1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,000 What I'm about to show you isn't exactly legal, 2 00:00:03,000 --> 00:00:07,880 but legal doesn't necessarily mean something is right anyway, does it? 3 00:00:07,880 --> 00:00:11,720 It's legal to raise my subscription fees whenever they want. 4 00:00:11,720 --> 00:00:15,160 It's legal for them to control how I use my own account 5 00:00:15,160 --> 00:00:19,960 and the media I paid for. It's legal for them to keep showing me ads 6 00:00:19,960 --> 00:00:22,960 and steal my data when I pay for the service, 7 00:00:22,960 --> 00:00:29,400 and it's even legal for them to take my money and disappear into the night with my media. 8 00:00:29,400 --> 00:00:32,600 Now piracy can be just taking things 9 00:00:32,600 --> 00:00:36,440 without paying for them, but sometimes it's a little more noble than that. 10 00:00:36,440 --> 00:00:40,640 Sometimes it's about taking control back from the powers that be, 11 00:00:40,640 --> 00:00:46,840 reasserting our right to own the things that we've paid for and use them however we please. 12 00:00:46,840 --> 00:00:51,400 So I beg you, look at this big movie studio exec, 13 00:00:51,400 --> 00:00:55,220 it's blurred so you won't have any ammunition for a DMCA takedown, but believe me when I say 14 00:00:55,220 --> 00:00:58,800 that it's your Blu-ray and I'm streaming it from my PC 15 00:00:58,800 --> 00:01:03,120 to my phone because I don't care about your rules. 16 00:01:03,120 --> 00:01:08,760 And guess what? I'm gonna take it one step further and show everyone watching how to do it. 17 00:01:08,760 --> 00:01:13,200 Who knows, if you have a tech savvy nephew or something, you might even get them to watch along 18 00:01:13,200 --> 00:01:16,580 and set it up for you. It truly is very convenient. 19 00:01:16,580 --> 00:01:21,800 Of course, as you know, creating video costs money though, so I can't tell your nephew anymore 20 00:01:21,800 --> 00:01:26,680 until we get through this message from our sponsor. To rip a Blu-ray, all you need is the disc, 21 00:01:26,720 --> 00:01:30,840 a compatible drive like this one from LG, we'll have a full list linked down below, 22 00:01:30,840 --> 00:01:34,560 and a computer or NAS with a lot of free storage space. 23 00:01:34,560 --> 00:01:40,320 Start by downloading and installing MakeMKV, an SDF tool flasher, as well as the custom firmware 24 00:01:40,320 --> 00:01:43,680 for your drive from the guide that will also have linked down below. 25 00:01:43,680 --> 00:01:48,140 Then use SDF tool to flash your drive by pointing it to the firmware you downloaded. 26 00:01:48,140 --> 00:01:51,880 Next, pop the disc in and use MakeMKV to back it up, 27 00:01:51,880 --> 00:01:55,360 making sure that you select decrypt video files. 28 00:01:55,360 --> 00:02:00,280 Hit okay, and in about an hour, you're gonna have a copy of your entire Blu-ray disc 29 00:02:00,280 --> 00:02:04,000 that is tucked safely away in your computer. And you're done. 30 00:02:04,000 --> 00:02:08,040 Well, sort of. You can play the full quality M2TS video 31 00:02:08,040 --> 00:02:12,040 that's usually found in the bdmv slash stream folder. 32 00:02:12,040 --> 00:02:16,200 The biggest one is gonna be your movie and the smaller ones are usually gonna be extras 33 00:02:16,200 --> 00:02:19,760 or special features. But if you want a more broadly compatible file 34 00:02:19,760 --> 00:02:24,680 that will play nicely with more devices, we recommend re-muxing or re-encoding your video. 35 00:02:24,680 --> 00:02:30,560 Remuxing means simply changing the container of the video file without altering the quality or size. 36 00:02:30,560 --> 00:02:35,160 If you go back a few steps, you can actually choose this option right in MakeMKV. 37 00:02:35,160 --> 00:02:41,380 This is a great choice, especially for discs that have playlist obfuscation as an anti-piracy measure, 38 00:02:41,380 --> 00:02:45,240 which could lead to glitches or your movie being split into chunks. 39 00:02:45,240 --> 00:02:48,800 Apparently, Lionsgate movies are notoriously bad for this. 40 00:02:48,800 --> 00:02:52,640 MakeMKV can attempt to load the Blu-ray menu in Java 41 00:02:52,640 --> 00:02:57,160 to help you sort which playlist holds the correct files to re-mux. 42 00:02:57,160 --> 00:03:01,680 But if you're having issues, there are resources that would prefer to remain anonymous, 43 00:03:01,680 --> 00:03:06,120 but that can be found with a quick Google search on a per movie basis. 44 00:03:06,120 --> 00:03:10,480 But if you want the whole disc on your drive, you can also use MKV tool next 45 00:03:10,480 --> 00:03:14,160 to convert specific files to MKV for your personal enjoyment. 46 00:03:14,160 --> 00:03:17,800 If you want both better compatibility and a smaller size, though, 47 00:03:17,800 --> 00:03:21,040 a full re-encode with Handbrake is the way to go. 48 00:03:21,040 --> 00:03:25,840 Re-encoding means fundamentally rearranging the ones and zeros of the media file 49 00:03:25,840 --> 00:03:31,640 in a matter that can shrink the video's size, but usually at the expense of some quality. 50 00:03:31,640 --> 00:03:36,800 To do this, open up Handbrake and drag the entire backed up folder into the window. 51 00:03:36,800 --> 00:03:40,920 Let it scan, and when it's done, use the dropdown menu to select the right video file 52 00:03:40,920 --> 00:03:44,280 or files. Look for the ones that are the proper length, 53 00:03:44,280 --> 00:03:49,000 then choose your export preset. This one is great for very high quality Ultra HD, 54 00:03:49,000 --> 00:03:52,200 but some of your devices might play better with HEVC. 55 00:03:52,200 --> 00:03:57,160 You'll have to play around with things a little bit to see what works for you, but here are some starter presets. 56 00:03:57,160 --> 00:04:01,620 There's a lot more to fine tune in here, like audio tracks, the ability to keep 57 00:04:01,620 --> 00:04:05,680 or remove certain languages of subtitles, or even burn them in. 58 00:04:05,680 --> 00:04:09,440 We'd also recommend changing the frame rate to same as source, and once you're done, 59 00:04:09,440 --> 00:04:14,680 you can hit go and wait anywhere from several minutes to several days, depending on your settings and hardware. 60 00:04:14,680 --> 00:04:17,680 Once everything's encoded up the way you like, you add it to your favorite 61 00:04:17,680 --> 00:04:22,120 self-hosted video streaming library, and that's it. You've got your own personal Netflix, 62 00:04:22,120 --> 00:04:26,680 one that can't be taken away from you and never goes up in price. 63 00:04:26,680 --> 00:04:30,520 But the simplicity of this whole process is a little deceptive. 64 00:04:30,520 --> 00:04:36,000 Before these user-friendly tools could be developed, a lot of hard work was done to break the encryption 65 00:04:36,000 --> 00:04:39,800 of Blu-ray disks and of the DVDs that came before them. 66 00:04:39,800 --> 00:04:45,280 But that wasn't always the case. The difficulty curve has actually gone very easy, 67 00:04:45,280 --> 00:04:50,920 very hard, back to very easy. So how about a fun little piracy history lesson? 68 00:04:50,920 --> 00:04:54,440 In the early 1980s, when CDs were unveiled to the world, 69 00:04:54,440 --> 00:04:59,840 hard drives for home computers were hovering around 10 megabytes of total capacity. 70 00:04:59,840 --> 00:05:03,520 To put that in perspective, it would take about this many hard drives 71 00:05:03,520 --> 00:05:06,560 to store a single CD album. 72 00:05:06,560 --> 00:05:09,580 Sony and Philips, the joint creators of the CD standard, 73 00:05:09,580 --> 00:05:15,000 didn't bother to write any form of copy protection into the specification because the pricing of CDs 74 00:05:15,040 --> 00:05:19,040 was so competitive compared to those hard drives. I mean, what are you gonna do? 75 00:05:19,040 --> 00:05:25,160 Spend a quarter million dollars on drives or just head to the local Sam Goody for a new $20 copy. 76 00:05:25,160 --> 00:05:28,560 But by the early 2000s, things had changed. 77 00:05:28,560 --> 00:05:32,040 CD burners had become commonplace in home computers 78 00:05:32,040 --> 00:05:38,480 and the price of storage had plummeted. That, combined with the adoption of compressed audio formats 79 00:05:38,480 --> 00:05:44,080 like MP3, the growth of broadband internet, and the rise of easy to use piracy networks 80 00:05:44,080 --> 00:05:47,700 like Napster took music sharing mainstream. 81 00:05:47,700 --> 00:05:52,960 By the time things really reached the masses, DVDs had already been a thing for about four years, 82 00:05:52,960 --> 00:05:57,900 but the makers had definitely learned at least some lessons from CDs. 83 00:05:57,900 --> 00:06:01,280 There were many restrictions built into the DVD specification 84 00:06:01,280 --> 00:06:04,360 that prevented duplication and piracy. 85 00:06:04,360 --> 00:06:10,480 However, they were relatively primitive and were ultimately defeated by brute force attacks. 86 00:06:10,480 --> 00:06:14,040 By the time most new PCs shipped with a DVD drive then, 87 00:06:14,040 --> 00:06:17,360 libraries that could decrypt DVDs were readily available. 88 00:06:17,360 --> 00:06:21,920 You just needed to know where to look. Blu-ray, on the other hand, took longer. 89 00:06:21,920 --> 00:06:26,920 The copy protection is vastly more sophisticated, even including the ability to revoke 90 00:06:26,920 --> 00:06:30,800 and issue new encryption keys through new disks. 91 00:06:30,800 --> 00:06:35,440 But the industry was also going up against much more powerful computers 92 00:06:35,440 --> 00:06:38,480 in the hands of much more experienced hackers. 93 00:06:38,480 --> 00:06:42,880 It's an arms race that the studios can't possibly hope to win in the long term. 94 00:06:42,880 --> 00:06:48,200 Speaking of long term, that's reason number one why we made this video and why we think 95 00:06:48,200 --> 00:06:53,040 you should be ripping your Blu-rays. Mass failure of entire generations of optical media 96 00:06:53,040 --> 00:06:57,520 is coming and it's coming really soon due to something called disk rot. 97 00:06:57,520 --> 00:07:00,740 Blu-rays actually have the shortest expected lifespan 98 00:07:00,740 --> 00:07:05,320 of any commercial disk format yet at only five to 20 years. 99 00:07:05,320 --> 00:07:08,720 And while hard drives and SSDs also fail, 100 00:07:08,720 --> 00:07:11,880 sometimes even faster, once you've backed up your disks, 101 00:07:11,880 --> 00:07:16,320 it's much easier to move that data around and back up your backups. 102 00:07:16,320 --> 00:07:22,160 Reason number two is video quality. Streaming services are absolutely a viable alternative 103 00:07:22,160 --> 00:07:27,600 to get convenient access to your media. But to hit their profit targets in a very competitive 104 00:07:27,600 --> 00:07:31,440 industry, they've made serious compromises to picture quality. 105 00:07:31,440 --> 00:07:36,080 A 4K Blu-ray can go as high as 144 megabit per second, 106 00:07:36,080 --> 00:07:40,320 whereas most streaming services are currently sitting under 20. 107 00:07:40,320 --> 00:07:46,920 Now, most of the time it's fine, but as TVs get bigger, or as you get to those 108 00:07:46,920 --> 00:07:50,080 ever more popular under exposed dark scenes, 109 00:07:50,080 --> 00:07:54,920 ugh, the lack of detail in the graininess can take you right out of the drama. 110 00:07:54,920 --> 00:08:00,480 And that's even ignoring the loss in audio quality. I get it, encoding efficiency has come a long way 111 00:08:00,480 --> 00:08:07,120 in the last decade, but no, it's not enough to make up for that sweet, sweet raw data. 112 00:08:07,120 --> 00:08:10,200 Number three, if you're buying your Blu-rays to rip, 113 00:08:10,200 --> 00:08:13,960 you will actually be better rewarding the movies that you actually like. 114 00:08:13,960 --> 00:08:20,280 And this one is probably the most important point. The best movies rarely have the best box office returns, 115 00:08:20,280 --> 00:08:25,120 but in the past, home sales have rewarded those filmmakers that took a risk 116 00:08:25,120 --> 00:08:28,720 and couldn't find an audience in the multiplexes of yesteryear. 117 00:08:28,720 --> 00:08:32,560 And at the time, the accepted wisdom was that a movie only really needed 118 00:08:32,560 --> 00:08:37,000 to double its reported budget to remain profitable. This is due to marketing budgets 119 00:08:37,000 --> 00:08:41,000 often matching that of production budgets, not to mention the fact that a theater 120 00:08:41,000 --> 00:08:45,640 takes a lot of the gross receipts. However, it's been suggested in recent years 121 00:08:45,640 --> 00:08:51,280 that to break even, the required box office target is now more like a factor of three or four 122 00:08:51,280 --> 00:08:55,880 as streaming services have cut a hole out of the post theater profits. 123 00:08:55,880 --> 00:08:59,680 Now, I sure as heck don't miss paying $30 for one movie, 124 00:08:59,680 --> 00:09:04,160 but it's also important to actually support the creators making the content you love 125 00:09:04,160 --> 00:09:08,120 if you ever want to see any more of it. As content creators ourselves, 126 00:09:08,120 --> 00:09:13,840 we rely on multiple means of supporting ourselves, ads, subscriptions, and the fine merchandise 127 00:09:13,840 --> 00:09:17,680 on lttstore.com, like the insert merch promo of the week here. 128 00:09:17,680 --> 00:09:22,360 Well, we'll have something that pops up. Anyway, I realized that my take on this stuff 129 00:09:22,360 --> 00:09:26,080 is a little more nuanced than the average editor is going to be able to process, 130 00:09:26,080 --> 00:09:29,360 but I'm definitely not anti-piracy. 131 00:09:29,360 --> 00:09:33,040 You do whatever lets you sleep at night. I've always said that. 132 00:09:33,040 --> 00:09:38,360 I just feel that it's my responsibility to paint the complete Corsair canvas. 133 00:09:38,360 --> 00:09:42,080 Studies have shown conflicting reports on the damages of copyright infringement 134 00:09:42,080 --> 00:09:45,640 on creative industries. For example, an EU study, 135 00:09:45,640 --> 00:09:48,880 often disproportionately cited by proponents of piracy, 136 00:09:48,880 --> 00:09:52,920 shows that video game sales actually go up as a result of piracy, 137 00:09:52,920 --> 00:09:59,560 presumably due to increased word of mouth. However, of 34 academically reviewed studies 138 00:09:59,560 --> 00:10:04,040 pertaining to piracy, 29 of them have found that online copyright infringement 139 00:10:04,040 --> 00:10:07,840 causes statistically significant harm to legitimate sales. 140 00:10:07,840 --> 00:10:11,480 Only five studies found no harm to legitimate sales. 141 00:10:11,480 --> 00:10:16,080 In fact, that same popular EU study that seems to validate game piracy 142 00:10:16,080 --> 00:10:20,200 showed that both the book and movie industries have suffered due to piracy, 143 00:10:20,200 --> 00:10:25,800 especially when it came to newer movies. So in this end game, corporately-driven society, 144 00:10:25,800 --> 00:10:31,720 we know that only your money speaks and divesting from the services that are proud to announce 145 00:10:31,720 --> 00:10:37,880 they now use only 30% machine judgment to greenlight their shows is a good first step, 146 00:10:37,880 --> 00:10:42,440 but you may also wish to invest in the things you want to see more of. 147 00:10:42,440 --> 00:10:45,800 It's also kind of fulfilling to own a piece of what you love. 148 00:10:45,800 --> 00:10:48,920 And yes, I unironically love Despicable Me. 149 00:10:48,920 --> 00:10:52,880 Deal with it. That's reason number four. Under the current state of digital laws, 150 00:10:52,880 --> 00:10:57,320 you don't own anything. You're more or less leasing the right to access the content 151 00:10:57,320 --> 00:11:01,560 and that applies even to digital purchases of full movies 152 00:11:01,560 --> 00:11:05,320 from services like Prime, Apple, or Google TV. 153 00:11:05,320 --> 00:11:08,520 When you read the terms of service, these platform holders reserve the right 154 00:11:08,520 --> 00:11:12,560 to revoke that access on a whim, huge L. 155 00:11:12,560 --> 00:11:18,160 I mean, luckily, most platforms that have tried this have faced a backlash so severe that they had to backtrack, 156 00:11:18,160 --> 00:11:23,160 but that is at best a temporary W and I wouldn't count on it to last. 157 00:11:23,160 --> 00:11:28,800 That last bit is a big part of why buying this stupid piece of plastic is so much better. 158 00:11:28,800 --> 00:11:33,520 Sony is not going to be able to enter your home and blend up your copy of Morbius, 159 00:11:33,520 --> 00:11:37,480 despite probably wishing that they could. Another big one is special features. 160 00:11:37,480 --> 00:11:42,040 The behind the scenes from the Lord of the Rings box set literally set one of our production guys 161 00:11:42,040 --> 00:11:46,440 who happens to be the one filming this video on his current career path. 162 00:11:46,440 --> 00:11:50,920 That stuff is dead on streaming platforms. I mean, yeah, some studios still produce short 163 00:11:50,920 --> 00:11:54,160 making of documentaries about their films that autoplay as the credits roll, 164 00:11:54,160 --> 00:11:59,680 but they almost never feel as raw and plain awesome as the old ones. 165 00:11:59,680 --> 00:12:03,600 If you guys love sailing the forbidden seas, hey, give this video a thumbs up, 166 00:12:03,600 --> 00:12:08,920 and maybe if you're looking for something else to watch, go check out the one where we compared Plex and Jellyfin, 167 00:12:08,920 --> 00:12:12,080 a couple of the aforementioned personal Netflix services 168 00:12:12,080 --> 00:12:13,680 that we really love around here.