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by tombert 2794 days ago
In some fairness, buying the DVDs used on eBay for the first 10 seasons isn't terribly expensive. I got some of them as cheap as four dollars. I spent a few afternoons ripping all of them and adding them to my streaming server.

I realize that most people don't have streaming servers, but I think most of the people here probably have something that can read off a flash drive?
1 comments
PacifyFish 2794 days ago
As crazy as this feels to say, ordering a dvd and figuring out a way to consume it in this day and age is a huge ask! I haven’t had a DVD player in my house for about 6 years now & no CD-ROM drive in my laptop.

And, again I can hardly believe I’m saying this, it would be such a hassle to physically insert the disk when I felt like watching!

It’s got to be on HBO/Netflix/Hulu/Amazon or available on demand from my tv provider or I won’t watch it outside of theaters. Convenience has bested my better judgement shrugging emoticon

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Retric 2794 days ago
If the show is not worth inserting a DVD then it's probably not worth watching IMO.

PS: External DVD drives are ~25$.

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gutnor 2794 days ago
That's not the whole effort involved though.

You first need to either remember, or somehow get hints somewhere that the content exists.

Then you need to search it, in this case, first on all the streaming option.

Then you need to find it on a physical media, which means delivery. Each season of the Simpson is worth 1 to 2 months of Netflix. Watching all the episode is going to cost you the equivalent of 2 years of streaming across all the platforms you use.

Then you still need to go to the trouble of using the physical container. Which is not guaranteed to work even if you have the hardware. DVD DRM have not become more tolerant over the years and if you have older hardware you may not be able to use it at all.

This is some non negligible commitment, you really have to want to watch the Simpson or need a serious shortcut in some of those steps (eg: finding a pile of Simpsons DVD at goodwill). There is just too much competition for people time.

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darpa_escapee 2794 days ago
People drive to Redbox locations to rent DVDs from vending machines. I think you're overestimating the amount of effort it takes to buy DVDs on eBay.
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tombert 2794 days ago
I actually bought my DVD drive specifically for this Simpsons-project, but I've found it has been handy since then to have it lying around. Occasionally I have an old DOS game I want to play, or a more obscure CD that I want to rip, that I wouldn't have bothered with before, but now, why the hell not?
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