^ Even so, I don't think high speed internet will convert everybody to streaming. For me, there's a sense of "ownership" and permanency with a download. I won't subscribe to a site if there's no download option.
I do collect from my favorite websites . I just finished re-downloading from ECG , BRCC and Black Ambush , lost my previous files in a crash . Most likely move onto grooby next . I don't watch as much streaming mainstream stuff , as hotmovies no longer lets you save you favorites scenes as a playlist , I liked to catalog them I purchased a 4TB hard drive for back up . Wish I could recover files from my old old drive that crashed 7-8 years ago .
I love to collect but I call my collection a "selection". In 2916 I built a new computer and got a 7tb hard drive. Soon I realized that I would need more space. I selected my favorite models, not many, between 20 and 30 women and started collecting their best scenes. A good scene for me is a combination of content quality and video quality. My favorite websites are the fidelity sites; Teenfidelity, Pornfidelity, Kelly Madison and now 5KPorn. Those sites are an example of well produced porn, it elevates the models in a way that makes them even more desirable than they already are and the cameras and video editing are up to date. I always choose 4k files to collect when available and now 5K is here. That's a lot of space worth of downloads. I got a second 7tb hard drive and configured them as the first half of the alphabet on one drive and the second half of the alphabet on the other drive. As we come to the end of 2019 both drives are full to the point where I have to go and select scenes to delete in order to make space for new scenes but I only erase the scenes that are not of the highest quality. These hard drives will cover the years from 2016 to 2019. On 2020 I will get two new drives that will continue my collection.
By the way. My drives are backed up automatically to two other identical drives. ***If your collection is not in two different places then it does not exist*** You will discover this basic rule of data storage when your hard drive dies and hundreds of hours of work disappear in an instant. That has never happened to me as I'm a nerd and now my stuff. Please back up your data and know how deliable your hardware is.
Fly Eagles Fly Super Bowl LII Champions Nova Nation 2016 and 2018 National Champions 5180 Posts 2/16
Posted - Oct 12 2019 : 1:41PM
I don't have any porn DVDs. I still buy CDs from my fave bands or ones I really like. I like having porn scenes downloaded cuz its permanent and you don't have to go online to access them. I've been buying scenes from Lyra Lockhart's ManyVids and I download them rather than stream them online plus sometimes my internet isn't as fast as I'd like it to be. I have nearly 630 scenes and counting. I think that is about 250 GB or so. I would have to check.
No amount of high speed streaming can replace a readily available database that is perfectly tailored to your own likes, interests, and fetishes. Watching some awesome 4K porn through my apple tv with super easy navigation beats any website hands down! Besides, I don't subscribe to every single site every single month, so it's good to know that I can always forever watch a specific scene I'm interested in whenever I want.
It's also a good way to keep account of old scenes. It's been almost 10 years and I still watch the wonderful Mayli scene from facialabuse. It's my favorite scene ever. I will always maintain this scene in my collection because for some reason it is no longer available on the facialabuse website. I only wish there was a 4K version of it!!
I download for different reasons. When I watch for fun, or when I analyze what I watch, I frequently rewind, fast forward, skip to a similar scene, return back to a previous scene, and sometimes flip angles or run in slow motion. I can't do that stuff effectively on streaming. I download dozens of scenes at a time from the different sites I'm subscribed to. When I'm done, I generally delete them. If needed, I can always re-download. Also, I tend to go for the best quality video I can find on the site...4K, 60 FPS, best compression, etc.
I have no blue ray, i wont get streaming, i try not to buy stuff anymore, i already have more stuff that is unwatched than i have watched. I have a RAID 6 System that is getting older and older thus the fear of loosing everything is getting bigger. I have to face the fact to buy a bigger system and mirror the first one and then try not to fill the new system until i die ... leaving so much stuff unwatched ...xxx and non-xxx. A day has only 24 hours and sometimes you just need to do nothing. Cant even throw my old VHS tapes away. Damn i hate the collectors desease.
There are many reasons why I almost exclusively download my porn over streaming:
I can have a collection of scenes that are fully tailored to my tastes. It's much easier than having to sort through a whole website worth of models and scenes. Or worse: multiple websites worth of scenes and models and categories. I actually rename the files and arrange all my scenes by actress, it's just how I prefer it. I can't imagine an easy way to easily access 30 different scenes from one performer from 10 different studios without having multiple tabs open and having to switch back and forth.
There are some scenes that I really absolutely enjoy 10 minutes of, but also have 50 minutes of stuff that's not really going to get me going. Super easy to just download a video editor that will allow you to only keep the parts you want to watch and cut out the other parts. if that's your thing. It really helps keep the file sizes down. I have hundreds of videos that have been cut to only have the parts of the scene I like. Sometimes it's just 3 minutes out of an entire hour long scene but those three minutes are of a perfect angle, position, or dirty talk and the rest of the scene is just "meh".
I prefer to use a more robust video viewer like VLC. I can do some simple moves like looping a certain part of a video, slowing a video's speed down or up, and changing the color/saturation. Most of which is hard or impossible to do with web based streaming platforms.
Watching any particular scene is always an option without having to rely on it being maintained on a tube site or needing to maintain a constant subscription somewhere. Sometimes even the studios that produce the scenes take them down. I've only seen this once and I didn't understand why, considering there was nothing in the scene that stood out as objectionable compared to any other scene from that studio.
The quality will always be there. No need to rely on having a fast internet connection to make sure that a 4K scene doesn't have you about to blow and then you get hit with a buffering symbol.
Many newer TVs allow you to plug a usb directly into the tv and access mp4 files directly. No need to even bother with a laptop or anything.
I'm sure there are more but these are my main reasons.
I am just a simple man trying to make my way in this universe. 237 Posts 2/13
Posted - Nov 16 2019 : 11:55AM
I have collected more than 2.5 TB over the last 7 years funnily enough I haven't seen half of these.
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Porn Scout Deactivated User
3735 Posts 10/02
Posted - Nov 23 2019 : 11:59PM
I'm up around 10 TB at this point in my main collection and another 5 TB in my "archive". I have a bunch of different external hard drives that I store this stuff on. When I thin out my collection it's basically a two-stage process. First I move scenes to the archive and then, over time, I'll thin out the archive by deleting scenes altogether. In the last year, I've gotten more selective about what I download, and a bit more realistic about getting rid of scenes, so I'm not having to buy more storage for scenes that I probably won't watch. A few weeks ago, for instance, I went through a few of my drives and got rid of about 1 TB of scenes.
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Mass Facialties Deactivated User
"Facialized Vol. 7" 2021 AVN Awards Winner: Best Oral Movie 9308 Posts 9/13
Posted - Nov 24 2019 : 12:25AM
Ever since I've had an iPad, all I do is stream. Before then, I was primarily dependent on DVD's. I did try downloading like 8-10 years ago for a little while, but I found the whole process way too fucking tedious and time-consuming. Most of all, though, is that I quickly realized how rarely I actually had the desire to watch a given scene multiple times. That's the thing for me, the vast majority of porn scenes I view are "one-and-done", I literally only watch it once. It's really only the few "special" scenes to me that are the ones I have any desire to view multiple times and months/years later, most notably, the blowbang productions from Mason (Massive Facials/Facialized) that've come out over the past decade. Along with that, I just prefer the ease and instant gratification of being able to log in to a porn site I have a membership to via my iPad, no need to wait for a download and organize a collection of scenes. Plus, with an iPad, I like that the video is literally right in front of my face; I really have no desire to figure out how to get porn videos to play on my TV. Oh, one more thing, when it comes to my "porn time", I'm constantly switching back-and-forth between watching videos and viewing pictures; that's another thing that's simpler to do on the iPad.
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Mass Facialties Deactivated User
"Facialized Vol. 7" 2021 AVN Awards Winner: Best Oral Movie 9308 Posts 9/13
Posted - Nov 24 2019 : 1:00AM
Honestly, with the year 2020 upon us, I'm amazed that this is still true.
^ I'm not. Given how internet service providers have a monopoly in certain regions in the US and that they agree with other providers not to compete in the regions they occupy and how some push for legislation against communities providing their own, they have only so much incentive to invest in improving their infrastructure to provider greater bandwidth.
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Mass Facialties Deactivated User
"Facialized Vol. 7" 2021 AVN Awards Winner: Best Oral Movie 9308 Posts 9/13
Posted - Nov 24 2019 : 9:31PM
^ Except for the most rural parts of the U.S., is this really a problem for most Americans?
I know there are non-American Adult DVD Talk members here that have no choice but to buy DVDs because they simply do not have access to reliable internet. As for the American members on this forum who still buy DVDs, it sounds to me like they do it simply because they still prefer to have something they can hold in their hand and collect.
For the record, the last time I bought a DVD would've been back in 2015 when I bought Facialized Vol. 2. Back then, I had planned to buy every edition of that series on DVD simply to "support the brand", but I gave up on that plan quickly. Another "negative" when it comes to buying DVDs today is that most porn studios have limited their DVD releases to just 4 scenes/girls per DVD; HardX, Evil Angel, Jules Jordan are some of the studios that cut the number of scenes per DVD from 5 to 4 in recent years.
as much as i like having a physical DVD i also have numerous DVDs (ok they are years old) which have production flaws and i never got to watch them ... which really hurts. I dont know if a player from today might play em or not. So, with physical media you never know what you get.
I don't have the stats for most Americans but I do recall a study indicating that than a sizeable number of providers with the fastest broadband speeds are municipal because the likes of Verizon and AT&T for example didn't provide satisfactory internet. If I remember correctly, parts of San Francisco used municipal internet so it's not the case that only rural US lacks high-speed internet.
I am just a simple man trying to make my way in this universe. 237 Posts 2/13
Posted - Nov 29 2019 : 6:01PM
Buying DVDs depends on where you live around the world, in some parts, porn DVDs are still banned and may land you in jail so the only way is download.
A question for the guys with massive collection like mine, what's the best time defying way of storing, I am not a fan of external hard disks, I have a 2 TB one but I am always running chkdsk, lately I bought double layered Blu rays on which I stored some of my Playboy TV collection but I am still paranoid. Some websites recommend tape drives for backups, does anyone have an experience with these kinds of devices because they are extremely expensive?
The problem with Data storage in general are the drives. Data maybe ok decades but you may not be able to read them ... either your drive is dead and you wont get a new one or a new one cant read what another drive has written. Thats why i choose a RAID System ... but there is no 100% in this world and sometimes i puts a smile on my face if the guys from the stoneage knew how long their "data" (pictures in on a cave wall) have survived :) ... and can be read !
I am just a simple man trying to make my way in this universe. 237 Posts 2/13
Posted - Nov 30 2019 : 2:49AM
Yes, hero porn archiver.
RAID and mirroring are a good way, that's why I have many "important" stuff on mechanical HD and optical disks.
I am pretty sure that Mindgeek has a presence on this site and are not replying but I guess that even them suffered from data loss, you might go to Brazzers and find that some old scenes vanished, the same could be said about Playboy TV where entire shows have vanished like Beach House or some has missing episodes.
@Kristin - take backup ("LTO") in commercial settingsis regarded as ideal for long term storage as well as for price. There are various providers out there, such as Iron Mountain that give you a tape and charge you for storing it off site. The price might be more reasonable than one might suppose.
I am just a simple man trying to make my way in this universe. 237 Posts 2/13
Posted - Dec 1 2019 : 6:24AM
Thank you for the advice but I do not live in the US to use Iron Mountain, I also have an obsession with creation and modification dates of the files, storing them in some cloud would change these, I've heard about M-disk and BD-XL (100GB), these might not be very practical but better than losing an unavailable show.
To clarify, LTO is tape backup-not cloud-and can preserve file system dates. All the services companies (like Iron Mountain or equivalents) do is aid in the backup (to the extent needed) and more importantly store the tape in a secure location.
I can't imagine giving up downloading in favour of streaming at any time. Even if downloading eventually goes away I'll still keep what I have. As some here have pointed out it would be naive of me to think that my external drives bought in 2019 will still be accessible in 2029. But that change won't occur overnight and I'll be able to migrate what I have to whatever new comes along. Yes, a day will probably come when cloud is the only option but I'm hoping that by then the cloud option will be dirt cheap or at least as cheap as a per TB cost of external drives.
I suspect, however, that most of us on this forum aren't really average porn watchers. I suspect the average porn watcher goes to tube sites, has a wank and then shuts it down. Most of us here are collectors. We have specific models and directors that we follow. We don't just go to a tube site and type in 'blowjob' for a quick wank.
Bottom line - I'll continue to download as long as I can. I currently have somewhere around 60TB of porn on 24 external drives and all of that is backed up on larger drives that I don't store at home. So yeah, I'm a serious collector.
I am just a simple man trying to make my way in this universe. 237 Posts 2/13
Posted - Dec 20 2019 : 7:12PM
The most accurate answer for porn experts.
A note about hard drives, it's a matter of luck, I have a 106MB (yes, I am serious) SEAGATE ST3290 that I got with a 386 PC back in 1998 and the PC was pre-owned, so this 25 years old IDE relic still functions and I can read and write files and I even had MS-Dos installed there, while another one bought 5 years ago is causing my PC to suffer and causing me to redownload 256+ GB of rare material on a 3g connection and sadly some of the sites have gone offline or the scenes have vanished.
I imagine data loss is occuring at many larger adult companies such as Playboy TV because if you follow the site closely entire shows and episodes from series disappear or are corrupted when you download them.
I'm no tech expert but I still have a 1TB WD passport external hard drive from 2010 that hasn't given me any problems. I also have a more recently purchased 4TB external which has copies of all my most favorite videos. I can't imagine that usb connections and physical storage will be obsolete in 10 years.
Dont wanna argue with your statement but i never thought that Videorental stores would be gone ... in my town there is not one left. The problem that made it come to that was that not everyone is such a techi to be able to copy any DVD in order to watch it later when the time is right. So yes, copy protection killed the videostore.
^ I won't go so far as to suggest you're comparing apples with oranges though physical storage has data protection laws keeping it relevant and better protected against obsolescence than anything that was ever in place for video rental stores.
Do you really think copy protection was the main reason for the death of video rental stores? Not competition from DVD-by-mail competitors, transitioning into video-on-demand that is commonplace today? Not competition from cable and Pay TV operators pushing well-marketed content exclusively available from them?
I also can't imagine that many people would trust a lot of their more intimate files to any off site storage, cloud-like company, especially if you have personal sex videos with spouses or things of that nature. Nothing is 100% secure but I feel a lot safer with all my files, financial, personal, and pornographic stored on a few physical external hard drives. They are completely inaccessible when not hooked up to a computer and a lot less likely to be hacked when accessed on a personal computer with no internet connectivity.
I certainly don't know all of the cloud providers but several of the mainstream ones take a hard line against porn being hosted on the cloud in their datacentres. If you have to turn to a more obscure or specialist cloud storage provider, service level agreements and where they'll be in 5 years don't fill me with the confidence.
At least where I lived Blockbuster shot themself in the foot. They kept calling DVD a fad and refusing to stock them while Netflix was having Best Buy put the free two week trial sheets in every bag with a DVD. According to Netflix, I've been a continuous member since July of 2002.
I don't think it was copy protection. I think it was economics of packaged media distribution and Hollywood greed. There were also a bunch of court cases that helped set the direction of where were are today.
In the 80s and 90s video stores were able to flourish because the major Hollywood distribution channels had 2 pricing tiers for VHS tapes: rental and retail. Rental prices were anywhere from $50 to $100 per piece and they were made available to places like Blockbuster months in advance of the retail release version. This pricing scheme encouraged piracy of VHS tapes and made the cost of new inventory very expensive for video stores.
When DVDs came out the tiered pricing and staggered release schedule was dropped. There were no r/w DVD drives in the early days so they assumed piracy wasn't going to be an issue. Oops.
The old school Hollywood distribution channels tried desperately to prevent/slow-down the switch from packaged media to online distribution. They didn't adapt and went the way of the dodo.
I purchased a VOD movie, I had no emotional attachment to it. I emailed the production company and asked if they plan any disc release, they said no. I watched it only once, the bit rate was less than DVD quality even though resolution was HD. It seems the studios who do DVD are just tossing old scenes/comp. on disc. I'm buying more hollywood, boutique type releases now since porn on a whole seems to have abandoned the format. A certain studio is doing BD-r and selling for $35+. If you charge that price might as well go and do replicated discs. Heck, throw a 4hr comp on BD, I'd spend some dough. It seems downloads are the only compromise. A 4hr DVD I purchased in 2006 doesn't play, disc rot I guess.
I am just a simple man trying to make my way in this universe. 237 Posts 2/13
Posted - Apr 23 2020 : 12:02PM
The disc business whether CD, DVD or BD is being phased out in favor of digital that's been the case since the introduction of Ipod, people started switching from CD to digital music, the same can be said about VHS and DVD, where is Blockbuster now? The only ones who still care are people who used the format mostly aged 35+, I work with 20 something people and when I talk about DVDs and how they used to feature extras, commentary and other goodies, I get a weird look, their whole world id their stupid smartphone, they do not care about the frame rate and quality, they watch it once, this generation gets bored easily.
And the same thing applies to paper and magazines, most pertinent exhibit to this forum: Playboy.
Lets see when the Chinese win in building a new internet which is as free as the people in their country and everyone can be easily identified or they decide to switch certain things off. Lets see how those "non physicals aka easybored" listen to music then.
I am just a simple man trying to make my way in this universe. 237 Posts 2/13
Posted - Apr 24 2020 : 1:48AM
They wouldn't even care and this crap is happening all around the world, most young people, especially anyone born after 1990, wouldn't take their heads of their cellphones even when crossing the street or driving aka even when their lives depends on it, to a vapid girl that I know, her smartphone is HER life, and by the same logic you could argue that's the reason why the latest Star Wars underperformed, most young people do not care about some journey, some stupid ones would say isn't there an app to destroy the Death Star. Remember Stand By Me, it was more about the journey than finding that body.
On an upper note, in Europe there is some traditional porn production being shot aka a (terrible) storyline but it would involve some costumes and dialogue.
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Mass Facialties Deactivated User
"Facialized Vol. 7" 2021 AVN Awards Winner: Best Oral Movie 9308 Posts 9/13
Posted - Apr 24 2020 : 10:29PM
I'm truly amazed that porn DVDs are still a thing in 2020. Seriously, if you had told me back in, say, 2012, that they'd still be making porn DVDs (and people would still be buying them) in the year 2020, I would not have believed you.
Sorry, but as someone who hasn't bought a DVD in like 6 years, I don't miss 'em at all. Looking back on it now, I can't help but think to myself: "Geez, I wasted so much fuckin' money on those things throughout the years!"
Audrey Madison Interview
Posted - Oct 5 2019 : 1:06AM
