I might be asking a rhetorical question here but I was curious as to the overall consensus on physical media. Do support it because, unlike streaming, media can’t take away what you’ve payed for? or are you against because it’s a waste of money when you can “acquire” it through “alternative means?” I’m also thinking about getting a 4K Blu Ray player for when my wife and I get a new place; preferably one that can also play self hosted media. What do you guys think?
If I can’t find something I want to pirate, I will sometimes break down and buy it, but always in physical media, which I immediately rip into my collection. I don’t use physical media, it’s too inconvenient, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay some megacorp so I can rent media and pretend I’m actually buying it.
If you want to support the author, why not? DRM may be a performance buster, but you can always get a physical copy to support the further development and keep enjoying DRM-free content from the alternative means. Also for stuff where it’s harder to get something in an arrrrr way, physical media is often offered with steep discounts some time after the initial launch: I bought a lot of games for Xbox on disks for $10-15, while digital copies were still $60 a year after launch. BTW, if you have a game console, there is a good chance it has Blu Ray already.
I collect dvds and blu-rays, I haven’t really made the move to 4k because it’s harder to rip
I support ownership of stuff i buy.
Whether its physical or digital doesn’t matter. I probably prefer digital as computer related activities already produce a ton of physical e-waste.
I like me some music CDs. Cassettes, too
I won’t buy anything unless I can actually own it.
I will buy bluray movies if they are good, but I rip them to my server. With a set top player, there may be unskipable crap before the movie starts. Sometimes there are interesting extras on the bluray or DVD that can’t be found online. I avoid the 4K blurays since they are a pain to remove the DRM and I’m not a fan of HDR.
I will buy games that I like if the developer isn’t on my shitlist, but they must have a DRM free download that I can install offline. I wait for the games to go on sale though. I will not pay a premium just to be a beta tester.
Keep in mind that the average longevity of laser disks is 10-20 years. After that the data gets corrupted and will become unreadable at some point.
Thats why I don’t use cd/dvd/bluray.
Books on the other hand, I love as a physical media.
Got plenty of CDs older than that, and they’re fine. Might happen some day, but in my experience it isn’t that bad.
If you store them properly and create fresh backups on new discs every couple of years, they can last a long time.
My mind directly went to Laserdisc before I realized you were talking about the generic category 😅.
cd/dvd/blueray doesn’t become bad that fast, properly stored they can easely live to 50+ years (except the writeable variant). they are physically etched which helps with longevity.
VHS or other types of magnetic storage is more of a chore, they often don’t survive the passing of time.
I read it’s more like 20-200 years. But there are differences. Recorded CD-Rs are worst. Burn DVDs if you can. And bought (pressed(?)) disks perform considerably better. But don’t expose them to UV light or scratch them too much.
I don’t miss the times when my living room had several shelves with movies and CDs and XBox games. Nowadays I have everything stored on a NAS in the basement and a Spoitfy and Netflix subscription.
I find it difficult to compare those concepts, owning vs renting, pirating vs buying. They’re all very different and all have their use. I just think I’m not the one who likes to collect movies and music on physical disks. And streaming it to the phone or TV is more convenient anyways.
Physical media in the sense that you actually own the hardware where it’s stored? That’s an absolute must!
But personally I wouldn’t want to deal with CDs and other outdated mediums.
I own every outdated medium (alas, need to repair the 8-tracks) and the devices to use them. They hold music that’s most of the times not available via any other method.
The content is more valuable to me then the type of medium.
So copy it off the old mediums?
Yep, so you still need the old mediums. Also, analog sounds different from digital unless you take a very high sampling rate. (Some hear the diffeeence, same like some see the differense between HD and 4K and some don’t)
I’d challenge anyone to A/B a 16bit 44kHz sampled digitization with the original and tell the difference consistently. This is one of the reasons I love pbthal vinyl rips, his rig is awesome, I could never afford it, and it captures the sound I’m looking for. The 24 bit 192kHz vinyl rips on torrent sites are chasing ratio IMO.
The biggest disadvantage of physical media is DRM. With the exception of music which isn’t usually locked, pretty much all optical discs have some form of region locking. Software/video games also typically have additional DRM schemes. Some are easy to bypass (e.g. nocd cracks). Online activation is the worst because it relies on the game publisher keeping the servers alive.
I tried buying the BluRay to one of the recent Spider-Man movies. Unfortunately, due to DRM, I could not play it in my BluRay drive on my PC? I might have had to download some proprietary video playback software or something.
I realized that this too was such a hassle compared to the files that I could potentially download. As great as physical media is, the convenience factor plays an impact for me. I won my media, but I have to put in work and have a non-ideal setup to watch it.
On top of everything, with all the intros, and piracy warnings, just so many layers of non-comvenience.
For many years I would buy physical media, to the point where storage was a huge problem. Initially I ripped them to digital copies but honestly I did a terrible job ands most of them were too low of a quality to make it worth while. Pirates know how to rip stuff while keeping sizes under control and the quality top notch.
Now I can watch Blu-ray quality movies without have to deal with disks. So while I am not opposed to physical media, in most cases I still prefer digital.
Yarr! I like when I can touch me booty
I haven’t bought new media in years. Last time I bougth new they were LP records, new pressings. For movies I just download or buy used, for music I almost always buy used and from time to time new when I really want to support the artist.
Yhe problem with limiting yourself to either pirate or just 1 type of medium is that you miss out on good stuff. At this moment I have music from every decade between 1890 and 2020 on LP, of which most will never be available digitally.
I’ll sometimes get the disc for movies I love. These usually come with some kind of digital voucher so I can stream it without having to muk around with physical discs, but I have the disc so can play it when I want. This happens seldom enough the discs fit in my TV stand.
