The bigger secret is just to self host. Super easy and Plex/Unraid is the way for everyone upset at the changing content landscape
Personally, with family who earns living from entertainment industry, I try to subscribe to some services… but I also download it and just stream locally. People get paid, but in 20 years I still have taken care of my needs.
It isn't as easy as it appears, partly because media formats evolve. As device output quality increases, there's a desire to get the source up as well.
That means old libraries start to contain a jumble of formats and encodings. The maintenance of this can be a pain.
I noticed this first with Apple TV+ where some films were getting provided in HD or HD/3D. If you have to chose between their perfect audio and video or whatever you have in your library its probably going to be what they offer.
I suspect that Apple (as an example) is using media quality and its features, (spatial audio, their immersive video) in part to prop up people wanting to pay for streaming content. It has to not only be more convenient to stream, but consistently beat the socks off what's easily available via torrenting.
Torrent networks and media players might catch up to start including this stuff and making playback as easy as streaming services' native video players (again I am focusing on Apple TV, particularly Apple TV app on Vision Pro as an example) but as far as I can see its not there yet.
I don't think we're looking at only audio and video quality increases but accommodation of variants on 3D, including media that was previously purely 2D reworked for new ways of displaying content with greater perspective that makes viewing more immersive on a deep bench of legacy content.
My secret is to watch Paramount content through the TV app on macOS/iOS/iPadOS/tvOS. The Apple video player is a much better experience than any of the current streaming service apps.
edmundsauto|1 year ago
Personally, with family who earns living from entertainment industry, I try to subscribe to some services… but I also download it and just stream locally. People get paid, but in 20 years I still have taken care of my needs.
bredren|1 year ago
That means old libraries start to contain a jumble of formats and encodings. The maintenance of this can be a pain.
I noticed this first with Apple TV+ where some films were getting provided in HD or HD/3D. If you have to chose between their perfect audio and video or whatever you have in your library its probably going to be what they offer.
I suspect that Apple (as an example) is using media quality and its features, (spatial audio, their immersive video) in part to prop up people wanting to pay for streaming content. It has to not only be more convenient to stream, but consistently beat the socks off what's easily available via torrenting.
Torrent networks and media players might catch up to start including this stuff and making playback as easy as streaming services' native video players (again I am focusing on Apple TV, particularly Apple TV app on Vision Pro as an example) but as far as I can see its not there yet.
I don't think we're looking at only audio and video quality increases but accommodation of variants on 3D, including media that was previously purely 2D reworked for new ways of displaying content with greater perspective that makes viewing more immersive on a deep bench of legacy content.
kylebenzle|1 year ago
I honestly don't understand, do you generally just add media to a larger and larger hard drive and then transfer it every couple years to a new one?
cgriswald|1 year ago
Plex’s PS5 app stutters on all my content unless I dumb it down to a relatively low bitrate and 1080p max. Subtitles are a gamble.
Spartan-S63|1 year ago