[api]

I wonder if Hollywood is so obsessed with DRM because they themselves are such f'ing pirates. The entire culture of Hollywood is around stealing (e.g. the endless so-and-so stole my script idea lawsuits) and defending oneself from having one's stuff stolen. Maybe they're projecting and imagining that everyone is constantly trying to steal everything.

As a normal movie and TV viewer I will always look for an option to rent, buy, or stream stuff because I like to support the production of stuff I like and because the time it takes to jank around with pirated crap is generally worth more than the cost of just paying. The only time I've turned to piracy in recent (post-broke-college-kid) memory is when something is literally unavailable by any other means. I suspect I'm typical.

DRM has zero effect on my behavior. If anything DRM encourages me to consider pirating because it adds pain and hassle. In the case of actual purchases (vs streaming and virtual renting) I really despise DRM since I purchased a copy and should be able to play it on any device I have and store it for posterity. I generally will not outright purchase DRMed content.

[zerocrates]

Since we're talking Hollywood, what's your success rate in being able to buy movies that don't have DRM? I can't think of any way to do that, really. Or are you saying that you basically can't, and therefore don't buy movies and instead stream or rent?

[__david__]

Physical media has DRM but it's pretty much completely cracked. I can rip Blurays and even UHD Blurays now and end up with a non-drm-ed movie. It's not nearly as convenient as streaming (initially) but I can "own" the movie in a non-drm-ed form for as long as I can keep the bits alive.

[colejohnson66]

How can you rip UHD (4K) movies? MakeMKV doesn’t support them last I used it (a month ago)

[__david__]

MakeMKV does support them, but you need a UHD drive with specific firmware. On the forums you can figure out which drive will work the best and which is the easiest to flash old firmware on. Either way requires a hacked firmware updater because the drive makers have to give it their best shot to avoid downgrades (to satisfy DRM licenses).

Also you can decide between old stock firmware or new firmware that has been modified by the MakeMKV team. I opted for the old stock firmware, I'm not really sure what the modified firmware buys you.

It seemed overwhelming at first, but after an hour of reading and searching on Amazon I figured out what the easiest route was. Once the drive arrived, the flashing was simple—I plugged the drive into my Windows box and ran the flashing code, then plugged it into my Linux Plex server and it worked right away.

[api]

Music yes, movies no... you are right. That's why I don't buy many movies.