general media Physical media I think is psychologically healthy over streamed media.

[SunsetBaconDrive 169]

After buying the 5th season of MLP on dvd last week, I thought hard over one important reason why physical media needs to stay a part of our culture. People are still buying physical media, just not as much as it used to be several years ago. I own MLP seasons 1-4 through amazon digital download... It is in 1080p over the dvds for sure... But I am losing more freedoms when I am buying a show that can stream early. Amazon got rid of UnBox which infuriated me. I only have seasons 1-3 on my hard drive, I couldn't download season 4 because UnBox was terminated. But these three seasons are in WMV format... Amazing.. Now I got Microsoft's nazi DRM format where I have no file extension freedom. I know WMV can be converted, but it is time consuming. 

 

With physical releases, I know you are still paying for the license and are under the copyright laws. But it is good to bond over material possessions when they create bonds. I miss going to buy or rent a game and get into discussions about what to buy and what to avoid. Same with movies and music. I feel streaming everything and having everything centralized ruins the quality of interaction among ourselves. 

[Derplight Sperkle 1,013]

Also a point to bring up is that owning a physical copy means that you can never have it taken away from you. Streaming services only give you content if their servers are up. So if there is an outage on their end, no content. Then what happens when the business goes under and shuts down? There goes all the content you bought!

 

Physical media is guaranteed content at any time you want. Lost internet? Pop the DVD in. Company that distributes your DVD goes bankrupt? You can still pop in the same DVD and watch it. 

[SunsetBaconDrive 169]

Also a point to bring up is that owning a physical copy means that you can never have it taken away from you. Streaming services only give you content if their servers are up. So if there is an outage on their end, no content. Then what happens when the business goes under and shuts down? There goes all the content you bought!

 

Physical media is guaranteed content at any time you want. Lost internet? Pop the DVD in. Company that distributes your DVD goes bankrupt? You can still pop in the same DVD and watch it. 

One reason why I am pissed at Hasbro for just being cheap and not doing a blu ray release. 25gb and 50gb blu ray discs aren't even expensive anymore. The most expensive discs to my knowledge are M-Discs. Those discs are special blu rays for archival purposes. The US military uses them and even Facebook backed up all their data(aka private data from peoples's user accounts) on M-Discs. M-Discs are touted to last over 1,000 years if stored properly of course. 

 

I have the season 5 dvd and the ps3 will of course upscale it. But I wish I had the raw MKV files of the media I owned. 

[Derplight Sperkle 1,013]

@@SunsetBaconDrive

 

Blu-rays are definitely cheaper nowadays. I don't know why they wouldn't do Blu-rays right now, but it might be because the content they have fills up the DVD with no issue. Blu-rays may just have too much extra space afterwards to make it worth the upgrade.

 

Maybe in the future, Hasbro will release Seasons 1-5 on a Blu-ray. I don't know what they are planning. 

 

You also need to be careful of even having the raw data files. One day, maybe even within the next decade, your video players may not support the files. Technology is plowing ahead fast, and that is the reason why so much film from the last century is disappearing. The content isn't keeping up with the players.

[Envy 6,200]

I don't really feel any 'bond' with physical media, and am very happy with the advent of streaming. DVDs have always been too expensive for me, and just get shelved anyway, as I don't typically watch anything more than once.

 

Streaming is awesome because it's cheap, sometimes even free, and allows me to sample/watch so many more series than I ever would have been able to do with DVDs... because, as I said, I can't even begin to afford DVDs. I also can't afford TV. Streaming is the only option for me.

[SunsetBaconDrive 169]

@@SunsetBaconDrive

 

Blu-rays are definitely cheaper nowadays. I don't know why they wouldn't do Blu-rays right now, but it might be because the content they have fills up the DVD with no issue. Blu-rays may just have too much extra space afterwards to make it worth the upgrade.

 

Maybe in the future, Hasbro will release Seasons 1-5 on a Blu-ray. I don't know what they are planning. 

 

You also need to be careful of even having the raw data files. One day, maybe even within the next decade, your video players may not support the files. Technology is plowing ahead fast, and that is the reason why so much film from the last century is disappearing. The content isn't keeping up with the players.

I don't see why corporations would get rid of MKV so fast. Its the file container for the video, not a playback format for media devices like MP4 and AVI.

[Derplight Sperkle 1,013]

@@SunsetBaconDrive

 

They will get rid of it once a new file format comes out that is better. Eventually MKV will be replaced like VCRs and cartridge based games were replaced by DVDs. It will happen one day.

[SunsetBaconDrive 169]

@@SunsetBaconDrive

 

They will get rid of it once a new file format comes out that is better. Eventually MKV will be replaced like VCRs and cartridge based games were replaced by DVDs. It will happen one day.

The benefit of unsupported file formats though is that they can be used as open source. So someone can take that file extension and freely improve upon it and make it free for everyone. flac replaced wave, since flac is lossless and its half the file size of wav. 

[Derplight Sperkle 1,013]

@@SunsetBaconDrive

 

Sure, unsupported file formats can be made open source. The issue is still that someday those file formats will be completely unsupported. Nobody cared about the preservation of digital content last century, and now people are beginning to care. Software eventually will not support legacy files and files will be unreadable by up to date software. Then throw in hardware and we will have even more problems.

 

Notice how the only way nowadays to play the old 1990's games is via the hardware it was designed for or through emulators? We are lucky that people have gone back and converted the games for modern use.

 

But we are getting a bit off topic here.... I still agree that physical media > streamed content. I like that streaming is cheaper, but it may come to a cost further down the line.

[SunsetBaconDrive 169]

@@SunsetBaconDrive

 

Sure, unsupported file formats can be made open source. The issue is still that someday those file formats will be completely unsupported. Nobody cared about the preservation of digital content last century, and now people are beginning to care. Software eventually will not support legacy files and files will be unreadable by up to date software. Then throw in hardware and we will have even more problems.

 

Notice how the only way nowadays to play the old 1990's games is via the hardware it was designed for or through emulators? We are lucky that people have gone back and converted the games for modern use.

 

But we are getting a bit off topic here.... I still agree that physical media > streamed content. I like that streaming is cheaper, but it may come to a cost further down the line.

CDs and DVDs thankfully have gotten drastically cheaper. Vinyls have gone severely up to where paying $30 for one vinyl album? I would never even consider. Even pre-owned cds are in great condition at my local video-music store and they're more than half off of a new cd cost. 

 

Most I'm willing to spend on a physical cd is $10. DVD if its a movie, $4-5.. or if its a show in 480p, than $20 is fair. 

 

The japanese are still keeping cds strong. It actually is a method J-artists use to make their concerts more profitable as described here.

[GeekySonic 1,150]

I just use DVDs because I'm old-fashioned. I worked hard to earn my TV and DVD player, I intend to use them. Once we're all moved in, I'm having me a good ole MLP marathon.

[Dreambiscuit 10,167]

I like DVDs because I don't like computers or watching things on them. I like to pop in a movie and watch it on my big TV screen and not have to worry about servers or internet problems. No matter what I do on the computer, I always get a different result each time. Something always goes wrong. Companies would love to make everything streaming because they wouldn't have to spend the money on physical discs, but I'll hold out for the old-fashioned media. I'm used to it and I like to know what to expect when I hit the play button. 

[EpicEnergy 23,224]

I personally think both are fine, and I don't really think one has better effects on your psychological health more than the other.

[Clawdeen 15,500]

There’s something special about physically owning my jpop and Kpop cds+dvds/blurays. I love being able to physically hold them and have them. They’re very special to me

[Fluttershutter 2,539]

I agree.

Another reason to own the media yourself rather than leaving it all in the hands of the company is that they can rewrite history or make certain media disappear. They delete or edit shows all the time in the name of political correctness. They could and will do it for other reasons. It's all very 1984.

[Megas 27,783]

Physical media is great because it feels like you actually own something

[Tom Gallagher 33,595]

I agree completely. I much prefer DVDs to movie streaming and vinyl records to music streaming. I hope VHSs one day make a comeback. 

[The Kaeya Simp 13,989]

I much prefer physical media, i then know that I own my media, and personally like to hold my media

i have currently probably around 300 DVDs

[Steve Piranha 29,440]

I also prefer physical media over digital, and I have even paid extra for a physical copy of games even if I’ve previously owned digital

[ExplosionMare 18,086]

Given the choice, I’d much rather have a physical book or a CD, but as for games, I prefer them digital only because physical games are so much more expensive now. I went to a video game store recently and saw that “untitled goose game” was almost $40 in the physical version 

[Denim&Venöm 19,358]

It's not normally a problem for me. I usually watch something once and won't go back to it for years. Some games I'll play once and once I've completed them, back into storage they go. So if I'll only experience it once, streaming it doesn't matter. I lean a bit more towards physical releases when it comes to music though. I've had trouble accessing songs after I've copied them onto a device. So streaming songs off Youtube or Bandcamp works well, since a good chunk of bands don't have physical albums. 

Lately I've been buying cassettes. Experiencing music as it was intended, free from audio compression issues, but at the same time still in a portable format. Why I don't buy vinyl. It's useless unless you're in the same place and I like my music on the go.  Plus it suits the aesthetic of bands going for that throwback sound and to experience music in the way the metalheads of the 80s did. Putting modern music to cassette is just part of the culture.  So there is that attachment of making media special by acquiring it in  a unique format like cassette or vinyl or even mini-disc.   

[DixonTheAdversary 1,632]

I prefer physical media, I find it to be a lot simpler to pop the disc in instead of waiting for Netflix or whatever streaming service to respond, and I know that the video quality will stay consistent throughout the whole viewing.