Netflix to end DVD service.

[Reza]

Try ok.ru

It’s the Russian equivalent to YouTube and has practically every single movie you ever wanted to watch. And it’s free.

I swear by this too. Yes, it has everything on it, both past and present, and for free.

[mlrg]

Only one story that truly mattered while the board was down. Someone make sure Mister Tee is okay?

https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/vi ... 0721349653

I've been expecting/predicting this for...years, honestly...but I'll still be very sorry to see it come to pass. It's of a piece with many other evolutions of my lifetime: the friendly neighborhood video store crushed by Blockbuster, the art house theatre closed while the multiplex expands, etc. The American appetite is, at this point, for TV series, not movies. I'll be able to watch damn near any season of any show that's ever been on the air (as long as I subscribe to the proper streaming service), but seeing movies I missed in theatres a few months down the line will now be far more difficult. Not to mention catching up on hundreds of films of the past -- in my case, including the full works of Bresson, Almodovar, Truffaut and Ozu; never-before-got-to efforts like Drive He Said, Flower Drum Song, The Tenth Victim or The Killing of Sister George; and many many oddball titles that crossed my line of vision for one reason or another, and were instantly available to satisfy my curiosity.

I'm sure someone will say this and that title will be available on one streaming service or another, but that's kind of the point: you need to subscribe to what seems dozens of different services for what used to be covered by one, Netflix. I know I can't stop the onrush of history, but I feel well within my rights to bitch about it.

Try ok.ru

It’s the Russian equivalent to YouTube and has practically every single movie you ever wanted to watch. And it’s free.

[dws1982]

I let go of Netflix's disc service long ago when I moved and was simplifying things, but there's still no comparison between the number of films you could get from it (and the simplicity of getting them) vs streaming. Many movies that were available through their disc service just aren't available streaming anywhere, even if you were inclined to subscribe to every streaming service, and so some of those will just fall further out of the general consciousness because people can't watch them.

[Mister Tee]

Only one story that truly mattered while the board was down. Someone make sure Mister Tee is okay?

https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/vi ... 0721349653

I've been expecting/predicting this for...years, honestly...but I'll still be very sorry to see it come to pass. It's of a piece with many other evolutions of my lifetime: the friendly neighborhood video store crushed by Blockbuster, the art house theatre closed while the multiplex expands, etc. The American appetite is, at this point, for TV series, not movies. I'll be able to watch damn near any season of any show that's ever been on the air (as long as I subscribe to the proper streaming service), but seeing movies I missed in theatres a few months down the line will now be far more difficult. Not to mention catching up on hundreds of films of the past -- in my case, including the full works of Bresson, Almodovar, Truffaut and Ozu; never-before-got-to efforts like Drive He Said, Flower Drum Song, The Tenth Victim or The Killing of Sister George; and many many oddball titles that crossed my line of vision for one reason or another, and were instantly available to satisfy my curiosity.

I'm sure someone will say this and that title will be available on one streaming service or another, but that's kind of the point: you need to subscribe to what seems dozens of different services for what used to be covered by one, Netflix. I know I can't stop the onrush of history, but I feel well within my rights to bitch about it.

[Big Magilla]

I used the down time to do spring cleaning, work on the community newsletter which I am the editor of and the community website which I am administrator of, and finish boxing up my DVD/Blu-ray collection.

I first started collecting VHS copies of films in the early 1980s, went through the laserdisc revolution of the 1990s, the later DVD and Blu-ray revolutions and in late 2021, finally bought into 4K enhancements for some of my favorite films. While I consider the switch to streaming both a blessing and a curse, it comes at a time when, by necessity, I have slowed down my purchase of physical media.

For years, decades now, I've limited my display of physical media to several bookcases while I stored other parts of my vast collection in readily accessible large plastic storage boxes. Then, two or three years ago, I started getting rid of the plastic that the films came in, along with the cover art and printed booklets that went with them. Now, I've gotten rid of all the plastic and paper for the last thousand or so and just have the discs in paper sleeves in CD boxes the size of shoe boxes.

The boxes on eighteen shelves in four bookcases are not as attractive as the original media in those spots, but I can get much more in the ever-shrinking space provided for my massive collection.

I wonder what kinds of comments I'm going to get now. One of my neighbors, now deceased, a man I knew in his 80s and early 90s, would never come in my house beyond the foyer. After years of staring at my bookshelves from a distance, he asked me if what had on the shelves were CDs. When I told him they were DVDs, his response was "I don't see the point in watching a movie more than once." This from a man who was a big Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett fan, who fronted his own band interpreting their repertoires. I was so tempted to tell him that watching a movie more than once was no different than listening to a Sinatra record over and over, but I just shrugged and let it go.

[Sonic Youth]

Only one story that truly mattered while the board was down. Someone make sure Mister Tee is okay?

https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/vi ... 0721349653