by canofhumdingers » Sun Feb 24, 2019 1:33 pm
Games and music are far easier to make the switch, imo. Music takes so little storage that it’s not a big deal to go fully digital and the only reason to go for physical media is for quality reasons. Also, (likely because of the storage non-issue) it seems *really* easy to find almost any song I can think of I’d want to hear in digital form. Only obscure stuff like Godzilla soundtracks still sometimes necessitate physical copies.
With games, I still go physical media for consoles but will be going digital for any pc games I play in the future now that I finally got a new gaming laptop. But the nature of video games being digital programs just (for me anyway) makes it feel more natural to go digital. Plus, for pc games I only ever used the physical disc for the initial install anyway.
But movies are totally different. For one, the truly high quality video formats still take up GOBS AND GOBS of storage. I mean, a one terabyte drive would struggle to hold standard 1080p Blu-ray quality copies of just the Godzilla library. And that doesn’t even consider going 4K UHD... Also quality is still an issue. It takes huge bandwidth to stream in good quality (not to mention you NEVER get as good bitrates streaming as you do via disc) and there’s still plenty of issues with buffering, dropouts, and so on even with fast internet speeds. And then there’s the whole issue of accessibility. With streaming your choices are often quite limited, especially if you’re into obscure stuff like Godzilla. Plus content comes and goes at dizzying speed on streaming platforms. Just because the movie you like is available today doesn’t mean it will be there tomorrow. Even if you purchase your own digital copies you’re still forced to watch them when and how the provider allows and you may lose that copy if they go out of business (which still happens alarmingly often. I just got a notice the other day one of the ones I’ve used - moviesanywhere maybe? - is gone).
With movies the only way available today to own the highest quality legal copies that YOU can always control when and where it can be watched are still physical discs. Really the only other option I can think of is pirated or bootleg digital files where YOU, not the provider, actually have the video file itself and can do with as you please.
And so the move to digital video content is premature if you ask me and I’m disappointed to see it going this way. I (like most of us here I assume) am a film nerd and I love rare and obscure movies and I want to have access to them that *I* control. Looks like I need to start getting to work on shoring up my BD collection before it’s too late...
Edit:
Oh, and yes, I do see physical media dying quite quickly, especially with this news. Heck, I can’t tell you how many neighbors and coworkers I have who’ve mentioned they don’t even know where their disc player is if they even have one anymore. It’s only us film/video nerds who care at this point.