MPC-BE + MadVR + LAVFilters kicks the cone.

Losing what.cd was like having a Music Library of Alexandria burn down. Such an amazing resource for rare, out of print, obscure, and or otherwise unobtainable media.

They’re super cheap at thrift and consignment type stores right now. DVDs are like $1-3 if you know where to look. Libraries still have a lot of that stuff too if you just want to borrow it.

Most of the stuff I was looking for couldn’t even be found on store shelves. Before online shopping and streaming, if it wasn’t the latest release or biggest hit, you probably wouldn’t be able to find it locally. You’d waste time browsing up and down aisles of junk only to leave disappointed, then try again at another store, hoping that by some miracle they’d have it.

Then I discovered that terabytes upon terabytes of content was available, nearly instantly and conveniently, on the internet. All you had to do was click a few buttons and you had what you wanted. That was about 25+ years ago, and the recording industry still has not adapted to offer a service that even comes close to what was available back then.

Everyone should leave that instance, the admin and the mods on that instance are big time thought police and will find excuses in their vague rules to delete your posts and eventually ban you if your views go against the grain.

Streaming services are all so backwards when it comes to quality. They think resolution is the only thing that matters, to the point it is actually degrading the quality of the product they are offering, and is also wasting bandwidth and resources.

I have some laserdiscs that are ~40 years old and still play fine.