The music piracy community are some of the best archivists of music history we have. What.cd had a wonderfully curated and deep archive of music. I discovered so many small punk groups that would drop an LP then vanish.
Fortunately it's still relatively easy to support active bands directly via Bandcamp / physical media / tours. I cherish my personal collection, and it's all self-hosted on my NAS at home.
As for movies, half the time features don't even get a Blu-ray release. Back in the day I had a region unlocked player that would allow me to watch my favorite Japanese directors (which never got a US region release)
Streaming wise it's terrible, especially if you live outside of the US. A lot of films are not even available to "buy" via Amazon, etc. And even then services that do stream outside of the US have "4K" streams with low bitrates. It's not even funny how much better true 4k HDR remux's look when played back locally versus streaming it from HBO or something, even though it's the same source.
The music piracy community are some of the best archivists of music history we have. What.cd had a wonderfully curated and deep archive of music. I discovered so many small punk groups that would drop an LP then vanish.
Fortunately it's still relatively easy to support active bands directly via Bandcamp / physical media / tours. I cherish my personal collection, and it's all self-hosted on my NAS at home.
As for movies, half the time features don't even get a Blu-ray release. Back in the day I had a region unlocked player that would allow me to watch my favorite Japanese directors (which never got a US region release)
Streaming wise it's terrible, especially if you live outside of the US. A lot of films are not even available to "buy" via Amazon, etc. And even then services that do stream outside of the US have "4K" streams with low bitrates. It's not even funny how much better true 4k HDR remux's look when played back locally versus streaming it from HBO or something, even though it's the same source.