Blurays are better quality than streaming.
4K Bluray is the highest quality you'll ever get in your home by like, a lot.
Streaming is a regression.
this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2026
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Streaming is progress in terms of convenience, but the trade-off is a lower image quality and forgoing ownership of the media you buy/consume.
These days I buy Blurays and rip them to my Jellyfin server. Worth it for me, but I would hardly call that process convenient.
Now it’s expensive to even build one of those servers. I just play my discs and rip them to a hdd collection. I just do it the ghetto way by having a usb hub hooked up to an nvidia shield with some hdds.
Not really, Jellyfin will run just fine on old hardware. You don't need a lot of power to do it. That said, if a USB HDD works for you, that's fine too.
I assumed that they didn't have old hardware lying around, in which case they are not incorrect as they will need at the very least 8gb to run the server effectively which by itself is approx $100 unless your looking at the second hand market.
The cool thing about USB HDDs - when one dies, you just plug in another one - no issues with funky formatting, windows/linux compatibility or whatever. I had the power supply die on a QNAP NAS once... only once because even though the HDDs inside the NAS were fine, QNAP basically made the data on them inaccessible from any other system - no more proprietary NAS systems for me, thanks.
It’s not. I have a server with dozens of TBs of storage which is a 2011 Lenovo tower I got for free out of someone’s garage. It doesn’t take a whole lot to store things.
Yeah but HDDs are going up in price now
To a degree yes, but not nearly as bad as other components right now. You can at the very least buy a single “small” HDD like 4TB for pretty cheap that is far more than what you’d get from big tech on an average storage plan.
This is subject to change but as of today, you can get this for cheap
That’s good. Main thing stopping me from doing this is space but glad it’s still possible for others.
If you wanted something to get started for streaming and you are space limited (in your home) I would recommend this as your server:
- https://a.co/d/00MhaEgG the Beelink S13 which is under $300 and will serve your streaming needs for a very long time.
And for storage you could get this 4TB external drive and plug it into the Beelink and sit it right on top for $130:
And if you have an Nvidia shield I’m pretty sure you could also skip the S13 and just plug the drive into your shield and run Jellyfin or what have you directly on that. I know lots of people brag about their big overbuilt servers, but you don’t have to go down that road at all if all you want is to store and stream your media.
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Do you ever use any of the Bluray "connected" features where your disc wants internet access to fulfill the function? I must say, that's a major turnoff for me.
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What's the state of BluRay ripping these days? I know it used to be tough, but then again, DVDs are also "encrypted" and that's nothing to worry about any more.
Doesn't blue ray suck at archiving because their data is more prone to corruption? The only advantage they have is larger storage space.
They, like DVDs, have a lifespan of ~20 years but can last a lot longer if kept in a cool and dry spot.
But also you can rip the discs and store them digitally on hard drives or whatever :)
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Participating in a boycott this month? You should be doing all that stuff period.
Nah shop Amazon when it costs them money. As in, you know you are buying at or below cost.
I just bought a few things from Amazon, cheaper than any competition to begin with, but also used the last of my Amazon rewards balance.
Then put everything on a 0% interest offer and religiously pay the minimum until the last bill, and pay it all off then. Just don't forget.
Use them when it benefits you significantly more than it benefits them.
I have been buying a hell of a lot more stuff on eBay, Newegg, B&H, etc lately. And most of the cheap consumer junk that I would buy on Amazon is even cheaper on AliExpress if I'm willing to wait a little longer.
I was kinda pissed when I bought a reasonably priced commodity on eBay and it was delivered in Amazon packaging by an Amazon truck, though.
That's too much work. I just don't buy from Amazon.
>buy hard drives from Amazon to build your own AWS hosting without Amazon
Ref: I'll allow it
I was kinda pissed when I bought a reasonably priced commodity on eBay and it was delivered in Amazon packaging by an Amazon truck, though.
I've noticed this too, if the same thing's slightly more on eBay it's probably someone ordering it for you on Amazon and pocketing the difference
Yep. Good to know that soulless cretins who just want to make a buck off the backs of people with scruples are still out there.
Yeah, a friend of mine was recently buying markers, and a lot of companies also just... Don't have their own stores. They either redirect to Amazon, or if they to they still fulfill it through Amazon. Etsy is also full of resellers.
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Newegg Commerce, Inc. (NASDAQ: NEGG) is a publicly traded company. It is majority-owned by a Chinese multinational technology firm. Key ownership details include:
Majority Shareholder: Hangzhou Lianluo Interactive Information Technology Co., Ltd. (also known as Liaison Interactive) owns approximately 54.5% to 57.4% of the company.
Founder Stake: Fred Chang, the company's founder and former CEO, retains a significant ownership stake of roughly 22.1%.
Significant Individual Shareholder: Vladimir Galkin owns about 22.5% of the shares.
Public Float: The remaining shares (approximately 11%) are held by the general public and institutional investors.
I didn't see bezos or mush in that list.
In a baby steps scenario, I'd count that as a marginal win.
Theres like 80% of the population that still actively shop at Target and Amazon Prime. People buy from Whole Foods instead of the small "mom and pop" European market on the corner.
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It's marketing, my friend.
Just inconvenience yourself for this month for the greater good.
Ohh month's already up... he that wasn't that bad was it, maybe keep going?
Dang it, I'm already boycotting them because i want to actually own my media and support local businesses and a bunch of other reasons, how am I supposed to boycott them harder to include capitulation to Trump?!
Help your friends
What happened to good old pirating? We used to show them middle finger for wanting single payment from us, and now we do subscriptions for stuff we barely even use?
They changed tactics.
Pirating is work. You need a little technical expertise for debrid, or to set up a media server, or even to keep a bunch of USB storage organized. And while it's not that hard, when they couple taking care of all that for you AND running your likes through an algo and introducing you to new content regularly, your average person sees enough benefit, if the price is right.
So they introduce a service, get the price down to 10-15 a month. Get you in, get your preferences, sell them to the highest bidder and slowly crank back content to make more profit.
For the music it's worse, they're fucking over the artists AND selling your data.
When the cost in price or morality gets too high, they'll all pirate.
Some never stopped.
The last two years I started going to garage sales for DVDs/Blu Rays.
It's been great. You can get like 5-10 movies for the price of a month of Netflix. Then you can sell them next spring for $5-10 and buy $5-10 worth from someone else of stuff you haven't seen.
Dusted off the mp3s too. Long live VLC
Just missed Bandcamp Friday. Also, get u some flac.
With how much storage costs these days? I'll stick with MP3.
This. If you want to be sure that the flacs are worth it, go do one of those 128kbps mp3 vs 320 mp3 vs flac tests and see if you can hear the difference. I can't, so I just do 128 mp3s and save the storage. Almost 2k songs in 10gb of space :D
I ripped to flacs not because I can hear a difference but I can reencode to any format I want and never have to rip again.
If you have Plex, Plexamp does a great job of streaming music outside the home and having a host of other features (playing similar songs / keeping the playing going / music by mood / etc).
Discs from libraries!
although I doubt this will get much of any mainstream coverage, as someone who has been setting up/administering a number of plex servers for the last ~20 years, I have noticed a rather remarkable uptick in not only setting up new servers, but a flood of interest in membership for the handful that I administer.
This has had the interesting side-effect of renewing interest in the fact that you can borrow DVDs/BRDs for free from your local library for the purposes of ripping them. Believe me-- you may think that, in 2026, everything is available for download very easily.... no, it isn't Yes, much more is widely available at (generally) much higher quality than it used to be, but it all relies on how popular a show/film/album is (and continues to be). If you're looking to dl something new/current, you'll very likely have a 2 week - 3 month window it will very reliably be available to download. after that, whether it's available (and for how long) depends entirely on how popular it remains.
Example: The "New Trek" that most old-school Trekkies hate is less-available than, say, a mega download of all 7 seasons of DS9. DS9 is probably available (as a single download and as single seasons/episodes) much more easily than any episode of STD. Or, even, the JJ Abrahms films. Shit, even the Rifftrax commentary version of ST II has more seeders on more torrent sites than any of the 3 JJ Treks. And, to put a pin in this... Star Trek Lower Decks is even more available now than it was when it was airing.
The cool flip-side of this: I never got to see the iconic Fritz Lang film M in the pre-torrent era because I could never find a Blockbuster's that carried it in stock. But, as soon as that barrier to see it was removed (availability), I got to see the prototypical murder mystery thriller film which, still today, holds up as pretty awesome.
I’m know kids these days who are preferring a dumb phone, now physical media is making a comeback.
Has our surveillance economy finally backfired enough that people are starting to reclaim ownership? God I hope so.
We're the closest we've been since the cloud started, but sadly, people are still addicted to the almighty algorithm.
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targeting tech companies who, they believe, are not doing enough to stand up against President Trump's aggressive immigration crackdown
Oh ffs, they're not doing enough because they've submitted to him! They literally went to his inauguration to kiss the ring!
But better to wake up late then never I suppose
No, we don't "Believe they are not doing enough to stand up against", that's slimy spineless wording.
We "KNOW that they are ACTIVELY HELPING"
The website would be better if there was also links or resources to alternate.
But also that's hard depending on where you are.
lol. I was boycotting more than I thought. Seriously though its practically a fight to do things without a cell phone now.
My rapidly diminishing purchasing power due to high inflation, tariffs, higher interest rates, higher taxes, higher junk fees, and stagnant wages is forcing me to boycott as much as I can, whether I like it or not.
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TIL I am unintentionally boycotting
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