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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

There has never been a better time to be a consumer of home media than today. I wouldn't trade the (legal) access I have to essentially any film or TV show I can imagine wanting to watch for any conceivable bookshelf full of DVDs. The Blockbuster Video and Comcast Premium Channel Package era was no more cost effective, and things just get worse as you go further back in time.

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> the (legal) access I have to essentially any film or TV show I can imagine

My imagination runs amok..

There is a Disney+ but https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Little_Dog_Lost is not on it. Nor is any other Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color or whatever name the anthology ran on television since 1954 but to me this is the only one that matters, what can I do, I love corgis :)

The Mists Of Avalon mini series from 2001 is nowhere to be found.

Many, many movies have been made out of the novel The Count of Monte Cristo but what many consider the closest to the book, Robert Vernay's version from 1954 with no less than Jean Marais in the lead is impossible to find these days. This was Vernay's second Cristo movie, the vision he always wanted to make but couldn't in 1943 when he made the first. But no one knows of it because streaming, DVD, whatever you want just doesn't exist. Rare Films And More sourced a high quality 16mm print (it's in German) and digitized it and wrote English subtitles for it -- but it's a pirated copy, I don't think it entered the public domain yet.

About your Disney+ example, I do wonder why it seems that a lot of content like that isn't available on the platform.

Are there streaming rights issues? Are they holding back content to drip feed content drops for as long as they can? Did they determine that some content isn't worth digging up the tapes and preparing for streaming?

Disney has always made a big deal out of the "Disney Vault"—back in the VHS days, they tried to replicate the scarcity of waiting until a movie was showing in a local theater by arbitrarily refusing to sell copies of some of their movies for years at a time. I believe they continued this practice with DVDs and Blu-Rays, though not nearly as widely.

This seems likely to be part of the same philosophy.

I wonder also how much of the older content is self-censored for e.g. political correctness reasons.

That’s certainly seems to be true for Kundun (1997).

The Chinese Communist Party wasn’t happy the film was made in the first place and would probably ban Disney from their market if it was available for streaming in the USA.

It’s quiet, limited sale on DVD is still tolerated.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kundun

This is indeed true of movies such as Disney’s Song of the the South. You won’t find that anywhere;; even eBay prevents sale of the DVD.

Cartoons have also been censored:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censored_Eleven

https://deadline.com/2021/03/pepe-le-pew-space-jam-2-new-yor...

Many cartoon shorts from the 30s and 40s with blackface and other offensive material has been edited. I can’t find references right now, but have noticed this personally.

Yeah, it's sad some stuff isn't available. I think it was worse in the past though.

I used to live next to a DVD rental place that was 1€ per day. Often I would return the movie the same night. I used to watch 1-2 movies per month. Nowadays I have Netflix for what, 12€ a month? I still watch maybe one movie a month. So I guess I pay ~10x for not having to step outside?

I sure did watch a lot more stuff when I lived a block away from Scarecrow Video, one of the last great video rental stores. With shelves full of stuff that had been curated, with staff notes here and there calling out the occasional film.

Theoretically the streaming services are more convenient, they're all lurking right there on my PS4, but... I never really touch the things.

So I suppose we should all move within walking distance to a rental place (that too a cheap one at that). Even back then it’s a pipe dream.

You pay 10x for access to Netflix’s content.

The fact that you only want to watch 1 movie out of their catalog is irrelevant. I do not find their content worth it, so I do not pay Netflix.

I find it better to just rent a movie from an online provider if/when I want to watch one, since I rarely watch. If I want to watch it over and over, I buy it (kids’ movies).

So I pay for what I don't need to get the little that do I need. What you call irrelevant I call the core of their business model.

My point was that it is not productive to compare a la carte business models to all you can eat business models.

If you want to compare DVD rental to renting a movie on Apple/Google Play/Amazon, that would make more sense.

Bit of a niche anecdote.

Sure, but how many streaming packages do you need to pay for (every month!) to be able to say you have that?

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