Turns out that ripping software doesn’t care about regions.

I’ve ripped both US and British DVD’s. These will only play in their respective DVD players (had region players before I started ripping).

Right?

I used Discord for about 15 minutes (OK, 6 months) before I could no longer tolerate it’s crappiness.

Don’t pay for Windows antivirus apps. It comes with it’s own.

None of it is any better than Defender. When Defender came on the scene, every enterprise I’ve worked in stopped buying AV licenses - they have that little value.

Video and audio are unlikely to contain a virus that Defender wouldn’t catch (say an executable renamed as an mp3) which just wouldn’t launch anyway.

The one thing you can do to improve your security is to stop running as admin on Windows (which the first user account is by default and necessity). Create a user account just for doing this stuff - a regular user account, which means it can’t make changes to the system itself.

Even better is to test anything suspicious in a VM.

Using Linux for this is the best approach all around. Get an old laptop, run Linux. Most tools are developed for Linux first anyway.

Neat! That may be what OP’s looking for

Yep.

I keep the subtitles as external files (as well as internal to the video) to provide flexibility for different clients.

SRT are just text files, so standard desktop search tools work.

I’ve not seen a media player setup that can search subtitle text.

First, how big is your TV, and how close do you sit?

I have a 65 and sit about 6’ away. I’ve found there’s a LOT of variability in visual quality even in the same category of source (eg DVD). BluRay can be better, but only of the source is better and mastering is done better.

There’s a lot of dependence on the original source, and then on mastering. Most of my videos are h264 (for compatibility), some look fantastic on the TV, some look like crap - and the difference is in the original source or the mastering process (I’ve converted a lot of discs myself, so have seen the difference). Conversion brings it’s own issues, but that’s secondary and more about my preferences.

Old masters weren’t intended for today’s large TVs or LED/LCD tech, so bring along or induce artifacts (blockiness especially in dark areas, videotape originals, or mastered for smaller CRTs, etc).

Lol, no, they aren’t.

Linux isn’t the desktop of choice for business, which is what MS cares about. That’s where they make their money.

And that means SMB will run Windows Server to manage user accounts and the environment in general.

Add Excel to that equation, and Linux has no relevance in the business world (and before you mention any OSS competitor I have one word: tables. And I’ll add decades of automation).

Yes, you could do things like Linux as the OS then run virtualization layers or Wine or whatever, but there’s no value in that for a typical SMB, and a lot of risk.

Enterprise is even more of a lock-in for MS, because it’s a simple choice, they get all the support they need from MS, and it “just works” for them.

MS has a mature user, machine, and software management infrastructure that’s well known by millions of technical people. Desktop and office apps have the same familiarity (and again I’ll mention decades of extant automation built around excel).

Linux doesn’t stand a chance against MS in a business environment for the desktop. Can it be done? Sure. But in very specific use-cases and hoping you’ll never grow into a circumstance where you suddenly need Office or some other element to interop with a vendor or client. This is exactly the situation management doesn’t want to be blamed for.

Servers are different question altogether, and have been since 2000.

If someone else is storing the digital copy for you, on a system you don’t control, it’s not “ownership”.

Yea, Jellyfin is far from perfect, and it’s what I use.

It’s a bit more work than it should be, like it loves to identify stuff as Asian if it doesn’t have a perfect match, sometimes with folders properly structured with year and IMDB ID.

I’m constantly having to fix metadata or even remove a specific movie, rescan, return the movie folder, rescan, and then it sees it right.

I’ve had to blow away my entire Jellyfin database multiple times this year because it just loses it’s mind and won’t properly identify something.

It’s what I use, that doesn’t mean it’s perfect, but it is an incredible value, and it doesn’t phone home or any other nonsense.

But you MUST follow the folder structure rules or it won’t know what you have.

Big difference between Linux and Windows: Linux permissions are per-process, while Windows permissions are per-user. This is why Windows needs Defender in the first place (in addition to being the big target).

If you’re not using root all the time, risks are very low.

Yes, they all work. 🤦🏼

Any online office app will suck balls

?

Thanks for the explanation.

Wut?

And being the southwest wearing a hat outside isn’t really a choice, unless you like a sunburned scalp.

I wear a hat because I don’t like a sunburned scalp

I forget the rule or why, but if memory serves Beemer is car, Bimmer is bike.

Or the reverse. I don’t know why.

BMW - well there’s your problem!