Re: Want to Annoy a Colleague? (running Windows)
By: Nightfox to Knight on Wed Oct 22 2014 09:37 pm
I briefly subscribed to NetFlix for a few months last year with the intent of using NetFlix as an alternative to renting hard-copy movies from RedBox. However, I found out that NetFlix doesn't get movies at the same time as movies are released on DVD/Blu-Ray; NetFlix also didn't have much other content that I was interested in watching - at least, not enough to get me to continue subscribing on a monthly basis.
Yeah, NetFlix isn't for everyone. I've been a subscriber for as long as I can remember. At least 12 years. Maybe longer? I fluctuated between the 3 and 5 disc at a time programs, and then a couple of years ago dropped down to streaming only, when I realized that I was not returning my discs and using the
mail service.
I find that they have a good repository of older things, and a lot of documentaries. Certainly not a lot of new post-theater content. They are shining right now in their own productions (Orange is the New Black, House of Cards, etc -- see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_original_programs_distributed_by_Netflix).
That's one of the things that keeps me around.
I ended up subscribing for Amazon Prime though. Amazon Prime has had a few TV shows on it that I've watched, as well as an occasional movie. One nice thing about Amazon Prime is that it also includes free 2-day shipping on many items from Amazon. I tend to shop at Amazon every now and then, so
for me, I think Amazon Prime is more worth it than NetFlix.
I'm also a heavy Amazon Prime user. I have added family and friends to my prime
as well, so that they get the perks. I order a lot of things from Amazon because I've grown to trust their quality, customer service, and of course 2-day shipping. Surprisingly I've even used the $1 credits for turning down the
shipping speed lately for stuff I don't urgently need.
I do use the Amazon Instant Video, but I don't really feel like they have as much to offer as NetFlix. They do have some shows that NetFlix doesn't, but it's not that comprehensive (yet).
I also have Hulu. I use to use Hulu a lot, and then canceled it because I thought it wasn't something I wanted or needed once I signed up for cable TV again. But I found myself wanting to watch the Criterion collection movies again, so I signed back up.
Beteen NetFlix, Amazon, Hulu, YouTube, and Xfinity, I have pretty much everything I want to watch at my fingertips... minus all that cash that could be lining my wallet :P
I'm similar in that there are many movies I probably wouldn't watch more than once, but there are some movies I'd like to have in my collection so I can watch them again. Also, besides movies, I think concert videos are
good to collect on DVD/blu-ray, particularly since streaming media services don't seem to carry concerts. I have several concerts from various artists on Blu-Ray & DVD which I like to watch occasionally. There's also
Animusic, which produces computer-animated music videos, and they have a
few collections out on DVD/Blu-Ray which are fairly cool. So far they've released 2 DVD collections and one blu-ray with high-definition versions of their popular videos, and they're currently working on a 3rd collection (which has been delayed for over a year).
Yeah, I use to collect. I did some work on MythTV years ago, and was big into home theater PCs run on Windows/Linux, with distributed nodes throughout the home. But it got a little exhausting. I don't even miss it now. I save on my electricity bill, and I have all that time back from ripping content. I remember when it took a whole day to rip a DVD. What a pain in the butt!
There's a paid concert streaming service, that I trialed for a week. It was nice. I didn't sign up because I don't watch enough concerts to pay for such a thing.
Animusic, right... I saw that stuff demoing at Fry's Electronics quite a few times. Pretty fun to watch.
Yeah, I think both can be said about Apple. Sometimes I question their decisions all around. I also remember when Apple updated the notification system in iOS to be more like Android's, so that a system notification
would be less conspicuous so as not to interrupt what you're currently
doing - using a pull-down menu, I believe, rather than pop-up
notifications.
Yeah, Google and Apple take turns borrowing from each other. I think that's just how progress works. I know some fanboys on either side of the fence like to get angry about it, but I don't care. I think the steep competition is really good for us, the consumers, in the end. We will have better products with each iteration when it's like that.
Both companies also have a bit of a shady/dark side to them, but ultimately I think they are both doing some good too.
At least Apple is still selling external optical drives. I suppose it
makes some sense - Apple recognized what people were doing with their computers and thought it would make sense to remove the built-in optical drive to make way for something else. However I'm not sure if Apple replaced the optical drive with something else in their systems, did they?
No, I think they just realized that since these things are getting thinner and thinner, the disc drives were just eating up a sizable amount of space in the laptops, and since most people don't really use them that often, it made sense to yank it and spread out the components more easily, and perhaps add more battery. Thinking about this makes me wonder if there's some form of metric that system designers came up with to describe the value per inch (VPI)... i.e.
how many inches does this component take up vs. the value it provides the end user. I know I'd much rather have extra memory, extra disk, and extra battery over a disc drive I rarely (if ever) used.
For laptops, I've seen some laptops from other manufacturers that have an option to install a 2nd hard drive in place of an optical drive (and I've even seen laptops that have 2 hard drives in addition to an optical drive - something I don't think Apple has ever offered).
Yeah, that's awesome. I don't think Apple ever offered that either. I think you
are right about that.
I recently bought a new laptop and did something similar - The manufacturer (Lenovo) had an option to include a 2nd hard drive in place of an optical drive, and considering my usage, I opted to get the 2nd hard drive instead of the optical drive. I did buy an external USB blu-ray drive though, just in case I'd want to access an optical disc with the laptop.
Nice! Yes, two drives in a laptop is quite a thrilling thing. It makes it desktop class in a lot of ways. No longer do you have to choose what you bring with you... take it all!!!
That's true. I've slowly been moving toward using external hard drives and USB flash media for backups. Somehow I still feel like an optical disc might be more reliable in the long run though.. I backed up my original
BBS to a CD-R disc in 2000 and was able to read it just fine 7 years later. I'm not sure if an external hard drive would last that long - I've seen external hard drives start to fail (making clicking noises and being inaccessible) after just a couple years. Maybe an external solid-state drive would be more reliable.
You are right. Disc media would last a hell of a lot longer for archiving than hard drives would. And SSDs actually require a tiny bit of power (there's an internal battery) to keep the state of the contents in memory active. So while their aren't moving parts, I bet it doesn't have a very long shelf life.
For those reasons, I still like to buy music on CD - Then I can rip it to whatever format I want. Also, I like having the original CD audio, which
is not in a compressed format. Many times, music that is sold as an online download is in MP3 format, which is lossy, and I don't want to have my
music only in a lossy format. I have ripped all of my music CDs to FLAC (lossless) and MP3 format, and I do the same to new music CDs I buy. Then, when I want to listen to it, I have the files right there, and if I ever lose the files somehow, I still have the CDs.
Totally true. The streamed MP3s and downloaded MP3s are always compressed, and rarely can you find lossless for sale. There was a time that I really cared about this too. I had nice home audio gear (not exactly TOP of the line, but close), and hunted for lossless audio on the net and stored it on a central server at home, etc. But, I'd be lying to myself if I could tell the difference
between a lossless track and a 320kb MP3. As much as I love the idea of what being an audiophile is and appreciating sound for it's raw beauty, I don't have
the ability to discern it.
I can probably tell you what variety of grapes were used to make a random glass
of red wine though :)
:) If movies ever do get sold on USB flash drives, I suppose we'd have those lying around. Either that or external hard drives to deal with as we back up our media. :)
That would be cool! Stacks of thumbdrives. I wonder if we could override the contents should we get tired of an artist and put our favorite Linux install media on them ;)
Knight
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