this post was submitted on 31 May 2025
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Others have already made good suggestions for older movies (libraries, Kanopy, Hoopla, Tubi, Archive.org etc). Also try buying second-hand physical media (DVDs, BDs).
Specifically re an old Kurosawa movie, there are a couple of channels on Peertube with old movies they say are in the public domain (I am not a lawyer).
A couple of such channels
And ClassX has Kurosawa's Seven Samurai
There are also YouTube channels that claim to have public domain or licensed movies. I recently found an "all-in-one" site that collates movies from many such channels.
If you don't want to go via a third-party site like Cinetimes, you can try some supposedly-legally-free channels directly on YouTube:
Warning: the movies on the channels are free, but not necessarily any good :) A lot of dross and only a few gems, unless you love trashy B-movies.
A couple of possibly decent films (in my watchlist, haven't seen them yet)
All the ones I've given above are for video on demand (VOD), i.e. you pick what you want, press play and it starts.
There are also linear channels, i.e. like old fashioned TV where things are shown according to a schedule and you see whatever's on when you tune in. Nowadays sometimes called "live TV", even when watching stuff made years ago. ( TheArchive.tv does both: VOD and one linear channel.)
A lot of free linear channels (including some with old movies and TV shows) are available through different ways:
For apps on your phone or computer, you might need to add a "playlist": a big list of channels that you can pick from to watch. Currently, I use the English language playlist from iptv-org (over 2,000 channels from around the world).
There is also the IOTV app for Roku, which I think uses the all languages playlist from iptv-org.
Warning: using these playlists can mean a bunch of the included channels won't work for you, e.g. because they are geoblocked to a specific country.
Some example channels with older stuff:
Thank you very much for this detailed reply. I need to get PeerTube set up, in fact I've been needing to do it for a while. Thanks
You're welcome.
Re Peertube, I believe you can start watching without setting anything up.
Re setting up an account and choosing an instance, I'm not a content creator and just went with peertube.wtf when I saw it promoted by its admin here on Lemmy.
Handy post on Peertube instances here: