"no physical media"

[Henry88]

a lot of people in rural places don't have high speed internet,to use netflix and others.

[lhb412]

I love collecting books and movies. My idea of heaven is something like a library (maybe Professor Broom's library in the Hellboy movie...).

[DannyBeane]

I like having a physical collection, thumbing through my collection of blu rays and dvds is much more physically satisfying than scrolling through a netflix queue. Also I take pride in my collection of movies as I have different disks of the same movie that have different cuts and extras. Plus for a while I was living in an area of columbus that the main internet provider constantly had internet outages. I'm not even a huge fan of downloading movies. I think the world can survive with both digital and physical media at the same time. They compliment each other.

[MekaGojira3k]

I hate paying for digital things. I want something tangible plz.

[XvGojira]

I'm a fan of both physical and digital media. I haven't bought a physical PC game in years. And I rarely buy full albums, let alone physical discs.

But digital movies have some hurdles before I start buying them. For me there's almost too many options. Look at : iTunes, Google Play, Vudu, Amazon, Verison, XBox, Disney, Playstation Video, Barnes and Noble Nook, M Go, Cineplex. And I'm sure each and everyone has different rights and abilities for the files, not to mention selection of movies.

Now I don't want a monoploy, but at the same time if I have a digital collection I don't want to have to access a different system for almost every movie.

Another issue is, and I quote The Digital Bit's Facebook page, "If you encourage people to move away from physical media and buy digital content instead, once they purchased that content in digital HD, WHY WOULD THEY EVER PURCHASE IT AGAIN?"

We know they love double, triple, quadruple dipping and this would negate that. Unless they switch digital platforms and to get your movies back you'll have to repurchase them (if they're feeling generous it'll be at a discounted price).

But at the same time, if I could have the same experience I have with buying and using games on Steam with movies, my movie collection would be triple or more what it is now. Living in apartment with 3 other people, space is sparse. Soon enough I'll have to start trying to mix my movies with my figures (or vice versa).

There are some movies that I haven't got because I'm not sure if their worth is equal to their space. Like if I could get the on some fantasy universal platform, I would. Only a few of the movies are "worthy" of physical copies (1,2,3 and maybe H20), but the collector in me doesn't want to be missing the other movies.

I've traded and re-bought movies to get smaller packaging. I've bough blank multi-disc cases to house big series (but what do I do with the old packaging? Toss to save space? Keep it in case I become rich and have a full movie library room). I have forsaken any and all over sized and odd shaped collectors editions.

Digitally, it can be as easy as swapping .jpgs to get the cover you want. If I want a good cover to something, I have to hope some one better at photoshop already beat me to the punch, if not cobble together something halfway decent myself, and then try and get my printer to correctly print it without emptying my ink cartridge with failed attempts.

And I get that there are some people with crap net that makes digital distribution a crap shoot at best. But as streaming entertainment becomes more and more common place the push for better and faster internet gets bigger more wide spread. And honestly it isn't happening fast enough in my opinion. Wasn't there one of those rich millionaires trying to make a world wide wi-fi with suborbital satellites or something?

With HBO coming out with a digital platform divorced from cable packages, I could see many other premium channels following suit. The Death of Cable TV might be closer than the death of physical media, but that's getting a little bit off topic.

[Dr Kain]

If a movie, tv show, or video game is not released physically, I refuse to pay for it. I will pirate before I buy a digital copy.

I do not like the idea that I can not do with something I paid for. If I buy it, I want to touch it, put it on my shelf, line it up with the others in its series, lend it to friends, sell it if I decide I don't want it anymore, etc. Also, with digital, a company can decide that you only have the ability to watch that movie for a limited time. They may say, "Well you can license it for 5 years, and then you will need to renew your license for it by buying it again."

[Tom R VanSlambrouck]

I do a mixture of both for PC games, music and books digital. For others I like the physical copy. I can't think of the last time I bought a disc PC game other than a collectors edition of ESO. But then again I just used the codes in that to redeem the extra content and install the game from the disc it came on.

[kidnicky]

[O.Supreme]

It's not just about people in rural areas, or those that may not be up to date with the latest technology; again it’s about having physical tangible item. I have nearly 1500 DVD’s & BRD’s in my collection. With the exception of Toho films, which I have on VHS for nostalgia value, sure I have purged my collection of VHS tapes, but I was able to do so on my own terms, transferring everything to DVD copies, or digital copies I made for myself.

I enjoy Netflix and other streaming services, but since content there comes and goes at the whim of the company, there are no guarantees. Sure I have a small Ultraviolet collection, but these have all been obtained through purchase of a physical DVD or Blu-ray, I don’t purchase from UV directly. I refuse to watch a movie on a phone or Tablet, no matter how large the screen. And I’ve only ever done it on a computer when I have no other choice (i.e. wife or kids are watching something). My first and usually only preference to watch Television, Movies or play games, is ON a Television.

[XvGojira]

[O.Supreme]

[XvGojira]

[Dr Kain]

I have to agree with him, sort of. The problem with digital film is that everything looks the same. Actual film had a distinct feeling about it. Yes, sometimes you would get film that was really cheap and way too grainy, but it gave the movie its own identity. With digital, everything is silky smooth to the point that nothing really looks real anymore.

[XvGojira]

[lhb412]

[canofhumdingers]

Another thing to consider about the digital revolution is the ability to archive media/data and then retrieve it in the future. And this is actually why analog media (books, vinyl records, and actual film) are actually still VITALLY important. Technology advances so rapidly in the digital world that the software used to retrieve the stored data goes obsolete and then becomes incredibly hard to find way too fast. Think about the world of computers. Most laptops (and all tablets) on shelves today don't even have an optical disc drive. Have a rare cd or dvd based game? Too bad. Think about if someone gave you a 3.5 floppy disc. Do you even have access to something that can read it? What about a 5 inch floppy disk?

The same problem is inherent with things like DCPs (digital cinema packages, the way films are distributed for digital projection). That software is highly proprietary, closely guarded, and updated continuously. Think it'll survive? Heck, even lucasfilm admitted that when they went back to open the digital files for the cgi from episode 1 while making episodes2 & 3 they couldn't. The files were already so outdated they didn't have any workstations that could recognize them.

But with something like film, as long as it's stored well it can last for over a century. And it can be copied by mechanical (or chemical I guess) means. Even if every film projector in the world was lost, you could still shine lifght through it and see what's on it.

I'm not against digital, it has provided amazing new opportunities and things. But physical media is still important too, and there's room in the world for both.

[XvGojira]

[hanshotfirst1138]

I will fight for physical media until the end (which, in the case of celluloid, has come ), but I love my streaming for its convenience (and the quality is better than I ever imagined streaming would be). Ideally, both can coexist, though physician media will her be what it once was.

[Dr Kain]

Streaming looks average to me. Sure, it is DVD quality, but it can never look BD quality. Not to mention all of the HD drop outs and episodes crashing and restarting 3 minutes ago.

[XvGojira]

[Tom R VanSlambrouck]

It is dependent on your ISP (Internet Service Provider) when I stream stuff on Netflix that's HD it looks just like I'm watching a Blu-ray copy. It may start off on par with DVD but once it buffers the stream is just as good as a Blu-ray. Hell Netflix is the only service that has true 4K content right now but you have to have a decent internet speed to get it.

[canofhumdingers]

But it's not just like bluray. It may be the same (or even higher in the case of 4k) resolution as bluray, but it's streamed at a much lower bitrate. HD streaming content is more compressed than the same content on a BD. That being said, I'm sure a lot of people don't notice. Depending on what kind of TV you have, how big it is, how far away you sit, etc. you may not notice the difference between the two sources. I can see the difference but I usually have to be looking for it to really notice, though sometimes it can be quite glaring. And, of course, you don't have all the buffering, playback, and availability issues (and commercials, darn you hulu!!!) on disc that you have with streaming.

[XvGojira]

I don't expect to have streaming to replace my media library but it is damned convenient.

[jellydonut25]

[Dr Kain]

I wish I could say streaming is more convenient, but usually what I want to watch is not available for streaming. Even the things I want to watch aren't always on On Demand, and a few others that are want me to pay $6 for a 24 hour rental. What happened to the days when $6 got you a rental for a week? Streaming sites like Netflix should have every and anything I want to watch at any given time. I never had an issue going into a Blockbuster or Video Factory and being told, "We're sorry, we're not longer able to rent out that movie." Hell, Netflix got rid of a crap ton of horror movies BEFORE Halloween. That is freaking stupid as hell as that is the exact opposite of what they should have been doing.

As such, I pretty much have to buy what I want to watch because it is cheaper to buy it and own it until I choose otherwise than to rent something for 24 hours.