eyeroll keep your stupid DVDs I’m just gonna pirate and self-host.
This article starts with such a contrived scenario that I can’t take it seriously enough to read the rest. If I had a generator and a DVD player with a bunch of DVDs, sure, I might watch the DVDs. I’d be far more likely to just go get a hotel room somewhere that has power and internet access. If the world has collapsed so far that you need a genny for entertainment, just go ahead and take the next step and start doing an oral history of your people, and don’t forget to boil your water.
You won’t be laughing when somehow all the hard drives die but DVD players still work.
I suppose a magnetic storm and in this scenario the earth’s magnetosphere has failed but you’re in a shielded bunker so you don’t turn to soup from all the hard radiation but didn’t bring hard drives?
You won’t be laughing when the DVD eater (a cryptid which probably exists) shows up to eat all your DVDs and leaves all my hard drives intact. DVD eaters are afraid of magnetic storms so they generally only attack places that are magnetically shielded during storms
You’re all fools! You should just be hoarding the screenplays on trusty ink and paper, or perhaps etched into clay tablets to deter silverfish and parchment mites.
When the great solar-amberic conjunction erases all earth’s digital media simultaneously and nothing else, me and my travelling theater troupe are going to make post-apocalyptic bank with live re-enactments of all of cinema’s greatest moments, just you wait!
You’re the fool! What good is all that ink on paper when you miss the vocal range to make it come alive. And props! Don’t forget the props! You’ll come crawling to my mountain encased warehouse full of props, I say!
Of course… I’ve been collecting treasured works of art and culture, when I should have been hoarding authentic screen-used Hollywood memorabilia and officially-licensed tie-in merchandise - the true paragons of human invention! Damn you! Damn you, and your citadel of props!
Do they spend hundreds on hardrives (I guess two copies?) then just download TV shows and dvds individually, in bulk, and slowly work their way through?
There’s a few different things people do but the most common thing is to run a stack of the “servarrs”. These are services that automatically find, track, and download movies and shows. Mostly this is on request. You get various search interfaces to find stuff that’s out there in the TV world or the movie world or the music world, you request it, and your server uses bittorrent or usenet or both to download the parts that it needs. Then it’s held on a hard drive until you watch it, at your leisure, and keep it or delete it.
I think peoples’ preferences for how long they keep things and how they find new things to watch are very personal, but the stack gives you almost too much flexibility about it.
Since you mentioned cost, this will usually run to a few hundred dollars for hardware (including the drives), but I think you could scrape together something barebones for less than a hundred and barely notice the difference.
eyeroll keep your stupid DVDs I’m just gonna pirate and self-host.
This article starts with such a contrived scenario that I can’t take it seriously enough to read the rest. If I had a generator and a DVD player with a bunch of DVDs, sure, I might watch the DVDs. I’d be far more likely to just go get a hotel room somewhere that has power and internet access. If the world has collapsed so far that you need a genny for entertainment, just go ahead and take the next step and start doing an oral history of your people, and don’t forget to boil your water.
You won’t be laughing when somehow all the hard drives die but DVD players still work.
I suppose a magnetic storm and in this scenario the earth’s magnetosphere has failed but you’re in a shielded bunker so you don’t turn to soup from all the hard radiation but didn’t bring hard drives?
Look whatever man spinny plastic goes brrrrrrrr.
You won’t be laughing when the DVD eater (a cryptid which probably exists) shows up to eat all your DVDs and leaves all my hard drives intact. DVD eaters are afraid of magnetic storms so they generally only attack places that are magnetically shielded during storms
You’re all fools! You should just be hoarding the screenplays on trusty ink and paper, or perhaps etched into clay tablets to deter silverfish and parchment mites. When the great solar-amberic conjunction erases all earth’s digital media simultaneously and nothing else, me and my travelling theater troupe are going to make post-apocalyptic bank with live re-enactments of all of cinema’s greatest moments, just you wait!
You’re the fool! What good is all that ink on paper when you miss the vocal range to make it come alive. And props! Don’t forget the props! You’ll come crawling to my mountain encased warehouse full of props, I say!
Of course… I’ve been collecting treasured works of art and culture, when I should have been hoarding authentic screen-used Hollywood memorabilia and officially-licensed tie-in merchandise - the true paragons of human invention! Damn you! Damn you, and your citadel of props!
In truth though what an amazing concept for a post apocalyptic legacy drama??
It sounds a lot like Station Eleven
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot
😉 the free market has decided
Realistically what kind of set up do people have.
Do they spend hundreds on hardrives (I guess two copies?) then just download TV shows and dvds individually, in bulk, and slowly work their way through?
deleted by creator
People that self host.
Never mind then.
There’s a few different things people do but the most common thing is to run a stack of the “servarrs”. These are services that automatically find, track, and download movies and shows. Mostly this is on request. You get various search interfaces to find stuff that’s out there in the TV world or the movie world or the music world, you request it, and your server uses bittorrent or usenet or both to download the parts that it needs. Then it’s held on a hard drive until you watch it, at your leisure, and keep it or delete it.
I think peoples’ preferences for how long they keep things and how they find new things to watch are very personal, but the stack gives you almost too much flexibility about it.
Since you mentioned cost, this will usually run to a few hundred dollars for hardware (including the drives), but I think you could scrape together something barebones for less than a hundred and barely notice the difference.