Opinions on the need for unRaid or media servers once DVD's & Blu-Rays extinct?

[justinkas]

So here's something to ponder......will the same demand still exist for unRaid and other media file systems once physical DVD's & Blu-Rays become extinct within the next 5 years - since the platforms are all moving into cloud streaming?

 

Just thinking about this......and wondering......

[Brucey7]

I don't own a Blu Ray or DVD player and haven't for 8 years, but my unRAID needs grow at 4TB/month and it's all media.

 

I don't have any experience of streaming (Netflix isn't available here) but I do often wonder, will they have the breadth of movies available?  I have over 10,000 Blu Ray's and 30,000 TV series, for sure a streaming service would be cheaper.

[BRiT]

I have over 10,000 Blu Ray's and 30,000 TV series, for sure a streaming service would be cheaper.

 

How many of those have you watched more than once? And of those rewatched, how many after a two day period (typical rental period)?

 

The following is not addressed specifically to you, but to everyone in general...

I don't get the mentality of digital hoarding when none of the material is ever rewatched. It's so much easier to simply stream and financially cheaper too (assuming you're not simply a criminal and stealing all the content in the first place).

[sureguy]

The issues with streaming are quality, and media isn't reliably there. On Netflix entire series disappear without notice regularly.

 

I keep things I'm pretty sure I'll watch  again, other stuff I'll delete.

 

[Brucey7]

I often re-watch stuff I have watched before, maybe I am getting old, but it always seems like a new movie ;-)

 

When you are collecting anything up to 30 movies a day, you spend more time processing them and cataloging them than you do watching them.

 

What I do particularly like though, is when a friend recommends something and I find I already have it, that's when I watch it and really enjoy it.

 

Digital Hoarding is simply an outlet for some peoples Obsessive Compulsive Disorders.

 

On the issue of criminality.  The industry is well aware of a solution that gives a significantly enhanced revenue stream for Torrents over selling Blu Ray's.  It involves water-marking in the corners of movies with adverts from large advertisers (Coca Cola etc) and then posting on websites like the bay of pirates.  IMHO, these dinosaurs need to grow up and adapt to the new market, not try and plug leaking ships with holes that are just getting larger.  I am actually a retired magistrate and sometimes the law is indeed an ass.

[sgibbers17]

I watch movies more than once and using unRAID as a place to store my backups of my blu-rays makes it much easier to watch my movies more often because I done have to go find the disc and put it in the player to watch it.

[garycase]

I have over 10,000 Blu Ray's and 30,000 TV series, for sure a streaming service would be cheaper.

 

How many of those have you watched more than once?

 

Forget "more than once" ==>  How many have you watched, period?    I know several folks with very large collections (5,000 or more movies) ... and most of them probably haven't watched 10% of their collection.  Yes, there are some they watch multiple times (we all have our favorite movies) ... but many have simply never been watched (and likely never will).

 

[Brucey7]

I couldn't say how many I have watched, perhaps 5 a week, that would be less than 2%.

 

Ask any collector why he collects and he'll tell you it's a hobby.  It's not about watching them, it's about collecting them and cataloging them.

[tdallen]

I believe there is a conspiracy in Hollywood to prevent me from consuming their products  .  If Hollywood were an entity I could address, I'd be yelling "please take my money!".  Seriously, Hollywood could put local media storage out of business - but can they get their collective acts together?  Make every movie ever made available for streaming at a reasonable price?  I'm a skeptic - or better said an unbeliever that they can do that any time soon.  Not for technical reasons - just sheer stubbornness and outdated business practices.

 

I think there are far fewer movies available online than have ever been made - like, less than 10% (huge guess).  Perhaps more have been digitized than that - but movies that have been digitized simply vanish overnight based on screwy licensing agreements.  I think Hollywood needs to make at least a majority of their movie catalog consistently available online before there is any real risk to the local storage market.

 

I realize, btw, that "Hollywood" isn't a single entity - it's a business segment.  That just makes a solution that much harder to achieve.

[jonp]

Just thought I'd chime in on this thread with a few additional thoughts:

 

1)  Reliable fast internet, while becoming more and more available in certain parts of the world, is still not readily available for the majority of the world's inhabitants.

 

2)  As we jump into the realm of 4k media, bandwidth requirements increase dramatically

 

To get the highest quality Netflix experience in Ultra HD 4K, we recommend available bandwidth of at least 20Mbps. This provides enough throughput for the stream, which is about 16Mbps, plus headroom for service variability.

 

3)  Apple and Google still continue to offer the option to "purchase" music and video content as opposed to "renting" due to the fact that there are still a great percentage of folks that view these mediums as products, not services.

 

4)  There are other uses for unRAID beyond serving digital media such as movies / tv shows.

 

5)  Many ISPs are throttling and/or otherwise penalizing customers for using too much bandwidth.

 

6)  It was just ratified recently in the UK to legally allow folks to backup their media content (DVDs/Blu-rays) to systems like unRAID.

 

I could go on, but these are some of the biggest reasons why I think our industry will continue to thrive.  Yes streaming services are definitely becoming better and better, but content selection and consistency in availability are two key areas that users continue to be frustrated by and yet the industry doesn't seem to think they need to provide a solution.

[tdallen]

Interesting development in the streaming world:

 

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/verizons-netflix-competitor-redbox-instant-to-stop-99318196764.html

[sgibbers17]

 

 

I have over 10,000 Blu Ray's and 30,000 TV series, for sure a streaming service would be cheaper.

 

How many of those have you watched more than once?

 

Forget "more than once" ==>  How many have you watched, period?    I know several folks with very large collections (5,000 or more movies) ... and most of them probably haven't watched 10% of their collection.  Yes, there are some they watch multiple times (we all have our favorite movies) ... but many have simply never been watched (and likely never will).

 

I can't say I have thousands of movies and TV shows but I can say I have over 100 blu-rays and maybe just as many DVDs and I can honestly say I have watched all of them at least twice and a good portion of them I have watched many times.

[Brucey7]

Many of the movies I have, were only available for a short time.  I could not replace them today from any source.

 

I collect the best available copy of any movie available, if a better copy becomes available, I replace it with the new one.

 

I also have just short of 5,000 lower quality DVD rips, that number is gradually going down as a Blu Ray copy becomes available, but I suspect there are still 1000's that will never become available.  I was recently able to upgrade 2 of my favourites to Blu Ray rips, one is a cult movie, Michael Mann's "The Keep" and another the 1980 release "The Changeling" which has a beautiful original piano score sound track.

 

I do have a 65" LG 4K TV, there is no content available, but it does upscale HD quite nicely and a good quality 1080 upscaled is definitely better than viewing it on my Sony 60" HD set.  Once the content does start to become available, I will have to replace my HTPC and either bypass my Receiver or replace that too.

 

I live in Northern Thailand and have a 20MB/s fiber link (3MB/s upload if anyone has any requests for something hard to find), it's occasionally throttled at 10MB/s but it often peaks at 27MB/s download.

 

Thailand does have a HD satellite broadcast, it's best described as 560p upscaled, total rubbish.  Thai people don't know any better because they have never seen full HD except on their Blu Ray players.

[BRiT]

Ask any collector why he collects and he'll tell you it's a hobby.  It's not about watching them, it's about collecting them and cataloging them.

 

Interesting choice of words there. What you really mean is many are addicted to the thrill of breaking the law in their spare-time through stealing.

[Brucey7]

"Stealing"  Interesting choice of words.

 

The legal definition of stealing (in the UK) is "the taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it"

 

I don't deprive the rightful owner of their property.  Am I breaking copyright?  that's another issue.  Every member here who uses a program to download a TV series is doing exactly that.  We can either toe the line like sheep and support an industry in great need of reform or we can cross that line and encourage the industry to move to a new licencing model.  One I previously described with watermarked adverts where the copyright owner are remunerated on the number of downloads.

 

I prefer to say I am a free thinker and don't follow the crowd. 

 

If we talk about movies, would you rather pay for your Blu Ray or have it free and suffer watermarked adverts in the corner?  I would advocate you should at least have the choice.

[bnevets27]

Duplicate post, see below.

[bnevets27]

 

Ask any collector why he collects and he'll tell you it's a hobby.  It's not about watching them, it's about collecting them and cataloging them.

 

Interesting choice of words there. What you really mean is many are addicted to the thrill of breaking the law in their spare-time through stealing.

 

Is it stealing if you can't buy it in the first place?

 

As a previous post said,  the part that bugs me the most is the fact that a lot of the content isn't available to be purchased.  Many TV shows are never released to be purchased.  A ton of great movies aren't on Netflix or available to purchase in any shape or form.  Many movies are just being remade.  I find myself discovering old movies I haven't seen or that were before my time.  Most of which are way better then the crap that comes out now.  I like to "hoard"  TV shows from my childhood for reminiscing and to have something great to show children.

 

Exactly like the previous poster said, take my money.  If everything was available online for a reasonable cost piracy would be so much lower.  People will pay for convince,  as long as it's reasonable. Case in point Netflix.... And for where Netflix falls short,  piracy since it's more convenient and at a more reasonable cost.

 

I really don't understand why many TV shows have never been released for purchase.  Sure back when they had to produce dvd's there was a cost in doing so.  If the return wasn't big enough then they didn't bother.  But now,  how much would it cost to just post a digital copy online? Dollar an episode for shows that have never been available.  Little to no cost,  and profit on something they are making zero money off of currently.

 

So until something like that happens there will still be a demographic of hoarders hanging onto their content.  And also for all the other reasons that have been brought up.

 

Also one last point.  As far as I'm concerned,  if I'm subscribed to the channel in which the show I wish to download is aired on then I've already paid for it.  If, because of the media providers, recording is very much more difficult,  costly and results in a lower quality copy then if I was to just download it,  then I consider the download to be a "recoding" same as if you used a pvr.

 

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk

 

[Brucey7]

@bnevets27

I agree with your comment about downloading something you are subscribed to.  BUT, you are breaking the law.  In this case the law is an ass.

 

The UK has just changed the law on ripping.  A few weeks ago you were breaking the law by ripping your Blu Ray disk to unRAID, today you are not.

 

We need choice and we need change, we can only have it by people breaking the law until we achieve that change.  If enough people do it, the law and in this case, the licencing model will change.  Case in point, homosexuality.  Many homosexuals have gone to jail to stand up against laws that used to say it was illegal.  Not only is it legal today, we even discriminate against those countries where it is still illegal by withdrawing aid etc.  We are even moving forward allowing gay marriage today.  Times change and they only change because of radical free thinkers who will stand up and say "F.U. you are wrong".

 

I wrote to a couple of organisations (MPAA etc) offering to pay a fee to download content, I knew what their reply would be, and needless to say, I wasn't disappointed.

[Ice_Black]

I don't own a Blu Ray or DVD player and haven't for 8 years, but my unRAID needs grow at 4TB/month and it's all media.

 

I don't have any experience of streaming (Netflix isn't available here) but I do often wonder, will they have the breadth of movies available?  I have over 10,000 Blu Ray's and 30,000 TV series, for sure a streaming service would be cheaper.

 

How long will you keep 30,000 TV series? It is unlikely to rewatch again.

 

 

[Brucey7]

I will keep them until I die.

 

There are a stack of TV series I want to watch, I'm just too busy collecting to find the time to start watching them.  I even have a few from my childhood, like Fireball XL5.

[BobPhoenix]

All 150+TB I have were ripped from DVDs/BluRays that I own (30TB) or recorded off of cable or satellite signals.  My ISP caps my download speed off usenet to about 50 bytes per second so it would take long time just to download what I can record from netflix/amazon with playlater in 2 hours.  Also when I was able to download a show before they capped my speed the show was missing segments.

[PeterB]

I even have a few from my childhood, like Fireball XL5.

 

Wow!  That was one of my favourites!  I even had a polystyrene kit of Fireball XL5, which I carefully painted up in red/yellow, with detachable Junior!  If I remember correctly, the kit was made available through some promotion linked to a food product.  In those days we didn't own a TV - I had to go around to the neighbours in order to watch.

 

I'm sitting here humming the theme tune now! "... if you would be my Venus of the stars."

 

The theme music was released on vinyl, which I had, once upon a time.  I may still have a copy on 1/4" mag tape somewhere!

 

When one gets old, all that's left is the reminiscences!

 

 

To get back on topic ...

Here, in Philippines, it is very difficult to find any Blu Ray discs on sale ... except those sold by the street vendors, with 50 movies crammed on a DVD, and featuring a Blu Ray symbol on the packaging!

 

If I drive 40 miles, I can find about 10 BD titles on display in the Sony outlet.

 

Oh, and streaming won't work here ... most Internet connections are relatively slow, and subject to an FUP with very low limits.

[Brucey7]

I even have a few from my childhood, like Fireball XL5.

 

Wow!  That was one of my favourites!  I even had a polystyrene kit of Fireball XL5, which I carefully painted up in red/yellow, with detachable Junior!  If I remember correctly, the kit was made available through some promotion linked to a food product.  In those days we didn't own a TV - I had to go around to the neighbours in order to watch.

 

I'm sitting here humming the theme tune now! "... if you would be my Venus of the stars."

 

The theme music was released on vinyl, which I had, once upon a time.  I may still have a copy on 1/4" mag tape somewhere!

 

When one gets old, all that's left is the reminiscences!

 

I had the Steve (forgotten his surname) communication center for christmas.  2 microphones on long cables, a morse code key and I think it had a flashing lamp.  Oh the happy days of being a young child, like taking the draws out of my mum's coffee table and putting readers digest magazines on the front and making thunderbirds mountain.

[amatt]

Hey Brucey7,

 

Sounds like a ton of work - our collection is 1/10 of yours and it took months to convert and catalogue. I was curious what front end you use to present your media from your servers for such a large collection? We still use YAMJ with some scripting help for proper html pointers, but at ~ 3000 movies, full scans take about an hour to run.

 

Rarity search - HBO Original movie "Long Gone" with Virginia Madson and William Peterson - baseball movie.

[Brucey7]

I have Long Gone in DVD quality, it's 1.4Gb. 

 

I have both Ember Media Manager and XBMC as front ends.  I use Ember,  I don't use XBMC because it is not ideal for large collections although it looks great.  Ember handles large collections really well, it also scrapes IMDB & TMDB etc to build it's catalogue.  I am fastidious on file naming and language processing, by default they all play in English or if foreign audio then with English subs turned on