Your Strategy? (1 Viewer)

[Charles 22]

This is a thread to see what strategies are for dealing with your desired disc empire of sorts. Nobody has to agree or please me, but I think what you'll find here is some variations you may be able to apply to your current technique. Here is mine.

I'll agree, mine isn't the best, because if I had amazon next door, and they rented, that would be far be the best opening stage, perhaps just for your recon efforts, but in my case it would often be my entire attack, because I often keep discs just to make screencaps of them, so at least half of them I couldn't care about them any more after I have done that. So, we all know having an amazon that rents next door is pie-in-the-sky, and while I do have a VERY good disc outlet, where I end up selling them, it's so far away and their rental period so miniscule, it's a joke to think I can get screencaps off in time to more than 1-2 seasons per trip. So here comes my reality. (If only such places would let you rent for a MONTH!)

The overwhelming bulk of my buying is from Amazon. For the most part, many are being saved awaiting a price drop. Many of my buys are movies that are used, and even a good number of my seasons bought are used. At first, just like with my cars, I would buy nothing but new, especially for seasons, but as time went on, I started seeing how used will often be in very good shape, so I can save quite a lot buying them. It's a bummer to get bad discs when you really dive down, but at least I am getting some little something out of it, even if it's just a photo or two.

What I look at my strategy being, is extended rental. Because of my great disc palace over here (no, no, not my house, the disc rental place), I'll never have trouble selling them, and though they give me pretty much bottom dollar (I can get 50% more if I put it into an account to buy their discs with, which are usually over-priced) I think it beats all the hassle of dealing with people not wanting to pay, etc, that you may encounter selling over the net, and I sure don't want to SHIP anything. If you're especially buying more used stuff, you're not going to make a killing anyway, so I forfeit extra bucks to make things more easy. The idea is that every year, I will gather up a pile of those I no longer want and sell them to those guys, and get cash in return. So what it amounts to overall, is my paying a fairly high price for renting them as long as I want. The last two times I sold a pile, they had to write me a check I broke them so bad.

I just don't see any value whatsoever in accumulating discs that supposedly impresses people (I think most people think you are ill when they see it quite frankly, just like if you had a large "collection" of comic books - just not as bad), as I have hardly anybody to impress if I believed that. My intentions are to stock up as little as possible when some day I basically give most of this all up. That may mean I will end up with maybe no more than two hundred seasons of tv altogether. I have been building an empire recently, as selling is overdue, and I'm somewhere in the 460 seasons range and still buying, I think last time I sold it was like 200 altogether, mostly seasons and a few movies. Movies I don't care about as much, so in the end I may be keeping no more than twenty-five movies.

Also, I am getting rather stuckup about buying BD only. I mean, there's clearer picture most likely over here, and just ordinary over there. You just usually have more reason to enjoy the better. It's sort of the same story for accumulating I think, where you get a certain degree that seems to fit your desire, and that sort of just spurns on more buying, as if more will make you happier. Having a substantial amount in BDs, maybe 100-200 seasons worth, you finally get enough of them where getting something in only DVD is a disappointment. Sure, if The New Lassie is only available on DVD (I realize that's not a killer title and I put it in there as almost a joke, but when you're enchanted with Dee Wallace as I am, you do want it pretty bad) I'll probably settle for it with a decent price, but that's only because I'm very confident it will never see BD, let alone me ever being able to even buy a copy from amazon (I believe it's an Aussie product).

Time Tunnel devotees for example, it's on dvd, though I owned it once, if you don't have it, do you keep waiting for the BD edition? Because unless you're REALLY keyed up and just have to have it, it certainly in the long run could be a better strategy to wait for it's BD, especially if you're getting sort of stuckup about BD like I am. I have the exact dilemma going for me now with The Saint series. It seems to be not priced too terribly well for such dvd that has been around quite a while, and you have to wonder if BD isn't just around the corner. I mean, I have done without the series for decades, and have plenty of stuff to occupy viewing time, even if it's stuff I've seen, and it's probably not all that great (of course, I have seen it on tv quite a few times).

I think my strategy is probably quite unique, if for no more reason than most people may not have such easy access to selling with no effort, but there's so much more than can be weighed in this journey, so tell us all your past, current, and any possible future strategies that might sound intriguing.

If any recording people see this thread (and yes, recording onto a disc IS a physical media, It's just homemade media you might say)), do chime in, because while I am now recording quite a lot from METV, I would like to know any strategies involving that sort of thing too. I never bother with Hulu, etc, but I am keen on possibly going with Amazon Prime, since I can get quite a lot of streaming and hopefully being able to record it (I've dabbled in that a little bit - very little with other services). I run an OTA setup, so I have no access to cable channels, etc. I'm curious though, does Amazon prime have any company stamps on the streaming? I wanted to jump on amazon to get Gilligan's Island in 1080p (afterwards found I could get it cheaper elsewhere) and then METV started running it 1080p. Assuming my METV recordings come out great, I'll withstand the logo, and then it might be my greatest means of getting stuff in HD (if only I can buy enough hard drives before I'm done with the data!). The hard drive is close to filling up now, so I'll know pretty soon.

Oh, this is funny to me. We have people who realize their library of discs is getting out of control, but "if" METV is working real well for me, and I wanted to record everything I wanted, I would have a too many discs space problem of another sort (hard drives). And the best thing, should people see my "collection" they wouldn't, because it's all in a closet on a full hard drive. You have to keep an eye on those stealth collectors. Imagine you open a closet and a ton of hard drives comes dumping down on you.

Anyway, swing away.

 

[jcroy]

My current "strategy" if can be called that, turns out to be completely unrelated to watching the actual movies or tv shows on dvd discs.

One of my side interests is figuring out how the drm copy protection functions on dvd discs, especially the extra 'basketcase' drm schemes which made it difficult to rip/copy dvd discs. So most of the discs I've been buying over the past few years, involved looking for titles which are known to be encoded with extra basketcase drm. A lot of these turned out to be dvds from $5 dump bins, or the $1 bins at charity thrift shops (such as goodwill, etc ...).

I waste too much time googling + reading old threads about "sick" dvd discs which caused then-current ripping programs to deliberate crash and/or burned copied discs which didn't play properly on generic dvd players. So from such research, I keep a list of known dvd titles which had basketcase drm.

I spend too much time reading the *.ifo files of such "sick" dvd discs, to figure out how these extra basketcase drm schemes actually functioned and how/why did they cause ripper programs to crash. Nowadays I can almost immediately identify which basketcase schemes are being used.


(Bluray isn't as interesting, other than some of these same extra basketcase drm schemes being on steroids).

 

[Charles 22]

My current "strategy" if can be called that, turns out to be completely unrelated to watching the actual movies or tv shows on dvd discs.

One of my side interests is figuring out how the drm copy protection functions on dvd discs, especially the extra 'basketcase' drm schemes which made it difficult to rip/copy dvd discs. So most of the discs I've been buying over the past few years, involved looking for titles which are known to be encoded with extra basketcase drm. A lot of these turned out to be dvds from $5 dump bins, or the $1 bins at charity thrift shops (such as goodwill, etc ...).

I waste too much time googling + reading old threads about "sick" dvd discs which caused then-current ripping programs to deliberate crash and/or burned copied discs which didn't play properly on generic dvd players. So from such research, I keep a list of known dvd titles which had basketcase drm.

I spend too much time reading the *.ifo files of such "sick" dvd discs, to figure out how these extra basketcase drm schemes actually functioned and how/why did they cause ripper programs to crash. Nowadays I can almost immediately identify which basketcase schemes are being used.


(Bluray isn't as interesting, other than some of these same extra basketcase drm schemes being on steroids).

I'm not sure what you're saying exactly, but at times I will use DVDFab Passkey9 and it seems to take care of all my needs concerning that. It's extremely rare that a disc will keep me out while using it. Of course, that's talking only the computer BD player. It also makes all the discs region-free, even though I think my player is as well.

Also, I'm not sure what you mean by ripper programs, but to me that means stripping the disc so you can copy it to somewhere else. In my own case, none of that occurs. If it's doing it, I don't know, because they do offer programs that are formally rippers and copiers. That doesn't interest me really, as all I want to do is have the same access I have in the living room BD player, on my computer.

 

[jcroy]

My interest is entirely in figuring out the minutiae technical details. The actual copying is not my primary interest.

For example over the past year, I went through the details of the dvd's css encryption algorithm to understand why exactly it was a poorly designed algorithm which could be easily cracked with only 16 bits. (The actual css keys are 40-bit keys, but can be cracked with only 16 bits).

I rewrote the cracking algorithm code independently, to see whether I understood what exactly was going on.

 

[Charles 22]

My interest is entirely in figuring out the minutiae technical details. The actual copying is not my primary interest.

For example over the past year, I went through the details of the dvd's css encryption algorithm to understand why exactly it was a poorly designed algorithm which could be easily cracked with only 16 bits. (The actual css keys are 40-bit keys, but can be cracked with only 16 bits).

I rewrote the cracking algorithm code independently, to see whether I understood what exactly was going on.

I don't think you understood this thread. I raised it so we could talk about strategies to obtain disc data, primarily the best thing to get the common physical media such as dvd and BD, but also anything involving shooting data by other means to hard drive, etc. I understand deciphering can help in that, but this isn't just a general strategy thread, if that's what you're thinking.