Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Anyone else returning to Physical Media
- Thread starter JamesMay82
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
The ironic thing is that it all started with streaming music. Back in the 17 and 1800s, during the Baroque and Classical eras, all music was 'streamed' in a sense. You would go to your local theatre to hear a symphony or an opera, or buy printed chamber music that your family could play at home. The printed music was the closest to "owning" physical media.
Same. I’m 41 and the SECOND i could stream things i streaming. I remember what it was like to have a big case of dvds and be swiping through them looking for something good. Then having to blow on the disc, put it in the dvd player and play it lol so much work. Or i could see a list of movies on my Apple TV or Vision Pro and just play it.
My local Best Buy and Walmart doesn’t even sell dvds anymore. They got rid of their physical media section so I don’t think we’re alone in this
I retained a few Blu-ray Discs but my music library was ripped to digital a long time ago. Between my wife and I we had probably a few thousand dvd/cd media, and after moving twice and lugging those around I said enough’s enough! We still do purchase books though. I have a large Kindle library but nothing beats opening a book and turning those pages.
I want to start renting video games and blu rays from our city library instead of using subscription services like Netflix or PS+ but I am too lazy to restore my library card once again cause I lost the password to it
Good thread. Glad to see it. Had a bit of a rollercoaster here.
Picture 2020. Apple Music, Netflix, Amazon, Kindle, the lot across the whole family. Digital note taking, the lot.
Then along came the curses. First there was the disappearing music in Apple Music. Then the Netflix pricing issues. Then Amazon closed my retail account because I returned too much crap they sold that didn't work and was no longer a valuable customer. Left in the lurch and lost my DRM'ed Kindle crap. Then Apple started with the CSAM stuff and the EU and UK started with the anti-encryption and anti-privacy measures.
Picture 2025. iCloud is mostly dead to me for privacy reasons. The family have Apple Music but I have FLAC rips mostly from physical CDs and some bought from Bandcamp. Netflix is no more. Amazon is but a memory. There are no eBooks. My kids even started buying physical CDs and barely touch Apple Music. The CDs are cheap. We have hundreds of physical books now which can be lent to or given to people freely. All the Kindles are gone.DVDs are starting to appear now due to the sheer ubiquity of them in charity shops in the UK. Blu-Ray is not important for me - my eyes aren't good enough to care about anything more than 1080p
. Digital media is slowly evaporating. The iPad, previously used as a note taking surface is sitting in the drawer rotting in favour of simple A4 paper and gel pens.
So we have DVDs, we have CDs, we have books and we have paper and pens. Life is better. And there is a small community growing around us where we exchange them freely without a monthly fee each. The corporate wall building has failed. No one can see, track or trace what I read, watch, listen to, or write about.
The only physical media form missing is the last curse. The photograph. The photograph was made cheap and insignificant by the smartphone. They are not taken responsibly and with care, merely for conspicuous sharing of activity on social media. Barely for a memory. Barely for a frozen moment in time. All with no care due to the perception of near infinite storage. And on your phone, and in iCloud, they are at great risk. I know people who have lost everything. No one prints them, no one displays them any more. I go in many houses and they are dead, possibly with some reproduction of the same painting over and over again (usually Van Gogh's starry night) indicating an attachment to some art. But nothing personal. So over the last few weeks I made efforts to change that. First set of home developed negatives since 1998...
Printing is next. Physical photos here we come.
Picture 2020. Apple Music, Netflix, Amazon, Kindle, the lot across the whole family. Digital note taking, the lot.
Then along came the curses. First there was the disappearing music in Apple Music. Then the Netflix pricing issues. Then Amazon closed my retail account because I returned too much crap they sold that didn't work and was no longer a valuable customer. Left in the lurch and lost my DRM'ed Kindle crap. Then Apple started with the CSAM stuff and the EU and UK started with the anti-encryption and anti-privacy measures.
Picture 2025. iCloud is mostly dead to me for privacy reasons. The family have Apple Music but I have FLAC rips mostly from physical CDs and some bought from Bandcamp. Netflix is no more. Amazon is but a memory. There are no eBooks. My kids even started buying physical CDs and barely touch Apple Music. The CDs are cheap. We have hundreds of physical books now which can be lent to or given to people freely. All the Kindles are gone.DVDs are starting to appear now due to the sheer ubiquity of them in charity shops in the UK. Blu-Ray is not important for me - my eyes aren't good enough to care about anything more than 1080p
. Digital media is slowly evaporating. The iPad, previously used as a note taking surface is sitting in the drawer rotting in favour of simple A4 paper and gel pens.So we have DVDs, we have CDs, we have books and we have paper and pens. Life is better. And there is a small community growing around us where we exchange them freely without a monthly fee each. The corporate wall building has failed. No one can see, track or trace what I read, watch, listen to, or write about.
The only physical media form missing is the last curse. The photograph. The photograph was made cheap and insignificant by the smartphone. They are not taken responsibly and with care, merely for conspicuous sharing of activity on social media. Barely for a memory. Barely for a frozen moment in time. All with no care due to the perception of near infinite storage. And on your phone, and in iCloud, they are at great risk. I know people who have lost everything. No one prints them, no one displays them any more. I go in many houses and they are dead, possibly with some reproduction of the same painting over and over again (usually Van Gogh's starry night) indicating an attachment to some art. But nothing personal. So over the last few weeks I made efforts to change that. First set of home developed negatives since 1998...
Printing is next. Physical photos here we come.
Better quality, no one can take it from you.
As someone who rips discs to hard drives, I 100% understand why people would just stick with physical media.
There should be a way to get your card back if you don't remember the password.
Similar age and left Uni with around 300 DVDs and 1-200 CDs. I had ripped all the CDs to MP3 (first time around) and then lossless for preservation and digital ease of access. In the late 2000s I started ripping my DVDs with Handbrake as I wanted a similar way to consume the content I owned without the hassle of having to get the disc and sit through the non-skippable stuff. This is what got me into Apple stuff as a DVD rip + Handbrake encode + MetaX tagging loaded onto an Apple TV (1st gen) gave me a great media experience. At the time, the Apple TV came with a 160 GB PATA drive and I could only fit my films or TV series onto it (and had to stream the rest from my PC). I patiently waited for a second generation Apple TV that took SATA drives so I could get all my media onto it...that day never came.
I cautiously entered the world of Blu-Rays, promising myself that I would buy new films on that format and only upgrade my absolute favourite films. As I got into the 2010s I found I was buying a lot less music and perhaps only 10 Blu-Rays a year. My switch point came when I discovered internet forums where people were selling HD (or 4K) digital codes from their physical media for a few $. After buying a few of these, I made the decision to go digital for films. I bought up codes (or iTunes items on sale) and have effectively upgraded the vast majority of my film collection to iTunes HD/4K copies and do the same for new films I want to own. All the old DVDs of these films have gone to charity. At some point I should buy a large hard drive and download all the HD versions from Apple's server for keeping (I still have the DVD-quality Handbrake encodes too). It's so refreshing to have all those items available digitally with no ongoing subscription fees. I was starting to feel like my physical collection was becoming a burdon. I'm more emotionally connected to my CD collection as this was build up as a teenager (and they take up much less space) so I still have the physical media, even though I haven't listened to a CD in over a decade.
I do pay for several video streaming services (but use the free Spotify / Apple music free month offers), but I'm happy to cancel these as soon as I feel I'm not getting sufficient enjoyment from them for the money (and will continue to buy my favourite films digitally). If everything goes wrong (e.g. Apple revokes my licences to my digital purchases), I'm fairly sure I could pick up everything again for under £2/disc on DVD (and not much more if I wanted to go with Blu-Ray).
TL;DR - I'm was happy to go to digital purchases to reduce the clutter of physical media, but wouldn't want to rely on streaming services. And I can't let go of my CD collection!
I cautiously entered the world of Blu-Rays, promising myself that I would buy new films on that format and only upgrade my absolute favourite films. As I got into the 2010s I found I was buying a lot less music and perhaps only 10 Blu-Rays a year. My switch point came when I discovered internet forums where people were selling HD (or 4K) digital codes from their physical media for a few $. After buying a few of these, I made the decision to go digital for films. I bought up codes (or iTunes items on sale) and have effectively upgraded the vast majority of my film collection to iTunes HD/4K copies and do the same for new films I want to own. All the old DVDs of these films have gone to charity. At some point I should buy a large hard drive and download all the HD versions from Apple's server for keeping (I still have the DVD-quality Handbrake encodes too). It's so refreshing to have all those items available digitally with no ongoing subscription fees. I was starting to feel like my physical collection was becoming a burdon. I'm more emotionally connected to my CD collection as this was build up as a teenager (and they take up much less space) so I still have the physical media, even though I haven't listened to a CD in over a decade.
I do pay for several video streaming services (but use the free Spotify / Apple music free month offers), but I'm happy to cancel these as soon as I feel I'm not getting sufficient enjoyment from them for the money (and will continue to buy my favourite films digitally). If everything goes wrong (e.g. Apple revokes my licences to my digital purchases), I'm fairly sure I could pick up everything again for under £2/disc on DVD (and not much more if I wanted to go with Blu-Ray).
TL;DR - I'm was happy to go to digital purchases to reduce the clutter of physical media, but wouldn't want to rely on streaming services. And I can't let go of my CD collection!
Been into it for years! The communities around it are growing. Facebook, Reddit etc it's become more popular last few years.
The quality is just simply unmatched. The new Dune II on UHD looks out of this world, not to mention the sound. Heck even old movies dvd looks better than a new apparent 4k stream.
The quality is just simply unmatched. The new Dune II on UHD looks out of this world, not to mention the sound. Heck even old movies dvd looks better than a new apparent 4k stream.
Never left physical media. I have a ton of DVD’s, Blu-Rays, vinyl records, books and comics. I also stream music, films and TV.
I find streaming music is useful for discovering new music, new and old 'new' music.
Still mostly using discs, especially for 3D-Blu-ray and multichannel Sa-cd/Blu-ray audio. They have no real equivalent in the world of streaming.
Prefer the convenience of digital. But for media with offensive, hostile DRMs, would buy physical for extra peace of mind. Having a huge physical media collection is very enticing, that's for sure.
I find youtube better for that. A lot of stuff isn't on any streaming platform.
Found this earlier for example. Not on Apple Music
Yes I do buy discs. I archive them to my NAS. I do playback of late from NAS and from purchases from one of the streaming services. As for music, I buy CDs from time to time but use HD streaming services and Flac purchased music often 96/24. I think having a mix of sources works very well for me depending on what I am doing and where I am at a given time. I recall the old* iTunes, when it was till fun and converted about 80 CDs over. This is when iTunes also had the "jukebox" view. Today, I avoid Apple's music offerings if possible. It is just a damn commercial to buy. I rather have the CD.
Interest in physical media seems to be rising again. I used to have my pick of DVDs and old games from the thrift stores, now there’s a lot more people buying both.
At the moment physical media is dirt cheap and paid streaming options are terrible. I don’t know if that means anyone will want to pay $20+ for movies on disc again. But at $2 for a DVD, $3-$5 for a BluRay, and $8 for a BluRay player it’s an inexpensive hobby during tough economic times.
At the moment physical media is dirt cheap and paid streaming options are terrible. I don’t know if that means anyone will want to pay $20+ for movies on disc again. But at $2 for a DVD, $3-$5 for a BluRay, and $8 for a BluRay player it’s an inexpensive hobby during tough economic times.
I've started doing this with movies. The fact that most streaming services require me to pay $20+ a month to watch things in 4K HDR keeps me from fully enjoying my home theater setup with streaming. Left with the option of buying from Apple TV or physical media, physical media is the clear winner considering it's often even cheaper than digital with how often 4K blu-rays go on sale on amazon, Walmart, etc., they have higher audio quality for my speaker system to take advantage of, and I generally get the Apple TV version as well since most blu-rays have a digital redemption code included.
For music though, having everything in one place in CD or higher quality (thanks to Apple's introduction of lossless) is too good a deal for me to pass up.
For music though, having everything in one place in CD or higher quality (thanks to Apple's introduction of lossless) is too good a deal for me to pass up.
I never left, at least for DVDs and Blu-rays. It's comforting to know none of those movies and TV shows I've collected will suddenly disappear one day due to some contract dispute or whatever.
Last edited:
Not me. I remember years of hoarding CDs in a case and lugging it in and out of my car, and tons of unused CD cases laying around. Digital simplifies everything so I don’t need that stuff anymore. I donated my collection when streaming became a thing and haven’t looked back. Apple Music is my jukebox of choice now.
Honestly, no. I actually just finished digitizing my family's most precious DVDs using HandBrake and a SuperDrive from eBay so that I could easily distribute them to everyone and back them up so that damage to a single DVD ≠ permanent loss of irreplaceable memories.
I would much rather store my media in the form of an infinitely portable, easily replicated, automatically backed up (at least in my case) file than have to bother with disks or vinyl records or something because they have Vibes™. That's how I view it, but I get that it's not always that serious. I'm just an archivist at heart, I guess.
I don't watch a lot of TV or movies, but when I come across something I really like, I'll buy it legitimately from whichever digital platform it's available on but also grab a 💜community-sourced version💜 (if you know what I mean). That way I can support the creators while still having my own copy of what I bought (which sounds absurd to even say but... here we are).
I would much rather store my media in the form of an infinitely portable, easily replicated, automatically backed up (at least in my case) file than have to bother with disks or vinyl records or something because they have Vibes™. That's how I view it, but I get that it's not always that serious. I'm just an archivist at heart, I guess.
I don't watch a lot of TV or movies, but when I come across something I really like, I'll buy it legitimately from whichever digital platform it's available on but also grab a 💜community-sourced version💜 (if you know what I mean). That way I can support the creators while still having my own copy of what I bought (which sounds absurd to even say but... here we are).
Last edited: