You should own the media you pay for!

 What's up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the PW Podcast. In this one, I am gonna share some things that have been just really bothering me, and I think it's a cautionary tale for some if you're not aware of these things. So let's get into this. I am talking about. Media and basically anything I guess that you actually don't own and may not realize this, and I'm not gonna list them off.

My point here is with, the huge rise in streaming services of all types, right? Audio books music videos. All the things, even games, right? You know what I'm talking about. You don't really own those, right? You may think you do and you pay probably a fortune for some of them, but you don't really own it.

And this is really starting to come back and bite people. And I'm just sick and tired of it, and this has been partly a project. A good excuse to use some of my old hardware, but also out of the frustration of, dang it, if I've paid for something, I darn well want to do with it what I'm entitled to, and it's mine, right?

So for example, I have stopped buying for the most part. Streaming videos, movies in particular, and I am going back to DVDs, not Blu-rays and I'll talk about that in a second, but I was surprised to see how many folks also doing the same thing. Going back to buying DVDs and CDs.

Now, it's not always possible with some things, of course, things like games and that you have to get 'em to a service. And even if you own the CD and you get the hard copy, they can still turn that game off. And we have seen examples of that. And again, it's, especially with games now, it's 70 US dollars for a game.

And the company still has the right to turn around and turn that game off and say, Hey, we are not gonna let you play that anymore. That, that to me is just wrong. And we've seen court cases in that. I'm not gonna get into it, but just wanna make you aware of that in case you didn't know. But when it comes to music and videos.

I am buying the hard copy. I'm going back to CDs. I am going back to DVDs now. I love Blu-ray, but I don't get that many Blu-rays because Blu-ray is another one where theoretically they can block you from watching it, even though you've brought the disc by way of some built-in DRM and some codes and hardware and all sorts of.

Wonderfully technical things that they don't really want you to know about. And so therefore, I go with DVDs now, that way I've got them, they're mine, and okay, it's a little bit of a level of frustration because I've gotta store them somewhere. I gotta go get it to watch it or listen to it, as opposed to, just push a button and there it is.

But that's part of the problem there. You are paying for the convenience. Of having it immediately available until it isn't. And I think that people forget that. For example, how many times have you gone to play one of your favorite music tracks and you discover that, hey, that's not the way I remember that.

And it could be because music service of your choice has chosen to replace it with a different version. Maybe it's the remastered version that sounds different and hey, artists are entitled to do that. I'm not saying they shouldn't, and sometimes remastering can be fantastic, but there are also times where artists will remaster something and change it.

And maybe you liked the old version. You are outta luck now unless you have the music CD with the old version. And just in general, this has really started to irk me. And so I am basically going back to, having the media. And controlling what I buy and it's mine, right?

Unless someone physically comes and takes that CD away from me or that DVD away from me, I've got it. And as opposed to just push of a button, even accidentally something in a library somewhere, it gets changed or removed. And this has happened to me. I have brought things on apple. I think it was a TV series.

I'm not gonna name which one, and it's basically not there anymore, but I bought it and now it's not there. Maybe it's a mistake, whatever the end result is, I can't watch what I paid for and I just have a very big problem with that and not singling. Apple out here is the only one. They all do it right.

And it's interesting to me, like I say, how many folks have said, yeah, I'm doing the same thing. I'm going back to that. Even to the fact that I've been looking at MP three players that are just MP three players, right? Very dumb devices that I can put the music on. And there it is. Not even, my iPhone, which I love, but, the convenience of having it there again, is.

It's under somebody else's control. And people, again, tend to forget this. Whereas if I've got a dumb MP three player I can put the tracks on there. And I'm the one controlling what version's on there and whether to take it off and so on and so forth. And I don't have to worry that some software update is going to block me from hearing those tracks.

Interestingly it brings me back to my favorite medium that I really wish was still a thing. Which was MiniDisc. That is why I loved the MiniDisc. I still have a MiniDisc player, but I don't have the discs and they are crazy expensive now. But one, AA battery in my MiniDisc player would go for, gosh, I don't know.

Far longer than any of the newer devices. I'm talking like weeks Anyway just a thing I wanted to share this week that I'm, I found myself going back to that, and I've also found myself going back to like I say, hosting my own services in-house on. An old, I say old, are very capable, but when it comes to years old gaming machine.

I, blew it away and put in some SSDs in there. And so they're on raid. So I don't have to worry that I've only got one copy of the media and it's lost forever. Again, it isn't technically lost forever 'cause I've still got the discs right. But I've put 'em on there and I'm using ZEMA OS on there, and I just spin up a service for what I need.

So whether it's video. Or audio documents, basically taking the cloud and bringing it home, which ties in very nicely with how I was talking in a previous episode about backing up your stuff remotely. Go check that out. It's in the history of the podcast, bringing the services in home, still having remote backups, but the service is run from my house where I need it most of the time.

And that way, again, I control that it's in my cloud, not the cloud controlled by somebody else. And yeah, I get it. You gotta be a bit of a tech person to a bit of a tech nerd, but it's getting a lot easier to do these things and set them up. In particular, I've tried quite a few and Zema Os was just so super easy to set up on a machine and make available on my network.

I think it's worth your time. And I, if nothing else, I want you to go away and think about. Do. What do I actually own? Or what am I relying on Somebody else who can throw a switch and turn me off, or just make it go away one day? Think about that for example, what if your Google account or your Apple account or whoever account was suddenly deactivated or you were banned from it or whatever, it was locked, or the service was down.

Even from just a genuine mistake that you've now gotta get corrected, which believe me, is not easy. But to get an account unlocked is crazy hard. And next thing you know is boom you don't even got access to any of that stuff anymore. So I wanted to share that with you all just to think about that.

And it's the same with software as well. Now, to a certain extent with this service model, which I don't have a problem with subscription models, but a lot more, my software is now becoming open source that I'm using, which may not have the best interface, may not have the best features.

I can not only look at every line of code, but it's under my control. And again, it's can't be locked out by somebody else. So I want you to think about those things. Love to hear what you think about it, reach out to me, PeterWitham.com to those of you that have been sharing your thoughts on recent episodes, thank you very much.

Great having those conversations with you. And that's it folks. Speak to you in the next one.