DVD and Blu Ray being discontinued?

philh wrote:
I moved all our media to digital 10 years ago. I have a 16T server to store our media.

That's all great but you have to either watch the same stuff over and over or plan in advance of what your family may want to watch while RV'ing. Is your 16T server in your RV?

We never know what we're doing any given night. If we feel like a movie we'll head over to a nearest Redbox etc. and rent a DVD. If DVD's are discontinued then what? Plan ahead and buy digital copy at higher cost than renting, copy to drive if legal and possible to do so and take with us. Don't see the newer technology being superior when it comes to it's application when RV'ing.

mileshuff wrote:

philh wrote:
I moved all our media to digital 10 years ago. I have a 16T server to store our media.

That's all great but you have to either watch the same stuff over and over or plan in advance of what your family may want to watch while RV'ing. Is your 16T server in your RV?

We never know what we're doing any given night. If we feel like a movie we'll head over to a nearest Redbox etc. and rent a DVD. If DVD's are discontinued then what? Plan ahead and buy digital copy at higher cost than renting, copy to drive if legal and possible to do so and take with us. Don't see the newer technology being superior when it comes to it's application when RV'ing.

Until Redbox rents thumb drives, I feel the same way.

We don't watch TV or movies while in our RV, we listen to music, read surf the web.... I have ripped a lot of DVDs over the years some I own and just want them easier to get too on the computer (I use plex to store moves from TV and that I own) because some we watch ever so many years and others are just in the que to watch and delete. Moves we have gotten from the library or rented, I try the to follow the intent of the law and store till we watch then delete. That all said I would say it is the opposite of what mileshuff found, maybe it is the type of movies he likes versus us but I would say less than 10% have copy protection. Most all DIsney DVDs for the last 10 years or so are protected.

Many different options for enjoying movies. I use them all with no hassle or inconvenience. Cheers


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mileshuff wrote:

philh wrote:
I moved all our media to digital 10 years ago. I have a 16T server to store our media.

That's all great but you have to either watch the same stuff over and over or plan in advance of what your family may want to watch while RV'ing. Is your 16T server in your RV?

We never know what we're doing any given night. If we feel like a movie we'll head over to a nearest Redbox etc. and rent a DVD. If DVD's are discontinued then what? Plan ahead and buy digital copy at higher cost than renting, copy to drive if legal and possible to do so and take with us. Don't see the newer technology being superior when it comes to it's application when RV'ing.

You ask an interesting question.

16T server is located in our park model trailer, and while we're in the park model, have it connected to a cell based hot spot. 16T is a LOT of music and video, more than I'll see in my lifetime.

After spending 3 months on the road, and I was carrying a 6T hard drive with stuff I figured we would watch. It did ok, but there were some holes in the plan. I'm going to change it up for the 5th wheel, and still working out the details. I'm thinking the hot spot will stay hooked to the server, and I'll use something else for hotspot, or just duplicate what is at the base camp.

I haven't decided if I'm going to carry the backup server, or get a smaller package.

My tech savvy solution. At home we use HDHOMERUN Prime boxes and rent 3 cable cards (Giving us 9 tuners) from FiOS/Frontier. I'll record multiple music genres, 30hours, then later transfer them on a few SD/Thumb cards. Same with TV shows & movies. Inside RV I'm using the Raspberry Pi running Kodi, Small DHCP router with GSM slot and another HDHOMERUN Prime box without cable card. Most parks we've stayed at offer digital TV service (Clear QAM) that the HDHR Prime box converts the signal. Running PVR HDHomeRun client inside Kodi. Best part, I can run everything off solar.

Well B$printervan, you got my attention.

What small GSM router are you using?

I have a love hate relationship with a kodi box. Software is a bit quirky and I have to adjust which program brings up which video files. Haven't found an audio program that will search my whole collection and play one genre. generally stream from my phone.

Also had an issue with the smart TV, I could not get the TV to feed the radio. After working with the 3rd purchased device, talked to a higher end tech guy, and the first question out of his mouth, is it a samsung tv, why yes it is. He said some samsung TVs will not play nice with fiber out through D/A convertor. They hadn't figured out why, and samsung was of no help

Teltonika RUT950-J GSM Router (Can be found on Amazon)

Your love, hate relationship with Kodi is likely hardware related, along with possible sketchy video addons. Additionally they updated to Python 3 that killed some addons .

Samsung started using their own proprietary **** for ARC, CEC, OS, 2013/14?.

Home setup-
LG smart tv (LG uses WebOS, it's compatible with RaspberryPi Kodi ARC/CEC) + RaspberryPi running libreelec kodi https://libreelec.tv/downloads_new/ CEC compatibility is critical for using the tv remote navigating Kodi. Simply attach RaspbeeryPi into TV's HDMI/ARC/CEC port.

I ran 100' HDMI cable (Monoprice) from TV to audio AVR cabinet. I'm only pushing audio/ARC through HDMI cable. Fiber/Toslink doesn't support surround sound.

Steaming from phone- I too have a nice collection of music like you, but now just stream from phone, Spotify mostly, they have higher bit rates. There's another RaspberryPi running Kodi headless that's dedicated for music with what's called a hat board from HiFi Berry, it's DAC soundcard for RaspberryPi's. RCA out to AVR.

Getting back to my van. I rarely use the GSM feature, I just wanted something with low power consumption that provided IP assignment. It's nice sitting outside streaming from either HDHOMERUN or SMB share on RPi.

Oh, speaking of Samsung TV's. That's what came with my van so I been using this "Wechip" remote for navigating Kodi. Comes with usb dongle, it's also found on Amazon. (Using same remotes on Win10 laptops) .

DVD/Blu-ray is not going anywhere in the near future. Movie/TV studios are still making billions $ in sales annually.

I still buy Blu-rays (BR), including upgrading the movies I most like to Blu-Ray 4K where available. Occasionally buy BR with foreign region-codes where they are not licensed for U.S. market.

Will buy DVD where steaming or other formats are not available. Primarily, for documentaries. In fact, searching for one DVD doc now featuring a pioneer in SciFi movies though appears no longer available. May have to resort to used copies selling for 3-4x the new price.

B$printervan wrote:
My tech savvy solution. At home we use HDHOMERUN Prime boxes and rent 3 cable cards (Giving us 9 tuners) from FiOS/Frontier. I'll record multiple music genres, 30hours, then later transfer them on a few SD/Thumb cards. Same with TV shows & movies. Inside RV I'm using the Raspberry Pi running Kodi, Small DHCP router with GSM slot and another HDHOMERUN Prime box without cable card. Most parks we've stayed at offer digital TV service (Clear QAM) that the HDHR Prime box converts the signal. Running PVR HDHomeRun client inside Kodi. Best part, I can run everything off solar.

Not familiar with any of that for streaming. I use a Synology NAS which has APPS to handle most any files or I write my own. Rather simple but works. Currently have 1T drives in it.