THE DEATH OF PHYSICAL MEDIA

I enjoy watching movies, listening to music and playing video games.

It's interesting to have witnessed the delivery methods of consumer level entertainment evolve over the years.

Take film for example.
Back in the day, if you wanted to watch The Lion King, you bought the VHS. VHS became DVD, then Blu-Ray and finally Disney+.

Enjoy Pink Floyd's music?
Buy the vinyl. Vinyl became cassettes, then CD's, then MP3's and finally Spotify or Apple Music.

Everything is becoming digitized and we are witnessing the death throes of physical media.

Already, Disney no longer sells DVDs and Blu-ray discs in Latin America, certain Asian markets, Australia and New Zealand.

www.forbes.com...

Best buy to stop selling Blu-Ray and DVDs.
kotaku.com...

Walmart will stop selling video games.
comicbook.com...

There's an active movement happening right now to convert the video gaming industry into an all digital model.

"In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Ubisoft Director Philippe Tremblay said that, for videogame subscription plans like Ubisoft+ and Game Pass to expand, gamers will need to become more comfortable with not owning games, and he implied that this is likely to happen.

"[Consumers] got comfortable not owning their CD collection or DVD collection," said Tremblay. "That's a transformation that's been a bit slower to happen [in games]."

www.pcgamer.com...

There's many issues with buying your entertainment digitally and the biggest one is that you do not own your purchase.

In December 2023, Sony erased hundreds of already purchased shows from their users libraries due to licensing issues.

www.businessinsider.com...

Is Spotify your main access to music? You better not be a Neil Young fan.
time.com...

On Disney+ you can't watch certain Simpsons episodes depending on where you are in the world and definitely will never see the episode, Stark Raving Dad. I predict a future demand for lost media such as this.

Price hikes, sharing crackdowns and preservation also comes to mind.

Charging a premium for ad free streaming. Account sharing becoming more restricted. When those servers go down in a few years, many digital/internet access games will be unplayable.

On top of that, there's the possibility of cyber attacks, corporate mergers, weather anomalies, all kinds of things that could disrupt your regular viewing experience.

We're choosing convenience over ownership.

The death of physical media is a perfect example of you will own nothing and be happy.

a reply to: TinfoilTophat

No medium has more charm than a vinyl record. And yet I wouldn't take one of them in my truck because it doesn't work there. The sentimental value of holding something in your hands will still always be better. I can still install the games that are close to my heart from my youth at any time. None of today's games have ever captivated me so much. It's probably also due to age. Today's generation is flighty anyway. There is so much choice, not like before.

Games, as fast-moving as they are today, can no longer be put on DVD or Bluray because 40GB of updates have to be loaded on release day 1. On the one hand, this is due to the industry, and on the other hand, it is due to gamers who cause terror when the release date is postponed. One also causes the other, although it is more about money.

It's also better for the environment. Even here in the country we have 1Gbit/s now, I can download it faster than my Bluray drive can ever copy it to the hard drive. Some of my DVDs no longer work after 20 years and can no longer be read. Times change, it has always been that way. Nobody complains that we no longer write on stone tablets.

I am actively collecting vinyl records and have been since the 80s.
DVDs once in awhile. Shogun Assassin is on the list.
You gotta' have that physical media once they take the Interzones down.

Waiting on the new reissue of G.B.H City Baby Attacked by Rats color splattered vinyl LP
to arrive from Puke N Vomit Records.

Next thing on the list is a solar generator.

a reply to: TinfoilTophat

Yeah they want everything to be available on subscription only, on the one hand there is more money to be made long term from this model, on the other they can control what is available and to who. No more misinformation for you! That niche thing that you could pick up second hand, or was even collectible, won’t be available anymore and if it is it will be a fortune to stream/play.

Luckily there are way’s around the digital gulag they want to force on everyone, but most will choose convenience.

a reply to: Naftalin

The industry has done a good job of translating movies and TV to the digital realm. Quality has been maintained, and as you said, with a much larger portion of the worlds population having access to high bandwidth, it has made the transition reasonably smooth with caveats...
My physical media doesn't randomly buffer, even on a gigabit connection.
With a few exceptions, all of my 20 year old DVD's still play fine. The few that don't, can still be replaced.
They also can't delete (or alter) my physical media like they can my digital media. That includes books btw.

On the other hand, Music in the digital realm has been a huge disappointment. Besides all of the above, quality of sound has taken a nose dive. I may be old, but I can still hear the difference between an mp3 and a CD (or a crackly vinyl record). I've been tested multiple times. Once your ears are attuned to quality sound, the counterfeit sticks out like a sore thumb, especially in good headphones.

Nevertheless, for daily listening in your vehicle, work, etc, most folks don't care. A 128kbps (sometimes less) mp3 is fine for casual listening, but for serious listening, I'll take physical media every time. Even the introduction of Hi-Res or HD digital files still needs work, but it's a step closer.

a reply to: TinfoilTophat

The death of physical media is a perfect example of you will own nothing and be happy.

You WILL eat ze bugs!

a reply to: TinfoilTophat

The death of physical media is a perfect example of you will own nothing and be happy.

We all own the consequences of our actions. If Klaus Schwab don't want to accept that, he sounds happy sitting in a prison cell for the rest of this life with that approach.

a reply to: TinfoilTophat

What i think is dumb is that we have a PS5. I got the disc version purposely because we didn't want to deal with the digital downloads for those very reasons. You don't own it and playstation can take it away whenever they want. Well, even if you have the disc for the game, you have to download the game to your console, which some of them are very large and take up a lot of memory, but even when you download it to your console, you still have to put the disc in to play the game. Then unless you get the additional memory block (I dont know what its called im not the real gamer in the family) you have to uninstall and reinstall these games constantly because there isn't enough memory on the console itself to have all the games, even though you have the discs.

I miss the XBOX360. Just put the disc in and play. No downloading the entire game to the console and then still having to put the disc in to play. No storage issues. It was great.

I hate digital media and streaming. I only subscribe to Hulu because wrestling is on there and its handy to watch King of The Hill, but I have all the seasons of King of the Hill on DVD and actually just bought a new DVD player so if Hulu loses wrestling then im gonna cancel it.

a reply to: Klassified

Of course, a medium is always better because you have it in your hand. I already had the case on Amazon, bought the film for my nieces, then they wanted to watch it with me, well, it was no longer available. But I paid €12 for it. There's definitely a clause somewhere in the terms and conditions, which no one really reads anyway.

I still have vinyls at home and like to listen to them too. I'm not an audiophile but I like simple things. I also listen much more carefully because I don't have so much music on one record like with CDs or similar.

This isn't related to the thread starter or you, I just find it a bit strange sometimes when you're so nostalgic that you make life difficult for yourself and only concentrate on one thing, but ignore the comfort of newer technology. Sometimes you have to move with the times.

Well, you could go outside for a walk or hike. Take in the scenic beauty of the ocean if you're close enough. Play with the dog, he's always willing. Play catch with someone. Go fishing. Pull out a board game. Kickball. Gardening.

In other words, shut off the TV. Skip the movie. Or create your own music and entertainment.

Life is full of choices. Not all of them require money. But most that don't require money, require movement.

The idea of streaming services and preserving a video collection is why I dedicated a computer system to media. I can stream video and music on my devices through my private WiFi LAN. If a mesh network is developed to take over when the internet is down, the files can be shared throughout the network. The files can also be shared via thumb drives and portable hard drives if no other options are available.

The quality is lower as I save the music and videos as MP3s and MP4s, esp. if converted from VHS tapes, but I find it convenient and entirely watchable on my systems and devices. I have found some hard-to-find movies that I could download from YouTube and online Archives and save to my collection. Enough people save their CDs, DVDs, and media files to be able to have a network up and running, even if it is more like a physical library that you borrow shared media from rather than a streaming service.

a reply to: Naftalin

This isn't related to the thread starter or you, I just find it a bit strange sometimes when you're so nostalgic that you make life difficult for yourself and only concentrate on one thing, but ignore the comfort of newer technology. Sometimes you have to move with the times.

We can agree on this. Balance is important.

a reply to: TinfoilTophat

I actually went through my record collection the other day to get valuations. Took a while for a few hundred albums...lol

Some of them are worth a lot now and just selling half a dozen albums I wouldn't miss would fund a decent new hi fi system if I wanted one.

Also, nice to think that "the black stuff" is still treasured by many and sought after. I have a few CDs, but ANALOGUE is me in a nutshell. I've always enjoyed "The Space Between" rather than the noughts and ones of a digital binary mentality.

I have a friend who collects Blueray movies and he spends a fortune on them, has piles of unwatched ones and only watches them once before stacking them in the corner of the room. Same for "Funkopops". Too much money and no sense.

a reply to: TinfoilTophat
I see it as an opportunity for the smaller companies to jump back into a niche industry. I am a regular customer at a local video store that ironically opened in the middle of 2020. I love my collections, and I love to own things. I still buy physical blu rays. I don't subscribe to any digital service. This internet is not even mine, I just jack into local hotspots when I decide to use this particular device.

These moves are about draining the AmericanHuman wallet with a dozen+ digital subscriptions that when added up dwarf what people used to pay for cable-tv/satellite. I am perfectly content with my antenna tv , my am/fm radio and my collection of old video games and movies.

There are independent publishers who remaster old classic movies on blu ray. Twilight Time is one I have bought from before. Shout/Scream factory will continue to be releasing classic movies loaded with special features catering to the collectors crowd. This only means that there will be an increase in independent operations to fill the demand that is there.

The problem right now is that the generation born after y2k were ignorantly sacrificed to the very media companies causing these problems by buying them tablets and parking them in front of said internet devices since they were three years old. Tens of millions of kids have bene fully indoctrinated into internet deviancy and a slave hive-mind. They will blindly follow the later social media trend and are regularly brainwashed against traditional values as being considered backwards.

Ask a random child being educated in a public school to physically write a paragraph with their hands on paper with a pencil or pen. The penmanship has become utter garbage. Some kids cannot even spell the letter correctly despite knowing exactly how it looks when typed.

Its a downward slope to maximum ignorance and total enslavement.

a reply to: TinfoilTophat

We already don't control our own PCs anymore. Thanks Microsoft and Apple, and huge thanks to the U.S. government for not busting the monopolies these companies have on operating systems that are becoming less useful and much more intrusive.

Sure, there -are- other OS's that one can put on a PC. But most of them won't run the software the average consumer wants to run, or the tech knowledge required to do so puts them off. Hardly a remedy.

Cheers

a reply to: TinfoilTophat

All of my media is digital, saved on a variety of external storage. You can make infinite backups. One accident with a physical disc and you ain't getting it back. I've even gone so far as using a phone to snapshot my important documents and correspondence, anything that isn't an email, and keep it archived accordingly. Now I can use folder search tools to locate specific receipts collected over years. Very handy for warranty purposes.

originally posted by: TzarChasm
a reply to: TinfoilTophat

All of my media is digital, saved on a variety of external storage. You can make infinite backups. One accident with a physical disc and you ain't getting it back. I've even gone so far as using a phone to snapshot my important documents and correspondence, anything that isn't an email, and keep it archived accordingly. Now I can use folder search tools to locate specific receipts collected over years. Very handy for warranty purposes.

One E.M.P. attack, loss of power or short circuit and anything digital is GONE. Like leaving a traditional hard drive on a speaker cabinet, short circuiting an SSD drive or running out of a power supply. All that sensitive tech is fragile, fallable and loosable.

A pin and a paper cone and I could still play my vinyl. His Master's Voice.

If Blu-ray is the last of the physical media, I’m going to expand my collection and also start hunting down rare VHS and Betamax movies 👍🏼

a reply to: TinfoilTophat

I saw this coming and have been collecting more lately. Mainly started when I found a nice CRT TV and played my snes. It was in its natural habitat and felt/looked amazing. Decided to pull out a vcr dvd combo and was impressed how well it looked and how cheap tapes are now. Why buy a movie on vudu when I can buy a tape for a 25 cents and ACTUALLY own it?

Plopped in a DVD and wow. DVD on a CRT through progressive cables looked 100% better than streaming on a 4k TV. Crisp image, not stretched, no buffering, great bit/frame rate, and I can hold the disk in my hand. I can even lend it to someone if I want!

We’ve really lost the way. Soon we’ll be “buying” virtual objects for our augmented reality in our Apple Visions. Then comes the illusion of us having things; an empty room with an overlay. Augmented reality will need to constantly scan your physical space, combine that with deep fakes and the already intrusive targeted advertising IDs.

I’ll be playing my ps1 which also happens to be a great cd player!