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

[Yeoman007]

Only one thing I can see to add to the list of reasons already given for my love of physical media: I can have an unedited, uncensored copy of a movie or TV show.

 

[Thomas T]

Simple. I can hold it my hand

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Yeah, some mix of most-of-the-above, hehheh...

But like some, I've definitely migrated to some blend of physical media and streaming to save space and $, particularly for content (currently) deemed less important to me...

I've never been much of a renter though. Between (mainly iTunes) digitals often going on sale for <=$5/movie, which includes some hard-to-find/OOP on physical media, and my rotation of subscription streaming (though I do keep the Criterion Channel year-round), I don't generally see the need for renting for me...

But yeah, streaming probably will never completely replace physical media for me. It'll just be a good supplement/complement to handle the vast, growing, additional array of content I'd like to enjoy, but not (all) necessarily occupy my limited available home space (or discretionary spending)...

_Man_

 

[Angelo Colombus]

One reason i buy discs are foreign and documentary films that some streaming sites will not have. And on a disc there are the commentary and the extras that are nice to have.

 

[jcroy]

Another big issue for me, is that I have a very hard time remembering much of the movies I watch. (Similar story with music concerts, plays, live shows, seminars, etc ...).

In practice since I was a 20 year old or so, I've found that I had to watch a movie at least 4 or 5 times in order to remember much of anything about it. For a long time, I have went to a theater and not remembered much of anything about the film I had just seen after exiting the theater. (This is the primary reason as to why I didn't really go to the movie theater much).

If a movie doesn't catch my attention immediately during the first viewing, then most likely it will be a film that is largely forgettable to me. This is completely independent of the quality / pedigree of the film. (For example, I have seen Scorsese or Coppola stuff where I didn't remember a single thing after a first viewing of the film, other than the name of film's title).


So if the only things I remember about a film were the explosions, car crashes, sunsets, blood, gunshots, etc .... and very little else, then I won't bother buying the bluray.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

One reason i buy discs are foreign and documentary films that some streaming sites will not have. And on a disc there are the commentary and the extras that are nice to have.

Quite a lot of iTunes digitals actually include much the same extras as the corresponding disc versions -- and there are some foreign films on there (in HD and sometimes even 4K) that might not be readily available on good quality BDs (at least here in the USA), but might go on sale for <=$5 (and I've been buying quite a few of such). As usual part of this hobby anyway, doing some homework on what extras are included is just par-for-the-course, if that's important to you (though, yeah, it's trickier w/ digitals)...

I'd add though that iTunes digitals of Criterion titles (or Warner titles that are part of WAC w/out prior general Warner release) generally don't include any extras... and they haven't usually gone on sale for $5, but maybe that's changing given what we saw back in July (re: pricing).

But sure, if physical space and $ aren't issues (or for titles important enough), I'd certainly go for the disc version...

_Man_

 

[StarDestroyer52]

Yeah, all the reasons have been stated already in this thread, so I'll just add my two cents is that I'm still buying physical discs but have also started subscribing to a few streaming services like the Disney Bundle, HBOMax, Paramount+, and the Criterion Channel. I was late to collecting BluRays and I guess I probably am much younger than many here, but I'm at the point where I've gotten mostly what I want on disc(800 BluRays and 1,167 movies) and another 136 DVDs(a lot of TV shows and pre-Code/silents put out by WAC), except for the Region B Hong Kong gems they are putting out and I am looking to try and cut down on the amount of physical media I buy. Whether I am successful, we will see. Finally, it helps that I finally got a VIZIO V405-H19 40-inch LED 4K UHD Smartcast TV earlier this year, beforehand I did not have the TV that was needed for the full streaming experience.

 

[jcroy]

In my case, you uncovered another reason I really prefer to have a physical disc of movies/tv that I want to rewatch in the future is the data space. Although longer-term I plan to set up a huge Plex server with direct rips of everything, that's probably a good 5+ years out and I'll likely need a legitimate industrial-grade storage server with many terrabytes to hold everything.

That being said, as you brought up music as well - since a full CD ripped to FLAC is only a few hundred MB, I've mostly shied away from physical CD purchases for the last few years unless I can't legitimately purchase a FLAC version (recent example being the 1998 Godzilla movie's 'the album' CD... scored a sealed version for $5 shipped on fleabay). I'll rip them myself and store the CDs away since I then have a local FLAC copy and back-up everything to cloud storage in case my house burns down destroying my computer and discs. Much easier to justify cloud storage for a few hundred GB for music than probably a few hundred TB for the movie/tv collection at this point

When it comes to movies/tv or music now... to your point of impulse buying I try to pause and think "ok realistically am I going to want to watch/listen to this a few more times before the end?" and that usually helps me cut back.

I largley restrict most of my disc purchases to playing them on actual standalone disc players. It is simply "too easy" to just rip every cd/dvd/bluray disc to the computer.

If I am not willing to listen/watch a disc's content more than four or five times on a disc player with my full attention , then I simply won't bother buying the cd/dvd/bluray disc.

 

[Alan Tully]

Short answer...I like owning "stuff".

 

[jcroy]

In practice, I've found that more than 98% of the cd/dvd/bluray discs I rip to the computer, will never be watched/listened/read on the computer.

Essentially my high capacity multi-terabytes sized hard drives, end up largely being storage devices which are almost never used.

 

[jcroy]

Short answer...I like owning "stuff".

When I was younger, I would have been thinking this ^ too. As I got older and had less and less storage space, my thinking gradually changed.

Nowadays my own unstructured free time is more valuable to me, than anything I can buy / accumulate.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Curiosity up -- what title was this?

I Am Not a Hipster.

 

[Chip_HT]

Then there's the issue of cost. Even if the titles are available for streaming, you may need to subscribe to 17 different services, paying never-ending monthly fees, to maintain access to them all while hoping none of them drop the titles you're interested in watching. You can buy a disc for a few dollars and it's yours forever for no additional cost.

You can buy a digital copy for a few dollars and not have to worry about additional cost. Not all streaming is subscription based.

 

[Worth]

You can buy a digital copy for a few dollars and not have to worry about additional cost. Not all streaming is subscription based.

Yeah. There are certainly advantages to physical media, but price isn't one of them.

 

[Malcolm R]

I tend to think of digital purchases differently from "streaming". Those who bitch about owning discs seem to have issues with owning movies, period. They're mostly looking just to watch "something" to kill time. No interest in any specific film and don't care about watching anything more than once.

 

[jcroy]

I'll rip them myself and store the CDs away since I then have a local FLAC copy and back-up everything to cloud storage in case my house burns down destroying my computer and discs.

Frankly at this point, if my house is burned down or destroyed in a natural disaster (ie. tornado, wildfire, flooding, etc ...), I wouldn't even bother "replacing / rebuying" my entire collection of books, dvds/blurays, cds, vinyl records, etc ....

I would just "start again" by going straight to streaming services, digital ebooks, etc ... after getting the insurance.

 

[jcroy]

This goes to my original point in the second post in this thread: "Inertia".

I still have the mindset of getting music/movies on a disc, with a huge legacy collection.

I might very well think differently if I ever experienced a sudden "shock" of my house burning down or destroyed in a hurricane/flood.

 

[jcroy]

I tend to think of digital purchases differently from "streaming". Those who bitch about owning discs seem to have issues with owning movies, period. They're mostly looking just to watch "something" to kill time. No interest in any specific film and don't care about watching anything more than once.

For the most part. When it comes to my personal tastes in tv shows and movies, my genre of choice is science fiction.

Though unfortunately I have very high standards for scifi type stuff, where I end up being repeatedly disappointed by almost every scifi movie / tv show I watch. In the end, I end up "mostly loooking just to watch 'something' to kill time" via watching through horrible scifi movies produced by garbage movie studios such as The Asylum and other "bottom feeder" studios.

(Outside of the Sharknado franchise, The Asylum doesn't even release their movies anymore on bluray. Just dvd-only releases, if they even go that far).

It is as if I am looking for the proverbial "unicorn" in a crowd of noise, which likely will never happen.

 

[jcroy]

The other big reason I end up "killing time" via watching a lot of bad sci-fi/fantasy movies, is that it is the least expenditure of effort and time for me.

(More generally).

For a long time, I have known that the "cream of the crop" of excellence in science fiction is definitely not in the form of movies and tv shows. The best sci-fi was written as books. Though just like anything else in life, 95% of anything is shit where sci-fi books are no exception.

Since I am not a "speed reader", most generic sci-fi / fantasy novels will usually take at least several evenings for me to finish. Over the years I have read one too many sci-fi / fantasy novels which turned out to be mediocre or outright garbage.


So instead of being really disappointed after reading a crappy sci-fi novel which takes a week or so for me to finish regardless of quality, I rather waste 2 hours watching some semi-humorous sci-fi movies produced by bottom feeder movie studios. Less disappointment with wasting 2 hours on watching a crappy sci-fi movie, than wasting several evenings on reading through a lousy sci-fi / fantasy novel.

 

[David Norman]

I Am Not a Hipster.

I will admit. I've never heard of it. It does look quite interesting though.

The disc appears to have been crowdsourced so I'm assuming it was a single run -- I can't tell but it appears it might be a pressed disc or at least the case has the normal BD Logo. Plus if it was a BDR why would it be OOP and selling for that kind of money. Weird that the DVD online is more expensive than the original price of the BD.