The GateWorld Cantina MKII

[mad_gater]

Hear ye, hear ye!!

I bring forth a message from the esteemed wanderer of the Cantina basement, Cowpants.

To whom it may concern...

The black and white patterened pants has been lost, and must be found.

Those who are brave and honorable shall go on this quest, to find the pants which once belonged to the great and powerful Cow.*

Much greatness awaits you upon finding it, for thou shallt wear it and instantly possess all the powers of the great and powerful Cow.

* Notice: Cow or I can not be held responsible for loss of limbs or life on this quest.

I think I'd rather possess the power of Thor

[mad_gater]

General question. Anyone think folks around here would be interested in a hardware thread, for discussions regarding the hardware that we watch TV/Movies on at home?

I figure since we can't talk about politics anymore, might as well start something else. At least with audio hardware you have left & right channels...

yes.....we can shake our canes and rail against the demise of VHS, DVD, BD, and other physical formats and against all this newfangled streaming business

[Who Knows]

Are they the ones on the wing?

[Annoyed]

yes.....we can shake our canes and rail against the demise of VHS, DVD, BD, and other physical formats and against all this newfangled streaming business

You jest, but that is serious problem. If you buy something's streaming rights, who is to say how long you keep them?

Till the vendor changes their mind?

https://io9.gizmodo.com/amazon-secre...kindle-5317703

Till the vendor goes out of business and your playback device can no longer phone home to check for rights?

Or, it is until the vendor makes a better deal? Doctor Who S 1-10 used to be on Netflix, then BBC made a new deal with Amazon Prime, and it was available there if you're a Prime subscriber. That has recently been removed from Prime. You can still buy it, but how long will that last?

If I buy a physical copy of whatever it is, it sits on my shelf; it's mine. I don't have to worry about losing access because some greedy bastage in a suit wants to milk the property for more $.

[mad_gater]

You jest, but that is serious problem. If you buy something's streaming rights, who is to say how long you keep them?

Till the vendor changes their mind?

https://io9.gizmodo.com/amazon-secre...kindle-5317703

Till the vendor goes out of business and your playback device can no longer phone home to check for rights?

Or, it is until the vendor makes a better deal? Doctor Who S 1-10 used to be on Netflix, then BBC made a new deal with Amazon Prime, and it was available there if you're a Prime subscriber. That has recently been removed from Prime. You can still buy it, but how long will that last?

If I buy a physical copy of whatever it is, it sits on my shelf; it's mine. I don't have to worry about losing access because some greedy bastage in a suit wants to milk the property for more $.

yeah...I'm currently working towards making virtual disk images of all our DVD's and BD's (and CD's but those are relatively easy) and maybe some of the VHS tapes...VHS tapes are easy but take a long time as what you have to do is hook a VCR into a playback device then plug said device into a computer (usually via USB) and use the software that came with it to capture the playback to a file so you have to wait for the whole movie to play back whereas with DVD's and BD's you can use software to scan them into a virtual disk image in a fraction of the time...the only issue with these then is the various DRM methods they use in their attempts at circumventing what I see is our right to make copies, both physical and digital, of our movies for our own use, esp. digital ones as physical copies don't last forever

I have an on-the-fly decrypter that takes care of most of those DRM techniques but the one that's proving to be a real pain in the mik'ta and so far the only software that exists to remove it is paid software is the DRM technique known as Cinavia, a technique that embeds a "watermark" into the waveform of the audio itself so that any "illegal" copies of the movie will have their audio muted after x number of minutes (usually somewhere around 20 minutes into the movie)

[Falcon Horus]

We don't use gender pronouns around cow

She tells me her pronouns are she/her.
Also, those rags you found -- the underpants, not the actual pants.

I think I'd rather possess the power of Thor

You jest, but that is serious problem. If you buy something's streaming rights, who is to say how long you keep them?

Until they are too expensive to pay for because not enough people stream the thing you're paying for.
For example: Stargate on Netflix. Apparently that license was outrageously high.

Till the vendor goes out of business and your playback device can no longer phone home to check for rights?

Or the vendor decides that older versions of their application will no longer be supported so the app on older devices no longer functions properly.
For example: Whatsapp (from Facebook)

Doctor Who S 1-10 used to be on Netflix, then BBC made a new deal with Amazon Prime, and it was available there if you're a Prime subscriber. That has recently been removed from Prime. You can still buy it, but how long will that last?

BBC has their own streaming services now where Doctor Who is available. It's called BritBox. It's basically the reason, Doctor Who was pulled from Netflix (and Amazon I guess).

If I buy a physical copy of whatever it is, it sits on my shelf; it's mine. I don't have to worry about losing access because some greedy bastage in a suit wants to milk the property for more $.

It gathers dust but at least I have the copy to rewatch whenever I like -- and all I need is electricity and not even that if I have enough battery life left on my tablet/PC.

[jelgate]

You believed cow? Cow has lied about it's own mother.

[Falcon Horus]

Probably Cow senior...

[Annoyed]

Until they are too expensive to pay for because not enough people stream the thing you're paying for.
For example: Stargate on Netflix. Apparently that license was outrageously high.



Or the vendor decides that older versions of their application will no longer be supported so the app on older devices no longer functions properly.
For example: Whatsapp (from Facebook)



BBC has their own streaming services now where Doctor Who is available. It's called BritBox. It's basically the reason, Doctor Who was pulled from Netflix (and Amazon I guess).



It gathers dust but at least I have the copy to rewatch whenever I like -- and all I need is electricity and not even that if I have enough battery life left on my tablet/PC.

The Doctor Who/Netflix etc. situation is becoming very common these days, as the content creators are using their shows to leverage subscriptions to their own streaming services.

Bad enough that these deals reduce the value of a service I'm paying for, but what about outright purchases from Amazon & such? I used the example of a book, "1984" being removed from the libraries of people who had PURCHASED the book.

Suppose you buy a TV show or Movie from Amazon/whatever, and 5 years down the road, the service dies, or some suit and tie determines they need more money and invalidate the item you purchased?

If I spend the $ to BUY something, I consider it to be mine. The person I bought it off of has no right to withdraw that content from me, for any reason whatsoever. Suppose 50 years ago, I bought an album on 8-track tape. Yes, dead format, no longer used, but as long as I have a working 8-track deck (which I do, play & record; I can play anything from Reel to Reel forward.) I will be able to play that tape should I want to.

Until the laws catch up, and enforce that idea of permanent ownership, buying streaming versions of any media is a fool's errand in my book, for the simple reason that the vendor can change their mind and take that content back.

[mad_gater]

The Doctor Who/Netflix etc. situation is becoming very common these days, as the content creators are using their shows to leverage subscriptions to their own streaming services.

Bad enough that these deals reduce the value of a service I'm paying for, but what about outright purchases from Amazon & such? I used the example of a book, "1984" being removed from the libraries of people who had PURCHASED the book.

Suppose you buy a TV show or Movie from Amazon/whatever, and 5 years down the road, the service dies, or some suit and tie determines they need more money and invalidate the item you purchased?

If I spend the $ to BUY something, I consider it to be mine. The person I bought it off of has no right to withdraw that content from me, for any reason whatsoever. Suppose 50 years ago, I bought an album on 8-track tape. Yes, dead format, no longer used, but as long as I have a working 8-track deck (which I do, play & record; I can play anything from Reel to Reel forward.) I will be able to play that tape should I want to.

Until the laws catch up, and enforce that idea of permanent ownership, buying streaming versions of any media is a fool's errand in my book, for the simple reason that the vendor can change their mind and take that content back.

yeah...as far as the aforementioned Cinavia goes...I've only encountered one DVD in our repertoire so far that was protected with Cinavia (there may be others but just haven't yet run across them in my slow but steady progress of CD/DVD/BD imaging).....by far the more common annoyance I've encountered so far are disks that are becoming corrupted (i.e., BADLY corrupted with scratched and scuffed disk surfaces)

in that situation one of the things you can try is to use software to force copy the file whose bits and pieces occupy some bad sectors and see how much of the file can be recovered...sometimes you get lucky and the file that can't be read is sometimes just due to a random finger smudge or speck of dirt which can be taken care of with an alcohol wipe

but if you have scratches and scuffs it's more difficult as the only thing to do then is to attempt to patch over the scratches and scuffs using various disk surface repair tricks and then see if the file(s) in question can be read after the patch job...but some surface repair tricks might make matters worse....for example the toothpaste trick I've read about.....tried that and I think the toothpaste I used must've had some abrasive stuff in it as it seemed to ruin the disk surface even more...a trick I haven't tried yet is Vaseline....some people have had success with that so we shall see.

[Annoyed]

yeah...as far as the aforementioned Cinavia goes...I've only encountered one DVD in our repertoire so far that was protected with Cinavia (there may be others but just haven't yet run across them in my slow but steady progress of CD/DVD/BD imaging).....by far the more common annoyance I've encountered so far are disks that are becoming corrupted (i.e., BADLY corrupted with scratched and scuffed disk surfaces)

in that situation one of the things you can try is to use software to force copy the file whose bits and pieces occupy some bad sectors and see how much of the file can be recovered...sometimes you get lucky and the file that can't be read is sometimes just due to a random finger smudge or speck of dirt which can be taken care of with an alcohol wipe

but if you have scratches and scuffs it's more difficult as the only thing to do then is to attempt to patch over the scratches and scuffs using various disk surface repair tricks and then see if the file(s) in question can be read after the patch job...but some surface repair tricks might make matters worse....for example the toothpaste trick I've read about.....tried that and I think the toothpaste I used must've had some abrasive stuff in it as it seemed to ruin the disk surface even more...a trick I haven't tried yet is Vaseline....some people have had success with that so we shall see.

The only real "ripping" I do is so that I can store frequently accessed optical media on a Plex server in the basement, so I don't have to get off the couch to load it in order to watch it. I've got all of my CD collection on that, as well as most music video type things.

As far as movies go, I'm satisfied with just handling my media carefully. It's a habit I've had for a very long time. If you notice my activity in the "What Music Are You Listening To?" thread, you will see that a great deal of what I listen to is on Vinyl. Vinyl sounds better for music, if you ask me. I can have the same piece of work on both CD & Vinyl, and it sounds richer and fuller on vinyl, with the receiver set to "pure audio" listening mode, which cuts out all of it's modern digital sound processing and just amplifies what the analog hardware stack sends over. (I have it separated into analog & digital source hardware piles)

Many of the LP albums I have are the original copies I bought in the 70's or so. Listening to Vinyl teaches you to be very careful with your media unless you enjoy the snaps, pops and other noise that careless handling results in.

As far as optical media that has been damaged goes, there are polishing devices that your better used record and CD stores have that can do wonders in cleaning up scratched media to restore playability.

[mad_gater]

The only real "ripping" I do is so that I can store frequently accessed optical media on a Plex server in the basement, so I don't have to get off the couch to load it in order to watch it. I've got all of my CD collection on that, as well as most music video type things.

As far as movies go, I'm satisfied with just handling my media carefully. It's a habit I've had for a very long time. If you notice my activity in the "What Music Are You Listening To?" thread, you will see that a great deal of what I listen to is on Vinyl. Vinyl sounds better for music, if you ask me. I can have the same piece of work on both CD & Vinyl, and it sounds richer and fuller on vinyl, with the receiver set to "pure audio" listening mode, which cuts out all of it's modern digital sound processing and just amplifies what the analog hardware stack sends over. (I have it separated into analog & digital source hardware piles)

Many of the LP albums I have are the original copies I bought in the 70's or so. Listening to Vinyl teaches you to be very careful with your media unless you enjoy the snaps, pops and other noise that careless handling results in.

As far as optical media that has been damaged goes, there are polishing devices that your better used record and CD stores have that can do wonders in cleaning up scratched media to restore playability.

I'm sort of doing the same thing only putting the virtual disk image files on an external SSD (1 TB capacity) rather than on a server, with the hope that in the near future they can give modern CD/DVD/BD players that you hook up to a TV the ability to mount virtual disk image files of various formats (*.iso format being the most common) from any storage media that you plug into the player's USB port

...simply because I'M not a lazy lout that can't even be bothered to get up off the couch for the few minutes it takes to load a disk or plug in a USB stick

as far as damaged disks....sometimes those repair kits (I have one...came with the spray, the hand crank thingy to spread the fluid around on the disk, and the cloth to buff it clean) do more harm than good...as some of the chemicals in the fluid can be quite harsh and wind up damaging the surface of the disk even more...so it seems to me like the safest possible way would be to use free software that will attempt to force copy the corrupted files in question...unless you're talking about some of the more professional-grade disk restoration machines that might be in those stores....but chances are the fee for them restoring the disk would probably be just as much as buying a new copy of the disk in question

[Annoyed]

as far as damaged disks....sometimes those repair kits (I have one...came with the spray, the hand crank thingy to spread the fluid around on the disk, and the cloth to buff it clean) do more harm than good...as some of the chemicals in the fluid can be quite harsh and wind up damaging the surface of the disk even more...so it seems to me like the safest possible way would be to use free software that will attempt to force copy the corrupted files in question...unless you're talking about some of the more professional-grade disk restoration machines that might be in those stores....but chances are the fee for them restoring the disk would probably be just as much as buying a new copy of the disk in question

Nah, I'm talking about commercial grade machines for record/CD stores and such. I've had 3 discs successfully resurrected by one local shop.

I chose the server route because I've had a Linux machine as the head end of my house network for years, so on the last rebuild, I installed 2 6TB drives into it and configured them as RAID 1 (mirroring) for total storage of 6TB. There is still space in the machine for another 2 drives, so by the time I fill that up, I assume 12 TB drives will be available, allowing for easy expansion.

[mad_gater]

Nah, I'm talking about commercial grade machines for record/CD stores and such. I've had 3 discs successfully resurrected by one local shop.

I chose the server route because I've had a Linux machine as the head end of my house network for years, so on the last rebuild, I installed 2 6TB drives into it and configured them as RAID 1 (mirroring) for total storage of 6TB. There is still space in the machine for another 2 drives, so by the time I fill that up, I assume 12 TB drives will be available, allowing for easy expansion.

doubt I'd be able to afford that much solid state storage LOL (prefer SSD to traditional HDD...faster read/write speeds and no mechanical moving parts that will wear out over time like the magnetic platters in traditional HDD's do)

[Gatefan1976]

doubt I'd be able to afford that much solid state storage LOL (prefer SSD to traditional HDD...faster read/write speeds and no mechanical moving parts that will wear out over time like the magnetic platters in traditional HDD's do)

A RAID array is a lot more stable and recoverable than your standard HDD or external HDD (trust me, lost terabytes of data on damaged eternal drives)
You will RARELY see me say this, but Annoyed has a far superior idea than what you are suggesting.
6TB internal HD are not even that pricy these days, computer prices drop so rapidly its not even funny these days.
What will cost you more is setting up the array if you don't know how to do it yourself.