Beware Hollywood’s digital demolition: it’s as if your favourite films and TV shows never existed
Beware Hollywood’s digital demolition: it’s as if your favourite films and TV shows never existed
The amount of media being wiped from the internet is worrying for viewers, and industry workers who need the exposure, says journalist and critic Zach Schonfeld
Last June, fans of Comedy Central – the long-running channel behind beloved programmes such as The Daily Show and South Park – received an unwelcome surprise. Paramount Global, Comedy Central’s parent company, unceremoniously purged the vast repository of video content on the channel’s website, which dated back to the late 1990s.
Used to be considered simply prudent to back up the vhs tapes you bought and people were encouraged to tape their favorite shows off the tv. Now some random CEO of the month has the right to bury decades worth of creative works?
Backup vhs tapes? They put copy protections on those too, which made that difficult. In the 90s I had two VCRs, I ran the output of one to the input of the other to record duplicates. Some of the copy protection schemes would fuck with the signal or the tracking.
My gmaws wall of VHS tapes ripped from every movie she ever rented from a blockbuster would beg to differ
Recent events with streaming services has really been the best argument for self hosting your own content
Every day I inch closer and closer to setting up my own plex server (or something else if there's a better alternative idk)
but the term "raspberry pi" makes me scared and confused
Plex is good but another option is jellyfin
Personally I just setup a PC as a NAS‡ and installed VLC on my TV so that I can just browse the NAS and play the files directly
Is it efficient? No.
Is it the best way? Also no.
Does it work? Yes, surprisingly well in fact.
‡ The first time was simply a network shared folder, the second time was using TrueNAS.
You don’t need to run it on a pi. In fact, I’d actually argue against it; A pi will be underpowered if you’re ever needing to transcode anything. Transcoding is what Plex/Jellyfin does if your watching device can’t natively play the video. Maybe you have a 4k video, but you’re playing it on a 1080p screen. That video will need to be transcoded from 4k into 1080p for the screen to be able to display it. Or maybe the file is encoded using ACC (a fairly recent encoding method) which isn’t widely supported by older devices. This often happens with things like smart TVs (which often don’t support modern encoding and need to be transcoded even if the resolution is correct.)
Basically, if you’re 100% positive that every device you’re watching it on will never need transcoding, then a pi is acceptable. But for anything else, I’d recommend a small PC instead. You can even use an old PC if you have one laying around.
Or if you want to use a new machine, maybe something like an HP Elitedesk. They’re basically what you see in every single cubicle in every single office building. They’re extremely popular in corporate settings, which means there are a ton of used/refurbished systems available for cheap, because IT destroys the drives and sends the rest to refurb when they upgrade their fleet of PCs. So for the refurb you’re basically just paying the cost of an SSD they added in (to replace the one IT pulled out), plus whatever labor is associated with dusting it out and checking the connections to make sure they all work. You can pick up a modern one for like $250 on Amazon (or your preferred electronics store).
Worth noting that the elitedesk generations are marked by a G-number, so google the model (like an EliteDesk G9, G7, etc) to see what kind of processor it has; Avoid anything with an intel 13th or 14th generation CPU, (they have major reliability issues) and check with Plex/Jellyfin’s CPU requirements list to see if it supports hardware accelerated transcoding. For Intel chips, look for QuickSync support.
For storage, I’d recommend running a NAS with however many hard drives you can afford, and one that has extra ports for future expandability. Some NAS systems support Plex and/or Jellyfin directly, but the requirements for full support are tricky and you’ll almost always have better luck just running a dedicated PC for Plex. Then for playing, one of two things will happen. Either the device is capable of directly playing the file, or it will need to be transcoded. If it’s directly playing, the plex server basically just points the player to the NAS, and the player handles the rest. If it’s transcoding, the PC will access the NAS, then stream it to the player.
As for deciding on Plex vs Jellyfin, that’s really a matter of personal preference. If you’re using Plex, I’d highly suggest a PlexPass sub/lifetime purchase; Wait until Black Friday, because they historically do a (~25% off) discount on their lifetime pass. Plex is definitely easier to set up, especially if you plan on streaming outside of your LAN.
Jellyfin currently struggles from a lack of native app support; Lots of smart TVs don’t have a native Jellyfin app, for instance. But some people have issues and complaints (many of them justified!) with Plex, so if the FOSS sounds appealing, then consider Jellyfin instead. Jellyfin is also rapidly being developed, and many people expect it to have feature parity with Plex within a few years.
And if you’re having trouble deciding, you can actually set up both (they can run in tandem on the same machine) and then see which one you prefer.
And the nice part about using a mini PC is that you can also use it for more than just Plex/Jellyfin. I have the *arr suite running on mine, alongside a Factorio server, a Palworld server, and a few other things.
Can’t keep archives of Saturday morning cartoons we all grew up with and loved; will sue you for keeping copies of them.
Definitely ok to being three mile island back online for AI though, that’s the ticket to a better humanity!
For real why has everyone with any kind of money gone psycho? Have the bad guys started winning even harder?
The more they delete, the more they can resell every few years as "new" while charging ever more exorbitant prices for!
Buy it before it goes back in the Disney vault!
The Disney Vault!
Write that down!
Yo ho yo ho...
The only way to watch the original Star Wars movies before George completely fucked with them is piracy.
The 4K77, 80 and 83 editions are what you're after. Enjoy. There are apparently reduced noise versions as well, but I thought it was perfect as is. It's old. It's supposed to have noise and grain. The desert scenes in the first one are really noisy and I'm not 100% sure why. Maybe he filmed those on cheaper film stock in smaller cameras, but that's just a guess.
The director was an amateur, and he didn't align the grains of sand with the grain of the film.
It’s not his fault that sand is coarse, rough, and irritating, or that it gets everywhere.
They were course and rough and irritating and got everywhere.
The late 90s dvd versions are gold.
I do have a double set with original (or as much as you could get) along with the post-prequels completely broken one. I think there was a pre-prequels version as well. But then that is DVD quality, which is getting on a bit.
The likes of Disney+ doesn't even acknowledge the originals even exist.
Same with their Alien and Aliens versions as well. No director's cuts at all, which is a shame as I far prefer them. They should have both.
There was a storm in the desert where they were filming which destroyed a lot of the equipment and almost doomed the film.
I think I remember reading that they had to use cheaper film stock in those scenes for that reason.
This is why I still download movies and try to keep them. They make up the bulk of the crap I keep on my hard drives.
And there was a time when the computer science world wanted to avoid this... and it was 1990 (yes, almost 35 years ago) when the term digital dark age was coined. It was in response to several things. Firstly: the first voyager probe was sent and the code used to store the information could not be disciphered by (then) the latest computers, which resulted in a problem. The second thing is that governments all around the world were starting to be heavily computerized and the older computers used in the 1960s were 100% incompatible with newer systems.
In the US and UK in 1960 the first census were done by computers, and by just 1976 there were only two computers in the world that could read that data, and one of them was a museum piece.
The FOSS community has done far more to combat this with emulation over the past 30 years than any corporation has ever done. Whether it is for video games like MAME, MESS, or whatever console emulator you want to mention, or by OSes like MS-DOS and Amiga Lemon and countless others that emulate almost every system ever created.
Now these fucks are just shitting all streaming media and forcing normal people to have to break the law by pirating the stuff just to keep the stuff from vanishing into oblivion.
It's going to be a fun historical period to look back on when there are just huge gaps where IP/product control became so powerful that no record of certain things were allowed to exist.
Orwell didn't know he was also writing about the Entertainment-Industrial Complex.
The simple answer to this is to change the tax code to not allow for write offs for completed projects. And to shorten how long copyright lasts (fuck Disney so much for that one)
Also set up a standardized licensing process that breaks the mini-monopolies of exclusive content.
Personally, I'd also limit copyright to specific works and not the characters, setting, etc. Then protect trademarks and use those to establish canon. Like in the MCU and DC universes, Spiderman and Batman don't exist together, but in the Superhero Fan Universe, they are roommates and play genius billionaire vs superhuman with a sixth sense prank wars on each other.
What does this have to do with write-offs? I don't think they can write off episodes of South Park and the daily show that have already aired.
Enshittification continues
I still have dvds and a dvd player like an old person for just this reason.
I've just realized there's an animated series on Youtube, that I've had a really hard time (read: impossible) finding anywhere else, and if LEGO (yes, I'm talking about Ninjago) decides to delete these videos from their channels, the OG seasons are nowhere to ve found as far as I can tell. Yes, there are some cartoon streaming services but those are few in number and getting fewer, so I wouldn't bet on them or any new ones that spring up having that content available in 5-10 years. And that's worrying. Time to download all 15 seasons and store them somewhere! (oh shit, I don't have enough space, do I)
Edit: found them on a downloads site from the piracy megathread, but only Seasons 1-11. I'll get them all soon enough.
Edit 2: The first 11 seasons from that website come up to just over 105GB and I don't have the space. Do I buy a 256GB USB/ Drive to store this at? I'm scared that I'm getting to the point of becoming a data hoarder. Not too long ago, I didn't know what I'd do with my single 32GB USB, now I have added a 128GB one, and a 64GB Ventoy usb to the mix, and I still don't have enough. Wtf?
105 gigs is nothing, you can get a 1TB external drive for ~60$
I'm getting to the point of becoming a data hoarder
What's wrong with that‽ Join us on the dark side (according to giant corporations anyways), we have milk and cookies!
My brother in christ you have less than a TB of storage. you're very far from being a hoarder.
I still have my first 512GB HDD from when I was in high school and I've got over 32TB on my latest build, plus my archive of old drives I leave off until I need to access them. Join us, it's better.
About to build my first really nice homelab NAS for Jellyfin, archiving, etc. targeting between 30-40TB if all goes well :)
Don't be scared. Embrace the data. Let it flow through the fiber optic cables and into your RAID array. Dew it!
You can have large amounts of storage without being a hoarder, tbh in this day and age its just prudent to have an offline DRM free copy of your favorite media
If you have a bit of spare cash I can't recommend building a NAS and setting up a jellyfin server enough, its really nice knowing that everything on it won't disappear unless you will it
You don't even need much cash. An old N40L and four 250gb ssds will get you 750gb running Truenas and raid.
If only. I'm a student living in student accommodation. I can't set up a NAS because hosting things on the network is against their policy, and I also wouldn't feel comfortable having that type of hardware in my room. And if electricity bills skyrocket because of me, I'll be forced to pay them.
Storage is relatively cheap, and don't stress becoming a data horder, added bonus, learning to manage it well is a nice skillset to develop.. Looks over at the 700tb rack!
Do it. Buy an hdd, start to understand how to store the data safely, how to torrent and how to contribute to the community.
You'll learn a lot, and I am guessing that you are very young, all this knowledge will be very useful in the future. Every cent spent now, will multiply in the future
You might be able to convert to hevc (x265) and trim it down by quite a bit.
You will always lose a bit of quality converting though, even from 1080p to 1080p, but I consider it pretty acceptable for cartoons and things of that nature.
Have my main server back home, while I'm traveling I have a script to reencode to av1 onto my local machine, works beautifully and the quality drop isn't too bad (colors look weird but think that's the Intel xe encoder)
If you have an m.2 slot, 2tb drives are cheap and don't worry about it for a while
Edited: I originally absent mindedly said 2gb, meaning 2tb
You buy as much space as you'll need in the next few years and make a plan for proper duplication/backup, such as 3-2-1 Backups.
Seasons 1-7 appear on Tubi. Pretty easy to rip with yt-dlp
They will charge you again for the remake. So nice you have payed twice...
Leaky ship?
I am rowing a riverboat nowadays on the stremio, from torrentio to real debrid hi ho.
Get the physical medium
Preservation is an invasive and destructive process. Recreating the experience of watching 'The Daily Show' in the 90s or early '00s is already impossible. Language and culture mildew and rot just like leather and wood.
EDIT: People don't seem to understand what I'm talking about. Even the people who are responding in good faith seem confused. That's on me. So I thought I'd try to clarify with an example.
Take the Mona Lisa. Perhaps one of the most preserved objects in history. It's so well preserved that it's impossible to see. Sure, you can look at it, but you won't see it. Taking a picture of the painting is encouraged, but you can't get a look at it in your camera roll either.
If you saw the actual painting hanging on a friend's wall, your first thought would probably not be "what a masterpiece", but "why didn't they remove the default print that came with the frame"? If you go to Paris, you can wait in line to have the "Mona Lisa experience" but the painting you saw wasn't hanging on the wall, what you'll see is the Mona Lisa you brought with you.
(yes, I stole this example from 'were in hell' youtube channel)
This is stupid as hell.
I'm the genealogist of my family. There are things about what life was like when my grandmother was young that now only I know (since she's passed on). As I research through more and more of my family history, going back further and further, the less and less I know about what life was like when my ancestors were around, especially the minutiae of every day life. But I WANT to know what life was like. It's fascinating and, more importantly, we don't always know now what will be important in the future so how can we learn from the mistakes of the past if we don't even know they existed? My kids will never know directly what living life in the 90s as a teen was like. But I do. I remember. But I won't be here forever and if they ever want to have even a tiny inkling of what it was like, I need to ensure that the stories, the accounts, the events, the nuance, the opinions..... are recorded and passed on, as my grandmother did with me.
The saying, "History is written by the victor" is absolutely true. But if we had the little tiny details from the perspectives of lots of different people, the victor cannot rewrite history for their benefit and in their image. History, no matter how big or small, matters.
If you don't care. Cool for you bro. Ignore it. But for the rest of us who want to learn, recording and archiving matters. I feel nothing but honour in my obligation to ensure events and history is passed on for future generations.
History is written by those that write stuff down.
obviously a news show isn't going to feel the same rewatching it. that's not the point lol.
that would be like saying it's dumb to preserve newspapers in libraries because it's not going to feel as good rereading the "Hitler is dead" headline. people don't look at old news to have a good time.
boy was it silly of us to preserve that kind of thing and it totally never comes in handy/s
that's not even what people are upset about anyway. comedy Central mostly makes entertainment programming that isn't news based and can still be enjoyed whenever. believe it or not, comedy Central has a lot of content that will stand the test of time. especially when looking at their stand-up catalogue.
this is the destruction of a library. a digital one, but a library none the less. that's what people are mad about.
but you're right. we should just dump all of our old movies and shows. they're worthless moldy junk anyway... 🙄
Just a simple lowly troll, nothing of importance to see here
Even considering your edits, it's still a stupid argument. By that same logic nothing should be preserved. Watching LotR now is not the same as watching it when it first came out, which should have never been made according to you because by that time the book should have already been destroyed since you wouldn't want to preserve it for 50 years, but Tolkien shouldn't have even written it, since they were based on ideas and drafts he did during the first world war exploring how war changes men and power corrupts, which obviously is only valid in that context and nowhere else so it should be destroyed since preserving it would be invasive and destructive, no?.
Preserving something can never be destructive, it's the opposite of it. If the Mona Lisa was destroyed you wouldn't even know it existed, so how can having preserved it be destructive when the alternative is oblivion?
And I agree that the Mona Lisa is no big deal, you know who else agrees? People from that time. It's widely known that the Mona Lisa was one of Da Vinci's less famous works, and until Napoleon made a big deal out of it it was just a random painting in a random museum. So I get part of your point, that people who make a big deal out of the Mona Lisa are only there to see the famous painting, but that doesn't mean that there's no reason to preserve it, or that there are no people who go there to see the actual Mona Lisa.
Preservation is an invasive and destructive process. Recreating the experience of watching 'The Daily Show' in the 90s or early '00s is already impossible. Language and culture mildew and rot just like leather and wood.
EDIT: People don't seem to understand what I'm talking about. Even the people who are responding in good faith seem confused. That's on me. So I thought I'd try to clarify with an example.
Take the Mona Lisa. Perhaps one of the most preserved objects in history. It's so well preserved that it's impossible to see. Sure, you can look at it, but you won't see it. Taking a picture of the painting is encouraged, but you can't get a look at it in your camera roll either.
If you saw the actual painting hanging on a friend's wall, your first thought would probably not be "what a masterpiece", but "why didn't they remove the default print that came with the frame"? If you go to Paris, you can wait in line to have the "Mona Lisa experience" but the painting you saw wasn't hanging on the wall, what you'll see is the Mona Lisa you brought with you.
(yes, I stole this example from 'were in hell' youtube channel)
Figured I'd make a copy. Who knows, the OP might change it in the future. Gotta preserve the past and all.
Look at the veil on her head dude, it's translucent.
This painting is a masterpiece
Sure, "no man sets foot in the same river twice", but that does nothing to argue against the preservation of cultural items.
Take music, for instance. I never feel the same way the second time listening to a song as I did the first time, but that doesn't make the music less special or change anything about it at all, and it certainly does nothing to advance a hypothetical argument that music shouldn't be recorded or that the recordings of it shouldn't be preserved for future enjoyment or different audiences.
Thanks, Obama.
Here's a random paranoid tangent before lunch! I was reading recently about the evolution of theater in England over a hundred years from ~1550-1650. Elizabeth ruled during the first part of that interval, and Shakespeare wrote. His plays included perspectives from wide slices of society and were performed for royalty and commoners alike. Elizabeth died and private theatrical commissions began to outgrow public theater, which according to wikipedia "sustained themselves on the accumulated works of the previous decades".
Starting in 1642 theaters were closed entirely by act of a Puritanical Parliament. That ban lasted 18 years and once the audience was Quite Thirsty, the English Restoration restored theater abstractly and filled it with bawdy raunch.
Yada yada, Disney then hired a crew of weepy Christian writers in the 20th century to repackage folk tales into Little Mermaid and Iron Man, which seems parallel enough to Shakespeare retelling Ovid. Film flourished, and in the early days of broadcast TV anybody could star in their own very own program. The Writers were on the brink of delivering us Heroes, but they up and left before they could save the cheerleader.
Now this age of regurgitated, computer animated-and-written, crowdsource produced art seems familiar, too. We're filling the gaps with what we know, and the Appalachians wielding the pen are finding gaps they didn't know were there. It's odd being here, but my point is that if we are stuck in a loop then there's the potential that on the horizon is a period of Hollywood producing a bunch of light hearted Boob Comedies.
Your honor I object that he interrupted me while watching Ow My Balls!
I think I need a rewatch with this new perspective. I saw Enlightenment to Romanticism through a lens of British stuffiness that gave the veneer of "light hearted", but Ow My Balls makes a little more sense with a layer of mid-Atlantic mud. I already got Boob Comedies from Ren and Stimpy through Family Guy. What I want is hero stories to save Atlas, but the scornful judgment in the movie's framing is a force of Christian conservatism trapping him between two worlds.
Someone bought ALL the thrift store DVDs in all my small city’s thrift stores, like four of them. People are starting to know that self-ownership is where everyone is going