my home media history

07 May, 2026

Way back when streaming services did not exist, me and my family watched movies by renting them out in a Video City shop in town¹. I’m too young for VHS and just the right age for Blu-Ray and pirated flimsy CDs with all the Disney movies in one², displayed and sold on the streets in a collage of movie posters supported by steel mesh.

Right around the same time that era was about to end and the police came for piracy in the streets, I got older and our family got a new Samsung TV. This was when I got hooked on HBO and Star Movies channels³, when there were film schedules and the titles displayed on the left hand side. It was a great opportunity to watch and rewatch movies, since the same movies were shown at different days of the week and then a new set of films would show maybe every other week.

I was very happy with that. I loved having a TV as a kid. Also, there was a channel dedicated to karaoke and you could call the cable company if you wanted to request a song to be put up in the queue. I don’t know if that’s a thing in your place or just a Filipino thing since we kinda have an attachment with karaoke/singing. And so I’m the kid that used to call the cable, then also ask them why a channel has no signal, what channel number is this program, etc. etc.

I was pretty invested in Disney, all while being this huge Spongebob nerd, and before that, I loved Mr. Bean, too - both the animated and live-action editions, to the point that my parents and all my family used to tease me that Mr. Bean is actually my ninong (godfather) because I had this show on too many times and it had kept me entertained as a child. I guess I thought he was so funny and creative and smart in his own way. I also remember how it came as such a shock to learn of the man that was Rowan Atkinson, who had a performance at the London Olympics and had a beautiful daughter. And then that was my childhood. Not really related to movies but I thought it is worth establishing my behavior on watching media and remembering that part of my life since cable TV is essentially near extinction if not totally extinct now.

Around the 7th grade, I got my own laptop and I also learned how to connect a drive to our TV. My dad is a seafarer who is on board a ship for more or less a year of duration. He’d been working in the kitchens of cruise, cargo and container ships, then come home after a contract, wait for another one, rinse and repeat.

His line of work would then be detrimental to my interest in films because as at the time when technology got crazy and everyone was in on the Internet, he started to bring home 500 gigabyte hard drives in his trips, where he stored pictures, films and shows that he watched in his cabin since wifi was still not readily available in the middle of the ocean then (though he still does this until now, actually).

Apparently this was very common, and I heard from a co-worker that sometimes you can pay someone to get you copies of a collection of movies and shows and all that. So, whenever my dad is off a contract, those hard drives are connected to our TV, and it really was like we had our own lil portable Netflix back then.

Though obviously it was all pirated and nevermind that I also stumbled upon stuff that was not meant for children - it was filled to the brim with movies and shows and it made me so happy; browsing through folders, my decision to watch a film not relying on thumbnails or posters, but titles and the year it was out, without any synopsis or a ranking or a category save for the folder name, which are not at all helpful. I was watching them all on a Samsung TV, remember, and the UI was not at all that advanced. Either way, I had the best time, and I can also recall inviting friends and classmates at home and we’d pull up a movie from the hard drive and that was how we spent our time after school.

Eventually, I learned about torrents and got way way too familiar with it.

~

Anyone here that has zero tolerance for piracy in any shape or form you can stop reading now...

I have never felt any remorse for pirating media or software that I know are produced/created by a corporation, because otherwise I’d spend a whole bunch of money I would have to ask my parents for or at this age I’d have to budget it like subscriptions. I know a few months back bearbloggers have had this discourse on piracy but I forgot to write my own piece on it and what the general consensus was in the end.

I absolutely understand why people have zero tolerance for piracy but I’m not going to be sorry for that right now on this post...

~

The films I downloaded with torrent the first time I got wind of it, I’d say contributed a lot into me trying to muster up a personality⁴. At that time, I even kept a notebook, years before discovering Letterboxd, where I wrote down a movie that I watched and wrote my thoughts on them and a rating that at that time I thought would be great if someone would stumble upon it and watch a specific film because of my recommendation. I still keep it in my room somewhere! It is always such an interesting dose of nostalgia when I come across it.

Let me fast forward to today though, and the reason for this post. Me and my family’s current subscriptions: Netflix and Disney Plus. Then, instead of cable (our local provider has not changed, but has transitioned to being a cable + ISP company now), we watch Youtube livestreams⁵ of Filipino TV shows and news or sometimes use a TV box that the provider provided (LOL).

With that as the entire gist, the other day my dad asked me where he could rewatch Game of Thrones. Him and I are avid fans of this series, and it all just dwindled down after Season 7. IYKYK.

At that moment I thought it was just so pathetic to suggest we should subscribe to HBO Max so we can do a rewatch. Like. That would have us having 3 active subscriptions? It’s not a matter of pricing (I said we can afford it) but it dawned on me just then that you can never really own a piece of media, not anymore, and it has been like that for quite some time now, compared in the analog past where you could own shelves and shelves of films. Now you either watch it at the cinema, buy a physical CD/tape (LITERALLY WHERE?) + have a player, catch it on TV reruns (also sort of rare, but we do have the TV box), or subscribe to a streaming service. This is all I can think of on what to do to watch an old piece of media that is not premiering right now. At least, legally.

So I’m not going into the illegal ones - that is besides the point - it is just insane that streaming services now have a chokehold on films and TV shows like this and then they just get to decide whenever they want to just scrape off these art pieces entirely. Am I delusional or missing something to come to the conclusion that this threat of media being lost to the void forever is very real or it just horrifies me that with the amount of connectivity we have in our hands some pieces of art are just not going to be that accessible?

Man, I miss cable TV a lot. This thing where we choice what we should watch, I think it limits us as a society, being in our own little bubble, the recommendations all tailored to what we like and the ethics that comes with how the service came up with that. All for profit profit profit.

I should probably touch some grass, but what this all means for me now is that in the future, having your own collection of physical films and official copies outside of that threat is going to be a pursuit where you need to be financially able or have generational wealth. I guess this is the price we pay, like we always do for technology; there’s a limitation, a line or a divide and we can’t have it all...

Well, that certainly makes me feel right back to where I started. I’m going to get back to everyone in a decade or so if I come out of the rat race successfully and have my own basement of media I wanna watch that do not rely on the Internet and that I also own, not affecting bandwidth, no interruptions, no Ads, just a video playing offline. Doesn’t that make for a great marketing line?

There is a solution here ~ but for reasons, it is not that good of an idea to write it on here so explicitly. I just wanted to share that I did get my dad to rewatch the series again without subsciribing to a service. As it turns out, a few years ago, he had the same exact request weeks before a contract, so I put the thing in the thing, and with just a little bit of digging in some folders it is still very much there. With subtitles. Thank you to my old me.

The north remembers!

#2026 #film #life #tv