Part of the resolution issue is probably caused by Netflix silly requirements. You can use hardware that is perfectly capable of handling 4k@60 or even higher, in whatever codec they deliver. But if your hardware is not considered as supported, good bad.
An argument can be made for ease of use and general consumer base, but these things shouldn't punish everyone else for that.
Ascendance of Bookworm is always worth a shoutout. Good, organic world building and well planned storytelling without it becoming an empty power-fantasy.
Have you ever heard his full stance on the matter? Because he clearly stated that this is not a judgment against using it. Heck, he's been open about having sailed the high seas himself and still doing so for media he physically owns.
It's just that gaining access to media while circumventing the payment (ads in this case) is basically piracy. Which is fair.
I agree, however I think the main cause is studios/publishers just deciding where to allocate the time. Devs are just the ones implementing these shitty decisions.
Probably stress. Running a business + a nonprofit + YouTube is already a lot. And on top of that I think he's recently been diagnosed with being in the spectrum, which is stressful on it's own way as well.
I don't think he'll stop though. Dude's been burning himself like that for over a decade, it's probably the only way he knows how to live.
If you wanna selfhost your own solution, I can recommend Audiobookshelf. It scraps metadata from Apple, Amazon, Google etc, tracks on a per-user basis at what point in the book you are, can be used in a browser and has an android app. It's easy to set up with Docker too. You can even add PDFs and epubs to the books.
Been using it for a few months and it has been great.
As for sourcing of audiobooks, aside from torrents there are also audiobb.com & audiobooksbee.com . They use RapidGator as host for a ddl.
I found a whole bunch in a place I never thought to look: e-hentai.org
Just look for the tag "artbook" and you already find a bunch. Or look for something more specific. Yes, you will have porn in between. Yes, its just the images without text embedded etc. But it's a decent source.
Basically, the repo for the extensions has been nuked by DMCAs. You can switch to a repo hosted by a third party to bypass it. I'm not gonna link one here because I have not looked deep into who's a good host. But you should be able to find one with some searching.