I might be asking a rhetorical question here but I was curious as to the overall consensus on physical media. Do support it because, unlike streaming, media can’t take away what you’ve payed for? or are you against because it’s a waste of money when you can “acquire” it through “alternative means?” I’m also thinking about getting a 4K Blu Ray player for when my wife and I get a new place; preferably one that can also play self hosted media. What do you guys think?
If I can’t find something I want to pirate, I will sometimes break down and buy it, but always in physical media, which I immediately rip into my collection. I don’t use physical media, it’s too inconvenient, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay some megacorp so I can rent media and pretend I’m actually buying it.
I pay for games on gog.com because they are DRM free, but physical media is meh
you my friend … need a little trip to this rabbithole called /c/selfhosting
Be warned tho … altho it’s a fun and enlightening journey … it gets pretty expensive
Cries in 3 storage arrays across 2 bare metal hypervisors
Are you running a distributed storage software like ceph? I’m starting to think of how I should manage storage for personal files and containers, wondering if ceph is feasible for small home use and growing from there.
I support ownership of stuff i buy.
Whether its physical or digital doesn’t matter. I probably prefer digital as computer related activities already produce a ton of physical e-waste.
Keep in mind that the average longevity of laser disks is 10-20 years. After that the data gets corrupted and will become unreadable at some point.
Thats why I don’t use cd/dvd/bluray.
Books on the other hand, I love as a physical media.
If you store them properly and create fresh backups on new discs every couple of years, they can last a long time.
Books. There isn’t any real substitute for books portability, smell, touch, ease of use.
Other than that I’m digital all the way.
I partially agree.
Reference books, with high-resolution images and diagrams, or subjects that invite constant page flipping, are great as physical objects. Most other books I prefer to have digitally. I do not need to have an object full of short stories or history lessons taking up space in my home.
I do like the feel of books and the look of a bookcase… But not as much as I like having that space for other things.
Everyone finds their own path in this, there are no wrong answers.
It’s funny I have kind of the opposite opinion. I like to keep reference books digitally because I care so little about them and tend to look at them so infrequently. But my hitchhiker’s guide series? My one volume collection of annotated Sherlock Holmes? Zoids Chaotic Century? Harry Potter, Redwall, and all the other books I raised children on? Conan by L. Sprague DeCamp? The list goes on and on.
But yes, to each their own.
Couldn’t agree more. Nothing replaces the feel of holding a book.
If you want to support the author, why not? DRM may be a performance buster, but you can always get a physical copy to support the further development and keep enjoying DRM-free content from the alternative means. Also for stuff where it’s harder to get something in an arrrrr way, physical media is often offered with steep discounts some time after the initial launch: I bought a lot of games for Xbox on disks for $10-15, while digital copies were still $60 a year after launch. BTW, if you have a game console, there is a good chance it has Blu Ray already.
I haven’t bought new media in years. Last time I bougth new they were LP records, new pressings. For movies I just download or buy used, for music I almost always buy used and from time to time new when I really want to support the artist.
Yhe problem with limiting yourself to either pirate or just 1 type of medium is that you miss out on good stuff. At this moment I have music from every decade between 1890 and 2020 on LP, of which most will never be available digitally.
I try to support physical media when I can because it’s more consumer friendly than streaming exclusive shows. there are a lot of shows I just pirate. these days though my physical collecting is pretty much just manga.
If I purchase music, it’ll be in the form of a CD which I’ll create a torrent out of and seed to at least 10 people have it. That takes a while though
I like me some music CDs. Cassettes, too
The biggest disadvantage of physical media is DRM. With the exception of music which isn’t usually locked, pretty much all optical discs have some form of region locking. Software/video games also typically have additional DRM schemes. Some are easy to bypass (e.g. nocd cracks). Online activation is the worst because it relies on the game publisher keeping the servers alive.
I download things like good movies, video games, and music.
I stream things like TV shows on free streaming sites.
A lot of people here don’t understand that having something saved on a storage device is the exact same as owning it physically.
They believe that having a box for a disc with cover art on it matters, or something.
Right, I got my movies, music on my storage so I own it. Of course it wasn’t free, I’d to pay with electricity, internet service provider costs. I don’t have space to keep set of dvd/bluray/cd’s wherein a single hdd/ssd can hold all of that data. Most of the new content is mostly crap nowadays. I won’t pay a dime for it. So yeah will sail the high seas and get my content as long as the options are available to me.
Most of the new content is mostly crap nowadays. I won’t pay a dime for it.
So don’t watch it if it’s crap? Or stop trying to justify piracy to yourself, we’re all here for similar reasons.
