Streaming movie/TV site questions

[MathWizard]

I don't have much time to watch movies/TV, especially not new stuff that I've never seen before. But I like to put something on in the background, mainly well know and fairly well known stuff from the past 50yrs.

 I had amazon prime and 1 channel for a bit, but there's not really much there I wanted to watch, without paying a fortune for all the channels.

So is there a service where you only pay so much, but you can watch which ever movie you want, from just about any Studio ? Without rotation's and channels ?

And can you buy a digital copy, just like you would buy a digital video game ?

And say if I wanted to watch Star Trek TNG, then old Star Wars , then a LoTR movie, then some classic 80's movie....can I do that all in 1 place ? Does anyone besides Disney even have SW's these days ?? Does anyone besides Amazon have LoTR ??

I'd buy some more DVDs', but the sound of the DVD drive and DVD players, drives me up the wall.

[tszaboo]

Back in the 2010s it was all nice, everything was on Netflix. And then it went all downhill, and Hollywood started producing movies for 100 millions that have 1% community rating on rotten tomatoes. But since you want to watch Star Trek, it's either on Prime (at least it's on that here in EU) or Paramount+ maybe there.
Also, with Prime, I think there is something called Freevee that has a lot of 90s sci-fi but I think its also available for free? I'm now watching the Earth Final conflict (from Rodenberry) first season. I hear the others seasons are not very good.

[Shock]

Buy the DVDs and compress them to disk is probably the best way. For newer shows or something like the Starwars series the cheapest way is to sign up and binge watch them after several series complete. Most people would consider this morally ethical.

[james_s]

It used to be Netflix provided most of what you describe. Then everyone decided to get in on the streaming game and now fragmentation has pretty much ruined it. I gave up and set up my own Plex server that I use. I've bought a lot of my content on used DVDs and blurays that I rip myself. Sometimes it's faster to download something from a torrent than rip the disc yourself but the quality varies. You can also just do it the old fashioned way and pop a disc in a player but after being spoiled by the streaming experience this feels like a hassle.

[austfox]

Another one for buying DVDs. They are dirt cheap at 2nd-hand stores these days due to everyone disposing of their collection in favour of streaming.

Most dvd / blu-ray players allow attachment of a USB drive, so all the shows that I watch regularly (or like to have running in the background when I potter around), such as Corner Gas, Frasier, Seinfeld and Utopia, I rip as .mkv files and store them on a 2TB drive.

[tszaboo]

Buy the DVDs and compress them to disk is probably the best way. For newer shows or something like the Starwars series the cheapest way is to sign up and binge watch them after several series complete. Most people would consider this morally ethical.

I wouldn't subscribe to Disney if it was paying me to do that.
I don't take part in the deconstruction of legacy characters and the destruction of our values.

[Shock]

I wouldn't subscribe to Disney if it was paying me to do that.
I don't take part in the deconstruction of legacy characters and the destruction of our values.

Droid assistance please.