I am a grumpy old man
Image by InspiredImages from Pixabay
Some 10-20 years ago, it was standard practice to download games, movies, and music. The reason was simple, it was a lot easier and better than any commercial offer. Personally, I haven’t done any piracy download or torrents the past ten years. And the reason is just as simple; the commercial offerings became so good that it was a no-brainer to go fully legit. That, and the fact that I now had a steady income instead of being a dirt-poor student. But this weekend I got sick and tired when I was trying to buy a movie legit, but it was just not possible. I took me around 30 minutes until I had managed to get the movie to start on my iPad. It would have been way easier to just fire up a Torrent client like back in the days. And that is a bit sad in the year of the Lord 2023. It felt as if I had moved backwards.
With online music, I think as a customer that the services are very good indeed. Everything I want to listen to is on Spotify. I have rarely or never not been able to find what I was looking for. For the performers, it is a different story though, which obviously deserves a mention here. Games is also very easy to buy legit copies of online, unless we are talking older and retro games. They face a very real threat of ending up in digital oblivion. But the old games are also easy to handle if you have period correct hardware. There were no online servers or patches or anything, so if you have a copy of the (pre-internet-era) game, the probability that you can use it is quite high. Modern games on the other hand will likely become very problematic in a decade or two when they are removed from online services and the developers and publishers have gone bust. How will you buy such a game that no one owns anymore?
Movies is what have given me the most headache in recent years. Firstly, I want to be legit. I want to use my money to buy or rent a specific movie. It should be the easiest thing in the world. It is not. In some cases, it is even impossible. Try to watch James Cameron’s classic movie “The Abyss” if you don’t believe me. I think the only way to watch that movie today is to scout eBay for a physical 2nd hand copy on disc. Or to find it on a piracy site. A couple of weeks ago I wanted to see the first Transformers movie with my son. I spent quite some time finding a streaming service where it was available for rent, but finally I managed. By now it is becoming increasingly annoying that my movies are spread over several different streaming services. Back in the days, you had your VHS or DVD movies in a bookshelf. Sure, it took up a lot of space, but at least it couldn’t be more pedagogical to have all your stuff in one place. Let’s say my wife wants to watch a movie that I own. She wouldn’t know where to find it unless I write some kind of document with my digital collection and provide proper logins. That’s just annoying.
Let’s say I want to buy a 4k UHD version in the original language. Forget it. We do not own a TV and thus we are not licensed to watch content in higher resolution than 1080p. I suppose they have some deals with the Smart TV manufacturers to block out all users of tablets and computers. I do have several relatively big 4k screens that could be nice to watch UHD movies on, if I was allowed. Ridiculous and stupid! It is also very rare for us to watch movies, so a subscription is out of the question. But even if I had a subscription, the chances are slim that I will find more than a fraction the movies I want to see. And I can’t subscribe to several services to watch a handful of movies per year. Buying or rental is a no-brainer.
This last weekend we wanted to watch Moana (2016). I found it on Apple TV with original language. But it seems as if I can only watch my purchased movies on my mac or my iPad. Not on Windows. Forget it. I want flexibility. Next stop YouTube. The movie is there, but however I tried - even with VPN – I couldn’t find it in original audio. Only the dubbed version, which I despise. Finally, I found it on Prime and pulled the trigger. English audio and subtitles and watchable on any device – except in 4k UHD of course. Back to the iPad, trying to start the movie. “You are not allowed to watch this content”. Aarrrgh, my patience is running out now. Finally, I figured out that even though I clicked on the link to the movie I had just purchased in Chrome, the movie opened in the Prime Video app. Which my wife had logged into… and that’s why I could not see the movie until I logged out and back in again. I knew exactly what I wanted but had to spend 30 minutes.
Why does it have to be so damn complex to watch a movie legit?! Maybe this is the reason I rarely watch movies nowadays. Sometimes I really miss the “piracy noughties”. Or even the VHS rental. It would probably be faster for me to drive to a video rental, rent a physical copy and go back home and watch the movie, than to find a streaming service that provide what I want. I guess I have now become a grumpy old man that is complaining about how things used to be better. Good night.