Hey Low End Mac friends! It’s been quite a while since I’ve written my last piece. Sometimes life and the real world gets in the way, but here we are again with a great piece that leads us up into the summer season when folks have a little more free time on their hands to unwind and think about how to maximize those budgets.

The Subscription Trap and Price Creep

As everyone knows, the world has become a real pain when it comes to enjoying media on the go. It has become either a costly affair requiring us leveraging multiple streaming services or has become riddled with more ads than one can stomach.  In all cases, Apple hasn’t exactly made it any easier to deal with due to their own vested interest in pushing all users to Apple Music, and their video services through the TV App and AppleTV+.  Recently, my wife and I went through our list of streaming apps:

Apple One (with 2 TB iCloud), Netflix, HBO Max, Paramount Plus, Discovery+, Disney+, Philo, and Sling Blue and Orange (with Sports add-on).

Each time we wanted to watch a given series, specific movie, or have the app for any given purpose, we just got the subscription and just kind of forgot about it since they were all a fairly nominal cost (with the exception of Sling).  Many of these services were far cheaper when we signed up for them a few years ago, but it seems like every year now as of late these services want to keep raising their prices, and in some cases have done so more than once a year.  Before we knew it, between the sheer number of services we had, plus price increases over the years, we were spending more than the cost of cable TV that we got rid of to go to a streaming only life as cord cutters like many others have done!  It was getting outrageous and out of control. While cutting the cord and going to streaming everything (plus over air TV) is convenient, not one service necessarily covers all bases and that’s how the “Subscription Trap” happens to many of us, but we started to ask ourselves what we really wanted to keep, so we cut a ton of it back.

So we got rid of Philo, HBO Max, Sling, Discovery+, and scaled back Apple One to just iCloud Storage plus Fitness (wife likes this with her Apple watch).  We also switched ISPs since our ISP was doing the same thing (with price creep) – it had started out around $70/month for 1 Gb Downstream/60 Mb Upstream service (with home phone) just a few years ago, and before we knew it, over the last year this had nearly doubled.  Moving to a different ISP with similar bandwidth availability at a fresh new promo rate (guaranteed for 2 years), plus using their streaming cable (far cheaper than Sling) along with all the services we cut back and got rid of saved us a bundle!

Is it Time for a Physical Media Revival?

So now that my family has less at our fingertips in terms of the steaming services we cut back, we need to ask ourselves – how do we deal with it to fill the gaps – especially with Apple Music? The answer is pretty simple.  Physical media, building your own media library from your own created digital copies (plenty of resources out there on how to do this) and having ease of use to enjoy it when not at home base where you have all the physical copies.  Thrift stores, flea markets, garage sales, and other places like that are a boon for physical media since so many have just accepted the prices of these streaming services as a way of life now, and while not everything you may want is available on physical media, there are still gobs of choices if you look around.

Navigating the Inconvenience and Remembering the Past Using Dedicated Devices

There are a few ways to do it.  Sure – one could build a Plex server and load it all on there and stream from your home.  That’s fine if you only care about being able to stream everything to your modern iOS/Android device and have Internet access wherever you go, but I’ve begun to appreciate more and more the ability to just have what you want with you on local storage and use older technologies that just worked and did so very well.  You’re no longer reliant on a data connection to get to your content, plus it’s fun to pull out those older devices that made moving media around a little more fun and intuitive.  iTunes was the best thing Apple ever did and to this day, it dumbfounds me that they have essentially killed off an interface that worked so well with local digital copies and created a replacement that is somewhat more convoluted and disjointed as a replacement. 

With that said, what’s old is new again.  Pull out that old Mac Mini.  Build it up on Snow Leopard and if you really want to max it out, look at my guide on combining a 2010 and 2011 Mac Mini and getting Snow Leopard running incredibly on the 2011 machine (something that wasn’t fully intended by Apple) so you can leverage Front Row.  A 2010 Mac Mini also works to a lesser degree (less capable for more demanding 1080p content), and so does the 2011 MacBook Pro for Snow Leopard (and again – allowing Front Row).  For portable devices to consume your media on the go, look at the PlayStation Portable (PSP) and PlayStation Vita when connecting to those Macs running Snow Leopard and sync what you want.  You’ll also then gain the benefit of having a nice portable gaming device to use.  The Vita can play back 720p content, but is optimal when video is encoded at native 960×544 resolution (essentially the same quality as 1080i).  The PSP has a native pixel display field of 1/4 that at 480×272, but can automatically downscale and display 480p encoded content (720x480p/640x480p).  On these smaller screens, you’ll be pleasantly surprised how good video content looks.

Back in 2018 I wrote about using the 2010 Mac Mini as a Media Center type device when support was removed for adding your official iTunes digital purchases to the original AppleTV (see Mid 2010 Mac mini: The Perfect Low-End 1080p Media Center).  The concept itself is still very valid, and though further challenges have presented themselves, it is worth revisiting again. With more and more films no longer being compatible with Front Row, the simplicity of hitting the menu button to browse and view all your official digital copies is becoming a thing of the past unless you have some good workarounds.

Limitations

As with anything, you can’t always have it all.  A modern iPhone obviously has a much greater pixel density and modern iPhones will play back 4K HDR content – even Dolby Vision.  As long as you jump through all the hoops of getting content localized on your iPhone, leveraging the TV App on the Mac and syncing your local content to your iPhone, it can still be done. 

In Conclusion

Moving media around is just not as intuitive as it used to be, though it can be done. As times moves on, most of us are increasingly used to media on the go via streaming, and may not notice the subscription trap and price creeping after cutting cable. Although streaming is convenient in it’s own right, there’s not a single app out there that “has it all” as evidenced by needing to subscribe to multiple platforms to get all the shows we wanted. That, and streaming often requires a modern device with modern apps. When you have your own physical media library however, the only thing limiting you is your own hardware. Is it Time for a Physical Media Revival?