It's naive to think the model will die. In fact it's merely getting new operators and beneficiaries in the form of Google, Disney, Warner, etc.
The state and commerce will always vie and co-operate for control of the public's media access and consumption patterns, with an eye to market captivity.
So you're telling me the model cannot consistently run at a profit, even through it relies on a massive unpaid labour force.
That's not the look of a bigot, it's the look of a man who's fed up with low-rent posturing clickbait. The look of someone who got a Salon article entitled What your household's toothpaste preferences say about White Fragility™ that he knows will be paygated or cookienoticed after two seconds' scrolling.
Telemetry, advertising, etc. are ultimately web page elements that I can download or block. The paid offering might have a TOS that requires acceptance of such, but those terms do not bind me as a free, public visitor. I think Youtube is doing its best to have people buy its nonsense argument, as part of a wider campaign to shift the public's understanding of web site versus web service. For what it's worth, I don't see them ever putting their money where their mouth is by pay-walling the whole site.
Alternative frontends don't fall under piracy by any definition. Youtube's servers are publicly accessible.
To acknowledge the truth of what you said but offer an explanation. It's a fly in the ointment, if you like. No one wants to live in a low-trust society.
Public listing of grocery retail is a key cause of these problems. Listed food has the wrong owners, by virtue of being listed in the first place, and they're pursuing their priorities at the direct expense of shoppers and suppliers.
If you suspect you're being fucked on a favourite purchase category, direct your custom elsewhere (Aldi, Costco, family run) and review your consumption rate. If I see unreasonable price rises, I know I'm buying less as a rule.
Those traits are pitfalls of being a high trust society.
Banding and blocking are associated with low bitrates. Bitrate is a key consideration in video encoding. Either it is constant, where you set a value of 2000 kbits, 5600, etc. and Handbrake sticks to it, or variable, where you set a quality rate factor, and Handbrake then adjusts bitrate on the fly to maintain quality X. Variable approaches will provide an average bitrate.
Occasionally DVD sources will compress really inefficiently: no matter how much bitrate you throw at it, the encoded result is substantially worse than source. But typically I've found RF 18-21 does a good job. I use mediainfo to ascertain bitrates and other information.
I pulled these settings from a DVD profile I made. They go in the 'More Settings' box
bframes=16:ref=16:fast-pskip=0:dct-decimate=0:aq-mode=2:aq-strength=1.0:qcomp=0.65:me=umh:me-range=32:psy-rd=0,0:deblock=-3,-3
Care to demonstrate 'looks worse'? Are visual artifacts showing up? Are the sources DVD or BD? What encoding speed is in use? What special parameters are specified (More Settings box) in the video tab?
I hear you, but with traction comes the corporate interest.