Movie Thread

[NTP66]

They also smartly removed the free trial options.

Of course they did. Guess I'll pirate all of their **** instead now out of spite.

I mean, it makes a lot of sense to remove that. But to your other point, holy **** the quality of early pirated copies just got a whole lot better. It'll be better than screener season.

I was legitimately going to sign up for a trial to check out the quality of the movies, too. **** 'em, I'll do it my way.

[NTP66]

Can you pirate in 4k hdr atmos yet?

Absolutely, and have been for a while now, though there aren't nearly as many seeders.

[DigitalGypsy66]

Can you pirate in 4k hdr atmos yet?

Absolutely, and have been for a while now, though there aren't nearly as many seeders.

I was looking for a copy of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (because I had started watching it on Xfinity OnDemand on 11/30, and they pulled it the next day before I could finish watching it ) and there was a 26GB version. That's just the BluRay version, too.

[NTP66]

That's a movie that absolutely does not need a 4k/Atmos version. Just pure silliness.

[eddy]

Haha, I still have my dvd for that one

[NTP66]

I went to watch LOTR last week, knowing that I had discs, and it turns out that I own the actual DVD version, not BR.

[skullman80]

They just redid LOTR trilogy in 4k and the difference is a huge step up from the BR and I'm not even a LOTR fan.

[AuthorTony]

I just can't get behind streaming until the video quality improves. Since most of what I watch is horror, the banding and artifacts in dark scenes is overly annoying to me and really detracts from the viewing experience.

[NTP66]

I wouldn’t hold my breath, as they’re going in the wrong direction, despite all of these advancements in technology and broadening access of high speed Internet to consumers. It makes no **** sense.

[AuthorTony]

I wouldn’t hold my breath, as they’re going in the wrong direction, despite all of these advancements in technology and broadening access of high speed Internet to consumers. It makes no **** sense.

Agreed. And TVs are bigger than ever. Watching some streamed "HD" content on a very good 65" 4K TV is downright painful. I watch DVDs produced in the early 2000s that look better.

[NTP66]

I mentioned this a while back, but Netflix added Jurassic Park to its collection recently. It’s the 1080p version, but even so, it’s completely unwatchable - especially on a large screen.

[skullman80]

Physical media for life.

[NTP66]

I used to be that way, but I’m simply not paying for it anymore. I’ll just deal with streaming, or download full 4k rips.

[AuthorTony]

Physical media for life.

[dodint]

If you read NTP66 in this thread long enough you could conclude he hates... everything.

[NTP66]

[eddy]

Physical media for life.

Spent $300 on 4k discs last week.

[shafnutz05]

Physical media for life.

Agreed. The feature on Xfinity where you can spend 20 bucks to "buy" a digital movie is appallingly stupid to me. Do people actually do that?

[DigitalGypsy66]

It's kind of interesting at a college library for physical media. We have over 3000 DVDs (and a handful of Blurays) but we now have fewer than 5 DVD players across campus classrooms. Most of the PCs in those rooms still have DVD drives, but my guess is over the next five years, those will be replaced by SFF PCs with a few USB ports and no way to play DVDs (without buying a USB drive).

What do I do with the thousands of DVDs? We also have thousands of CDs that are used for music and theater classes. Same issue there.

And this was an issue before the pandemic, when we switched to online teaching. I'd guess we'll be doing more of that anyway, as we can hire adjuncts to teach these from anywhere and not have to pay them well or give them benefits.

What I've been doing - for a small number of professors - is ripping DVDs with MakeMKV and Handbrake to MP4 and stashing them on Google Drive (we have unlimited storage). Students need to be logged into their campus email (with is authenticated via Windows Active Directory) so only current students and faculty can get to videos. Google Drive has a YouTube like interface, which works well. Only issue is subtitles for accessibility - Drive does not pick up subtitle files encoded in the video. You can add .srt files to the video file or burn them into the video in Handbrake, but that gets dicey with multiple languages being spoken in a few of our films.

[nocera]

I love physical media. My fiance and I enjoy looking through our shelves and deciding on something to watch. But, it's just no longer worth the time or space. I'll still buy the heavy hitters or collections. I mean I can't own every Star Wars movie except Rise of Skywalker. And you certainly can't expect me to only have three different versions of the LOTR trilogy. I also have our favorite TV shows because I hate relying on licensing deals. So I have The Office, Parks & Rec, Seinfeld, Roseanne, Friends, Sex & the City, etc. But I've stopped buying everything I want to watch and instead I'll look for them on streaming. It's kind of sad how much my physical media collection has stalled in the last 5-10 years but I can no longer justify the money.

[nocera]

Source of the post What I've been doing - for a small number of professors - is ripping DVDs with MakeMKV and Handbrake to MP4 and stashing them on Google Drive (we have unlimited storage).

[NTP66]

The correct answer is who gives a ****

[nocera]

I'm guessing there's language in the copyright that prohibits transfer to a new medium. I mean, I don't care. It's not my library. But it seems like something that DG would have considered.

[DigitalGypsy66]

The legality is a gray area. Fair Use comes into play, but with the transfer to MP4, that gets a little messy.

Only users that are active students or faculty can access the films, and they are posted in our course management system, so only those students enrolled in those classes have access to the films. I also turn off link sharing when the semester ends (which thanks for the reminder, I need to go do that next week) That should be enough coverage for me legally. Maybe?

[nocera]

The legality is a gray area. Fair Use comes into play, but with the transfer to MP4, that gets a little messy.

Only users that are active students or faculty can access the films, and they are posted in our course management system, so only those students enrolled in those classes have access to the films. I also turn off link sharing when the semester ends (which thanks for the reminder, I need to go do that next week) That should be enough coverage for me legally. Maybe?

I brought it up because I've run into that issue a few times in the past where I've needed to rip something from a DVD that my company owned but wasn't able to do that because the licensing agreement prohibited any change to the medium. I wasn't sure if there was possibly a caveat for educational use.