Why I went to DVDs.
There is libre software to rip them and depending on country it’s legal, so basically you get a DRM-free legal copy with ability to archive or lend to a friend.
I’ve been buying preowned DVDs off ebay every few weeks or so for the last year. I don’t even bother looking to see if they are available to stream anymore.
This. My only media expense monthly is my VPN at $10. Everything is pirated.
Even that though - I just download only my favorites for the collection. Everything else is available on stand alone websites these days (multiple) so if you’re paying for a streaming service or really even using bittorrent then you’re living in the past as far as movies go.
It’s really good quality.
In my opinion low resolution only matters in static images or when video is paused, I’ll take high bitrate and superior sound every day instead of today’s streaming.
Sure you can just download, super convinient and gives best results. But sometimes it’s good to do things the way that can scale in society or just actually own something you like :).
I have 4k TV and 5.1 studio speakers and noone in my house can see the difference from modern streaming besides a little grain on still images.
Always buy newer, at least two-layered disks, they are much better.
Of course that’s nothing compared to 4K/DTS/DA/HDR Blu-Ray rip, but it’s not that the movie is not watchable. DVD is the basic experience, 2010s cinema like, where Blu-Ray is just a crispy fresh layer added.
Comparing to max quality >10-30GB torrent is not fair. You need to compare it to other DRM-free legal options, oh, there’s none.
Side to side with Blu-Ray, really bad. But Blu-Ray is many times more expensive and less freedom friendly.
Side to side with Netlix-like streaming, assuming you don’t use some high-end service, DVD is just better in real watching and not pausing and glaring at pixels.
Why isn’t it fair? No reason you can’t just torrent a 10GB Blu-Ray rip of the movie. It’s free, easy and probably takes less time than going out and buying a DVD.
I would say that side-to-side the quality of Netflix-like streaming is A LOT better, at least when it comes to video. Audio is probably comparable since both DVD’s and streaming services usually use Dolby Digital or Dolby Digital Plus.
Plain VLC can do it. You may need to at least install libdvdcss and libdvdread packages, they are 100% open source and easy to obtain, but you need to read the guide for specific OS because some system distribution repositories does not ship them by default for legal reasons in a few countries.
Thanks! I’ve read that VLC can do it before, but I’ll look into giving it another shot sometime. The guides I found weren’t exactly the best, but with the mentioned packages I should be able to better narrow the searches to better guides, I think.
They may not have as many ebooks as Amazon, but they do offer DRM free ebooks, and may be worth keeping in mind to check before going straight to Amazon.
Old school pirating or new school? Last time I remember pirates was like… Napster, Limewire, Kazaa… Then went to TPB before it got raided like 8 times… What’s the current? Is it still torrenting with proxies?
Set up your profiles for Radarr/Sonarr to pick the quality of release you want (1080p, min/max file size, etc)
Feed Radarr/Sonarr your qbittorrent info, nzbget & Usenet info
They will automatically search the indexes (I use 1337x for torrents & nzbgeek for Usenet) for the files that fit your parameters, download it, and organize it.
All you have to do is point Plex at the output folders and BAM, automated pirating.
I even took it a step further and set up Doplarr - a Discord bot that handles requests. Now friends/family can ping the bot with their movie/show requests and it’ll sync up to Radarr/Sonarr and add their requests!
Word on the street is that reddit’s arr slash piracy has a pretty good guide to it in their wiki, including lists of generally trustworthy torrent sources. I of course don’t torrent, because I’m terrified of legal consequences–I just browse shady but technically legal websites to stream my anime
I’ve been pirating since Napster and you’re right, it’s changed a lot. These days, I usually just stream from third party sites. Takes less room on your PC and is faster than downloading a torrent. Dopebox is where it’s at for most stuff. 9anime if you like anime, it’s better than the paid alternatives like Crunchy roll or Funamation.
If you want to stick to torrents I’ve found 1337x to be the best since TPB died.
New skool is to use automation tools to grab and manage your media. You can still use torrenting but IMO using usenet is more reliable and doesn’t flag your ISP. I highly recommend anyone pirating to use 'arrs https://wiki.servarr.com/
Yeah I can’t argue with the usenet fees but all three of my index sites I’ve had no issues with their free version so long as you do go wild and download ten terabytes in a night. I’ve actually had better luck with the selection compared to torrenting, pretty much is there in all of the popular resolutions. The only thing I have finding is some of the obscure adult swim shows but I can’t find them on my private trackers either.
Content leaving isn’t a problem. If they give up some things they have more money to get the rights to other content, and usually by the time it leaves I’ve either watched it or don’t want to. If it’s one of the rare things I want to watch several times, I can just buy it.
But cracking down on password sharing is ridiculous. They’ve been functioning fine with people sharing passwords. I bet the current pricing accounts for password sharing. But now people in college can’t be on the family netflix? Pure greed.
Content leaving is totally a problem. I’ve lost track of the number of times my spouse and I say, “Oh hey, what about we finally watch xyz that’s been in our queue for ages? Yeah that seems like a good one for Friday pizza night! …oh, it’s vanished from our queue, hooray.”
It’s not my full time job to keep tabs on what’s coming and going from the damn entertainment service that I hope to use in my ever dwindling reserves of free time. Especially when there’s alternative means available that are not too difficult to use.
This is incredibly annoying for series. Crunchyroll dropped Bleach, a series with over 350 episodes, when I was at episode ~100.
A few years ago I started to manually keep track of the episodes I watched, since you lose your progress when they drop it (true for crunchyroll, prime and netflix)
Other than the recent nonsense, this is why I cancelled Netflix and went back to pirating. Content leaves unexpectedly? Not on my Nas.
Why I went to DVDs. There is libre software to rip them and depending on country it’s legal, so basically you get a DRM-free legal copy with ability to archive or lend to a friend.
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I’ve been buying preowned DVDs off ebay every few weeks or so for the last year. I don’t even bother looking to see if they are available to stream anymore.
Probably cheaper too
But then it’s in DVD quality. Why not just pirate a full quality version?
This. My only media expense monthly is my VPN at $10. Everything is pirated.
Even that though - I just download only my favorites for the collection. Everything else is available on stand alone websites these days (multiple) so if you’re paying for a streaming service or really even using bittorrent then you’re living in the past as far as movies go.
What should I be using instead of (q)bittorrent?
QBitTorrent is fine. BitTorrent and its children are not.
I don’t think I we’ve used any of those actually.
fmhy.net will tell you.
Blurays exist and they’re pretty cheap from thrift stores (often just $3)
Piracy is free though
Ya but Blu-ray is a PITA to rip sometimes.
It’s really good quality. In my opinion low resolution only matters in static images or when video is paused, I’ll take high bitrate and superior sound every day instead of today’s streaming.
Sure you can just download, super convinient and gives best results. But sometimes it’s good to do things the way that can scale in society or just actually own something you like :).
DVD isn’t very good quality. I don’t really care and I have a tiny TV, and DVDs still don’t look very good on it.
I have 4k TV and 5.1 studio speakers and noone in my house can see the difference from modern streaming besides a little grain on still images. Always buy newer, at least two-layered disks, they are much better.
Of course that’s nothing compared to 4K/DTS/DA/HDR Blu-Ray rip, but it’s not that the movie is not watchable. DVD is the basic experience, 2010s cinema like, where Blu-Ray is just a crispy fresh layer added.
The video quality is shit and it’s extremely obvious in my opinion. Even the sound is inferior to a good torrent with Dolby TrueHD/DTS HD sound.
Comparing to max quality >10-30GB torrent is not fair. You need to compare it to other DRM-free legal options, oh, there’s none. Side to side with Blu-Ray, really bad. But Blu-Ray is many times more expensive and less freedom friendly. Side to side with Netlix-like streaming, assuming you don’t use some high-end service, DVD is just better in real watching and not pausing and glaring at pixels.
Why isn’t it fair? No reason you can’t just torrent a 10GB Blu-Ray rip of the movie. It’s free, easy and probably takes less time than going out and buying a DVD.
I would say that side-to-side the quality of Netflix-like streaming is A LOT better, at least when it comes to video. Audio is probably comparable since both DVD’s and streaming services usually use Dolby Digital or Dolby Digital Plus.
What software would that happen to be, supposing it’s not MakeMKV?
Plain VLC can do it. You may need to at least install libdvdcss and libdvdread packages, they are 100% open source and easy to obtain, but you need to read the guide for specific OS because some system distribution repositories does not ship them by default for legal reasons in a few countries.
Thanks! I’ve read that VLC can do it before, but I’ll look into giving it another shot sometime. The guides I found weren’t exactly the best, but with the mentioned packages I should be able to better narrow the searches to better guides, I think.
I’m pretty sure handbrake can rip as well as re-encode.
I went to DVDs because a ton of movies can’t be streamed either due to copyright issues with the music or because they want too much money.
I’ve taken to de-DRMing any e-books I bought from Amazon for that reason.
Also, the “You can only view this book on 3 devices” – yeah … fuck off.
Calibre + DeDRM plugin + KFX plugin. Perfectly legal too, as long as you aren’t distributing them.
Btw, did you know of Weightless Books and Smashwords?
They may not have as many ebooks as Amazon, but they do offer DRM free ebooks, and may be worth keeping in mind to check before going straight to Amazon.
Thanks. I had a collection from several years ago of Amazon books, though these days it’s my absolute last choice for anything.
This is the way.
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Except when I accidentally rm -rf the media folder but shhhhhhhh
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Old school pirating or new school? Last time I remember pirates was like… Napster, Limewire, Kazaa… Then went to TPB before it got raided like 8 times… What’s the current? Is it still torrenting with proxies?
I just got my automated pirating machine set up!
Here’s the wiki for the *arr apps!
Set up your profiles for Radarr/Sonarr to pick the quality of release you want (1080p, min/max file size, etc)
Feed Radarr/Sonarr your qbittorrent info, nzbget & Usenet info
They will automatically search the indexes (I use 1337x for torrents & nzbgeek for Usenet) for the files that fit your parameters, download it, and organize it.
All you have to do is point Plex at the output folders and BAM, automated pirating.
I even took it a step further and set up Doplarr - a Discord bot that handles requests. Now friends/family can ping the bot with their movie/show requests and it’ll sync up to Radarr/Sonarr and add their requests!
Oh, the high seas are very, very busy these days. Still a bit difficult for the non technical user, but there is buried treasure out there.
Non technical users can just use Stremio and a debrid service. Couldn’t be simpler.
Torrents are still around, lots of sites out there for them.
Word on the street is that reddit’s arr slash piracy has a pretty good guide to it in their wiki, including lists of generally trustworthy torrent sources. I of course don’t torrent, because I’m terrified of legal consequences–I just browse shady but technically legal websites to stream my anime
I’ve been pirating since Napster and you’re right, it’s changed a lot. These days, I usually just stream from third party sites. Takes less room on your PC and is faster than downloading a torrent. Dopebox is where it’s at for most stuff. 9anime if you like anime, it’s better than the paid alternatives like Crunchy roll or Funamation.
If you want to stick to torrents I’ve found 1337x to be the best since TPB died.
New skool is to use automation tools to grab and manage your media. You can still use torrenting but IMO using usenet is more reliable and doesn’t flag your ISP. I highly recommend anyone pirating to use 'arrs https://wiki.servarr.com/
Yes but with usenet you need to pay a monthly fee for a provider (generally) and a then the same for an index to find the content.
Also the selection is a lot smaller. IMHO a better solution is using realdebrid if you’re okay with paying already.
Yeah I can’t argue with the usenet fees but all three of my index sites I’ve had no issues with their free version so long as you do go wild and download ten terabytes in a night. I’ve actually had better luck with the selection compared to torrenting, pretty much is there in all of the popular resolutions. The only thing I have finding is some of the obscure adult swim shows but I can’t find them on my private trackers either.
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Content leaving isn’t a problem. If they give up some things they have more money to get the rights to other content, and usually by the time it leaves I’ve either watched it or don’t want to. If it’s one of the rare things I want to watch several times, I can just buy it. But cracking down on password sharing is ridiculous. They’ve been functioning fine with people sharing passwords. I bet the current pricing accounts for password sharing. But now people in college can’t be on the family netflix? Pure greed.
Content leaving is totally a problem. I’ve lost track of the number of times my spouse and I say, “Oh hey, what about we finally watch xyz that’s been in our queue for ages? Yeah that seems like a good one for Friday pizza night! …oh, it’s vanished from our queue, hooray.”
It’s not my full time job to keep tabs on what’s coming and going from the damn entertainment service that I hope to use in my ever dwindling reserves of free time. Especially when there’s alternative means available that are not too difficult to use.
This is incredibly annoying for series. Crunchyroll dropped Bleach, a series with over 350 episodes, when I was at episode ~100. A few years ago I started to manually keep track of the episodes I watched, since you lose your progress when they drop it (true for crunchyroll, prime and netflix)