Disadvantages of physical media

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I have brought up the issue of physical media versus streaming before, but everyone keeps talking about how, with physical media, you own something forever. But while it's true that physical media gives you a sense of ownership, it comes with its own drawbacks, which I think are just as important as studios taking items away on streaming services.

First of all, there's the cost to actually buy the Blu-Ray, DVD, etc. Streaming something may be about $10 to (perish the thought) $20 a month, but physical media can cost upwards of $25. Even more if it's out of print. I for one am still looking for the complete set of "Pee-wee's Playhouse" on Blu-Ray for not too bad a price, but it's usually $100 or more! How can physical media be cheaper than streaming if it costs so much?

Then there is the issue of Internet connection. Again, while physical media is apparently almost entirely independent of Internet connections and can operate when the connection goes out, how does that even work? How is it that physical media can ignore the issues of Internet? Also, DVD and Blu-Ray players, like all electronic devices, require electricity to run, meaning you are still beholden to the power company, as it's included in your electric bill. And if the power ever goes out (i.e., a blackout), then you can't play your DVD/Blu-Ray at all. Watch this clip from "Sesame Street" to see my point:


Finally, there's the issue of supposed permanence. A physical copy of something, like on streaming, is only yours until it isn't. This means they can be taken away from you. I remember one time many years ago, when we were still using VHS tapes, my family and I went out for a while, and when we came back home, someone got into our home and took away many items from us, including my Super Nintendo and all the games that came with it, including Super Mario World. And I'm not the only one; this has also happened to quite a few other people, as this link shows: https://www.world-of-nintendo.com/fun/worst_nintendo_experiences/get_robbed.shtml. Granted, I was using video games as an example, but it too can be both streaming and physical media. And that's not to mention the degrading of physical media over time, which is the equivalent of a VHS tape being "eaten" by the VCR it's put into.

Those are just some of the primary examples of how physical media has drawbacks just like streaming.

Physical media, like film, a Betamax cassette or a DVD directly stores the media content in question. It's already downloaded onto that tape or disk, meaning there's no need to get the data via any connection to an external source.

The internet is completely irrelevant when you have the data available locally because no additional data is required, it's all on the tape or disk already.

Exactly this.

If you buy DVD's or Blu-ray discs second hand on places like eBay, they are a lot cheaper than retail prices usually. I personally prefer having my favourite media on disc.

I remember in the UK when they took Pulp Fiction off of Netflix - and that can happen to anything that is available for streaming. It is like an ever changing catalogue of video media.

I have a 1 Terabyte 2.5" hard drive which cost me £15 secondhand. It's in excellent condition with no bad sectors. It has almost 700 films on it (mixture of downloads and ripped titles) and is still nowhere near full. I have a backup of it on a similar hdd. This seems pretty impressive to me from a technological angle by any standards!

Also, there's the cost to actually buy the Blu-Ray, DVD, etc. Streaming something may be about, say, $10 to $20 a month, but physical media can cost upwards of, say, $25. Even more if it's out of print. I for one am still looking for the complete set of "Pee-wee's Playhouse" on Blu-Ray for not too bad a price, but it's usually $100 or more! The fact that's been out of print for ten years doesn't help. How can physical media be cheaper than streaming if it costs so much?

Cheaper for who? Streaming is probably cheaper than physical media considering there's no physical merchandise to transport.

I'd anticipate physical media is only cheaper than streaming under some conditions, like if it's a popular media franchise with lots of physical copies sold.

Streaming probably isn't cheaper unless you have a massive appetite for things to watch and the time to do it. $40 can often buy you a couple box sets of TV shows new during sales, I think I spent something like that for 100 hours worth of TV shows. I've started buying at the local thrift shop and eBay and the cost of a DVD is pretty low.

I'll then rip the discs to my computer and stream it to the TV and my cell when I need that. Even with the NAS set up I've got, it'll still wind up saving me money in a few years. I've largely stopped buying more media as I haven't got the time to watch what I've got.

If you really don't want to watch it again, you can always sell it second hand anyways.

Like I said before cheaper for who?

For the content distributor, streaming is cheaper.

For the customer, it's much less clear-cut.

There's also the issue of unskippable ads, which is not only an issue on streaming, but also on physical media. On some DVDs and Blu-Rays, you can't really skip the ads that play automatically at the start. I just watched a bit of "Race", and you are prohibited from bypassing the ads with the menu button. You have to repeatedly press the "skip" button just to get to the main menu. And there were EIGHT ads in all! At least YouTube doesn't have more than two ads at any one time (not yet anyway).

And physical media collections don't change?



When I said "cheaper", I meant for the customer.

Good excuse to rip the movie and keep it as a digital file, I'd say.

First of all, I don't have the technology to do that, let alone for a Blu-Ray, and second, isn't that illegal?

I don't have a Blu-Ray drive, so I can't offer any insight there, but it's straight forward with DVDs.

No, creating a personal backup is not illegal, you're entitled to do so. In theory if you transfer ownership of your physical copy you would have to delete the backup.

That said, legality isn't really high on my list of considerations when it comes to how I make use of the product I've purchased. If I've bought the movie I'm going to (privately) use it how I see fit. If ripping Blu-Ray disks requires unencrypting the data, I wouldn't let any legal differences deter me compared to ripping DVDs by just copying the content. The end goal is to have the product in the most useful format for my needs.

If you buy them on sale at places like Target, they're also often a lot less expensive than Netflix. It's currently $15.49 for the cheapest non-ad supported version. That comes out to about $186 a year. A couple years of that and you can have a basic NAS and quite a few DVDs ripped onto it. It's the route I went, and I've mostly run out of media that I want. I'll still buy more as things pop into my head that I like watching, but all of the streaming services are just too expensive for what they're offering. And I'm completely ignoring certain nautical options for receiving content for less.

For me personally, I got annoyed when they were increasing rates in the US as the content library was shrinking in order to subsidize deployment in other countries. I drop them completely when they decided that those extra screens they were charging for had to be in the same physical house. I may subscribe in the future for short periods, but it was a ridiculous cash grab to be charging people for extra screens, but then restricting how they could be used.

Technically, blurays are different for that reason, but as a practical matter, the bigger issue for me is that blurays are a lot larger and I don't really notice the difference in most cases when I'm viewing it in a living room setting. (Plus most of what I'm watching is older anyways, and unless they put a lot of effort into it, like with The Prisoner, it's often times more distracting.) (The worst abomination is probably the 1984 Ghostbusters where the digital conversion just revealed how much of that movie was shot out of focus)

Everyone should have access to media.

I've mainly stopped buying physical media. However.

I went through a recent move, in which my house was also moved. I was 5 weeks homeless and relying on .. ugh, my mother in law, but that's another story, ... and motels and even my house without power or water for a couple days.

It took over a month to get internet, once moved back in. The 5g signal was barely enough to get emails. Believe me, I was extremely grateful to have my DVDs and CDs. And as said above, they don't need internet to play. Physical media is far older than streaming

I love streaming, and I'll always have at least one service at all times, given my choice. But I'm not exclusive to a connection that can go wonky at any time.

I think the biggest problem with physical media, is the "physical" part

Disks can get scratched and broken, whereas data on streaming services doesn't isn't a tangible format and the only way they can get ruined is a severe malfunction of hard drives for the host.

I still buy DVDs if it's something I really enjoy, as the quality is noticbly better on bluray,but I rip them and put them on my pc.

To the credit of steaming service, it's good value for the consumer, a 4k bluray costs $40 here. Compared to the $15 monthly subscription to netflix which has a variety of 4k titles to watch.

In short, I don't think streaming has replaced physical media, but it is complementary to a physical DVD library.