While that is true, I think what @Tjj226_Angel was referring to is the pure moral side of it, trying to stay 100% legal. Noone is denying that breaking it for private purpose won’t get you in any trouble (apart from “how would they even know”), but this isn’t the question here.
I don’t know what the law in the US says exactly, but in germany for example it refers to an “effective copy right mechanism”, and as far as I know the DVD copy protection is not regarded as “effective” anymore, so that’s not a big deal (though I’d need to read into it again to be 100% sure).
But then again I don’t want to count pixels so DVDs aren’t going to cut it (and the same is true for recording TV content, because at least here there’s only a handful non-protected/free HD channels that actually show something useful). The next thing would be BluRays for obvious reasons, but that copy protection is still widely regarded as effective, so breaking it is technically against the law.
But: it used to be the case (again, not sure if this is still true), that breaking copy right protection for private use and backup purposes only is OK.
To add something more, in another thread some people mentioned the “free” digital copies that are included in many BluRay purchases today, but the problem with those is that every publisher has their own little service, so you need like 5000 accounts to actually use them (not to mention specific software in some cases as well). And in addition to that it’s basically impossible to properly integrate them into a media center like Kodi. While you “can” create dummy files and even call external applications from the media library, using the actual software included can (and probably will) be a pain in the ass.
In the US, it doesn’t matter if the copy protection itself is laughably easy to circumvent, it’s still illegal.
Not sure how DE law defines “effective”, after all, 1080p Blu-rays have been fully cracked for many years now. 4k Blu-rays haven’t actually been cracked, but some insider is leaking the keys required to make perfect digital copies.
Regarding those free digital copies, these days most of them integrate with Movies Anywhere, which links all your purchases from a bunch of studios on Vudu, iTunes, Google Play, and Amazon. Pretty neat. But yeah, doesn’t work in Kodi… yet.
Kodi v18 has a new Inputstream.adaptive and widevine so it may be able to stream DRM video like Netflix in the next version.
Well, ironically - you can still use the big cloud-providers such as Google, Apple, Amazon for their videos/music offerings. If you dig around, specifically for music, you can usually find a download option to store it locally. Those files are just perfect to store on your Home Media Server as well. And as others have said as well, you can also use other tools/options; for example free content online, or photos you made etc. - all of which fall under the media banner.
I would like to see something like how I would host a Web Server or a website. A Home Server sounds nice but I don’t feel like I would have much use for one and would just make a NAS for my video files and stuff like that.
Have been looking at duel xeon servers on Ebay after watching this video. Majority only support 2.5" drivers. Do you have any recommendations to adding 3.5" drives in that situation?
Cleaning up old metadata, playing directly via Kodi, copying files over from your desktop, etc.
Plex connects to their servers to authenticate for Plex Pass, and one of its main features is adaptive streaming outside your home. You can block those connections if you don’t want to do that.