Ask HN: Any legal place to buy offline TV movie downloads?

It would be really weird if I make it to the frontpage with this, but nobody knew any answer.

But then again, maybe there's some entrepreneurs in here who can make it happen ;)

Looking at RARBG, it should be possible to convince movie execs that no, DRM is not preventing piracy. And I have a feeling that the "I go through extra work to avoid ads" crowd would have a higher than average income, so for them, $30 (the price of a recently released bluray) for a HQ file might work.

Doesn't Widevine need internet access to check the certificates?

Legality or ease of getting lots of content, pick one.

I think the problem here is what you're really asking for is DRM free content. None of the content producers themselves are willing to license their content that way so it would be very difficult to build the service.

Would you consider a middle ground for movie watching? I understand you don’t want to hook up your LG to the internet, but would you considering booking up a fire stick, Roku, Apple TV, etc device for the purpose of streaming movies?

You’d avoid the forced upgrades on your LG and suffer a minor inconvenience of streaming from another device which does have internet access. I don’t know what the ad’s situation is on those devices, but I’m sure with some research you could find a streaming device that hopefully meets your requirements.

Another option is cast all the videos from a tablet or computer to the TV.

To my mind, the closest thing to a legal option here is to purchase the blu-ray and then use Handbrake to rip it to whatever format you want. I say close to a legal option because in most cases it's still going to be illegal in the US.

I've read conflicting stuff about this, but my understanding is that it is technically legal to make "backup" copies of media you own. However, breaking encryption to bypass DRM on the blu-ray (which you will need to do in almost all cases) in order to make that backup is considered a violation of copyright.

So, while I wouldn't advise anyone to break the law, I will say that this is one of those laws that I don't think anyone has an ethical obligation to follow. It's not only a stupid law, but almost impossible to enforce. Make of that what you will.

>Is there any place where I can legally purchase a movie file that can be played offline on an Android "smart" TV?

International waters.

I don't know that they are any better - but there's also Google play video and the Microsoft store.

You could buy Blu-Ray at Amazon and most Blu-Ray bundles include a digital download.

Partially related: How come I can "purchase" 4K files on iTunes if there is no way for me to make a permanent backup of the movie (because I'm not allowed to download 4K files) which means I am dependent on the content not getting removed from iTunes or else my "purchase" just vanishes. For HD files the "purchase" label makes sense, because I can download and backup them. But for 4K, it's more like long-term rental.

Are you in the US? Legality is strongly location-dependent, e.g. "Now I've heard that it is technically easy to rip the iTunes DRM to recover an MP4, but that is likely illegal again." is totally legal in Spain where people have the RIGHT of private copy of their purchased media (including circumventing any restrictions).

You can use an external device that stream the movie to the tv from Netflix, HBO, etc. This way you don't need to connect your tv to the net.

I personally use the nvidia shield tv pro.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/shield/shield-tv-pro/

buy it, then download it via IRC/XDCC https://sunxdcc.com/

First mistake: buying a TV. Buy a cheap computer and plug it into a big monitor. After that, then we can talk about sourcing content legally/ethically/morally, which are very different concepts imho.

Buy Blueray movies

My solution is MakeMKV. Allows me to rip DVD, Bluray, and 4K Bluray title to a MKV file, full bitrate. No menus, no FBI warning, no bs. I store the movies on a NAS and use a RPi running Kodi for playback.

i mean, it's freakin crazy you and i are willing to jump thru legality hoops when they can legally hostage the content we paid money for.

It sucks but if you want convenience, get an Apple TV and hook it to your TV via HDMI. That way the TV stays offline and you can just buy and stream media from Apple with extreme convenience and decent privacy (they aren’t selling your personal info to advertisers).

Alternatively, as far I know, your options are buy ‘n rip or pirate them.

IMO the “smart” features of basically all TVs are worse than useless and trying to copy media to the TV is a huge waste of time compared to using streaming hardware (Apple TV, Roku, etc)

Well I'm not going to say pirate movies. But the laws exist to ensure capitalists make money, even if it is at the expense of people's freedoms.

There are numerous justifications for avoiding connecting most smart TVs to the internet, so that's reasonable. None of ours get connected either.

Play a Blu-ray on an Xbox or laptop connected to the TV instead of your bad player, it should be more convenient than downloading on your questionable connection and shuffling files around all the time. After all, it's just a digital file with DRM on a storage device, which you're ok with. There may be rights issues that limit stores to offering 4K streaming and not downloads.

If you do bother to switch to another playing device, maybe try grabbing a UHD Movies Anywhere movie then playing it in 4K from several of the Movies Anywhere linked services to see if one buffers better or has a better bitrate suitable for your connection.

If the underlying connection problem is the ISP in your area and it doesn't even offer 20Mbps, maybe you could give Starlink a try. If it's more about wireless signal or interference, look into a better wireless router or try ethernet.

Lastly, the HD releases of some movies now are quite good due to better source material, especially at some viewing distance/screen size combos. I know it can feel like a waste when you've invested in a great TV since you miss out on HDR or other features, but part of having a great device is good upscaling. How much it matters really depends on the kind of movie.

Dumb TV's are harder to find, but so worth it. You probably can't walk into a Best Buy or Walmart and buy one anymore but there are options online.

As for the legal part of your question, I firmly believe uploading content is different than downloading it, so I have no issues sailing the high seas. Especially considering all of the price fixing scandals and Hollywood accounting that end up as a hidden tax on consumers. I have no moral qualms looking at something for free.

The closest and easiest is to buy the digital download or Bluray, then get a rip from a pirate site. You've already bought the content, you just want to choose how to view it.

I, like you, also have an LG OLED, and I use RARBG. I outlined my setup in a previous comment:

I'm using rarbg as my main source which has magnet links that qBittorrent detects on click. I use mpv with Anime4k for animated content or an Nvidia Image Scaling glsl filter which is a decent upscaler/sharpener. I also use SVP for frame interpolation with an RTX 3080 which supports optical flow, and I assume it'll be even better in the RTX 40 series given their DLSS 3's frame interpolation exclusivity. It all looks incredible on my LG OLED TV/monitorm with 4k HDR 10 bit support.

Just buy an Apple TV.