I’m Tired of Pretending Physical Media Isn’t Still Better Than Streaming Digital
Holiday season 2024 solidified it: we really need to stop going along with the lie that streaming is better than physical media.
I’m tired of pretending [piracy of lossless rips of] physical media isn’t still better than streaming digital.
It is fun to own a physical version for my favorites though. Especially when effort goes into crafting an actual souvenir and not just a money-grab.
I like collector's editions that are actually nice. I have an edition of Dune (1984) on DVD that includes multiple versions, the soundtrack and an actual frame from a movie roll.
Yeah, I haven't dealt with actual physical media before Netflix was even an option. Piracy is becoming the best experience again.
This is basically my pseudo-legal solution to modern media collection and consumption.
I buy physical copies (or get DRM-free downloads) of the stuff I intend to keep and use more than once or twice, making my own rips using the settings I like.
Then I subscribe to streaming services that have all the other stuff I want… and just pirate it instead of using the service. Because torrenting and queuing media on my computer or phone is easier than using their players! I can download Japanese TV shows and find fanmade subtitles for them even if the streamer doesn’t have it. I can shoot the content to any device I own. To multiple devices at once. I can make screenshots. It’s the experience streaming platforms SHOULD be offering.
No, officer, I paid for it. But because their software is shit I rolled my own stream of their content. No sudden quality drops, no freezes, no “you cannot play this file you downloaded to your device because we cannot ping the home server” bullshit.
Okay, but this still requires the physical version, so the author's premise holds.
I kinda want to put together a collection of the best behind the scenes DVD extras
Physical media without DRM is better than streaming.
There's a funny story about DRM on physical media.
When Sony/Philips/etc. were first designing the Audio CD format, they didn't bother adding any DRM or copy protection schemes, as they figured that no one would have the capability to rip them to their devices. And then CD burners/rippers entered the market, which proved them terribly wrong. In later years, the record companies tried adding DRM to CDs, but that came back to bite them when someone sued them, because the CD wouldn't work in their player.
So, long story short, CDs are legally prohibited from having DRM of any kind.
What commercial physical video media doesn't have DRM?
DVD extras forever.
I got a special edition of 'Buckaroo Banzai' with an added on-screen commentary that is hilarious.
In the original, we see BB get into his JetCar with a brief case. Thanks to the subtitles, we know he's heading into the 8th Dimension carrying Einstein's brain and a tuna fish sandwich.
That must be in case he needs to stop for lunch on the way to delivering that sandwich
Is this a ad for physical media? Who’s pretending?
I'm tired of "I'm tired of pretending".
It's almost as annoying as "who says X can't Y".
They're so rhetorically empty.
ease? Convenience? I ripped my physical media, stuffed it on my file server and now have both.
I have a ton of my blurays and dvds ripped to my media server, but there are some films that aren't worth the size. Anything recent that makes use of 4k/surround i like to watch on disc rather than take up 50GB on my drive. H265 makes this a little more bearable, but I'm also really lazy and I don't watch the high bitrate stuff THAT often.
Bought my daughter a multi region blu ray player along with Gravity Falls, Over the Garden Wall, The Mist and a handful of Ghiblis for her birthday next year.
I love the fact you can get films and shows for next to nothing from the charity shop / eBay etc
Region-free players are the way to go!
Blu Ray disks can be region locked......fuck the studios!
But most of them are 10 - 20 years old, will soon fail. Which is why i kept the player to rip the disks and give her a fancy thumbdrive once she's 5.
what do you mean by "multi-region?"
edit: nvm, it's exactly what I feared it'd be...
As I've been getting more physical copies of my favorites, I've been looking into backing up all my physical dvds on digital storage so I don't have to handle the actual dvd and risk scratching it.
Not that there aren't significant advantages to things like ownership comparing to licensing fees, but this article seems like satire.
People without kids liking bluey?
People like it enough, that they buy the soundtrack to a tv show for toddlers, one that they have no nostalgia for, and also buying it on vinyl?
I have a friend who unironically watches it and me with a child does not.
I have a simple rule: if I love it, I buy a physical copy
Where is a good place to buy physical media? I recently got a Blu Ray player and have been picking up some movies and a couple of shows. If I'm really honest about it the selection seems kind of limited. I've been browsing Gruv anr Amazon.
Might just be me not remembering how to shop for movies though. If so any pointers?
I check new releases here:
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/releasedates.php
Then, once I know what I want, I run it down either through Amazon or directly from the publisher.
Good indie physical publishers:
Arrow:
(Their Shaw Brothers sets are amazing!)
Criterion:
Shout Factory:
Kino Lorber:
Vinegar Syndrome:
BFI:
Goodwill often has a selection as do garrage sales.
Second-hand stores, bookstores, and sometimes even libraries
My local thrift stores have literally everything I could want and for .5-2$
I want cartridge based physical media like how Nintendo does it. DVD storage is my main issue but if I could do the significantly smaller size I would buy way more
I talked about this in another thread, but there are many reasons we do not use SD cards/flash memory devices for movies and TV:
I pulled an SD card out of the cupboard I literally haven't touched in ten years and not a single file's checksum had changed
I think their point is more putting technical or commercial feasibility aside, cartridges would be the better UX. I agree with that sentiment, cartidges are way cooler.
There are large communities around cassette futurism/retro futurism for a reason. There is something much more satisfying about thwacking in a cartridge than inserting a disk or just pressing play on a screen.
You are right that as things are disks make more sense, but it's a different discussion. what is vs what ought to be
In a perfect world I'd rather have storage crystals with programmable stable display voxels inside. But that's not realistic any time soon sadly.
Why would anyone pretend otherwise?
Streaming DOES have a purpose... for media I don't otherwise CARE about. Media I don't feel the need to own.
I will 100% stream the America's Test Kitchen channel, but I'm BUYING their cookbooks, not their videos.
I dearly love the Doctor Who channel, but I'm saving my money for when I can get a complete set of Tom Baker (it's getting super close now!)
I pay for Max for John Oliver. Creature Commandos is a nice bonus. I THINK I bought Peacemaker on physical? Can't remember. I definitely THOUGHT about it when I bought Suicide Squad.
THANK you for POSTING
Personally I like to HAVE media saved, on my server, that I value enough that I would be sad if it disappeared
Streaming digital, and owning digital, are two different things.
Does anyone really "own" digital?
Unless you're talking about piracy.
I mean, a digital copy of your physical media isn’t piracy, and is ownership.
Unless you're talking about piracy.
What about it?
Here in Australia physical media releases are becoming more rare, or we don't get the 4k releases. Disney and Disney owned studios are gone, and paramount is becoming rare. I understand we are a smaller market, but it still a pain, I subscribe to Disney+ but the day might come when I dont want to, and only want the movies or shows I actually want to watch again. I understand there is a component of manufacturing and shipping in a reduced market, seriously just sell me the file DRM free in AV1, I'll throw it on my jellyfin server, if ebooks and music can do it, what makes TV and Movies so special - but that's it, its about control
With streaming video, I don't have to sit through unskippable do not pirate warnings, ads, unresponsive and annoying menus. Oh wait, the only difference is the piracy warning.
This is why I purchase physical media and then rip them, with all the extras, to my Jellyfin server. Best of both worlds.
I get to vote with my wallet on what I like and I don’t have to worry about my shows disappearing on me when I want to watch them again.
Streaming absolutely does have unskippable ads. Not every ad on every service, but they're being introduced and will eventually become the norm as people won't have a choice about it. Long term, they will not leave a penny on the table.
Meanwhile I've never seen an unskippable ad on a bluray, just the occasional 10 second FBI warning that can't be skipped.
With ripping neither.
I don't have the space. I have bought a few digital copies of films where the price was the same as renting it and it wasn't available to stream on the single streaming service I actually pay for. But I don't hold much stock in the idea that translates to ownership. The thing is, I've owned albums on CD and damaged or lost them, and I don't "own" those anymore because I only owned that copy. I've also owned plenty of games and DVDs and I've no idea where those are either. Meanwhile I went to buy Dungeon Keeper on GOG when I had some unplanned "time off" work, and it turns out I already bought it years ago. So perhaps digital ownership does work a little bit, sometimes.
This is where the high seas come in. Digital copy, your the owner. (i ofc mean copies of things you paid for and used the high seas to backup)
I'm not as talented as I used to be in that regard. It all seems pretty inaccessible nowadays.
Yes, but there's no reason it can't be streamed at exactly the same bitrate if you have a decent connection. They're both just data.
Why so the conversation centered around physical vs streaming???
But a cheap pc and use it to stream locally (plex, jellyfin, etc) and you’ll have no real data loss and it will look just as good without having to fuck around with discs and dvd/bluray/whatever drives.
Fuck streaming services, fuck physical media, learn to manage it yourself and you’ll never cry about scratched disks, dead lasers, whatever else you have with physical, along with the bad downscaling, bad pricing, roving licenses of streaming services
the biggest flaw with streaming is the inconsistency of connection, and the very inopportune moments that the suspension of disbelief in storytelling can be marked by glitches on any platform.
Are we going to pretend discs can't get scratched? I've had to deal with a lot more broken discs then glitchs with Netflix, which are essentially non-existant these days.
The biggest flaw with physical media is you have to pay 30$ for a 2 hour movie. The amount of money my parents spent buying and renting movies when I was a kid is mind boggling. A TV series was like 80$.
Streaming is insanely convenient compared to physical. It sucks we don't have extras but jfc, physical is not better. Not to mention the pollution it brings about.
Not to mention the pollution
Have you done a study of physical media vs all the infrastructure and maintenance required for streaming?
I feel like we really don't know which is worse/better.
From what I understand, it's about equivalent but only because people are able to watch a lot more.
The average family before streaming would maybe buy a movie once a month. Now we can binge watch a different series every few days. If we compare 2 hours of streaming to one movie, streaming wins, but we watch much more media then we used to which makes up for the difference.
Also imporrant to note that this is going down as the grid slowly drifts towards renewable. The environmental cost of Blu-ray won't be going down in the next decade.
Yes, it is better. In the process of enshitification, lossy compression got used more and more aggressively in streaming, to save bandwith and storage costs.
People remember back to scratches on DVDs, but protection from scratches is built into the bluray spec. It's not a problem anymore.
That's great to hear but streaming problems have like wise been solved.