The Glade 4.0

Any of you made this jump yet? I've been looking at the pile of blurays building up and am getting tired of making room for them. Any of y'all started buying your movies through a service and streaming them? If not, what's keeping you from doing so?

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The Dude abides.

Yes.




I never collected movies on blu-ray, dvd or vhs. The only reason I have a collection at all is:

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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I've been buying movies and TV series on Amazon for several years. I quite like it.

It's really no different than buying ebooks. As long as Amazon is still around, and I am online, I have access to them.

I can't remember the last time I bought physical media (i.e a movie or TV series on DVD), but it's been a long long time.

Aside from the occasional collector's edition (like Scream Factory or Criterion), I buy all of my movies through iTunes now, and began ripping all of my Blu-rays. I've got about 8TB so far. The special concerns of my disc collection were just too great.

I've got a substantial collection through Vudu/Ultraviolet as well, since you can pay a buck and get an HD copy of a film you own in your digital locker, but I like the safety of having an actual download, rather than relying on a stream (and thus a continued existence of the service). Also, immersion in the Apple ecosystem means all of my stuff just works together seamlessly.

I guess you touch on a problem I've had making the jump. I've no love for Apple products. But I'm trying to find a good compromise that lets me buy on a platform to use between my Xbox, laptop, phone, and tablets (1 of which is an iPad I have to use for school).

And on top of that, like you said, getting a service that lets me do an actual download. My recent travel history has taken me places with shoddy wifi, so can't count on a stream when I want to watch a flick.

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The Dude abides.

I second Amazon, I got tired of the kids movies piling up and started buying them digitally. They watch them constantly, no issues yet.

Yeah...if you've got a mobile device (tablet or phone), most services will let you download a file locally to the device for travel, but not to a computer or media server. Amazon did, once upon a time, with their now-deprecated Unbox program, but I don't know of another offhand that allows it. I dunno if Microsoft or Sony's in-house ecosystems allow local downloads to the console, or if they just do a stream. Amazon, VUDU, etc. are stream-only.

I get all my stuff through Google Play. Amazon would be my second choice. Google play stuff will play anywhere and Chromecast is awesome.

I can also second this one, as all my Disney "play anywhere" Blu Ray's I've bought redeem to Google Play, and it's great as well (And will play on anything with a YouTube app). Really, you should decide what devices you're going to use to play your media and that will determine what service to use. They're mostly universal now, but still a few limitations. The most simple option seems to be the Roku series, I've set my parents and grandparents up with one and they both love it, and it will play anything. Chromecast is nice, but you need to control it with your phone, and I've found I much prefer a separate remote to hand off to the kids/wife, so I'm not searching for my phone 20 minutes later. Xbox One has FINALLY gotten just about all the streaming services as well, so I use that quite a bit too.

I use a Plex Media Server for almost all my television/movie these days. Clients I'm using are Roku, Samsung smartTV, Android, web browser (though it has a lot more.)

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I hate physical media. Everything digital now if I can. Spread across Netflix and Amazon mostly.

What app are you using to stream Google stuff on the XBone?

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The Dude abides.

For my wife I set up a Roku box. It was the easiest for her to use. The kids and I use Chromecast.

Anything that has a Youtube app can stream your Google Play stuff. It's under your purchased items.

Ah didn't know that about the YouTube app. Good stuff - thank you.

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The Dude abides.

Yeah, once google added that functionality it REALLY opened up your google play content. Finally.

Many many years ago, I hacked an Xbox (the original Xbox) with a mod chip and large hard drive. There was an app for this called Xbox Media Center, which, especially for it's time, was awesome.

I lost track of the app when I retired my Xbox (no HD video capability). I was on a nostalgia kick a while back and discovered that XBMC becamse "Kodi", and is apparently still a thing.

Anyone use this? I would imagine is has similar features to Plex, perhaps with some additional internet streaming capabilities?

https://kodi.tv/about/

I don't use it, but there are tools to link it to Plex, as well.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I was running kodi on my media PC, but all my friends are Plexers, so they've pulled me to the dark side (finally). It runs just fine, I had no issues with it, has nice controller support as a remote as well.

I use physical media as exclusively as possible and avoid downloading like the plague. If I go to that I can forget ever actually using the internet because it will be nonstop downloading all the time with the wife and kids, and perpetual 500+ ms pings.

Plus, I do not like the trend of trying to turn every device into a subscription service.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Basically ditto, minus the wife/kids.

I still buy movies I like on physical media. Netflix has curtailed the TV Show Seasons buying I used to do, though it was only for a couple series of the ones I watch, so not that big an impact.

I object on principle to the subscriptionizing of content with no guarantees about content's availability for the aggregated source distributors like Netflix (where contracts are fickle) and the nascent fragmented services of the 1st party options (where the content is likely to remain available -- until they decide to stop supporting the service altogether). My physical disks suffer from neither availability problem, and have a much more transparent value proposition that I'm comfortable with.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I understand the sentiments here - I'm just getting tired of making room and looking at containers that have to hold movie cases. It seems like Ultraviolet support should mostly remove any concerns for losing access and there seems to be a large grey market for buying UV movie codes much cheaper than full retail. Darkroland almost has me sold on Google Play, but I'm also giving Vudu a serious look (despite the fact they're owned by Walmart) for the UV and Disney support.

To DE's point, some of these services allow downloading of the movies so that it won't require additional streaming beyond the first hit. Still taking my time though on the route I want to go.

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The Dude abides.

That'd still be nonstop downloading between the wife and the kids wanting every single Lifetime Original Movie ever and every single kid's cartoon in history. We can record 2 shows at once on satellite and my wife totally loses her **** if there's 3 at once she wants to see - and one of them had better not be the **** Bachelor/Bachelorette.

I don't buy enough movies, and we've got a big enough house that space isn't a concern. Sticking a DVD in a player means one less place out there that's collecting your information to put into their "ecosystem" or whatever other godawful **** they're coming up with this week.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I've got 5 terabytes of video on my plex server.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I just had to buy an 8TB drive. I'm at 6TB right now. Time to transfer again. Blech.

What's the average file size for a TV show or a movie on your drive?

Mine includes 750 movies, 100 TV series (varying from a few episode mini-series to 11 season long running shows), and 850 short films (mostly Looney Toons and Disney shorts.)

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █