Last June, fans of Comedy Central – the long-running channel behind beloved programmes such as The Daily Show and South Park – received an unwelcome surprise. Paramount Global, Comedy Central’s parent company, unceremoniously purged the vast repository of video content on the channel’s website, which dated back to the late 1990s.

  • @[email protected]
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    214 minutes ago

    The only way to watch the original Star Wars movies before George completely fucked with them is piracy.

    The 4K77, 80 and 83 editions are what you’re after. Enjoy. There are apparently reduced noise versions as well, but I thought it was perfect as is. It’s old. It’s supposed to have noise and grain. The desert scenes in the first one are really noisy and I’m not 100% sure why. Maybe he filmed those on cheaper film stock in smaller cameras, but that’s just a guess.

  • Chaotic Entropy
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    193 hours ago

    It’s going to be a fun historical period to look back on when there are just huge gaps where IP/product control became so powerful that no record of certain things were allowed to exist.

  • @[email protected]
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    598 hours ago

    This is why pirating is justified. If you want your shows to last forever, torrent them, and keep them seeded.

    • @[email protected]
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      52 hours ago

      I’ve looked around quite a bit for The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. No one seems to have the complete series. The show ran nightly for 30 years and amassed 6714 episodes so it would be quite a large torrent.

      • @[email protected]
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        26 minutes ago

        It’s likely that most episodes aired before the dawn of home video recording (early 80s) are completely lost media. NBC and other networks weren’t in the habit of archiving tape-to-air media.

        • @[email protected]
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          217 minutes ago

          Ahhhh this is an absolute tragedy. The same thing goes with many movies from the golden age of Hollywood. I love to watch these old films. It breaks my heart that so many are lost forever.

    • @el_abuelo
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      85 hours ago

      I wish this worked, but it only does for things that are popular.

      As it stands I think I’m just going to have to back up my entire media collection for fear of not being able to get a copy during retirement - when I plan to watch a shit tonne of TV.

  • @[email protected]
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    5610 hours ago

    Can’t keep archives of Saturday morning cartoons we all grew up with and loved; will sue you for keeping copies of them.

    Definitely ok to being three mile island back online for AI though, that’s the ticket to a better humanity!

    For real why has everyone with any kind of money gone psycho? Have the bad guys started winning even harder?

  • @[email protected]
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    11314 hours ago

    Used to be considered simply prudent to back up the vhs tapes you bought and people were encouraged to tape their favorite shows off the tv. Now some random CEO of the month has the right to bury decades worth of creative works?

    • @[email protected]
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      76 hours ago

      Backup vhs tapes? They put copy protections on those too, which made that difficult. In the 90s I had two VCRs, I ran the output of one to the input of the other to record duplicates. Some of the copy protection schemes would fuck with the signal or the tracking.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 hour ago

        I had a friend with a huge copied VHS library. He ordered his equipment from Germany. No macrovision on equipment there so his copies were very good.

        • @[email protected]
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          11 hour ago

          Was this in the US? Because then you had PAL vs NTSC, which is think would be an even bigger problem.

          • @[email protected]
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            146 minutes ago

            All US made VCR’s had a circuit in them called macrovision. Its what caused the distortion in the copies when the tape was recorded with it. The German units did not have this. He purchased them through friends who were in the military. They bought them from the base exchange or px I don’t remember which. As far as PAL and NTSC I’m pretty sure he had something to deal what that as well. The guy bought the second VCR in the state right behind some super rich guy. He still had it in the 90’s and it took up most of a fairly large table.

            Up until he died he made copies of everything he could get his hands on. He lived right on a county line and arranged it with his neighbor across the road in the other county to drop his netflix DVD’s in his mail box for pickup. He would get his DVD’s in the morning rip them and then put them in the neighbors mailbox before noon. It would be picked up that day and he would repeat the process. When he died I ended up with a huge amount of ripped DVD’s that I eventually gave to someone just to get them out of my way. I kinda regret that sometimes.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_Protection_System

      • @[email protected]
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        95 hours ago

        What a brilliant way to put it, “theft from the public domain”. I’m gonna have to remember that one.

      • Trailblazing Braille Taser
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        198 hours ago

        Yeah, there really should be some expectation of stewardship in exchange for absurd post-Disney copyright durations.

  • Gormadt
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    9214 hours ago

    Recent events with streaming services has really been the best argument for self hosting your own content

  • @[email protected]
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    5714 hours ago

    The more they delete, the more they can resell every few years as “new” while charging ever more exorbitant prices for!

  • @[email protected]
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    12 hours ago

    I’ve just realized there’s an animated series on Youtube, that I’ve had a really hard time (read: impossible) finding anywhere else, and if LEGO (yes, I’m talking about Ninjago) decides to delete these videos from their channels, the OG seasons are nowhere to ve found as far as I can tell. Yes, there are some cartoon streaming services but those are few in number and getting fewer, so I wouldn’t bet on them or any new ones that spring up having that content available in 5-10 years. And that’s worrying. Time to download all 15 seasons and store them somewhere! (oh shit, I don’t have enough space, do I)

    Edit: found them on a downloads site from the piracy megathread, but only Seasons 1-11. I’ll get them all soon enough.

    Edit 2: The first 11 seasons from that website come up to just over 105GB and I don’t have the space. Do I buy a 256GB USB/ Drive to store this at? I’m scared that I’m getting to the point of becoming a data hoarder. Not too long ago, I didn’t know what I’d do with my single 32GB USB, now I have added a 128GB one, and a 64GB Ventoy usb to the mix, and I still don’t have enough. Wtf?

    • @[email protected]
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      127 hours ago

      My brother in christ you have less than a TB of storage. you’re very far from being a hoarder.

      I still have my first 512GB HDD from when I was in high school and I’ve got over 32TB on my latest build, plus my archive of old drives I leave off until I need to access them. Join us, it’s better.

      • Lettuce eat lettuce
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        15 hours ago

        About to build my first really nice homelab NAS for Jellyfin, archiving, etc. targeting between 30-40TB if all goes well :)

    • @[email protected]
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      36 hours ago

      Don’t be scared. Embrace the data. Let it flow through the fiber optic cables and into your RAID array. Dew it!

      • @[email protected]
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        12 hours ago

        What’s a safe place to buy storage online? I’ve seen horror stories of an sd card in a drive enclosure, and modifying the storage to make it appear larger than it is.

    • @[email protected]
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      37 hours ago

      Do it. Buy an hdd, start to understand how to store the data safely, how to torrent and how to contribute to the community.

      You’ll learn a lot, and I am guessing that you are very young, all this knowledge will be very useful in the future. Every cent spent now, will multiply in the future

    • @[email protected]
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      1311 hours ago

      105 gigs is nothing, you can get a 1TB external drive for ~60$

      I’m getting to the point of becoming a data hoarder

      What’s wrong with that‽ Join us on the dark side (according to giant corporations anyways), we have milk and cookies!

    • @[email protected]
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      9 hours ago

      Storage is relatively cheap, and don’t stress becoming a data horder, added bonus, learning to manage it well is a nice skillset to develop… Looks over at the 700tb rack!

    • @[email protected]
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      912 hours ago

      You can have large amounts of storage without being a hoarder, tbh in this day and age its just prudent to have an offline DRM free copy of your favorite media

      If you have a bit of spare cash I can’t recommend building a NAS and setting up a jellyfin server enough, its really nice knowing that everything on it won’t disappear unless you will it

      • @[email protected]
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        12 hours ago

        If only. I’m a student living in student accommodation. I can’t set up a NAS because hosting things on the network is against their policy, and I also wouldn’t feel comfortable having that type of hardware in my room. And if electricity bills skyrocket because of me, I’ll be forced to pay them.

      • @[email protected]
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        310 hours ago

        You don’t even need much cash. An old N40L and four 250gb ssds will get you 750gb running Truenas and raid.

    • @[email protected]
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      311 hours ago

      You might be able to convert to hevc (x265) and trim it down by quite a bit.

      You will always lose a bit of quality converting though, even from 1080p to 1080p, but I consider it pretty acceptable for cartoons and things of that nature.

    • pezmaker
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      10 hours ago

      If you have an m.2 slot, 2tb drives are cheap and don’t worry about it for a while

      Edited: I originally absent mindedly said 2gb, meaning 2tb

      • @[email protected]
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        2 hours ago

        Are cheap

        Yeah, right. I know they’re cheaper than they were but they can’t be that cheap.

        finds a high-speed 2tb m.2 from Kingston (a brand I trust) for £120

        I stand corrected.

        • @[email protected]
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          18 minutes ago

          Do you have desktop or laptop?
          For desktop, I recommend getting an HDD for storage. They’re cheaper, I bought a 4tb Seagate Ironwolf for less than 100€.
          I also have a 1tb nvme, where I store things that require fast reads like my gaming collection while the system is installed in an SSD. (The parts were not bought at the same time). For laptop, you might want to stick to what you have inside and just get a good external USB. The usual brands are still good and I think prices have flatten across the industry.

  • kindenough
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    612 hours ago

    They will charge you again for the remake. So nice you have payed twice…