The glorious future, where we need never own DVDs again. It’s not all that glorious.
We were watching an old TV show from the 70s, one that isn’t readily available on DVD, on Amazon. We had finished season 1 and were taking a short break before continuing on to season 2.
It’s gone. No longer available.
I guess I can go hunt it down on DVD somewhere. Maybe Amazon has it…
Yep. You’re at the mercy of the complicated licensing deals. Plus, if you’re internet goes down…now what? But hey, at least you don’t have to have rooms and rooms filled with shelves upon shelves full of dvds.
I like streaming for movies and TV shows, because I rarely watch a movie or a show over and over. But I hate streaming for music. If I like a song or an album, I want to own a physical copy of it, dammit. Streaming music is only good for discovering new music that I can then go out and buy a copy of.
I’ve kept the DVD portion of my Netflix alive when I added the streaming to it. Of the 25 movies and TV programs in the queue right now none of them has a streaming option. I like movies too unusual to go online.
Like the OP I’ve had programs disappear on me. I streamed Archer when it was available then, just about the time the newest season was due out, it all vanished. Likewise, the final season of Once Upon a Time was available we were watching it – very slowly because it just wasn’t as engaging as previously – when it vanished from the Continue Watching queue, and Netflix altogether.
When the last season of The Good Place came up, I binged it all in one evening, and I never do that.
I would hate to go entirely to streaming, there are some things I re-watch.
Yes, I hate this too. Why don’t they add a warning feature: you have only one month before this show/film you haven’t finished is removed from the line-up.
That would at least give you the opportunity to finish it.
The perils of tech evangelism. People launch headfirst into dumping their dvd collection because “it’s all available online”. It isn’t “All” and It isn’t always “Available”.
Mines are torrents or dvds. I did still rent and rip but the pandemic ruined the UK postal system, so it was barely worth it.
I believe Netflix is doing this. I was watching Parks and Recreation and for the last month, at the beginning of every episode, there was text in the upper left corner that said this program is available until October 1.
Is there an option, or a third-party app, that saves the Netflix streams so that they do not self-destruct? Though that may go against some fine print that you (supposedly) agree to when you subscribe, not sure. [This leads back to the by-now familiar debate concerning the wisdom of DRM; personally I was always against it, especially when it’s well known your customers will go back to downloading whatever they want the moment your service becomes too inconvenient]
Yeah, I find the whole streaming thing annoying. In the old days, I just flip through maybe a dozen of the hundred channels in my cable package. Now I have to go through Netflix, Amazon Prime, streaming services for HBOMax, Starz, Showtime, and the other services available through my cable package, plus whatever trial I doing this month (Hulu) all to not find anything I want to watch. Or what I do want to watch I now have to rent. Or I have to wait until it changes providers in a few months.
It’s all very fragmented and requires me to a lot more “active” in watching TV than I would like. I just want background noise. Can’t Netflix or whatever just randomly play my watch list?
Some services have a “leaving this month” section.
There are programs that let you record whatever is on your screen.
Oh, that sounds good. You didn’t need to check an option somewhere, did you? I’ll have a look around.
I also use this. The streaming services don’t like it, but it’s completely legal. It doesn’t record at 1080p, but it’s an ideal way to record old series shows from Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, etc.
You have to set your system up to stream from your computer (or Network Attached Storage) as a server which can be tricky, but if you use a Roku, there’s a Roku app for PlayOn. Probably for Firestick and Apple TV, too.
I was watching it on Amazon Prime, and there was a warning for at least a week or two beforehand that it was leaving Prime at the beginning of October.
Another advantage to owning a series on DVD is that you won’t have episodes disappear if there’s something in them that someone later decides is taboo.
And as a bonus, if you live outside of the U.S. you have totally different licensing agreements to be at the mercy of.
This exactly. I mean, Amazon knows what we watch. An email saying “You know that show you like? It’s going away. You might want to finish.” It could be all automated.
I’ve always feared that someday, for our own good, of course, that the “authorities” will go and remove all the cigarettes from Casablanca (for example). And thus it will always have been.
So we own something like 1000 DVDs/Blurays. No one is taking the guns out of MY copy of ET.
Still, I had Thunderball go bad just sitting on the shelf between the last time we watched it and a month ago when we tried to watch it. Thank goodness for the abundance of used DVD stores in the greater Phoenix area, because at the time, it was going for like $90 on Amazon. (I see it’s $18 today. Who understands this?)
Physical DVDs aren’t all that durable. If you really want to keep and own your own copy of media, you should be ripping them to a backed-up harddrive.
What’s the best software for that?
Realted: my oldest CD, bought in 1985, is still in perfect shape. But a CD I bought earlier this year won’t play two songs already. Go figure.
Don’t know if it’s the best but I use Handbrake for ripping DVDs. One advantage it has is that it’s free.
How often do you guys rewatch stuff? I can’t think of a show that I’ve ever rewatched in a determined fashion. I mean, sure I’ll watch Futurama in re-runs, or the odd episode of Stargate SG-1 or Battlestar Galactica when they’re on and my wife isn’t watching TV, but I can’t think of a series or movie that I’ve ever had the need to rewatch repeatedly outside of whenever it showed up on cable and it happened to be on.
I do understand the frustration with streaming services discontinuing shows in mid-watch though.
The thing to keep in mind though, is that the streaming services are more about signing up more and more viewers, not pleasing the existing ones. They make their money either way off of your subscription, so long as they don’t drive you into unsubscribing, so there’s a lot of motivation for them to expand their subscriber base vs. making the existing people feel any way other than not quite about to leave. That’s why they only do 3-4 seasons of a show for example; by then that’s the point that the show has cooled, and is no longer attracting new subscribers. And why they cycle their back catalogs- they might be able to generate some slight increase in new subscribers if they constantly bring out “new” old shows to watch.
Personally, I think they could make more money if they had an add-on subscription for like “vintage Netflix” or something, and by paying another $3/month or whatever, you got access to all the old shows in perpetuity or something.