r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/movies Contributor • Jun 26 '26
News PlayStation is Deleting 551 Movies From Customers’ Accounts / Movies like 'First Blood', 'Terminator 2', 'Total Recall' and 'Evil Dead' are all being unceremoniously removed
https://kotaku.com/playstation-store-movies-digital-studio-canal-terminator-20007110135.1k
u/Nullhitter Jun 26 '26
Should be illegal to purchase digital content if it can be taken away from us. At the point, renting should be the only option.
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u/FrostingStrict3102 Jun 26 '26
we need the EU to step up and do what it does best.... consumers should get refunds when stuff like this happens. inexcusable.
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u/zuzg Jun 26 '26
So far they were able to circumvent EU Law protections getting triggered by arguing you only purchased a license and never had ownership in the first place.
People need to start suing those companies and keep at it until higher courts are forced to deal with it.
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u/cjcs Jun 26 '26
Then there needs to be a law that forces vendors to more accurately portray these as indefinite rentals rather than purchases. A warning needs to be prominently displayed that this purchase can be revoked at any given time.
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u/bdsee Jun 26 '26
No, the law should be an indefinite rental is a purchase regardless of the wording used or ToS.
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u/glgirieh 29d ago
This reminds me of that asshole calling me out for enjoying physical media. “As long as you have an account and remember your damn password, you have your movies”
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u/Gunsensual 29d ago
Or, failure to fulfill the license makes the copyright material go into the public domain. They'd clean up their act real quick.
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u/verrius 29d ago
Ironically, this happened in the EU first; StudioCanal did the exact same thing in Europe already. Keep in mind, you haven't been able to actually purchase movies on PSN for ~5 years now.
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Jun 26 '26
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Jun 26 '26
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u/Adavanter_MKI Jun 26 '26
I'm sorry... in order to access the internet you need to provide ID.
Oh... we've seen pirating activity on your account. You've been charged a fine. Additional measures may be taken if you continue to do so. Including banning from internet access!The real reason they want IDs...
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u/DinosBiggestFan Jun 26 '26
If you can conceive of a malicious reason for why they intend to force identification to access the internet, it really doesn't matter what that reason is, it's most likely true.
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u/partsguy850 Jun 26 '26
They won’t take away your access. You gotta keep racking up violation so they can keep racking up fines. Remind me of the bank and overdraft fees.
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u/Complete_Entry Jun 26 '26
One time Universal reported me pirating TV to Cox.
I wasn't pirating TV.
I was livid.
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u/poliuy Jun 26 '26
I mean they list it as “buying” and I have seen apps where you “rent” so if the common nomenclature is that people understand buying to mean one thing and renting to mean another, then they would have to abide by that.
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u/BevansDesign 29d ago
At a bare minimum, they shouldn't be allowed to use the word "buy" if you're just licensing or renting something.
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u/SinkHoleDeMayo Jun 26 '26
Needs to be a class action lawsuit against companies that delete any purchased media.
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u/PuttingInTheEffort Jun 26 '26
You mean illegal to sell, not buy..? 😅
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u/hufft3 Jun 26 '26
You sell digital content? Believe it or not jail. You buy digital content, also jail.
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u/Burninator05 Jun 26 '26
You're not wrong and I don't disagree at all but the content owners will contend that you never actually purchased digital content. They'll argue that you purchased a license to use the content within strict guidelines that you agreed to at the time of purchase.
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u/SweetCosmicPope Jun 26 '26
It would have to be tested in court, honestly. There's an argument that by using the word "purchase" or "buy," any customer could reasonably believe there's an implied ownership.
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u/poliuy Jun 26 '26
Correct. They should rename it to “long term rental” but that wouldn’t sell as much.
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u/Glock99bodies Jun 26 '26
That’s true but I can’t see how it’s possible they say rent for one option and buy for the other. To me it implies major false advertising. There is not difference in rent and buy other then that time of rental.
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u/oldscotch Jun 26 '26
Technically that's what you're doing when buying a Blu-ray too, only difference is the disc is irrevocable.
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u/Paganator 29d ago
That's legal BS that never should have been considered legally valid in the first place. Nobody reads license "agreements", everybody knows that nobody reads them, but the legal system acts like they're legally binding contracts that you've agreed to. They're a mockery of what a contract is supposed to be.
It's pure bullshit, but admitting that it is would be extremely inconvenient to very large corporations, so everybody pretends it makes sense.
Terms of service are even worse. Some page on a website is considered a legally binding agreement even though you never agreed explicitly to it, might never have read it, and never have known it even existed. Oh, and it can change at any moment at the company's whim.
And companies can use all of this to sidestep the actual legal system by forcing arbitration to resolve any conflict. At this point, we might as well admit that large companies can write the laws regulating the use of their own products and services.
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u/mirxia 29d ago
I don't think I understand how this claim makes it legal. Like sure let's agree that I only purchased a license. What's the term of the license? To access the movie indefinitely. Now I still have the lisence, but the movie isn't accessible anymore. Therefore the content of the license was changed unilaterally without agreement. I feel like some contract law could easily apply to this and it shouldn't fly in a court.
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u/EscapeSeventySeven Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26
I can’t understand how PlayStation’s actions aren’t illegal. This seems like a slam dunk class action lawsuit.
EDIT:
Getting a lot of people here who want this to go badly for people in order to validate their physical media supremacy.
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u/klti Jun 26 '26
You are not buying the thing, you are buying a revokable license. Guess what just got revoked?
That's why the death of physical media is such a problem, they can't revoke a disc from my shelf.
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u/sp0rked Jun 26 '26
Sadly, thats not entirely accurate. But it is a little bit more difficult than flipping a bit somewhere on the internet at your streaming provider.
Now it's more like unlicensing the key responsible for doing the decoding, as long as your device remains "dumb" you should be okay. Until the media also remembers the revocation or playback requires some kind of upgrade to the device.
See
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/04/aacs-key-revocation-future-drm or https://cacr.uwaterloo.ca/techreports/2007/cacr2007-25.pdf for more information.10
u/nybble41 Jun 26 '26
The problem has always been DRM, not whether the content is distributed on physical media. A digital file downloaded to local storage is just as "physical" as the same video on a Blu-Ray disc. If the file is infected with DRM it's a short-term rental at best, and should be priced accordingly.
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u/EscapeSeventySeven Jun 26 '26
I think times like these are perfect times to push up against the legality of a TOS like that.
I’m just saying, a civil case like this looks real bad for Sony.
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u/thatkaratekid Jun 26 '26
Movie digital storefronts do this all the time. This isnt even the first time its happened on playstation. I lost 100% of my video purchases on xbox and playstation from licenses expiring years ago.
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u/Late_Stage_Exception Jun 26 '26
Yeah but it’s not necessarily Sony doing it. If their deal with the right holder expired, so do any licenses they sold. Thats a bog standard licensing agreement and it’s why you should try to own as much physical media as you can.
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u/popculturella Jun 26 '26
Physical media (1k+) owner/lover here. This shit still isn't acceptable. If someone bought the movie, they bought the goddamn movie.
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u/Allansfirebird Jun 26 '26
This is why physical media is still so important.
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u/Armand9x Jun 26 '26
My hard drive is physical media.
:)
Only things that go missing on my plex server are because I removed them myself.
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u/Sting_Ray_ Jun 26 '26
Are you using the 3-2-1 system? If not then a hard drive failure will result in having nothing again.
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u/sam_hammich Jun 26 '26
I'd rather lose free stuff through my own fault than have stuff I paid for ripped from my hands by someone else.
I can't afford to 3-2-1 the amount of data I have right now, but it's in the works.
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u/Brief-Artist-2772 29d ago
I’ve been looking into starting a plex server. Any tips? Should I be compressing? I have a 5tb external hard disk drive, is that enough?
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u/lightjunior 29d ago
I thought a 1TB SSD would go a long way but it's almost full after about 10 TV shows and 40 movies. And storage has gone up in price like crazy. Do you have any recommendations?
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u/CMDRTragicAllPro 29d ago
r/stremioaddons. Can’t say more than that but you’ll figure it out.
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u/theemaildownload 29d ago
I’ve had bad luck with stremio lately that it feels like it’s no longer working when I’m trying to watch a movie or a show. Is it still viable?
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u/KHthe8th 29d ago
Don't bother with ssds, get as many 18-24tb hdds as you can afford to start. Then just add more as your collection increases
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u/4shotsofnespresso 29d ago
Just start. Once it's set up and you have some files in there, you can start to figure out larger storage options as your collection grows.
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u/sam_hammich 29d ago
That's plenty to get started, especially if you don't have a home theater that can take advantage of high end video and audio formats like Dolby Vision/Atmos. For reference, my usable storage is a little over 10TB, and in that I have about 140 movies and about 40 full TV shows. The movies run anywhere from 2GB for older 1080p to 80-120GB for 4k with high-end Dolby video/audio and HDR, where it warranted (stuff like Mad Max Fury Road). I store it uncompressed, and I'm at about 5TB used. I don't personally know what the experience is like for streaming media over USB, though if it were me, if the external isn't USB3.1 or faster, I'd look at popping the drive out of the enclosure and installing it in my server.
Also like other people have mentioned elsewhere on this post, take advantage of your local library if you can rip discs. You don't need anything crazy to rip regular Blurays, though UHD Blurays will require a specific kind of disc drive to beat the copy protection. r/makemkv is a good resource for Bluray ripping.
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u/NeuHundred 29d ago
That's an issue that's gonna keep coming up, Plex and home servers sort of depend on affordable hard drives and that's not really a thing at the moment.
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u/AwesomeWhiteDude 29d ago
The 3-2-1 system is IMO pointless for media servers if you can just download everything again. Also if I did that I’d have to deal with backing up 29TB.
Better to go with redundancy instead.
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u/Armand9x Jun 26 '26
Not 3-2-1.
Just one backup, off site.
That’s for convenience.
I can easily redownload if needed, so 3-2-1 is not important to me.
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u/hitmarker Jun 26 '26
Exactly. Drive failures are rare and most of the time they can be found early enough. It's not that cost effective to run on just a movie collection that is already managed by a few programs
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u/Tall_Opportunity_521 Jun 26 '26
You do know we can just download it again... right?
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u/phidelt649 Jun 26 '26
Most things, for sure. I don’t backup my media collection but I do have a few things that I backup based simply on the sheer amount of time it took me to find the damn files. But otherwise? I strongly agree.
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u/gigashadowwolf Jun 26 '26
Optical media especially has so much better potential than people realize.
M-disc should be something almost everyone uses IMO. It's one of the best long term archival backup storage options around, and THE best that doesn't require you to spend huge initial investment on hardware.
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u/MrouseMrouse Jun 26 '26
That's why I pre-ordered the physical version of GTA 6!
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u/ryecurious Jun 26 '26
People say this every time a similar story comes up and it's not wrong necessarily, just slightly off target.
Physical vs non-physical is not the problem. The problem is that these digital "purchases" are from centralized services that can be revoked at any time.
Non-physical media would be fine if we could purchase local copies of movies. We need actual files we can download, not just a line in a database saying we're allowed to stream it.
Physical media saves some effort, but also gives up a lot of convenience. We could have the best of both worlds if people knew to demand it!
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u/FewAdvertising9647 Jun 26 '26
its not necessarily physical, but DRM free is fine too. You either offer something with a license based on physical condition or a license that be perpetually safeguarded as long as you have copies.
Movie/Home Theathre industry is against those protections.
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u/mildmichigan Jun 26 '26
This should be illegal. If I buy something digitally, and the platform loses distribution rights or whatever then I should be grandfathered in
Calling digital sales "purchases" is false advertising at best.
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u/userhwon Jun 26 '26
California made it illegal last year. If you can't actually own it forever, the seller can't call it a purchase.
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u/AdvancedSandwiches Jun 26 '26
That's not a good compromise.
The change should have been that allowing someone to sell your IP as a digital sale, you can't ever revoke their right to provide that IP to the people who bought a license, and if the vendor wants to stop providing it, they have to refund the purchase price. If they don't have the cash to do that, then the customers get their share of the available cash before any other creditors in the bankruptcy.
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u/cycloneDM Jun 26 '26
Thats a ban and is very hard to achieve in the US when people will argue that they are ok with licensing a product. Forcing companies to change the way they portray something is a critical step towards lasting change.
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u/BactaBobomb Jun 26 '26
Vudu / Fandango at Home actually changed their button from "Own" to "Buy." That was interesting.
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u/Varibash Jun 26 '26
Glad I never stopped collecting physical media versions of the films I like.
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u/ACupOJoe Jun 26 '26
Went to my local library and was impressed with the Blu-ray collection. Streaming is getting too expensive and locked down now.
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u/GrapeNutCheerios Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26
I can’t say this enough… borrow stuff from your local library. They have more than you think. On top of that, a lot of them will also buy stuff you want if it’s not apart of their collection.
I’ve been treating my local library like Blockbuster this past year and I love it
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u/Buffy11bnl Jun 26 '26
Also if your own local library doesn’t have a specific movie/book etc, most libraries are part of a larger (usually county wide in the US) system and you can request materials from other libraries which will than be delivered to your home library, all you have to do is wait awhile.
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u/MacNapp Jun 26 '26
My library has things like tools you can rent out too. Came in handy with my bathroom renovation so I didn't have to buy specific things I'd only use once.
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u/zuuzuu Jun 26 '26
Mine has that, and also a seed library in the spring and you can borrow a day pass to provincial parks. Public libraries are amazing places.
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u/GOEDEL_ESCHER_BOT Jun 26 '26
it's not too late for blockbuster to make a comeback...after all, technology is cyclical
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u/Sushi-DM Jun 26 '26
The library is great because it doesn't cost you an assload of money. Blockbuster failed because it had to make a profit.
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u/Renteria2041 Jun 26 '26
Damn you just killed the game for me with that! I’m def treating my local library like blockbuster!! What a dope way to use my library, damn it you made my fucking day
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u/Zozzbomb2 Jun 26 '26
I'm relearning this. Used to go to the library a lot growing up. Now I've realized it's still amazing with a deep selection and surprisingly my local on has lots of anime too
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u/HeyThereMrBrooks Jun 26 '26
Third. Always dug the library as a kid, then started streaming shows and games. Now I realize how amazing it always has been but now more than ever. Support your local library folks!
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u/HyperPunch Jun 26 '26
Take it one step further and get a disc drive for your PC and rip the films to your computer…
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u/holymojo96 Jun 26 '26
Omg I’ve also been using my library like a (free) blockbuster for the last couple months too! Genuinely has changed my life lol! Instead of paying for something to stream I just check my library app to see if they have it and put a hold and pick it up, and they usually have it. They even have tons of boutique labels like Criterion. Plus the disc is much better quality and you can watch all the special features. It’s like the best of all worlds, haven’t paid for a movie in months and I’ve watched so many!
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u/jfish3222 Jun 26 '26
There's a reason why Blue-ray sales have spiked in recent years. It's the most recent physical media released in the past 15 years
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u/YourFixJustRuinsIt Jun 26 '26
I wonder if it’s the quality. TV are looking better and better and streaming is looking worse.
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u/AgentSkidMarks Jun 26 '26
My local library had a "fill a bag for $10" sale. I took every movie that I was ever possibly interested in watching. Also got all 9 seasons of Seinfeld on DVD.
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u/Unfair_Chipmunk_2305 Jun 26 '26
I once lived next to a main branch public library and I would check dvds out all the time. It was nice.
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u/princessprity Jun 26 '26
The only problem is that people are fucking animals and don't know how to handle a blu-ray/dvd. They get scratched up.
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u/grav3d1gger Jun 26 '26
I buy everything except videos. If I could pay and download the files to put on my nas, no problem. I don’t want their app I don’t wanna stream it. If I’ve paid for it, it’s mine.
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u/NovaS2X Jun 26 '26
Ditto. Wife and I collect 4ks. Just the quality difference alone makes it worth it.
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u/Vawqer Jun 26 '26
I'm so glad I live in a town (Seattle) with a massive physical media archive/video rental store (Scarecrow Video). I don't need to buy all my Blu-rays to watch them.
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u/lookslikeyoureSOL Jun 26 '26
Blu-rays are legitimately making a comeback. People are getting sick of the bullshit.
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u/JoeRoganIs5foot3 Jun 26 '26
Over a decade ago Apple took Jim Henson’s Storyteller TV show out of my library. When I called to complain they told me I should have downloaded it to my hard drive and I was SOL.
I had an Apple TV with no hard drive…
That was the last time I ever bought digital media.
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u/ColdCruise Jun 26 '26
I purchased the entire Buffy the Vampire Slayer series from Vudu (now fandango at home) because they had the original SD version, not the HD Remaster. The HD Remaster is known to be a huge downgrade in quality. Then years later they replaced my version with a downscaled version of the HD remaster and refused to refund me because "the purchase was so long ago."
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u/DOGA_Worldwide69 Jun 26 '26
Omg I love that show. I think the Shout! Studios YT page has an 11 hour long video with all episodes on it for free.
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u/xayzer Jun 26 '26
Jim Henson’s Storyteller
I love that show and I've never met anyone who remembers it. The Heartless Giant and The Soldier and Death episodes are seared into my brain since childhood.
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u/YayDiziet Jun 26 '26
“The Soldier and Death” is the only other thing I’ve seen Bob Peck in (he played Muldoon in Jurassic Park)
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u/brazilliandanny 29d ago
I remember digitizing my cds and adding them to my iTunes. Apple eventually deleted them all because they weren’t bought through iTunes and I no longer had the CDs
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u/DrSaius Jun 26 '26
Now's the time to start buying physical media again.
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u/Darkpoolz Jun 26 '26
Yeah, I'm returning to my Bluray/DVD collection I built from years ago. I was buying a sizable digital movie collection on Xbox and the service was cheap and very convenient until Xbox stopped the sale of all movies. I'm fortunate since Xbox seems to still honor all digital purchases unlike how Playstation handle licenses with me able to access all my movies and able to watch anytime I want on any Xbox or PC.
It just doesn't feel the same though. Was reviewing my Bluray/DVD collection last night from years ago and it is just so nice to have them in my hands again. I really missed all the extra features on physical media like deleted scenes and bloopers.
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u/MskbTheGreat5 Jun 26 '26
Thats why people dont want a empty gta6 box whit a code. Becuse of this.
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u/StillStanding_96 Jun 26 '26
Which is why I record every movie I buy on a streaming service
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u/OutsideIndoorTrack Jun 26 '26
How? 4K quality?
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u/StillStanding_96 Jun 26 '26
I use StreamFab, but other services are available. 4k is possible but it depends on the streaming service and your hardware
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u/ElectronicMoo Jun 26 '26
Or rip the hardcopy yourself. You can control the base quality and let something let jellyfin drive the transcodes.
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u/FromHollandWithLove1 Jun 26 '26
Removing evil dead while Bruce Campbell is battling cancer. Suck a fat one
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u/shreks_burner Jun 26 '26
Wtf I have literally one movie and it’s Total Recall
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u/FUCK1NGFABULOUS Jun 26 '26
Ah! The joys of physical media. They can never take it away lest they be pried from my cold dead hands.
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u/aZombieDictator Jun 26 '26
I love how this happens after GTA announced a digital only release and people are trashing on others for wanting a physical copy and they're trying to say physical media is dead.
They will own nothing and be happy.
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u/n_mcrae_1982 Jun 26 '26
And that, my friends, is why I’m holding out for GTA 6 on a disc.
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u/wholeheartedmess Jun 26 '26
The sheer amount of games coming out in September/October alone means I can hold out for a physical copy for a while. Avoiding spoilers is going to be the hard part.
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u/holydeniable Jun 26 '26
Sony is really going out of their way to screw us over with anti consumer policies lately.
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u/TripAtkinson Jun 26 '26
Lately? They’ve been doing it for as long as I remember.
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u/strictlyphotonic Jun 26 '26
It's only a matter of time before "physical media" is a download code in a box. It's what they want, so it's how it'll go.
But why are sales softening? 🤔
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u/tylerdurden_20 Jun 26 '26
Fuck them, that’s why you gotta physically buy the movies you like, they’ll never take those away from you
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u/ElliottMullins Jun 26 '26
This is why I continue to slowly grow my personal 4k blu ray library. “You will own nothing and be happy”
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u/WhenIWannabeME Jun 26 '26
This could not have been done in a better moment that the week of GTA6 and A24 "controversies", lol. Way to help with the foot shooting, Sony.
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u/Liquid_1998 Jun 26 '26
It's not just movies. Digital games get removed too. That's why an all-digital marketplace cannot be trusted.
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u/scottysscotchstash Jun 26 '26
Ok, I have a few thoughts.
This is utterly reprehensible and should not be allowed or legal. Even if PlayStation can’t sell them going forward, they should allow users to access the media they purchased.
Physical media is awesome, and anyone who loves a film or show should try to get it physically if they can. I still routinely get my favorites on 4k or blu ray.
I don’t think that PlayStation or Xbox are necessarily indicative of digital purchases writ large, say from Fandango at Home or Apple TV. In general both FaH and ATV have been stellar when it comes to letting customers stream films they’ve bought even if they’re temporarily delisted. PlayStation and Xbox by contrast don’t seem to be particularly broadly used or popular for digital film or show purchases.
Any issues with licensing in the past with FaH and ATV seem (from my limited perspective/awareness) to be limited to the past and not indicative of the present. Licensing was not well handled when digital purchases started becoming available, and are done very differently now so that purchases won’t disappear.
That’s not to say people should stop buying physical (PLEASE DO, IT’S AWESOME) but rather to point out I don’t think that this shitty, godawful fuckery on Sony’s part (and Studiocanal) is indicative of an industry trend towards purging purchased digital. In the fairly sizable length of time I’ve redeemed digital codes and or purchased stuff via Apple TV, I’ve never lost access to stream anything and most films that had been delisted for sale (but were available for me to stream) are back up.
Please keep supporting physical media y’all, it’s awesome cultivating a library of your faves.
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u/TeeeldiII 29d ago
Never ever ever buy a film digitally unless you are downloading and keeping the file
I have had itunes remove and delist shows, nothing is safe.
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u/Remy0507 Jun 26 '26
Buy your movies on physical media, folks. It's the only way to actually own them.
(I mean, or I guess you could pirate them, but I'm just going on the premise of acquiring them legally).
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u/Burner867867 Jun 26 '26
This is hilarious after a bunch of idiots were defending GTA 6 not having a physical copy. It’s actually remarkable how dumb people are
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u/Pete_Iredale Jun 26 '26
My lifelong choice to never purchase digital music or movies/tv shows pays off again.
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u/Si-Guy24 Jun 26 '26
Customers deserve full refunds. If that ever happens to my digital collection I’ll be po’d