This is why I prefer physical media.

[vader45]

I HATE streaming and digital download. It's not the same as actually holding the disc with all of the artwork, looking at what you spent your money on. The big corporations can't take them away or alternate them. Like Netflix can take down movies or tv when ever they want.

Online viewing does not include the special features or alternate versions of the films.

AND there are a ton of movies Netflix or Disney+ will never have due to a generational thing, such as old classics and silent movies.

 

[robn1]

I've not only still got a working laser disc player, I've still got a pile of laser discs.

I've got tons of discs too, including the OOT that I can't play anymore. The rest don't matter, but SW would be cool to spin up every now and then.

 

[JoeG]

Online viewing does not include the special features or alternate versions of the films.

Oh yes it does. Maybe not on Netflix, Hulu, or some streaming service, but when you purchase a digital version of a movie it does indeed include all the special features. I occasionally purchase physical copies of movies I really like and every single one of them that included a digital copy also had the special features available on the service I use to view the digital copy.

 

[CB2001]

Oh yes it does. Maybe not on Netflix, Hulu, or some streaming service, but when you purchase a digital version of a movie it does indeed include all the special features. I occasionally purchase physical copies of movies I really like and every single one of them that included a digital copy also had the special features available on the service I use to view the digital copy.

For some digital movies, they include some special features. For Ready Player One, the special features on the Blu-Ray are accessible in the Movies Anywhere app.

 

[vader45]

I don't have any digital viewing devices outside of my phone and TV, which makes a download useless for me. I never have downloaded a movie when I purchased one with a code. It's cool they include access to special features.

It's still not the same as putting the disc in the player and accessing it all through the menu. A BD disc as mentioned is nowhere near as compressed as the film's are streamed and downloaded which has better resolution and clarity. I noticed this when I watched Empire on BD then switched to Netflix after when I had my 4K tv set up the other day.

 

[JoeG]

Apples and oranges. You keep using streaming services as your example, but that is not the same as purchasing a digital copy of a movie. While those services may be compressed ( I dont notice it on my 4K tv when I stream from Netflix), the digital copies I have are still just as hi def as the blu ray disc.

 

[MattBlack]

I have and use both digital and traditional physical mediums.

I own vinyl/CDs/DVDs of films and albums that are important to me, and download the rest through official means. My music library is MP3 and I use that the most on either my computer, or portable music player. I currently have over 15,000 songs on that bad boy, and have two separate back up copies of the music library on external drives, so that music isn't going anywhere soon. I also have a free spotify account for checking out music before buying it on other mediums.

MP3 is fantastically convenient for taking my music wherever I go, but I treat my MP3 player like an old Walkman - make some playlists for that trip and that's all I'll take with me (I really really won't need 15,000+ songs on my trip to work)

I'll probably keep on using a combination of both for the foreseeable future.

 

[HeartBlade]

There are definitely advantages to digital (less waste, less physical space taken up, able to be viewed with new technology once the VHS, DVD goes the way of the dodo, etc) but I am also a fan of holding physical media.

Digital you only own a license which is fine if the price is cheaper but its not. Lifetime doesnt mean much since it is possible to pass down dvds or other media to your family members while who knows that "lifetime" membership actually entails?

I do have a feeling there will be a generational difference in opinion (suspect the newer generation who grew up with netflix may be ok with digital only).

 

[SirSandalot]

As a European I struggle with this a lot. Since European audiences are so small compared to the US because of the linguistic diversity of the continent, european movies are not likely to be on streaming platforms. Modern successful movies, sure. But in the long term? Not even those. This is changing though, as European film companies realized they had to be on streaming platforms if they were to survive.

That's the downside to streaming platforms and it happens with classics too. They play it safe, obviously, so many movies don't make the cut and get forgotten. So buy physical when in doubt 'cause if the movie doesn't last on streaming platforms, or doesn't make it to be on streaming platforms, it will die eventually. A contemporary damnatio memoriae. Before streaming services existed, a friend might recommend a movie that you didn't know about. But now that everybody has streaming accounts, that's not likely to happen. Everybody knows the same catalogue, as if anything else didn't exist.

I loved Acción Mutante (a dumb cyberpunk comedy from 1993) as a kid. There is no way it's ever gonna make it to streaming platforms. There's no bluray and nobody knows the movie nowdays. It was fairly popular in 1993, but since it's not on netflix it has been forever forgotten and no company is gonna risk money to release it in bluray. So I should've bought the DVD like 15 years ago. But I was young and I thought things lasted forever. Lesson learnt.

 

[Bigdaddy]

This year my 17 year old bought a turntable. Her vinyl Christmas list was Hendrix, The Beatles, CCR, Nancy Sinatra and Billie Eilish. I also broke out some old records from when I was a kid. I never thought I'd be buying her the same records I had in my youth.

 

[Richard Baker]

I typically get the Disc+Digital combos- any movie I either really like or might need for reference I make sure to have a physical copy of.
It kinda scares me at the size of my collection, but there are a lot of films which are not even available now. Most have additional features or content not offered on most streaming services- I like seeing how things are done, not just watching the final result.
Some movies I am just curious about and so I get them in VUDU when they are on sale.
My biggest concern with streaming services is that you have no real security over the media- the service can just shut down and you are simple out of luck.

 

[edge10]

Agree with you all.

There is an episode of a show on Prime that I own and it errors out every time I try to start watching it. So, that's a problem as well.

 

[Joek3rr]

Oh yes it does. Maybe not on Netflix, Hulu, or some streaming service, but when you purchase a digital version of a movie it does indeed include all the special features. I occasionally purchase physical copies of movies I really like and every single one of them that included a digital copy also had the special features available on the service I use to view the digital copy.

I got some pretty cool stuff when I bought the Star Wars films on iTunes.

 

[Cephus]

I've got tons of discs too, including the OOT that I can't play anymore. The rest don't matter, but SW would be cool to spin up every now and then.

Same here. A lot of discs, I converted to DVD years ago, but there are a few that I can't see anywhere else.

 

[Richard Baker]

Agree with you all.

There is an episode of a show on Prime that I own and it errors out every time I try to start watching it. So, that's a problem as well.

We only have crappy DSL as an internet option, streaming quality varies with each service and how they handle their buffers (Hulu by contract used a very small one to help prevent digital capture)

 

[Jagjaguwar]

Does anyone know if you download videos when you purchase films/tv shows from iTunes or are they streaming as well?

Short answer is that it depends on what service you buy from. With some, “buying” a movie simply lets you stream it at any time. With iTunes, you can stream a movie you’ve bought, but you are also able to download it to watch it offline. The tricky thing here is that iTunes (and some other services, I’m sure) have DRM (digital rights management) on videos, which prevents you from being able to watch the files on some media playing software. I think iTunes movies are generally restricted to using iTunes for playback. That said, there is software that you can use to “strip” this DRM in order to watch the movie you’ve purchased where you want to, but I imagine it’s legally questionable.

 

[Jagjaguwar]

Apples and oranges. You keep using streaming services as your example, but that is not the same as purchasing a digital copy of a movie. While those services may be compressed ( I dont notice it on my 4K tv when I stream from Netflix), the digital copies I have are still just as hi def as the blu ray disc.

So, minor point here, but this is technically incorrect. While digital copies can have the same resolution as discs (whether 4K or 1080P for blu-ray), the bitrate for digital copies is much, much lower than that of a disc. The video has been compressed to take up less space, with some loss of quality, and the audio is also compressed, to some sort of “lossy” format like Dolby digital surround, as opposed to “lossless” audio from a disc (some examples being Dolby TrueHD, Atmos, or DTS-HD.) And to complicate things further, even with generally “lossless” formats like Atmos, some streaming services like Apple TV Plus now output a lower quality version of Atmos audio (lossy) than what you’d get if you played the same movie from a disc (lossless.)

The only way to get full, uncompressed video and audio quality in a digital movie file is to rip from a disc directly. This is what I’ve done with my collection of blu-rays and dvds, in order to play them with software called Plex. With that I’m able to stream uncompressed, full quality movies within my home, and the software will automatically downgrade (transcode/compress) the video files for easier playback while traveling, streamed from my home server. It’s a bit like my own personal Netflix.

 

[Darth Lars]

I worked at a streaming company once, building up its technology, but that company was such a bad experience that I don't feel like joining a streaming service for anything. It would just remind me of that bad time.

The video game market also has a schism between physical media and digital downloads...
Even with games on physical discs that you would "buy", it is common that there is a DRM scheme where it tries to contact a server over the Internet every now and then, or it won't start. No Internet connection, or reinstall on a different computer: no game. Once the game publisher discontinues the DRM server, you can no longer play the game you "bought". This means that there is no second-hand market so there is no way to collect them, you can no longer play old games on your new computer ... and some games can not be (legally) played by anyone anymore because the game publisher has discontinued the DRM server. Such a waste ...
There have been a few attempts at similar schemes for movies on physical discs but thankfully they haven't taken off.
I'm afraid that if you have a streaming-device and a movie downloaded to its hard disc that you would risk getting into the same problem that some games have: that some time, it would just stop playing because the rights-holder has discontinued (or maybe just reconfigured) its DRM server.

 

[Shryyyk]

So, minor point here, but this is technically incorrect. While digital copies can have the same resolution as discs (whether 4K or 1080P for blu-ray), the bitrate for digital copies is much, much lower than that of a disc. The video has been compressed to take up less space, with some loss of quality, and the audio is also compressed, to some sort of “lossy” format like Dolby digital surround, as opposed to “lossless” audio from a disc (some examples being Dolby TrueHD, Atmos, or DTS-HD.) And to complicate things further, even with generally “lossless” formats like Atmos, some streaming services like Apple TV Plus now output a lower quality version of Atmos audio (lossy) than what you’d get if you played the same movie from a disc (lossless.)

The only way to get full, uncompressed video and audio quality in a digital movie file is to rip from a disc directly. This is what I’ve done with my collection of blu-rays and dvds, in order to play them with software called Plex. With that I’m able to stream uncompressed, full quality movies within my home, and the software will automatically downgrade (transcode/compress) the video files for easier playback while traveling, streamed from my home server. It’s a bit like my own personal Netflix.

I buy physical for stuff I actually want to watch more than once for precisely this reason. My boss buys everything digital on iTunes and swears by it (he says they automatically upgrade his stuff to UHD when it's available, no idea if that's true), and as far as I know he can take his AppleTV offline and the content will still work.

My opinion is that generally I avoid physical media where possible because of the overall wasteful aspect of it, but until (if ever) digital services offer true lossless options (I doubt they will because technology moves faster than the services can accomodate, so by the time a network can accomodate millions of people streaming lossless 4K, 8K will be the norm), I will buy some physical.

I worked at a streaming company once, building up its technology, but that company was such a bad experience that I don't feel like joining a streaming service for anything. It would just remind me of that bad time.

The video game market also has a schism between physical media and digital downloads...
Even with games on physical discs that you would "buy", it is common that there is a DRM scheme where it tries to contact a server over the Internet every now and then, or it won't start. No Internet connection, or reinstall on a different computer: no game. Once the game publisher discontinues the DRM server, you can no longer play the game you "bought". This means that there is no second-hand market so there is no way to collect them, you can no longer play old games on your new computer ... and some games can not be (legally) played by anyone anymore because the game publisher has discontinued the DRM server. Such a waste ...
There have been a few attempts at similar schemes for movies on physical discs but thankfully they haven't taken off.
I'm afraid that if you have a streaming-device and a movie downloaded to its hard disc that you would risk getting into the same problem that some games have: that some time, it would just stop playing because the rights-holder has discontinued (or maybe just reconfigured) its DRM server.

Newer games are going to suffer from a different problem - Always-on internet connections because of offloading processing to the cloud. At that point, it doesn't matter whether the game has DRM or not - you can't play the game if it doesn't have any content.

 

[sztriki]

Netflix specifically gets on my **** with this. Their stuff just NEVER comes out on physical, not this side of the pond at least. I wanted to have Stranger Things, Gerald's Game, Annihilation, House on Haunted Hill, Rick and Morty (I know it's adultswim but it's on NF in the UK) and it's just not on DVD/Blu-ray. It's nuts that Stranger Things came out in the States in a really cool VHS style package and if I want it on the shelf I gotta order it from the US and buy a region free player.
Bit sidetracking but why is region code still a thing in the digital age?