I see a lot of comments in here against the cloud and saying that on-prem is better. My question is, why would on-prem uptime would be any better? Or is it more about a loss of control in moving to the cloud?

Right, but if you want a digital video library that hasn’t been compressed to hell by some streaming company then your only option is using Blu-ray as a source.

Streams flac. Good supplement to piracy. I might switch to Qobuz sometime, but it works well for now.

Even with a free forum host, it’s difficult to keep things running for a long time.

Awhile back I was unsatisfied with how quickly my (new) furniture was degrading, and found a furniture forum run by a guy in the biz. So much knowledge on there about different furniture and how to actually find quality stuff that will last decades.

The owner retired this week, and he had been paying for an IT contract to do basic maintenance / upgrades on the forum (I think he started on a free host, but as it got bigger he eventually had to move it). He needed IT help basically to apply security patches and do upgrades. He’s stated that he no longer plans to pay for the maintenance contract. I’m guessing the forum will disappear soon.