How do you explain your love of physical media in an era of streaming? (1 Viewer)

[Josh Steinberg]

We have numerous threads about disc failures.

Optical discs were never conceived or engineered to be an archival medium. They’re not meant to last forever.

The most frequent cause of failure is the glue that holds the layers together beginning to separate.

Pretty much any disc is susceptible to failure. Many will. Many won’t. It’s not easily predictable. But the idea that anyone can buy a disc and have guaranteed access to that content in perpetuity is a fallacy.

 

[Thomas Newton]

I don’t disagree but I also don’t see that as being much different than when one of those titles goes out of print on disc.

Most movie discs – not counting Circuit City DIVX discs – are transferable. The DRM may interfere with eventual public domain use of the content, but barring insanity on the part of the studios ("let's revoke all of the player encryption keys"), when a movie goes out of print, there may be some chance of buying a legitimate used copy that will play on your equipment. Possibly for an arm and a leg; possibly for a song.

DRMed electronic purchases often are not transferable. That means that when new copies of a movie sold exclusively in this way go out of print, you won't be able to buy a used copy. A copy that is locked to someone else's equipment or to their identity, and that the vendor refuses to help you legitimately transfer, is for all practical purposes, useless.

It's like the difference between a species becoming endangered, and a species becoming extinct.

 

[Thomas Newton]

I heard Joe Dante say Laserdiscs are prone to disc rot.

Most LaserDiscs had a much larger diameter than CD / DVD / Blu-Ray discs. If I remember correctly, the large diameter of LaserDiscs, combined with the use of poor adhesives, was a big part of what made them susceptible.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I understand the theory and the logic behind what you’re saying, but at the same time this is also true for me: no one will want my disc collection when I’m gone. It’s just junk from my hobby to everyone I know. I’m sure the same will be true for my digital collection as well. It’s the plight of most collectors, whatever their specific hobby or collection is.

 

[Walter Kittel]

Those of us who collected Columbia / TriStar titles on Laserdisc are all too familiar with Laserdisc Rot. While rot was not exclusive to those titles, it certainly felt like a preponderance of disc failures were associated with that entity.

- Walter.

 

[jcroy]

Most movie discs – Circuit City DIVX discs – are transferable.

Even today, the drm on Circuit City's DIVX discs has done its job. It is purportedly triple-DES which has not been easily cracked yet.

One mind as well just buy the dvd (or digital) version of DIVX movies, instead of trying to crack the triple-DES encryption by brute force.

 

[Thomas Newton]

One mind as well just buy the dvd (or digital) version of DIVX movies

The failure of DIVX probably helped to increase the availability of DVD titles. According to Wikipedia, "DreamWorks, 20th Century Fox, and Paramount Pictures … initially released their films exclusively on the DIVX format."

Many DIVX discs contained butchered Pan-and-Scan versions of movies. This raises the possibility that had DIVX taken off, we might have lost the option to purchase, or even rent, OAR versions of many films.

 

[bmasters9]

or going to an actual theater as there are no longer any pros for me.

What happened in the movie theater that soured you on movie theaters (the way I'm reading this)?

 

[Scott Merryfield]

Have you had any issues with your digital purchases already made?

Hard Drive failure or loss of the file/download altogether?

You do not even need to download digital purchases to a local device. In fact, most (if not all) services limit download quality - - i.e. no 4K quality. Personally, I have never downloaded any of the hundreds of digital titles I have purchased or claimed codes for. I simply rely on the service's servers to store my purchases.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Regarding physical media, "Black Friday" deals have started across different retailers. Amazon, Best Buy and Walmart are discounting 4K discs as low as $7.99-9.99. I purchased a handful of them this morning despite me all ready having their 4K digitals.

 

[kalm_traveler]

I generally avoid these discussions, but who has considered this?

Home ownership of movies, and I mean home ownership as a truly realistic option only first appeared less than 25 years ago. Yeah, there was VHS and LD, but those were extremely expensive and very little was sold retail. LD a little more, but selection was extremely limited. It was almost exclusively a rental format. DVD wasn't actually released until 1997, and it didn't really start becoming a purchase format for several years. Then, there was the cost. We forget that anything on a DVD release in the '90s was generally $20. Remember the first DVD release of Star Trek: The Next Generation? $100 Per Season! Hardly mainstream. You can buy all seven seasons, on Blu-Ray for that much now.

I spent 15 years doing architectural photography. I shot houses with $100K+ home theaters. Not one of them actually owned a movie library that was even 1/20 of what I had. We are the exception. The idea that the movie industry can't survive without a format that's only existed for 20 years and is still the exception is absurd.

That's a good point John.

Perhaps I grew up in a strange place (was a kid through all the 90's) but large VHS collections were pretty common as I recall. My dad's was on the smaller end of things but he still had probably 20-30 tapes of 'his' movies and about as many of kid stuff for me. Granted that's a drop in the bucket compared to how many DVDs and/or blurays some of us now have but this was a single dude who didn't watch TV or movies all that often.

His brother (my uncle) was the only 'rich' person I knew as a kid - with a dedicated legit home theater in his home, big laserdisc collection and all of that. Guy must have had well into the hundreds of VHS as well - one room in the basement was entirely movie storage.

But I see your point - many of us here are far more interested and invested into physical ownership than the normies of yore, or even of now.

Again, I don't think there's anything wrong with streaming options - and I DO make use of them for sampling. My preference if I really enjoy some content though is just to have some local onsite maximum quality option for previously mentioned reasons, chiefly maximum PQ and AQ, no ads, and no risk of the platform no longer carrying some obscure old film or anime.

I haven't run into this as much with films, but with quite a lot of the anime I enjoyed (I was very into it from about late 80's through late 2000's), a great many titles released on DVD but have been out of print for close to 20 years now and not available for streaming anyway. Super glad to have my own hard copy in situations like that.

 

[Robert Crawford]

I had a huge video tape collection with both Beta and VHS tapes. I ended throwing away hundreds of tapes. Once I bought that first Sony DVD player released in 1997, my tape collection became obsolete.

 

[TravisR]

I had a huge video tape collection with both Beta and VHS tapes. I ended throwing away hundreds of tapes. Once I bought that first Sony DVD player released in 1997, my tape collection became obsolete.

Should've kept them. Today, 80's and 90's kids that are stuck in the past are paying premium prices for VHS tapes.

 

[DaveF]

It's difficult to quantify the percentages, but I suspect more of us stream some material than what they admit to on this forum. That's just my gut feeling. Of course, I'm talking about those that have capability to quality streaming and not that buffered crap we had on Amazon not too many years ago.

I stream about 110% of my viewing and buy about 3% of what I watch. I prefer buying discs for the infrequent movie party, so I can can create a playlist. This weekend, we had a The Lost Boys party, and I had a playlist with trailers for Young Guns and Stand By Me, the stinger for my theater, and then the feature. I can‘t do that with streaming. But with discs, I can accomplish it.

The average consumer - that is, the people who make up the bulk of entertainment spending - have time and again chosen easy and convenient access to content over ownership of physical objects. It’s happened with music, it’s happened with books, it’s happened with movies.

I think this is so pointedly overlooked so frequently, that it suggests a factor: streaming is so much easier. Sit down. Start watching. Multiple shows. No dealing with multiple forced trailers. No dealing with FBI warnings. No dealing with slow disc load times. No getting up to change discs. Normal people stream because it’s easier and cheaper: streaming is a better human experience than discs in most every way.


I used to joke that people who like reading buy eBooks, while people who like collecting buy dead trees. I wonder if it’s the same for movies: People who like watching stuff, now have streaming, while people who like collecting plastic discs own plastic discs. Collectors here boast of the hundreds or thousands of unwatched, even unopened, movies they own. I think there’s a significant aspect of just “possessing” and even some “retail therapy” that motivates collectors.

There is some low-key revolt to the non-physical experiences that are overtaking our entertainment. People want some physicality at times. Similar to the resurgence in vinyl music, I wonder if people whose formative experience was putting tapes and then discs into a player, want that visceral experience.

My largest 'concern' is that I want to buy and see a decent amount of movies that aren't owned by a corporation and that's the kind of stuff that falls in between the cracks when physical media disappears. I'm not going to have trouble seeing or buying Star Wars but Halloween 4: The Return Of Michael Myers might suddenly be difficult to see simply because it doesn't have a conglomerate putting it on their streaming service or selling it on iTunes.

As Josh noted, this is a problem with discs too. Especially niche titles, they go out of print. They have small limited runs, and sell for high prices. Discs are no panacea.

Discs are great. Streaming is great. I like both. But after resisting and being a chronically late adopter, I’ve come to love streaming. It’s just so much easier and cheaper and better in many ways. It’s not perfect. I like some aspects of discs better still. But I expect that will go away in a few years.

 

[DaveF]

Internet access is a big deal. I’ve got gigabit for <$100 a month. Streaming basically always works. It’s about as reliable as electricity.

In-laws moved into a ”forever home” which gets at best 3Mbps on DSL. Streaming just doesn’t work for them. So they keep expanding their disc library, which is thousands of discs and growing every Black Friday.

 

[usrunnr]

Frontier Communications does not offer a fast enough internet speed to
ensure streaming, even from Netflix, without constant buffering.

 

[John Dirk]

All I can do is enjoy what I do have for as long as it still works. The rest is out of my hands.

That about sums it up. Enjoy what you like while it's viable but know that thing are changing and prepare accordingly.

 

[John Dirk]

Internet access is a big deal. I’ve got gigabit for <$100 a month. Streaming basically always works. It’s about as reliable as electricity.

Right but as your own comment illustrates, Internet reliability [and even availability] is highly dependent on geography. Where I live outages are common, sometimes lasting over 24 hours. There is nothing I can do about it, regardless of how much I pay.

 

[jcroy]

I think this is so pointedly overlooked so frequently, that it suggests a factor: streaming is so much easier. Sit down. Start watching. Multiple shows. No dealing with multiple forced trailers. No dealing with FBI warnings. No dealing with slow disc load times. No getting up to change discs. Normal people stream because it’s easier and cheaper: streaming is a better human experience than discs in most every way.

Also no more returning the tape/disc to the video rental store + late fees and other headaches (ie. be kind and rewind, etc ....).

There is some low-key revolt to the non-physical experiences that are overtaking our entertainment. People want some physicality at times. Similar to the resurgence in vinyl music, I wonder if people whose formative experience was putting tapes and then discs into a player, want that visceral experience.

When I was younger, I use to buy vinyl based solely on the record cover artwork. Stuff like buying Judas Priest or Iron Maiden records without ever hearing the record, but for the cool "Eddie" artwork on the cover.

 

[DaveF]

Right but as your own comment illustrates, Internet reliability [and even availability] is highly dependent on geography. Where I live outages are common, sometimes lasting over 24 hours. There is nothing I can do about it, regardless of how much I pay.

The streaming future is here but it’s not equally shared.