3-24-2026
One thing you'll come to know about me is that I hate streaming content from servers I don't own unless I can store the content myself. I've collected physical copies of music, TV shows, and movies I enjoy since I was young. Believe it or not you can find a lot of great content to store at home at thrift stores such as Goodwill or going online to places like eBay.
I buy a lot of albums on Tape, CD, and Vinyl and I rip them into digital copies manually, I then store the content on a server in my home and host a music and a TV server to view them. This gives me total owernship over the content I have. The best part about a physical copy is that you can hold it in your hand, you can make your own copies, you can lend it to a friend, you can share it. Streaming services are increasingly locking down on families sharing accounts on their services. A physical copy has no limit on who it can be shared with.
another benefit of physical copies of things is you can limit the technology needed to enjoy it when you feel like doing so. For example: lets say youre tired of using desktop computers and smartphones, you just want to listen to music. You can use a CD player that doesn't have anything other than just the technology needed to play the music and thats it. Same thing applies with a DVD player or VHS player.
years from now when there are no more storefronts to buy music other than indie/underground stuff on bandcamp, I will be prepared. It has already become a thing that movies and certain TV shows are behind a walled garden of a streaming platform. If you want to take back a little bit of that control and have some freedom over the content you purchase, consider hosting a Jellyfin server and ripping your own DVDs, get back in the habit of buying content on DVD/bluray instead of going through a streaming service, consider how important a show is to you that you need to stream it. There isn't that much time left to start, so you should start.