How to expand my personal video library

The cheapest way to expand my video choice is to buy used DVDs and convert it, but obviously you need to find what you want and the media need to be not damaged.

I have also tried online VOD services such as Acetrax, but the choice its really poor, limited mostly to recent blockbuster videos and with high prices. No Netflix here and also I prefer to create my own library instead to pay a monthly fee.

My question is: since you can legally sell your private DVDs to someone else, you can also do the same using torrent? I think to be legal you need to be sure a single video can be sold only to a single person.

There are such a service I can use? This will give me much more opportunities to cross demand with offer, having lower prices for older movies, a bigger choice and remaining in the legality that's what I want.
Edited by davide445 - 1/16/13 at 12:10pm

Torrent was only my idea for content distribution, since appear to me efficient for that purpose. As I read the protocol and clients are not illegal, what it's illegal is obviously the distribution of copyrighted material.

But if I provide a centralized marketplace with a robust video hashing (just found this one http://www.phash.org/) I can guarantee my peer that is buying the video (identified by his credit card, or PayPal account) will not resell it to many other peers.
If he do it can be always be deferred to public authority, since I know what video he bought and who he is.
Having a robust hash I can track the video anywhere from torrent to any other video repository, even with minor modifications in place, and I know where the video is coming.

If he want to resell his personal copy he need to make the transaction on the central system, so that the new owner is know. The video remain his own responsibility till he perform this kind of transaction. Similar to financial securities markets.

The physical media can be stored anywhere, the most important thing is the first seller need to own the physical media.

Too simple to be right?

Yes, the assumption is you own the media, if you sell it you don't have it anymore. Such as books.

The system I suggest before didn't control this. The only way will be to deliver the video on a controlled client and do not store physically the media on buyer system, such as Acetrax do when you buy the video: it remain always available on Acetrax servers and playable trough his clients.

Considering only one person at time can own the video if more people want it the central physical media repository need to own more physical copies (such as the old videostore) before to assign the digital one.

The truth is if you can play it on your pc will be always possible to record it and so to have your own copy.

But in the way I described before the worst can happen is that any owner retain his own personal copy but don't resell/distribute it since its traceable on the net, he resell the official copy that will be available on this secondary market.

The real problem I think is people want to have their copies locally, so to play with them, transcoding or organizing in a way that fit with their current av setup.

I don't know how Apple resolved this problem with songs, I think apple+media companies have done a comparison btw the money they loose proceeding in the old way (no broad digital distribution) and the revenue sharing with Apple in the new one.
Edited by davide445 - 1/16/13 at 5:15pm

Ok understood: no way to do it legally.

My idea was to create (or better: to access to if there are some already in place) the digital equivalent of used DVD market, with all the possible ways to control that a digital copy will be buyed/selled from private to private in the same way the physical copy do.
But if the simple video transferring from physical media to liquid format it's illegal there is no way also to start such a process.

I bought my Samsung D7000 smart tv with the specific purpose to access legal payed VOD. The problem is the services available here are really disappointing: few titles and high prices.

So in 2013 I'm still relying on physical media, even if I just bought a 4TB NAS where I can store and play any kind of video content. As I read in the USA liquid video format surpass last year the physical one.

I think need to wait some more years here, in the meantime I will continue to buy used DVD/BD and rip for my personal use.
Edited by davide445 - 3/25/13 at 7:21am

I don't know how the legal aspects will evolve, but appear that at least in the USA something is moving in the direction I was thinking about (at least in the music sector)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReDigi