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I'm interested in revisiting several episodes of all three series that I recall fondly from my teenage years? I've checked all of the streaming services I'm aware of as well as two video-streaming aggregator sites (JustWatch and CanIStreamIt?) all to no avail, and VH1's own website, itself a very sparse affair, only grants streaming access to those with a traditional television provider account (which, as a cordcutter, I don't possess) with an alternate option to purchase the DVD boxed sets they offer. Even the traditional peer-to-peer filesharing ecosystems seem bereft of so much as an echo of their existence.

Some of the more popular episodes have been uploaded to YouTube, Vimeo and DailyMotion using one or more of the workarounds-du-jour for copyrighted content, but they offer precious little overlap with the episodes I've identified an interest in seeing again.


Resting squarely in my "First World Problems" folder, I do register a minor concern that these series might be poised to slip through the cracks of the media distribution ecosystem if VH1 fails to digitize and license them before they slip out of the zeitgeist altogether and become unattractive to potential licensees. I include this thought because I'd also find value in any well-informed appraisals of the likelihood of this coming to pass based on other actions/inactions their corporate leadership has been observed taking in recent years. I find the prospect of purchasing the DVDs to be distasteful, if for no other reason than the fact that my sole remaining option for playback of optical media is an external USB3 DVD+RW drive, but I'd rather bite that bullet while they remain for sale than never see them again.

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  • Allowing that the episodes simply aren't available, one possibility would relate to licensing. VH1 may have contractual agreements with the artists regarding licensing of their respective episodes that make streaming either difficult -- because of the need for VH1 to get permission from each artist -- or too expensive.
    – Aaron
    Aug 9, 2020 at 4:29

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