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!).
Back in the physical media days, libraries also had movies and games. I copied some games that way. Back then a personal copy wasn’t considered piracy by law though
I did. A friend pitched in for a netflix account, back when they’d mail you a DVD or two at a time, and I’d keep a rotation coming in where is rip a disc and drop it back in the mail to await the next in the queue.
Then gamefly came around and I sure the same for PS2 games. 😎
Whats with the question + slop essay? This is a bot
Huh, this one didn’t give me an immediate revulsion reflex. What makes this one obvious? I sometimes write meandering comments myself so maybe the style of this one is a little close to home
Typically it’s very obvious to me and I can even tell apart some of the models that have a relatively distinct style
I had the Apex AD-5131, a 3 disc changer/player that was great for VCD and SVCD. Especially because you could go with a higher quality and go for multiple s/vcd’s and it would autochange to the next, so clever splitting meant a change of disc at a fadeout wipe.
… Yes.
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. 🤘
You can still do this with a library card.
I still do this with my library card :)
I’m building my Star Trek collection
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.
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 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.
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.
Can confirm. For years, my pt night job was working a video store for the free rentals to “make recommendations” to customers. I didn’t have time to watch them all, so I’d rip to watch later, then used certain sites to share. I usually made direct 1:1 copies bc my PC wasn’t well equipped to remix or transcode. Thankfully, I had a school nearby that would offer free used equipment instead of paying for disposal, so I often had extra computers in doing the work on my broadband connection 😅 (I think 1.5-3Mbs).
I did often burn to DVDs as a backup bc external HDDs were expensive and discs were cheap. I did this for years, often releasing online the Friday or Saturday before DVD releases Tuesdays. If only Plex existed back then haha.
an uncle did for me, the whole star wars saga (trilogy and prequels), i was too young back then
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.
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.
I’ve never pirated rentals before, but there was a guy who got busted at my work for the like. It was at the post office and he had been… borrowing(?) mail video rentals, taking them home and making copies. He would return them to the mail stream the next day. I’m not sure how the inspectors caught him, but it was rumored he bragged about having hundreds of shows and movies. He never even had a subscription lol.
