Is there an argument for downloading content and and not just streaming content all the time?

Naer · Saturday at 12:55 PM

Maybe digital preservation is an argument?

Thoughts?

lxskllr · Saturday at 12:59 PM

If you don't have physical access, it can disappear at any time, for any reason. I have a small collection of youtube videos I might want to watch again, just in case they go AWOL.

KLin · Saturday at 1:14 PM

Laziness leads to ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRing. I just don't feel like logging into netflix/amazon prime/hulu, etc etc.

gorobei · Saturday at 2:24 PM

there is probably some energy savings to not having to run/maintain/expand the networks just to send a single song or movie/tv show on demand vs having it on your local storage. whether this is offset by the manufacturing costs of having huge drives for each household/individual is the question. but no consumer really thinks about it at the macro scale of resource allocation.

having media local means the streaming services are less stressed and they wouldnt have to lower the content bitrate to reduce traffic and bandwith costs. the quality of a bluray vs streaming is massive, even at so called 2k or 4k. they are probably cutting corners on audio quality too.

the recent netflix boxing live stream showed how the networks probably arent ready for the bandwidth needed to serve a hundred million people at the same time.

Red Squirrel · Saturday at 6:20 PM

I always prefer to have content on hand, in my possession. Also, if internet goes out, and you want to watch a movie or TV show to pass the time, it's not going to work out very well if it relies on internet to work. I tend to download stuff ahead of time and then it's just available whenever I want to watch it.

Same with books, I rather have them on paper or as a PDF than in the cloud.

Lost_in_the_HTTP · Sunday at 6:30 AM

Once you got it, you got it.

If the web goes down for hours you still got it.

Make and sort your own playlists of only stuff you like.

You can move it to other devices, etc. I put some on an XD card to pop into the car radio. I have some tracks on a phone for when I'm out walking. I also store it on two other drives .... just in case.

Plus you can edit out stuff you don't like. Audacity works wonders.

No monthly fees either.

sdifox · Sunday at 9:08 AM

had to update my sig xd

snoopy7548 · Sunday at 9:18 AM

sdifox said:
View attachment 112097
had to update my sig xd

You should check out Unraid.

sdifox · Sunday at 9:22 AM

snoopy7548 said:
You should check out Unraid.

meh important stuff is backed up. hell I have multiple instances of important VMs.

IronWing · Sunday at 9:35 AM

Having local content in non-proprietary formats prevents providers from pulling the plug or changing the terms of the contract.

K1052 · Sunday at 10:43 AM

I'm back to buying Bluray for some movies because 1) rights on streaming are constantly shifting to and from stuff I many not have a sub for 2) bitrates most are streaming at suck total ass in comparison.

Brainonska511 · Sunday at 11:17 AM

K1052 said:
I'm back to buying Bluray for some movies because 1) rights on streaming are constantly shifting to and from stuff I many not have a sub for 2) bitrates most are streaming at suck total ass in comparison.

For music, I like ripping CDs for flac, or just flat out purchasing downloads (though, I've been paring down my physical media collection because it's a pain in the butt to move, and takes up a fair amount of space not doing anything. Exception: we have some vinyl, so that can stay.

For movies, long ago, I ripped all of them to my HTPC to use with Kodi, and I've recently done the same for Blu-ray. Extremely nice to have them in a single, electronic collection to scroll through as you want, and no funky issues pausing and resuming that you sometimes get with the physical disks. Of the physical media, only the Blu-ray and TV sets have somehow come along for the ride through our last move.

Also definitely looking at buying certain movies for the better bit rate and audio. I can tell even with a 1080 TV, the rips always look better than the streams.

Edit:
I won't bother with "alternative" means of acquisition for media. If they don't want to make it easy enough for me to purchase or consume, then it must not be worth my time or money to watch/listen to it.

K1052 · Sunday at 12:01 PM

Brainonska511 said:
For movies, long ago, I ripped all of them to my HTPC to use with Kodi, and I've recently done the same for Blu-ray. Extremely nice to have them in a single, electronic collection to scroll through as you want, and no funky issues pausing and resuming that you sometimes get with the physical disks. Of the physical media, only the Blu-ray and TV sets have somehow come along for the ride through our last move.

I've started doing this especially with my older discs that are not going to last forever.

Brainonska511 said:
Also definitely looking at buying certain movies for the better bit rate and audio. I can tell even with a 1080 TV, the rips always look better than the streams.

We upgraded our living room to a nice 77 inch OLED 4K panel a couple years ago and streams certainly do not maximize its abilities. Bluerays look fantastic especially after at least a basic picture calibration. So many people running factory defaults on their panels at home.

cytg111 · Sunday at 2:28 PM

sdifox said:
View attachment 112097
had to update my sig xd

What is your setup for connecting 1000 hard drives?

cytg111 · Sunday at 2:31 PM

Naer said:
Maybe digital preservation is an argument?

Thoughts?

And Z apocalypse of course. You need entertainment for those 100 years in the silo.

sdifox · Sunday at 2:52 PM

cytg111 said:
What is your setup for connecting 1000 hard drives?

PCIe USB 3.0 card plus powered usb hubs. It's like 20 external drives. I have a few more not shown there since they are backup drives that I power on only when doing backup. Since most drives are WORM duty, I don't care about speed

I am running out of drive letters. So probably have to switch to mount points or replace smaller drives.

Plex is my movie server. For music I just use foobar2000 dlna server or copy to my phone. I don't want a dozen xml files generated for one music file.

Red Squirrel · Sunday at 4:29 PM

Lol should at least look into raid 5 and combine some of the same size drives into single volumes. Would hate having that many individual drives knowing the loss of one means I have to deal with restoring from backups and be down during that time.

I actually need to consider building a new NAS though, the OS on this one is so old that I'm limited to 16TB per volume. I was able to make one bigger but it involved some questionable hacks, that didn't work out for the other volume. Once I have a new storage server I can migrate stuff to it then upgrade the OS on the existing one.

Code:

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/md3              7.2T  5.0T  1.9T  73% /volumes/raid3
/dev/md2               18T   15T  2.2T  88% /volumes/raid2
/dev/md0               16T  6.0T  9.1T  40% /volumes/raid1

sdifox · Sunday at 6:02 PM

LoL 3 day rebuild time for 3tb raid 5. The internet is my backup

Red Squirrel · Sunday at 6:54 PM

How are you getting such high rebuild times? I get a little less than a day with 10TB drives with md raid. Still better waiting for a rebuild than having to restore from backups though as that's lot of manual tedius work while being dead in the water. The data is still live during the rebuild so you are not down. Of course if another drive dies during the rebuild then that's another story and you end up having to resort to backups. Raid 6 is always an option too. I have a mix of 5 and 10. 10 for VMs, 5 for general purpose data and backups.

sdifox · Sunday at 7:00 PM

My VMs are backed up daily. Rest is content that can be slowly reacquired

I have spent north of 30k on content.

Shmee · Monday at 12:23 AM

Do you use ZFS?

sdifox · Monday at 6:57 AM

Shmee said:
Do you use ZFS?

Nein. All the important stuff is backed up daily. Including media content listing.

This setup is not for everyone, works for me though.

dullard · Monday at 7:44 AM

Naer said:
Maybe digital preservation is an argument?

Thoughts?

Were you not around in the days of cable TV going from $30/month to $100+/month. That switch happened in just a few years. It'll happen to all your streaming services too (and possibly to your internet access). Once it is downloaded, it is free and yours forever. Even if the price doesn't ever change, each streaming service you subscribe to will cost you thousands of dollars over your lifetime.

I get to listen to or watch anything I want anywhere on any device forever. That is true even when I'm dozens of miles from the nearest internet access. And when I'm in places that ban whatever streaming service you might be failing to use.

Examples: (1) I will be in a small mountain cabin with no internet for 5 days this week. Sun starts setting at 4:37 PM and it is dark by 5:07 PM. It is nice to have something to listen to or watch for the 13.5 hours of darkness.
(2) I recently came back from a trip where I did many 2 to 3 hour train rides across and through the alps. No internet. Sure, I enjoyed looking out at the mountains, but I can only do that for so long. It was nice to have things on my phone with no internet.
(3) Planes are getting rid of the behind the seat TVs. Ever get on a plane where their internet is down? I have. For 25 hours straight on the same plane without exiting. Sure was nice to have stuff downloaded.

nakedfrog · Monday at 12:22 PM

I've turned on a 4K stream of something before because I didn't feel like looking for my 1080P Blu-Ray, turned off the stream, and looked for the Blu-Ray instead.

dave_the_nerd · Monday at 1:29 PM

From a pure network bandwidth perspective, if you're going to watch it more than once it would make sense to save it locally. Most residential internet connections have at least a soft data cap of sorts.

If your set top box was able to, say, pre-cache your watchlist during idle periods that would be helpful to your ISP probably.

And you aren't ALWAYS going to have wifi everywhere you go - preloading the kids tablet before a road trip is an obvious use case.

Is there an argument for downloading content and and not just streaming content all the time?

Diamond Member

No Lifer

Lifer

Diamond Member

No Lifer

Lifer

No Lifer

Diamond Member

No Lifer

No Lifer

Elite Member

Lifer

Elite Member

Lifer

Lifer

No Lifer

No Lifer

No Lifer

No Lifer

No Lifer

Memory & Storage, Graphics Cards Mod Elite Member

No Lifer

Elite Member

No Lifer

Lifer