The internet remembered back in those days ironically because stuff was harder to get and less accessible. People downloaded stuff because they weren’t sure when they might be on a slow connection or not have a connection at all, and once it was downloaded, it would sit there collecting dust until someone realized that it had vanished from its original source and like a hydra, two people who downloaded it would later upload it again. Always-online broadband and streaming basically killed that whole mentality. People just assume it will always be available from the original source… until it isn’t, and then it’s too late.
I do this again now. I use YouTube as just a frontend and copy links into yt-dlp to watch without ads at my leisure. If I like it and think I’ll watch it again I simply don’t delete it after I’ve watched it. They’re like 80mb videos each.
In days of yore, I did this because I wanted to rewatch the same videos over and over. It was hugely wasteful and also frustrating to do this on a dial up connection.
My favourite part is I get “real” 1080p, rather than whatever Google thinks I’ll believe is 1080p.
The internet remembered back in those days ironically because stuff was harder to get and less accessible. People downloaded stuff because they weren’t sure when they might be on a slow connection or not have a connection at all, and once it was downloaded, it would sit there collecting dust until someone realized that it had vanished from its original source and like a hydra, two people who downloaded it would later upload it again. Always-online broadband and streaming basically killed that whole mentality. People just assume it will always be available from the original source… until it isn’t, and then it’s too late.
I do this again now. I use YouTube as just a frontend and copy links into yt-dlp to watch without ads at my leisure. If I like it and think I’ll watch it again I simply don’t delete it after I’ve watched it. They’re like 80mb videos each.
In days of yore, I did this because I wanted to rewatch the same videos over and over. It was hugely wasteful and also frustrating to do this on a dial up connection.
My favourite part is I get “real” 1080p, rather than whatever Google thinks I’ll believe is 1080p.