This was during the era before streaming services became the norm, when Netflix was still brand new, they actually started by sending physical discs before launching their streaming service existed. You rent a copy and a disc is sent to your home within a few days but there’s a written letter telling you have to return it by a certain date otherwise they’ll charge extra.
That copy isn’t yours to keep, so what ends up happening during those days were people using blank DVD’s alongside their PC and DVD burning software to pirate the content from movie rentals (also DVDrips existed, but those file sizes are massive during dial up internet being broken up into .VOB / .BUP in a folder or outright converted into an large .ISO file).
It was either DVDrip (.mkv) or literally copying onto a blank DVD. VCD’s are an alternative for compression but sacrifices quality as a CD is designed to hold music rather than video. DVD ripping software exists, but you need heaps of storage on PC to hold those ripped files whilst maintaining their metadata (subtitles, dubbing, dolby / surround) and the file sizes are large.
Even if you have the ripped files, you still needed software to play them (VLC media player) or any proper digital DVD player (as an .ISO file isn’t the same as an .mp4) but nowadays most discs have AACS 2.0 to avert piracy (especially 4K movies and Blu Ray, the file sizes for those are a joke to pirate as they’re over 50 GB in FILE SIZE! like WTF!).
No, but I did brag to my friends by sending them a picture of some movie that I was watching at the movie theatre. The picture, I took with my foldable phone’s VGA camera. Good shit. 🤘
Whats with the question + slop essay? This is a bot
an uncle did for me, the whole star wars saga (trilogy and prequels), i was too young back then
You can still do this with a library card.
I still do this with my library card :)
I’m building my Star Trek collection
Speaking for myself - generally, no. A couple of reasons why. Even “back then” (early 2000s), files could be downloaded from torrents as needed in glorious 360-480p lol. Locally, illegal movies were easy to obtain as burned DVDs from corner stores / under the counter. I still have bodgy copies of LOTR (obtained in Bali, iirc). My wife OTOH would indeed rent DVDs and burn copies but that was never a thing for me.
Honestly, the culture was different and we used to look forward to going to Blockbuster, Video Ezy etc. Browsing the shelves and actually watching stuff instead of “curating a collection”. The hire terms were pretty reasonable (7 days). You could hire something, watch it over the week, and return it. $10 for 2 weeklies and a new release meant a week of viewing.
I remember hiring box sets of 24, Firefly etc like this - never bothered to burn them because there was just too much friction. It’s not like now where I can drop a DVD into a dvd burner and have it automagically appear on my NAS and Jellyfin.
I do remember in the 80’s and 90’s though - we would hire Sega Master System games, unscrew the cartridge, swap out the PCB with one you owned locally (usually Alex the Kidd), return game to store (hires we strictly 1-3 days). That way you play for as long as needed, then “hire” the OG cart back and swap the PCBs back around.
Frankly in my opinion it was the value in Redbox, rent something for a buck, copy it, return the original.
I had a MythTV system with an Athlon 700 cpu around 2005 as a DVR and somehow it was a ripping machine.
Using MythTV’s built in encoder it could rip a standard feature length DVD to about 800MB in about 45 minutes, so I’ve got plenty of 2000’s DVDs from the local video store on file still. The process was basically, watch movie via MythTVs interface, leave DVD in, select “encode” from the menu in MythTV, and about 45 minutes later, done.
A few years earlier I was putting bulk Looney Tunes cartoons onto VCD for my children, pretty much wore our DVD player out with those discs haha.
I remember taping songs onto compact cassettes off the radio.
It was hard to push the record button at the right time to cut out the DJ or the previous song.
Then I had to cue up the tape to the exact place, ready to record the next song.
I remember renting PS2 games and then ripping them onto the PS2 HDD using HDD Advance onto my 40GB IDE drive.
Pirating VHS casettes was very common, but I think that pretty much died with the VHS format. Music CDs got ripped a fair bit until car stereos were able to play mp3 format from CDs and later USBs.
I don’t think rental DVD ripping was ever common, torrents were already popular by that time and it was easier (and often less issues with quality and formats) to just download already encoded movies.
Yes.
I Remember listening to my first mp3 even and being blown away by the sheer quality of a 128kb mp3 over low end sound blaster shitty output compared to home recorded tapes from radio …
My first CD-Rom burner paid itself, literally, within weeks. Best investment I even done. But after I covered the cost (400.000 lire) I only ever made backup copies of my preferred Linux ISOs for myself, too much perceived risk.
IME, rentals had shit quality, unless you were one of the first few people to rent that movie. Still watchable, mind you, but the software for ripping back then would hang on the mildest errors.
My guess was that most of the high quality torrents back then were ripped by people who bought or stole New-in-box discs, or employees at stores that rented or sold them, an don’t forget Screeners.
My mother was really into this. Got like a special DVD drive for her laptop that she could rip films off of discs with. Didn’t really seem like the type who would download a car
Star Wars: A New Hope and The Office UK. :3
