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The End of an Era

Haywood

Haywood

Well-Known Member
Famous
I spent many years acquiring much of my television content via a sophisticated, securely encrypted download system built around Usenet and then accessed said content via Plex. It was never about saving money and it never did. Between hardware costs, subscription costs (news servers and index services) and cloud storage costs, it was a break-even at best. I did it, because I hated cable, hated ads and could not get all of the content I wanted from streaming services.

The system worked decently most of the time, but I was constantly fiddling with it. Between software updates, operating system updates, maintenance and troubleshooting, it was required an ongoing time investment to keep it running. The novelty wore off and it turned into a huge hassle. Meanwhile, the streaming world exploded. By the time my entire setup went down in flames a few weeks ago, I was already questioning whether it even made sense anymore.

The conclusion I came to was that I should have kicked it to the curb a year ago. I'm in the process of purging and consolidating my media library, so I can dump the cloud storage and am dropping my Usenet subscriptions, which will save me around $75-80/mo. This freed up money to add subscriptions to ad-free Hulu, ad-free CBS All Access, HBO, Showtime and Starz, in addition to the Netflix, Amazon and YouTube Premium subscriptions we already had. These new subscriptions cost me about $56/mo, which is about $20 cheaper than what I was paying before. I guess piracy really doesn't pay.
 
Wow! Talk about seeing the light!!!

I am happy for you, actually, because I could never relate at all to the trouble you went through to hold so much stuff. I also had doubts about the licensing. But, I hope the new approach meets your needs.
 
Flint said:
Wow! Talk about seeing the light!!!

I am happy for you, actually, because I could never relate at all to the trouble you went through to hold so much stuff. I also had doubts about the licensing. But, I hope the new approach meets your needs.
Click to expand...

I never had doubts about the licensing. :devil:

Pretty much everything we watch is available via our streaming subscriptions if we are willing to wait a few months and most of it is available immediately.

I had a full-blown digital hoarding problem. I was wasting terabytes of space on shows that we already watched and would not watch again. I was wasting more terabytes on shows that we never even watched and probably never would. There are also many terabytes of ripped movies that we also own streaming licenses for (those will get archived). I'm still working on it, but expect to purge about 15TB of content. The remaining ~15TB is mainly music and video content ripped from my own library, which consists of roughly 27K music tracks, 60 concerts, 700 movies and perhaps a dozen TV series.
 
We will argue about this, but having access to a title via streaming flat out does not give you rights to that title in perpetuity in any format you want.

That said, I love my life of not really owning any video content anymore. I just stream damn near everything and only own a few DVDs or BluRays of movies or concerts I know I will watch over and over and over as I go through life. There is so much AMAZING content I've never seen available to me via my handful of streaming services (mostly the same as yours) that if I have to go without one show I don't have, there are ten as good or better shows available to me to entertain me and make me happy.

We live in an era of overabundance of excellent entertainment. Paying or working hard to get access to something just because I've heard of it and some of my friends like it really doesn't enter my mind anymore.
 
Flint said:
Paying or working hard to get access to something just because I've heard of it and some of my friends like it really doesn't enter my mind anymore.
Click to expand...

It pains me to admit, but I agree with you on this.
 
I wager a year from now you still won’t utilize the 15tb of content you still plan on keeping. But at least the hard part will be done.
 
Batman said:
I wager a year from now you still won’t utilize the 15tb of content you still plan on keeping. But at least the hard part will be done.
Click to expand...

It is basically all the music, movies and stuff that I own on disc, but don't own streaming licenses for. I have it on the server in case I want to access it, because the discs are all in boxes and I don't have any place else to put them.
 
Flint said:
We will argue about this, but having access to a title via streaming flat out does not give you rights to that title in perpetuity in any format you want.
Click to expand...

When I mentioned streaming licenses, I meant movies that I own via Vudu, UV or MA. I wasn't talking about Netflix or the like. I converted hundreds of movies via disc to digital and repurchased many more, so the was a big overlap between my Vudu and Plex libraries. I'm archiving that stuff off. The only movies I am keeping on my Plex server are the ones that I do not have on Vudu yet. I currently have over 1300 movies on Vudu that I someday aspire to put on a Kaleidescape system.
 
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