If I had the capital, I’d mirror git repos, anna’s archives, libgen, scihub, Wikipedias, torrents, usenet, sketches, websites, portfolios, archive.org, minerva, etc. etc…
It is precisely capitalist oppressions that I haven’t been able to “download everything.” Otherwise I would, and then some.

I’ve been wanting to make a collection, but ironically now as storage solutions are becoming more expensive I’m between a rock and a hard place. I could spend the stupid prices for more hard drive space and then grab more. Alternatively I could take some existing smaller hard drives and use them for storage.

If I hadn’t gotten laid off last month I likely would have just expanded while things are still (relatively) affordable. But idk now. I might just stretch things where I can and hope that the bubble pops sooner rather than later

Right now my idea is to store things i find that are more niche or less likely to be shared in the future and i’ll cycle things that are more popular or that will stand the test of time

I don’t have much time to watch, but when I do I do it on the TV, and streaming on the TV from some random website is extremely difficult to pull off because you only have a shitty browser and the remote control, just to make it full screen is almost impossible without a mouse and keyboard, let alone browsing.

So that is why I use Jellyfin which has a lot of life quality features but needs downloaded files.

I do. Streaming sites (official or pirate) can still remove content or go offline all together. Also the pirate sites often have low quality.

With downloading I have full control over everything. And the collecting itself is fun, too!

The only real downside is HDD/hardware prices.

I still grab everything and cold storage older/unwatched stuff onto blurays and this stack of ancient hdds i got from work. Seeing as space is so expensive now, I can see your view and would probably be taking that if I didn’t already have a huge pool before the rampocalypse.

After years of streaming sites, you get tired of the churn. It’s only natural that most only last a year or two. Who’s paying for the infrastructure? The users just want to view streams with no payment and no ads, so the provider is just paying out of pocket. That doesn’t last long.

Torrents are maintained by a community, that you can contribute to yourself. It’s just more sustainable.

i do, my network sucks so there’s the occasional buffering + streamed videos usually seem to have terrible quality/watermarks etc. also the ability to use custom subtitles (in my native lang and not english) is useful

For maybe a 1 off thing, like a singular episode of a show, absolutely going to stream it rather than download the whole series and then not watch the rest.

Though, I typically like having all my shows/movies available with or without internet if possible. So I think you can easoly figure out my stance.

I like the idea of still have everything available if I ever move somewhere without access to internet. It actually happened to me once temporarily last time I moved, for a few months I only had internet on my phone.

I don’t stream anything. If I want to watch something, I will download it. The downloads for the shows I watch are all automated so I don’t have to do anything except click play.

When I go on a trip, I just load up my laptop and phone with whatever I want to watch. That way I don’t have to deal with an unreliable or non existent internet connection. Good luck streaming anything over the WiFi in an airplane. There’s barely enough bandwidth for audio unless they have Starlink.

I buy physical discs for the stuff I really care, Steam for digital-only games, streaming and piracy for everything else.

When you stream you’re still downloading. I prefer to have finer grain control over my buffer zone for when I’m offline.

Me I have an library of 55000 songs

I hoard media. I’m particular about my releases. I don’t want to stream some shady website that could disappear half way through a show.

I kept waiting to invest in more drives. Now I’m stuck with 4x4TB for the foreseeable future because replacing that raid array is brutal and even then I want to go bigger. Like the other commenter said, I’d like to be able to mirror big data sets.

I would if I could afford the storage. I’d download and archive every YouTube video I watch instead of streaming it. But I hoard and with like 20tb of collective storage, I’m still always moving things around.