Anyone else returning to Physical Media

[JamesMay82]

I’m 43 so grew up with VHS, DVD, blu ray and then I moved to digital purchases and streaming.

Maybe it’s nostalgia but I’ve oddly started thinking about buying blu rays again… I was telling a friend and he oddly was having same thoughts.. I think we both have streaming fatigue where it takes ages to find something to watch..

We both miss the days of blockbuster!

Anyone else ?

 

[confirmed]

Yes - same here. I dove fully into digital across music and movies, but have recently been nostalgic for physical media. Having immediate access to my entire digital library is great, but it lacks the intention of physical media.

And for my kids, I've realized that they'll never experience the memory of the first album they "owned" with streaming music platforms. I'm still using streaming services and digital media, but trying to build up a library of physical media for my favorites. I recently bought my 8 year old son a record player to kick off this same practice.

 

[Sheepish-Lord]

I’m around your age and I honestly don’t miss physical media. I can find literally anything I want digitally and enjoy it wherever I want. I have no desire to have physical clutter and legacy equipment that restricts me to a particular area of my home. Additionally, those will break or wear out as well.

Some of my absolutely favorite movies/music I’ll have a sealed or physical copy but good riddance. No desire to have a Vanilla Ice cassette tape ha.

 

[BotchQue]

I never left; play my CDs and Blu-ray concerts all the time.
I do appreciate, however, streaming a new album/artist before plunking down any cash, and listening to so many things from my past that I either couldn’t afford or have the time back then.

 

[Corefile]

I never left; play my CDs and Blu-ray concerts all the time.
I do appreciate, however, streaming a new album/artist before plunking down any cash, and listening to so many things from my past that I either couldn’t afford or have the time back then.

This is me. I only buy CDs and Blu-ray DVDs as I always believe people want to own their own media and not be subject to the whims of the content cartels. I always predicted that streaming would become another cable TV quagmire.

 

[JamesMay82]

I’m around your age and I honestly don’t miss physical media. I can find literally anything I want digitally and enjoy it wherever I want. I have no desire to have physical clutter and legacy equipment that restricts me to a particular area of my home. Additionally, those will break or wear out as well.

Some of my absolutely favorite movies/music I’ll have a sealed or physical copy but good riddance. No desire to have a Vanilla Ice cassette tape ha.

Yeah I am the same as you… the last time I had a blu ray was prob about 5 years ago and I found it noisey and a pain to keep changing discs!

It’s just this past month or so I’ve been getting bored of streaming. Plus realising digital purchases aren’t guaranteed ownership.

 

[JBaby]

No. I never invested in physical media and I’m not gonna start now. I don’t have the space for it. My house is small.

 

[Boyd01]

I'm 76 and completely stopped using physical media around 10 years ago. I moved to a rural location with no broadband in 2006 and built up a big library of DVD's (and some Bluray disks, towards the end) until an army of Verizon FIOS installers descended on my little town (population ~1700) in 2017 and I got fiber internet. Ended up ripping around 1200 DVD's over a period of about 5 years and never looked back. Really like having my own custom playlists (of quirky stuff like "1950's Sci Fi", etc). Yeah, the quality may take a little hit but I watch for content, not video quality.

Have upgraded some of my favorite movies/TV shows to HD from Apple using the gift cards I usually get for the holidays. Ripped my big CD collection even earlier. I play piano and guitar, spent much of my life working for a major opera company, so it's not like I don't appreciate music. But again, it's the content that interests me, I just don't get any big thrill from the act of listening to "high quality" audio. Much of my favorite music is from old 1950's - 1970's recordings of questionable quality.

I just don't want to deal with physical media and get annoyed by the long delay while a DVD or BD player goes chug-chug-chug loading a video, only to display some annoying animated menu when all I want is to watch the movie! 😄

My daughter and son in law are about the same age as the OP. They use Apple Music and iCloud for pretty much everything (I don't have that subscription and also download all my media when I purchase). But, after ripping what I wanted, I gave them all my old vinyl disks and they were thrilled. They have absolutely no interest in my big collection of DVD's and CD's however.

 

[CharlesShaw]

While owning physical media is no longer for me, it's good to know that, like a seed bank buried under a mountain, if needed (choose your own dystopian outcome), cloud 2.0 could be repopulated with collected music, movies, and books.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

No. I never invested in physical media and I’m not gonna start now. I don’t have the space for it. My house is small.

This is me.
I like vinyl, I have nothing against physical media, I just do not have the space…or the equipment.
There are also just so many extra steps in owning physical media, besides the extra cost and space.
Years ago I had a Blu-ray drive for my Mac, and guess what? Only six months after purchase, I went to go use it and, it was dead. Completely dead. Just gone. $100 or so right down the toilet.
Now, the only product I have that can play most physical media is a PlayStation, but guess what? Can’t play CDs.
And now we are just needlessly introducing complications where there doesn’t need to be any.
It’s a choice between paying the price of one or two movies a month for instant access to all of them without needing any extra equipment, or having to pay hundreds and hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of dollars just to have the *ability* to listen or watch the physical media, and then *on top of that* the price of the physical media itself, which can vary wildly depending on the format, release date, version.
I’ve seen CD and vinyl box sets and collections for one artist or album that cost upwards of the price of an iPad. It is not a cheep business.

 

[schnaps]

Although I use online services, I copy almost everything to HDDs and SSDs, some for long-term storage, some as cache on external SSDs for laptops.
And besides music and movies, I have a lot of other things that require storage.

I store a significant amount of music and videos on smartphones and tablets because I travel a lot, and internet access, especially fast internet, isn't always available.

But if we're talking about videos and music alone, I haven't bought either on physical media for a long time.

But, do burn CDs and cassette for my vintage electronics, but not much, they're not my primary source of music.

 

[notabitail]

I have physical media for most of my music. I usually rip it to FLAC and put it on my phone and NAS so I don't have to deal with the disc.

I want to own my music. If I'm buying a digital file it'd better be one without DRM or any of that nonsense.

 

[Juicy Box]

I still do. I have everything on my Plex media server. I been collecting since the 80’s, and never stopped. Movies, TV shows, music, and (now) retro video games.

I think people are starting to get back into physical media. I think between increase demand and out of print media, the used movies and music market prices are insanely high now.

 

[Rychiar]

nope. I'm 43 as well and I was already ripping my media to digital when I was 18 lol. Never been got a blu-ray player. I used to like collecting music and have a huge CD collection but movies always kinda sucked to buy

 

[jz0309]

I ripped all of my physical media to digital starting almost 20 years ago. I bought a USB turntable to copy all my vinyls to my Mac and then over the years all my CDs, DVDs...
I still have all of these in boxes in the garage but no need to ever go back...
Since I replace my MPro in 2017 with an iMac, I didn't even have an optical drive anymore, til mid year this year as I had some medical exams done that were captured on a CD and wanted to access. Since then I bought 2 movies, DVDs, that were not available as digital copies.
Will I ever go back? No. But I'm glad that I have the option now to rip again if/when needed

 

[TechRunner]

I grew up on physical media (I'm 62) but I've moved so much it became a pain to pack and handle everything (especially books), so I migrated to digital media over time and won't go back, though I do love strolling the aisles of a used bookstore when I find one.

 

[AL2TEACH]

Never left or stopped buying discs just slowed. I will stream a movie but if the picture and sound is really good, I will buy the 4K UHD disc because I have to feed my set-up lol

 

[fatTribble]

I’ve never really left it apart from a lull in new disc purchases. In the past couple of years I’ve been buying more, especially the classic titles that have been remastered for 4K. A couple of friends in their early 30s are avid disc buyers.

Part of my renewed interest is because of Apple. I use Apple TVs for streaming. The TV app makes it cumbersome to get to your purchases. There are large ads and many tiles with new titles to buy or stream on Apple TV. When I try to watch TV episodes, the app will start replaying episodes that I recently watched. So I spend time scrolling horizontally to find the episode I kind of remember I watched last.
For me, it’s all a bit much.

I enjoy the discs. I like looking at the cases. I like knowing that I own them.

 

[Allyance]

I have a few of my favorite movies on BlueRay, I did buy the complete West Wing and the Eagles Farewell Tour #1. Most of the music I listen to these days comes from iTunes. I have a tall rack full of CD's I've had for years, can't remember the last time I played one! I use Apple TV and Britbox for streaming. Plus I still have a Technics direct drive turntable left over from my sound contracting days, not many records. The only record I play once in a while is a recording of Joan Baez when she was 16 years old playing at the Club 47 Mt. Auburn in Harvard Square, very rare.

 

[Ignacio Russo]

I’m 43 so grew up with VHS, DVD, blu ray and then I moved to digital purchases and streaming.

Maybe it’s nostalgia but I’ve oddly started thinking about buying blu rays again… I was telling a friend and he oddly was having same thoughts.. I think we both have streaming fatigue where it takes ages to find something to watch..

We both miss the days of blockbuster!

Anyone else ?

Only for the editions that you cannot find anymore online. Or imports.

 

[Naraxus]

Physical media is about the only thing I buy these days. I like to own my purchases and with digital they can take them away at the drop of a hat or with an os update.

 

[BLtheP]

After 10 years of Apple Music, I got sick and tired of streaming and owning nothing. Worse than owning nothing, I really didn't like that Apple could snatch anything they want right back from me at will due to licensing issues.

I pulled the plug on the subscription last year and started buying a ton of CDs - probably 400 or so just last year. I am not 100% physical - some CDs are just impossible to get these days (and many items in recent years never went to CD), so I buy anything I can't get via CD through Qobuz, which sells lossless files/albums in any format desired (I use ALAC). They have almost everything...beyond that I'll go to iTunes as a last resort or figure something else out.

I have zero regrets with this backwards move other than the fact that it resulted in me spending a ton of money on music for the last year to play catch up on a bunch of stuff I had been streaming for years that I never owned. But now that I'm mostly beyond that, I have no regrets whatsoever. Since iTunes Match sucks, I have reverted to syncing the library to my phone over a cable. While it sounds like a pain, I don't find it to be a pain at all and have zero regrets about that either.

One thing I did not expect that I have found is that I appreciate everything in my collection so much more when I own it. I actually listen to albums start to finish, I listen to things I've never actually listened to before, etc. When everything is just streaming, it's too easy to hit the add to library button and then never actually listen to it because it gets lost amongst everything else I didn't pay specifically for. When I spend the money, I'm a lot more likely to give something a listen.

 

[subjonas]

I'm one of those who wants to own my media libraries and in the highest possible quality. I would prefer digital-only libraries, but as it is physical disc is the only way to own and in the highest quality, so I still buy CDs and Blu-ray discs and digitize them. I also get very annoyed with buffering time and pixelation due to connection speed, or simply not having access due to no internet reception or changes in licensing.

 

[JamesMay82]

After 10 years of Apple Music, I got sick and tired of streaming and owning nothing. Worse than owning nothing, I really didn't like that Apple could snatch anything they want right back from me at will due to licensing issues.

I pulled the plug on the subscription last year and started buying a ton of CDs - probably 400 or so just last year. I am not 100% physical - some CDs are just impossible to get these days (and many items in recent years never went to CD), so I buy anything I can't get via CD through Qobuz, which sells lossless files/albums in any format desired (I use ALAC). They have almost everything...beyond that I'll go to iTunes as a last resort or figure something else out.

I have zero regrets with this backwards move other than the fact that it resulted in me spending a ton of money on music for the last year to play catch up on a bunch of stuff I had been streaming for years that I never owned. But now that I'm mostly beyond that, I have no regrets whatsoever. Since iTunes Match sucks, I have reverted to syncing the library to my phone over a cable. While it sounds like a pain, I don't find it to be a pain at all and have zero regrets about that either.

One thing I did not expect that I have found is that I appreciate everything in my collection so much more when I own it. I actually listen to albums start to finish, I listen to things I've never actually listened to before, etc. When everything is just streaming, it's too easy to hit the add to library button and then never actually listen to it because it gets lost amongst everything else I didn't pay specifically for. When I spend the money, I'm a lot more likely to give something a listen.

I did the same on CDs last year… a local guys dad was a cd collector I think it was a compulsion as loads were unopened.. but when he past the son was selling them for pennies so I got about 500 CDs for £75 I think it was… only bummer was I did t get to choose so I got some crap ones but other that was good… it took ages to rip them all though! I was even ripping the stuff I don’t listen to for some reason! I think I was pretending to be a preservationist!

I remember in the 90’s and early 2000’s I used to have the entertainment centre with all the CDs on display… I’m tempted todo that but I think it may have to remain in my office

 

[P_Watt]

I started listening to music on shellac 78rpm disks, then vinyl, then cassette, CD and now Spotify.
Started with steel needles, (sock in the horn for quiet), then mono stylus with valves (tubes), then stereo with transistors, now Apple smart devices
At every stage it was a massive improvement and I'll never ever go backwards!