It's depressing knowing you own a license to access the digital file you purchased but that contract can be withdrawn at any time.
Besides you cannot replicate the same authenticity by showing your film library to friends and family when you sit down and scroll through your digital purchases.
No one ever exclaims “by the power of greyskull!” when I show them my plex library. So sad.
I actually think that you don't lose much going from physical moves/tv to plex as most people are super used to scrolling through streaming, but man do I miss having big cases full of books. Handing someone a kindle to scroll through is a lot less fun lol
Physical media isn't the ultimate format people like to make it out to be. I don't think there's anything wrong with digital media as long as it's files on a hard drive. Honestly, it's probably a better format for preservation than a disc that's locked into whatever video format it was published in. In 1000 years, it's pretty unlikely anyone will be able to read files from a DVD or Blu-Ray. But a file that's been reformatted to keep up with modern technology? That'll be useful.
Whenever I hear people talk about physical media as being "forever" I'm reminded of the episode of Cowboy Bebop where they have to steal a VHS player.
CDs themselves only last 100 years at most. Hard drives also fail. There really isn’t a great solution for something permanent unless you are changing its form/format every so often
There really isn’t a great solution for something permanent unless you are changing its form/format every so often
Right, that is what I meant by "reformatted to keep up with technology", including copying it to new hardware that's less likely to fail.
Hard drives fail more often than another computer component, at least the old-timey spinning hard drives. SSDs are better by far but I wouldn't trust important files to any single hard drive for long term storage.
Optical discs don't have that problem at all. They will be good as long as you keep them in a non-hot place out of bright lights. Heat and UV light and scratching are the enemies of optical discs, but they can all be avoided for as long as you care to keep them safe.
CDs don't last that long. I had a buddy that worked for a radio program tell me that the tapes lasted a lot longer. This was mid 2000s and he was already seeing failures. I think they were fairly early adopters, but still it couldn't have been that long.
Tape has been around for 80 years now and doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon. Copying to a fresh tape once a decade should keep your data safe.
I think DRM free digital media is viable as well. A hard drive doesn't have the lifespan of a blu-ray, but modern drives are good about warning of catastrophic failure, and I suspect most people that have digital media libraries migrate them to new storage as wanted/needed.
There's something satisfying about physical media that digital lacks. I get that appeal. But I don't think it's superior for media preservation.
Crazy times we live in.
I've purchased a few DVDs / Blu Rays of some of my favorite stuff. But I'm also trying to get my hands on as many "good" CDs as I can. I'm not really trying to be a curator or librarian, I just see the shitshow on the horizon (and already here, honestly) as physical media and ownership of media in general ends and streaming becomes the only option.
And owning media will get more and more difficult unless one format shifts the media (rips it) before there is no more hardware to do this.
Well, maybe not DVD given the shelf life, but certainly Blu-ray and Ultra HD.
Blu-ray has about the same storage life as a DVD.
Millennium discs are a thing, though, where the data is burned into plastic rather than a film.
In a Fahrenheit 451 sense, Holy Grail might be the most well preserved film for the future generations, given the level of storage redundancy.
Welp future generations will think Adam Sandler was the premier actor of our times
Gizmo was always cool
I guess I'm in the minority as I was kind of glad to get rid of the CDs which I wasn't listening to anymore.
I rarely watch the same thing over again. I find there's some much stuff to watch these days, I couldn't possibly watch it all.
I did digitize my CDs before giving them away which was hard to go as not many wanted them. This was just after Google Music took over Songza. I uploaded all my rips to GM then it was changed into YouTube Music and I'm not even sure how to access any of it now.
So I can see a world where the physical is important. Perhaps in the after times when things are being rebuilt again.
Physical is important now. A lot of the movies I watch just are not available on streaming services. You don't notice they aren't there because you don't see them.
I know you see this as a "I like what I currently see, so it doesn't matter" kind of equation, but it's a real problem today.
It doesn't help that the video quality of streaming is just not as good, too, so physical is preferable even in situations where things are available.
Great points. There are series I can't stream that I've had to use alternative methods to view. Mr Belvedere and Parker Lewis isn't on any streaming services. I've watched some pretty poor quality releases of them as a result and it's tough to find the physical copies for these alone. I can't imagine the rest that aren't available. The worst is when digital copies purchased are not available due to changes in vendor rights in certain counties.
So I can see a world where the physical is important. Perhaps in the after times when things are being rebuilt again.
This sounds very good, I'm going to check it out, thank you.
In a post apocalyptic hellscape, my most valuable asset will be able to recite a famous film perfectly with voices and everything.
Won't say which one. Let's just say that
SOME-BODY ONCE TOLD ME ...
