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

[ahollis]

There is nothing to explain. Really there is not. Either though wand physical media in your hand or you don’t. That’s it.

 

[Jake Lipson]

I will admit. I've never heard of it.

I'd never heard of it before last month either. I'm a big fan of the director, Destin Daniel Cretton, who made the excellent Short Term 12 among others and most recently Shang-Chi. But somehow before last month Hipster eluded me. It's pretty good though.

 

[Worth]

There is nothing to explain. Really there is not. Either though wand physical media in your hand or you don’t. That’s it.

I don't think that's entirely true. I don't actually care whether I can hold a title in my hand or it resides on a server somewhere. Since DVD, it's all zeroes and ones anyway. But I still buy discs because they continue to offer the best picture quality available - though streaming can come awfully close these days - and because I know that the contents on the disc will never change. For instance, my iTunes copy of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage lost it's Italian audio option when it went to 4K.

 

[cineMANIAC]

...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_

I feel the same way about streaming. It's a supplement to my physical media collection but that's it - just an extension, not a replacement. The way films today have taken a nosedive quality-wise I won't be needing to add much to my collection. Just sticking with the classics and personal favorites for the most part.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

Streaming is a solution for people that don't have the space or interest in collecting discs. For a lot of people all the options they will ever need are available streaming.

Physical media is a collector's niche. It allows you to have things that are not available streaming as well as features galore. Plus if they remove something they do not remove your physical copy of it.

 

[YANG]

quality presentation of a film we choose from streaming media often dependent on network speed, which if not smooth, affects streaming qualities as well as not to forget, regional restrictions of contents. the latter part of regional restrictions or censorship will affect the availability of the movie we want to own on physical media as well. but, should there be any conflicts between hardware, software, and firmware... certainly one will have issue on smooth playback process with certain discs. otherwise, physical media playback wouldn't be affected by network connectivity and strength as well as server flow.
I'm more tilted towards physical medias, than streaming medias... at least i knew there are some special releases of titles, that you'll not be able to find thru streaming services.

 

[jcroy]

Streaming is a solution for people that don't have the space or interest in collecting discs. For a lot of people all the options they will ever need are available streaming.

Physical media is a collector's niche. It allows you to have things that are not available streaming as well as features galore. Plus if they remove something they do not remove your physical copy of it.

Even if I still really wanted to collect movies on disc, my genre of choice (science fiction / fantasy) has less and less stuff being released officially on dvd/bluray.

As mentioned earlier in this thread, a lot of the less popular sci-fi / fantasy stuff doesn't even have bluray releases anymore, such as The Asylum productions and other bottom feeder studios. Some titles don't even have dvd-only releases anymore either, where they are released only as streaming or downloads.

 

[Mark Stenroos]

Many of the physical disc movies I own also show up on the streaming services, or are accessible thru Movies Anywhere and Vudu due to my redeeming the digital codes. When at home, I endeavor to play the discs for these titles because my internet carrier (Cox) will ding me if I exceed my monthly data limit by streaming a lot. Playing the discs also avoids the buffering I can encounter when my daughter decides to play some data-heavy online game at the same time I’m streaming a movie. Certainly I find that 4k discs tend to have consistently better quality than I get when streaming a 4k title.

 

[fdabbott]

I'm noticing that friends and family increasingly think I'm nuts for being so interested in having a decent home theater setup and collecting movies, tv etc in whatever highest possible disc format they can be had in which got me wondering how do you guys explain it?

In my case, I have always been a technology enthusiast so I think it's great that we have the streaming capabilities that we do now - something I couldn't have imagined 20+ years ago, but as for why I want physical copies of things I really enjoyed watching (and plan to rewatch) there are a few points that come to mind and I'm curious to know what your reasons are as well:

• control of the viewing experience - if you don't have a physical copy, there are are multitude of factors that can take your ability to view it away (power outage, internet service issue, online streaming platform decides to stop streaming it, etc)
• consistent quality - with streaming I notice occasional stutters or funny compression artifacts especially during peak times. With a disc, as long as it's not scratched and your player doesn't die it just 'works'
• ability to make your own backup to something like an in-home Plex server both for preservation and ease of watching. If that's the plan, you retain the option of using the disc but can store it somewhere out of the way
• preservation of more niche works that may not be available on any streaming platform. I've run into this with a lot of anime since I only watched it from about the early 90's through late 2000's and many of the series or movies I liked have been OOP for decades and not rescanned for blu ray releases. Also, the movie Titan AE.

Anyway, that's all I can think of off the top of my head but what are your reasons for sticking with physical media?

For me if it's not on DVD, Blu-ray I won't bother with it. I hate streaming services, you pay money for nothing and most of the time what I like is not available. Streaming services are a waste of time and money. Keep them. No company is going to con me into giving them money for nothing. Young people in general are such fools, they have no sense of the worth of money..

 

[DanH1972]

It's about overall quality and ownership. With streaming... you get neither. You can purchase all the lesser quality digital movies you want, but at the end of the day you own NOTHING. It's a lease agreement (look at the fine print!!), not an outright purchase, so you are at the mercy of the studio licensing agreements and the staying power of the company you "bought" from.

Sure, there is Kaleidescape, but the investment costs are outrageous for hardware and their downloads, there is no guarantee you will get a Dolby Atmos or DTS: X track even when it is available on disc or elsewhere, there is no Dolby Vision support, and you are still vulnerable to studio licensing whims and the possibility of Kscape going out of business as they almost did previously.

 

[JediFonger]

if you have naysayers in your life i think inviting them over and blowing them away is always key imho.

if you’ve got a decent system it would be the envy of your friends/fam

 

[TallPaulInKy]

highest possible disc format they can be had in which got me wondering how do you guys explain it?

I prefer to buy DVDs and Blu-Rays because the offer bonus features whereas streams normally just offer the movie. I especially like good commentary tracks, but I have to admit most of them these days are pretty poor.

 

[Worth]

...Young people in general are such fools, they have no sense of the worth of money..

As opposed to paying individually for every single thing you watch? To each his own, but to suggest that buying everything on disc is somehow cheaper than streaming is absurd.

 

[Drew Salzan]

Owning the physical media affords so many advantages. Aside of the mere joy of holding it in my hand, opening it and putting it in the machine, streaming doesn’t give you all of the extra behind-the-scenes material that often comes with the feature (outtakes, the making of and alternate audio commentary, just to name a few). Also, let’s not forget that the quality of the image is better.

I think there’s a place for both streaming and physical media. Sometimes you want to buy a book and sometimes you just want to borrow one from the library .

 

[JWC1969]

Probably been said before but even though the PQ of streaming keeps improving and admittedly is closing in on disks (although definitely not there yet), my biggest problem is the audio. Atmos streaming is fine-ish (definitely not true lossless Atmos), but a DTS-MA audio stream or Dolby TrueHD will crush the DD (or DD+) the majority of streaming offers.

 

[Santee7]

When I went back to school in '04 to get my Masters, I had to sell a whole lot of my physical media. And "back in the day" as the children say you could also rent about anything you wanted. Moving around to find jobs after the Masters also meant selling a lot of physical discs, and I had ripped a number of them. And once streaming arrived, and for a time it did appear absolutely everything in the world was on Netflix I thought I'd never buy another disc again. One night I was in a Bogart mood. Went to netflix, as they used to have a so called classics section. Nope, no Bogey, not even Casablanca or African Queen. Think of it, no Bogey! Not even the tried, true and over shown classics! In fact they only had like ten so called classics.
I had an older version of Casablanca on disc but on my new big screen telly it looked bloody awful.
Time to buy the blu-ray.
Discovered just how far Blu-ray had really come. I realized I had never seen Casablanca before. ON a 55 inch screen in blu ray, it was new movie to me.
About the same time wanted to watch some classic Twilight Zone. My favorite season is the on hour 5th season, those are the ones I grew up on. Nope, not on netflix either.
So I decided.
In this age we have the ability to watch what we want, when we want, IF WE HAVE IT. ON DISC.
For me, the no Bogey night coupled with only certain seasons of TZ meant, I gotta own my own library. I've spent a few bucks for sure, but these be the films I want around me. No more NO BOGEY NIGHTS for me.

 

[Kent K H]

Thankfully, I'm rarely asked for my reasons, but if I was, I'd tell them that not only do I love having a library, but I have tastes in media that often run outside films that are typically readily available for streaming. My girlfriend and I watched a lot of MeTV while we were visiting my folks last Christmas and she really got into Mannix. I want to watch it with her, but unfortunately, despite her having almost every streaming service on the market, it's nowhere to be found. That is until I went on eBay and picked up the entire series on DVD to give to her THIS Christmas. I'm already bigger on physical ownership than many of my peers in my early 40s. Meanwhile, she's in her early 30s and there's already a chasm as she owns very few movies/shows on disc at this point.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

You know... a lot of the points made against streaming are simply no longer true or at least not likely enough a real, practical difference maker (for anyone w/ good enough broadband access anyway).

Yes, the best of streaming generally remains slightly behind the best of physical media in terms of PQ, and streaming still only offers lower bitrate lossy audio (so far anyway) even when it's Atmos (although maybe that might eventually change... since more and more music streaming services are switching to making lossless audio available). But you can sometimes get a higher PQ (much) more affordably via streaming than whatever BD (not to mention DVD) in your collection... unless you always pony up for the 4K disc -- and that may be impractical (and sometimes not even possible since some titles simply don't even get a 4K disc release while getting a 4K digital release).

And for most people, any (generally slight) PQ diff between a 4K disc and 4K digital from the better, higher bitrate providers like iTunes and Movies Anywhere will be imperceptible (and I speak as someone projecting on a 120" screen w/ ~10ft viewing distance). And unless you have particularly high quality audio setup (and an ear for it), the audio diff may be essentially imperceptible (at least most of the time) as well.

And of course, you don't have to go exclusively one way or the other. You could always stick w/ the best of physical media for certain key parts of your collection while going w/ streaming (whether digital purchases or subscription service or some mix) for the rest -- that's what I and many others do... and getting various iTunes digitals on sale at <=$5/title (and sometimes w/ subsequent, free 4K upgrade), especially for blindbuys of the more obscure titles that might not be readily available on BD (NVM 4K disc) is a real boon IMO...

RE: special features, a lot (though certainly not all) of iTunes digitals actually do come w/ the same special features offered on physical media. Yes, there's a chance features can be removed/altered at some point, so if the features for a particular title is important enough to you, go w/ the physical media.

A lot of the choices between them can simply be made on case-by-case basis... much as you might for deciding whether to upgrade a title (or choose the more expensive version in some cases) you already own on DVD or BD. It doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing proposition...

_Man_

 

[DVBRD]

Preservation of more niche works that may not be available on any streaming platform. I've run into this with a lot of anime since I only watched it from about the early 90's through late 2000's and many of the series or movies I liked have been OOP for decades and not rescanned for blu ray releases. Also, the movie Titan AE.

That's one legit reason. I noticed that all of the Hitchcock movies he made for David O. Selznick are not available to buy digitally. Not even Rebecca, which won a Best Picture Oscar. The mind boggles.

 

[YANG]

For me if it's not on DVD, Blu-ray I won't bother with it. I hate streaming services... ...No company is going to con me into giving them money for nothing... ...

Collectors like me and you... will be phucked further when PARAMOUNT puts their focus in future on streaming, when Physical Media is not lucrative to them anymore.