution for file sharing for quite some while, but 2160p is increasingly common for rips of newly released streaming content; and any Blu-Ray release will be quickly followed by the appearance of a full-size Blu-Ray rip on the torrent indexing sites (can't speak to Usenet, haven't needed it yet).
If you have an Internet connection that's even halfway decent by modern standards, renting even the cheapest available Dutch seedbox really does make pulling in somebody else's rip via BitTorrent easier and faster than backing up a Blu-Ray disc locally. And if your Internet connection is shit enough that you get buffering and stuttering during peak streaming hours, downloading whole episodes beforehand from a seedbox to a NAS insulates you from all that aggravation as well.
File sharing is technically superior to commercial streaming by pretty much every measure. Which reflects very, very badly on the streamers.
posted by flabdablet at 9:03 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]
Not interested in learning Linux and running TrueNAS? I think the flexibility and strength of getting under the hood will corrupt you. In any case, good luck and have fun enjoying your media.
deadwax: No one has addressed audio specifically however this is much more doable if you are looking for things to listen to ...
I'm buying from bandcamp and a French high-def distributor at Qobuz.com who have all the reissued/remastered/resampled digital editions to download and keep forever. They're promoting the streaming side and a year's streaming membership gets huge discounts on the high-def editions in the download store.
posted by k3ninho at 12:56 AM on February 13 [1 favorite]
deadwax: No one has addressed audio specifically however this is much more doable if you are looking for things to listen to ...
I'm buying from bandcamp and a French high-def distributor at Qobuz.com who have all the reissued/remastered/resampled digital editions to download and keep forever. They're promoting the streaming side and a year's streaming membership gets huge discounts on the high-def editions in the download store.
posted by k3ninho at 12:56 AM on February 13 [1 favorite]
Here is the obligatory PSA on "high resolution" audio.
TL;DR: don't bother. A CD-format version of any given mix will sound as good or better even on the highest of high-end reproduction gear and will cost you up to six times less in storage space and download time.
In particular, ripping a CD or starting from the original master file used to create the CD, then upsampling it to "high resolution" for distribution will at best achieve no audible change and at worst add unpleasantly audible intermodulation distortion on playback.
There are plenty of ways to clean up existing distortion in audio from sub-CD-quality sources such as shellac and vinyl, many of which involve similar kinds of machine-learning wizardry to those used to upscale and colourize old movies, but that's where any analogy between HDR 8K video and "high resolution" audio breaks down; the end results of none of these audio processes are improved by distribution at higher-than-CD bit rates.
posted by flabdablet at 1:29 AM on February 13
TL;DR: don't bother. A CD-format version of any given mix will sound as good or better even on the highest of high-end reproduction gear and will cost you up to six times less in storage space and download time.
In particular, ripping a CD or starting from the original master file used to create the CD, then upsampling it to "high resolution" for distribution will at best achieve no audible change and at worst add unpleasantly audible intermodulation distortion on playback.
There are plenty of ways to clean up existing distortion in audio from sub-CD-quality sources such as shellac and vinyl, many of which involve similar kinds of machine-learning wizardry to those used to upscale and colourize old movies, but that's where any analogy between HDR 8K video and "high resolution" audio breaks down; the end results of none of these audio processes are improved by distribution at higher-than-CD bit rates.
posted by flabdablet at 1:29 AM on February 13
A couple of people asked for a "how to usenet" spiel so:
As the internet evolved away from the "real" use of usenet as a decentralized collection of chat rooms, people using it for piracy and IP owners have been at war with each other, as you'd expect. One consequence is that almost all movie files encoded into a series of usenet posts are lkdjfgilj349083423nkdffjkdj.mkv or 9834759328759823475982347.mkv in order to obscure things so that IP owners can't just scan with bots. People on the yarr matey side have mostly automated how to deal with this.
Step 1: An account with a usenet provider. There are lots, there are online ratings of them. Look for retention length and, if you care, encrypted connections. I use the cleverly-named usenetserver.com and I assume I had some actual reason for that choice in 2005 or so but I still use it because it hasn't pissed me off. Expect ballpark $10/mo, less if you pay by the year.
Step 2: An account with one or more nzb aggregators. An nzb file is the thing the pirates made up to deal with the garbage filenames -- it says that this collection of posts can be used to assemble that filename, and it tells you what the content is. ierfho54ut8929oeujfoiejr398u.mkv is in these usenet posts and it's Dune.2021.1080p.h264.dd51.pluscomms.GrUnTiEs.mkv, which tells you the movie, resolution and codec, sound format, that it includes commentary tracks, and who the pirate group was. nzb aggregators maintain a database of nzbs and add to that database as things get posted. You can log into your aggregator and see what new 4k files have appeared, or search for dune 1984, etc. There are some free ones but realistically expect to pay a little bit. I use nzbplanet and nzbgeek. I think I paid nzbplanet $40 to never bother me about money again, or you could pay like $5/year or something.
Step 3: a downloader. You're not going to fire up a usenet newsreader like tin and just look for stuff; you want a program that eats nzbs and shits completed files. The two big ones here are nzbget and sabnzbd. I use sabnzbd, again probably for some reason back in the day but really out of inertia. With sabnzbd, you fire it up and then interact with it through the web browser. You tell it where to put working files, where to put completed files, and where it should look for new nzbs to appear.
Finally, to actually use usenet you'd log onto your aggregator and pick something out. Then click the download-nzb link and save to the directory your downloader watches, and... that's it. Either the completed file appears in your completed files directory, or it doesn't and you can check sabnzbd/nzbget to see what happened. Usually in that instance it will say "missing parts," which just means that the IP owners noticed the posts and fired off a DMCA cancel request.
There is a whole other way to interact with usenet through apps like radarr and sonarr and a bunch of other *rr apps. The way these work is that you tell radarr what movies you want and with what qualifications (at least 1080p, etc) and point it at your downloader and aggregator. radarr then compares the rss stream coming off of your aggregator to the list of movies you want and tells your downloader to download the relevant files. I've never used this; it runs counter to my use case in a few ways. But it's out there and lots of people, especially folks who maintain the plex/emby/jellyfin server for the whole extended family, swear by them.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 9:35 AM on February 13 [5 favorites]
As the internet evolved away from the "real" use of usenet as a decentralized collection of chat rooms, people using it for piracy and IP owners have been at war with each other, as you'd expect. One consequence is that almost all movie files encoded into a series of usenet posts are lkdjfgilj349083423nkdffjkdj.mkv or 9834759328759823475982347.mkv in order to obscure things so that IP owners can't just scan with bots. People on the yarr matey side have mostly automated how to deal with this.
Step 1: An account with a usenet provider. There are lots, there are online ratings of them. Look for retention length and, if you care, encrypted connections. I use the cleverly-named usenetserver.com and I assume I had some actual reason for that choice in 2005 or so but I still use it because it hasn't pissed me off. Expect ballpark $10/mo, less if you pay by the year.
Step 2: An account with one or more nzb aggregators. An nzb file is the thing the pirates made up to deal with the garbage filenames -- it says that this collection of posts can be used to assemble that filename, and it tells you what the content is. ierfho54ut8929oeujfoiejr398u.mkv is in these usenet posts and it's Dune.2021.1080p.h264.dd51.pluscomms.GrUnTiEs.mkv, which tells you the movie, resolution and codec, sound format, that it includes commentary tracks, and who the pirate group was. nzb aggregators maintain a database of nzbs and add to that database as things get posted. You can log into your aggregator and see what new 4k files have appeared, or search for dune 1984, etc. There are some free ones but realistically expect to pay a little bit. I use nzbplanet and nzbgeek. I think I paid nzbplanet $40 to never bother me about money again, or you could pay like $5/year or something.
Step 3: a downloader. You're not going to fire up a usenet newsreader like tin and just look for stuff; you want a program that eats nzbs and shits completed files. The two big ones here are nzbget and sabnzbd. I use sabnzbd, again probably for some reason back in the day but really out of inertia. With sabnzbd, you fire it up and then interact with it through the web browser. You tell it where to put working files, where to put completed files, and where it should look for new nzbs to appear.
Finally, to actually use usenet you'd log onto your aggregator and pick something out. Then click the download-nzb link and save to the directory your downloader watches, and... that's it. Either the completed file appears in your completed files directory, or it doesn't and you can check sabnzbd/nzbget to see what happened. Usually in that instance it will say "missing parts," which just means that the IP owners noticed the posts and fired off a DMCA cancel request.
There is a whole other way to interact with usenet through apps like radarr and sonarr and a bunch of other *rr apps. The way these work is that you tell radarr what movies you want and with what qualifications (at least 1080p, etc) and point it at your downloader and aggregator. radarr then compares the rss stream coming off of your aggregator to the list of movies you want and tells your downloader to download the relevant files. I've never used this; it runs counter to my use case in a few ways. But it's out there and lots of people, especially folks who maintain the plex/emby/jellyfin server for the whole extended family, swear by them.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 9:35 AM on February 13 [5 favorites]
Pirate what can't be bought.
I told my "I have enough stuff" brother at Xmas that I'm getting people DVDs from now on because shit is getting disappeared off of streaming services and it's only going to get worse, the jerking around. Sure, not everything is on DVD, but the same could be said for VHS, and don't movie super-nerds even collect 16mm prints of old movies? (FWIW, DVDs are getting rereleased as 4K remasters these days, so it's probably going to be a good time to load up on Blu-Rays for the next several years)
Media rights-holders want to control the format of every single viewing of their properties, and get paid each time, and they won't stop until they achieve it. That will never happen, and that's how I know it'll only get worse. And watch: pirating will only get easier.
posted by rhizome at 12:11 AM on February 14 [1 favorite]
I told my "I have enough stuff" brother at Xmas that I'm getting people DVDs from now on because shit is getting disappeared off of streaming services and it's only going to get worse, the jerking around. Sure, not everything is on DVD, but the same could be said for VHS, and don't movie super-nerds even collect 16mm prints of old movies? (FWIW, DVDs are getting rereleased as 4K remasters these days, so it's probably going to be a good time to load up on Blu-Rays for the next several years)
Media rights-holders want to control the format of every single viewing of their properties, and get paid each time, and they won't stop until they achieve it. That will never happen, and that's how I know it'll only get worse. And watch: pirating will only get easier.
posted by rhizome at 12:11 AM on February 14 [1 favorite]
Pirate what can't be bought
Also pirate what can't be owned - properly owned, as in this is now my thing, to use as I see fit, for as long as I care to - after being bought.
If something you've bought requires ongoing access to some vendor-provided service in order to remain functional, you don't own it.
Being led to believe that you've paid to own a thing, only to discover after careful scrutiny of acres of fine print that what you actually paid for was an at-whim vendor-revocable right to use the thing, is an increasingly widespread pattern that I personally rate as far more akin to theft than file sharing could ever be.
posted by flabdablet at 12:40 AM on February 14 [4 favorites]
Also pirate what can't be owned - properly owned, as in this is now my thing, to use as I see fit, for as long as I care to - after being bought.
If something you've bought requires ongoing access to some vendor-provided service in order to remain functional, you don't own it.
Being led to believe that you've paid to own a thing, only to discover after careful scrutiny of acres of fine print that what you actually paid for was an at-whim vendor-revocable right to use the thing, is an increasingly widespread pattern that I personally rate as far more akin to theft than file sharing could ever be.
posted by flabdablet at 12:40 AM on February 14 [4 favorites]
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posted by raccoon409 at 8:16 AM on February 12 [4 favorites]