Anyone else returning to Physical Media

[Scepticalscribe]

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.

And this is also me.

I still listen to - and play, and buy - CDs, play music on my iPod Classic, (or computer's iTunes), and listen to classical music on the classical music station on the radio.....

And yes, while part of the reason is that I do like the (physical) tactile experience of physical media, equally, I also detest the rentier model promoted by the entertainment industry, and prefer (by far) to actually own my own media (such as my vast collection of CDs, and LPs).

 

[Ignacio Russo]

If you already have a CD player, you might want to consider just going with an external carplay screen. That's what I did. It was cheap and easy, and works really well.

I bought one. But I don't have surface for it at my car. No flat surfaces to use.

 

[mk313]

Just started buying Blu-rays And 4k movies again, started to hear things about peoples media getting deleted even tho they paid for them via Amazon

I'm genuinely interested in this. I hear people say that they've heard this happen, but I've never actually heard of it happening. I remember one member on macrumors was talking about how a movie he purchased was removed from his library, but then other users pointed out that the movie had never been available for purchase and was only available on Apple TV + (or maybe it was rentable).

I believe I had one episode of a TV Show I got for free on iTunes being removed, but the show was cancelled after like one episode & was never renewed, so I can't remember the show name to check (it was about a guy who worked in Big Oil or something similar & had two lives. One wife in a house in one city & another wife in another house in another city). But I could be misremembering that.

I get that theoretically any streaming service could revoke access to an item, but I don't think it's really happened much at all.

For me, the ability to store everything in the cloud and play them on any device at any time, and not having to store them at the house, is well worth the potential risk. Although I can definitely understand other people's decision to go the other way.

 

[MacsRgr8]

On a similar note, I sometimes find it confusing how purchased music through iTunes Store gets “mixed up” with the library of my Apple music subscription. Sometimes songs from a certain compilation album that I have purchased are linked to the song from an original album (so not the compilation album).
Of course, not the end of the world, but when creating my own playlists it can confuse me.

If you actually rip the above noted complication CD with iTunes and using iTunes Match it gets added to your music library, you will notice that those above mentioned linked songs are seen as “matched” and not seen as “purchased” in the iCloud status.

 

[Boyd01]

I'm genuinely interested in this. I hear people say that they've heard this happen, but I've never actually heard of it happening.

Here are a couple long threads about this, there may be more

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/disappearing-movies.2311757/

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/sad-day-for-movies-purchased-on-itunes-o.2343782/

 

[mk313]

Here are a couple long threads about this, there may be more

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/disappearing-movies.2311757/

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/sad-day-for-movies-purchased-on-itunes-o.2343782/

Thanks. I read through those threads. Every movie that a poster said had been removed from the store & they could no longer access, is currently available for purchase (at least in the US store).

It still seems to me that this is more of a temporary issue than a lasting one (at least in the US). I'm not discounting personal experiences but sometimes technological issues are something other than the company removing access to a video. It's possible that video was purchased from a separate movie store (Fandango, google play Microsoft store, etc. Or that there was some kind of temporary glitch with the iTunes Store. Or the movie was purchased through a different iTunes account.

To the extent that this issue exists, it hasn't impacted me ever. And the convenience of having all of my videos avaialable on every device, wherever I am, whenever I want them, would be worth it to me, even if at some point I did lose access to a video or two and had to rebuy them in physical form.

 

[erihp]

I have 1500 Bluray in bins in a storage unit. Clearly, I value the hard copies and high quality, but displaying them for playback availability became a huge problem. Even with media shelving, it was never enough space.

Now I'm torn between keeping them, selling them, or trying to copy them to a media server (which seems like a huge effort).

Help!

 

[bzgnyc2]

I have 1500 Bluray in bins in a storage unit. Clearly, I value the hard copies and high quality, but displaying them for playback availability became a huge problem. Even with media shelving, it was never enough space.

Now I'm torn between keeping them, selling them, or trying to copy them to a media server (which seems like a huge effort).

Help!

What is the current state-of-the-art as far as importing Bluray into media server? Do things like MakeMKV work for that?

Putting aside the I'm guessing 500+ hours I'm guessing it would take to read, transcode, and organize 1500 Bluray...

 

[erihp]

What is the current state-of-the-art as far as importing Bluray into media server? Do things like MakeMKV work for that?

Putting aside the I'm guessing 500+ hours I'm guessing it would take to read, transcode, and organize 1500 Bluray...

yeah, you can rip and containerize into mkv with no loss. so its really just read transfer rate of the disc itself...

and i suppose there are some tools/logic that can be used to somewhat automate the process as far as title/content selection when ripping. but really, also automating the disc 'feeding' process would almost be needed too, else youre babysitting disc swaps...

also, we're talking about some pretty serious storage requirements!

ive considered just ripping a subset, but then i get torn between ripping all the movies i actually want to see, or just targeting the movies i cant get on other formats... ahhh!!

 

[MarkC426]

I remember one member on macrumors was talking about how a movie he purchased was removed from his library,

I have had this when a particular ‘old’ movie gets re-released by a different studio/owner it shows as available to purchase. Luckily I have everything from iTunes downloaded onto my Mac Pro.

 

[MacBH928]

One guy online told me something when i was thinking of archiving,

its not the media you have to worry about, its the media player. Bluray drivers are getting harder to find them. Panasonic and Sony are the only ones in the market with crazy prices ($300) the rest seem to be chinese knock-offs.

For Bluray, we are in the year of 2002 of Laserdiscs. Your best bet a cd-drive PS5 as even those are coming in drive-less options.

I have 1500 Bluray in bins in a storage unit. Clearly, I value the hard copies and high quality, but displaying them for playback availability became a huge problem. Even with media shelving, it was never enough space.

Now I'm torn between keeping them, selling them, or trying to copy them to a media server (which seems like a huge effort).

Help!

assuming $5 per BD, thats $7500 in Blurays?

I have had this when a particular ‘old’ movie gets re-released by a different studio/owner it shows as available to purchase. Luckily I have everything from iTunes downloaded onto my Mac Pro.

i am assuming even if you downloaded it they can block the access via drm or something

 

[MarkC426]

i am assuming even if you downloaded it they can block the access via drm or something

I don’t think so

 

[MacBH928]

I don’t think so

View attachment 2591666

here is the question, can you store it on cloud? can you move , copy, transfer the files? or are they hidden in a secretly locked folder?

 

[MarkC426]

here is the question, can you store it on cloud? can you move , copy, transfer the files? or are they hidden in a secretly locked folder?

I have them downloaded to a HDD on my Mac Pro.
They are just m4a (music), MPEG-4 (video) files.

You can play TV/Movies in QT player if you want.

 

[ritmomundo]

Aside from a very few number of limited edition steelbooks of my favorite movies and shows, I sold all my physical media about 10 years ago and dove fully into streaming and building an iTunes library. I honestly love not having the clutter.

 

[subjonas]

I forgot to mention a big benefit of buying media (physical or digital) vs streaming is not having subscription prices routinely being raised or ads being introduced to previously ad-free tiers.

 

[AlaskaMoose]

I forgot to mention a big benefit of buying media (physical or digital) vs streaming is not having subscription prices routinely being raised or ads being introduced to previously ad-free tiers.

Agree 👍 No Interned needed, just a CD/DVD player.

 

[MacBH928]

I forgot to mention a big benefit of buying media (physical or digital) vs streaming is not having subscription prices routinely being raised or ads being introduced to previously ad-free tiers.

I guarantee you physical is much more expensive though, i never justified the price of $30+ to view a movie once and I have no idea how do people feel its worth it. The only ones i justify are personal favorites that i want to keep a copy forever or something the kids will watch to death.

 

[subjonas]

I guarantee you physical is much more expensive though, i never justified the price of $30+ to view a movie once and I have no idea how do people feel its worth it. The only ones i justify are personal favorites that i want to keep a copy forever or something the kids will watch to death.

You can't make that guarantee because there are a number of variables in the comparison--how many movies/shows one buys; how many streaming services one subscribes to; how long one subscribes to each service; how much subscription prices increase over time; how much and which content actually matters to the person.

But even if it is more expensive, other benefits of owning physical (or digital) may make it worth it for some.

I only purchase movies that I want to rewatch or show to others too.

 

[MarkC426]

I guarantee you physical is much more expensive though

I have ALL media formats.
My recent TV series purchase was on DVD as it was half the price of iTunes/TV app.

 

[Beepster]

Nah, a large nas for me does the trick with 5.5k movies and 1k TV series, tens of thousands of ebooks and magazine/book pdfs, and several hundred gb music and videos. Literally got rid of over 220kg of physical history/travel/science books today to a school, then came across original guns n Roses cds, Nina Simone, Michael Jackson tapes etc, and all went immediately to recycling. I keep original local history books that aren’t digitised, but everything else goes. Even thinking of giving up the ocd-like collecting, although it’s almost all automated now, simply because I already have multiple lifetimes worth.

 

[bzgnyc2]

I guarantee you physical is much more expensive though, i never justified the price of $30+ to view a movie once and I have no idea how do people feel its worth it. The only ones i justify are personal favorites that i want to keep a copy forever or something the kids will watch to death.

For one-shot movies yes (in which case rental, streaming, theater, whichever floats your boat).

For music I prefer ownership as the previous poster mentioned as I want to listen as often and as long as I want without ongoing subscription. For people who already built up a substantial music library before streaming became popular, adding an album here or there will likely be the same or less than streaming (especially in the future). There physical versus download are often roughly the same price (varying more by title than by type).

However, I feel for the younger generation where the option is a) access the majority of popular music today but being a music renter for life or b) spending decades (e.g. at a $20/month investment level) to build up a library with with reasonable depth and variety.

 

[MacBH928]

Nah, a large nas for me does the trick with 5.5k movies and 1k TV series, tens of thousands of ebooks and magazine/book pdfs, and several hundred gb music and videos. Literally got rid of over 220kg of physical history/travel/science books today to a school, then came across original guns n Roses cds, Nina Simone, Michael Jackson tapes etc, and all went immediately to recycling. I keep original local history books that aren’t digitised, but everything else goes. Even thinking of giving up the ocd-like collecting, although it’s almost all automated now, simply because I already have multiple lifetimes worth.

would you please share your software setup? do you have one of those dedicate NAS machines like synology or do you set up your own pc?

For one-shot movies yes (in which case rental, streaming, theater, whichever floats your boat).

For music I prefer ownership as the previous poster mentioned as I want to listen as often and as long as I want without ongoing subscription. For people who already built up a substantial music library before streaming became popular, adding an album here or there will likely be the same or less than streaming (especially in the future). There physical versus download are often roughly the same price (varying more by title than by type).

However, I feel for the younger generation where the option is a) access the majority of popular music today but being a music renter for life or b) spending decades (e.g. at a $20/month investment level) to build up a library with with reasonable depth and variety.

you are probably correct about music prices i just didn't consider it because i do not listen to music myself so i skipped it but a digital copy certainly preferable over physical. Who wants to carry a cd player around and exchange cds? ipod solved this 20 years ago.

 

[bzgnyc2]

you are probably correct about music prices i just didn't consider it because i do not listen to music myself so i skipped it but a digital copy certainly preferable over physical. Who wants to carry a cd player around and exchange cds? ipod solved this 20 years ago.

Ha and I focused on music because I'm the opposite as I listen to more music than I watch movies/TV.

There are however a few videos, shorts, and exceptional films I have or would like to have in my library in the way people historically kept great books. At that point it's not even the cost per view/etc but the idea of keeping and preserving them.

In any case, I agree iPod/iPhone/iTunes/etc changed the game for music. I still sometimes buy CDs but rarely play from them day-to-day.

 

[MacInTO]

I'm still in the dark ages! I never left physical media. I still buy CDs. They are all ripped in lossless audio and stored in a Mac mini connected to my home stereo for listening. I also have a full copy at a lower bitrate on my phone for listening in my car.

At home, I also have a turntable, Laserdisc and Minidisc player. I recently bought a car imported from Japan and it has a Minidisc changer installed - it was a factory option! I also have a portable CD player from 1986 but rarely use it.

I have a small dvd collect that I play through a player connected to the Mac mini. I never got into Blu-ray.