Interesting video but now I feel worried we won't get physical media anymore.
Could we say goodbye to physical media?
- Thread starter Gingerbread Demon
- Start date
Disc rot is a thing and making backups of physical media containing licensed content is illegal in many countries - although never enforced as far as I know.
In all the years since 2001 I have only had one disk do that and it was a copy of Maximum Overdrive
I've had problems with playing a few CDs from the 1980s where I could see pin holes had formed in the reflective layer and a couple of DVDs from the early 2000s where the problem wasn't obvious to the eye. Error correction sorts out a lot of defects but there's a limit to what it can cope with. All physical media are eventually going to become unreadable, so content will be lost even if you backed it up with multiply redundant copies.
I miss my probox, for that reason....... I had ripped most of my dvd collection to a stack of spinning rust in that thing but it died in a huge fireworks display and took out all the drive controllers with it.
Physical bookstores are making a comeback in some areas, at least in the romance genre. There are bookstores that only carry that genre plus other things associated with it (I would guess that stuff like candles and wine glasses and other such claptrap is part of it).
So much of my personal library is the sort of thing that you'd never find on Kindle, either because it's niche or because it was never officially published in the first place (talking about my huge shelf of print fanzines - mostly TOS, but also Highlander, Darkover, Robin of Sherwood, Doctor Who, Xena: Warrior Princess, filk books, etc.).
As for movies and TV, Americans are spoiled. They have so much available, and so much of that is geoblocked in Canada. And of the streaming methods we do have, most are unaffordable. That's why I never took the bait when we were allowed to see the first season of Game of Thrones for no charge. The idea was to get people hooked so they'd pay $$/month to watch the rest of it.
I didn't want to risk being put in that situation, so I've never seen so much as 5 minutes of that series.
For my Christmas 2022 present to myself, I bought an all-regions DVD player and the BBC Merlin series from the UK (the UK version was over $100 cheaper than the American version, even taking currency conversion into account). So now, if I can find any other UK or Australian series I want to watch, I've got a way to see it.
Same I like collecting drawing books which show you different techniques and styles. I find that fun and interesting. I also have a few books about fashions in different periods which I have used as springboards for ideas for shoots, and sometimes taken them with me to show models ideas. Things like that don't feel the same on a tablet or phone.
Yep. My book collection includes a few dozen Creative Haven and other coloring books (some are based on historical periods - medieval, ancient Egypt, etc.). There's one of them that has special paper that requires using wax crayons to get a stained glass effect. It's amazing how cool they turn out - it's a book of mandalas, and I finally bought multiple copies of the book to try different color combinations for the same pictures. Since I like coloring different versions of the Sun in Splendor theme, I was happy to discover that the local Staples sells boxes of single crayon colors. So I stocked up on the colors I use most frequently.
Yes, you can do stained glass on computers... but only with real crayons do you get that crayon smell. It takes me right back to childhood when I would sit for hours at the coffee table in the living room and color.
I still have the coffee table.
I have it on good authority, that random ordinary humans, part of the resistance against anti-intellectualism, will soon have to memorize entire novels verbatim, to preserve classic literature for a distant more enlightened future.
Did anyone ever figure out the life expectancy of eight tracks?
Did anyone ever figure out the life expectancy of eight tracks?
If I had a player, I could answer that. I have an 8-track of one of William Shatner's appearances at a Star Trek convention in the early 1970s (audio only, obviously).
But what was the audio quality of 8 track compared to cassette tapes?
I can certainly see "I'm not into physical media at all" as an understandable position, but "detest" seems like overly strong language? Like, you actively hate that it exists?I saved up some gift cards and went region-free a few years ago too, and I love it! (Finally was able to get that British Journeyman set and finish watching the show!
) TBH, I only have a few non-North American releases at this point, but it is really great to have the option. If one is into physical media, I would totally recommend it if one has the means.The only problem is, international shipping is eye-wateringly expensive!
True, though Amazon shipping isn't too awful. Ebay is the awful one, since some people blatantly gouge and they are allowed to do it with impunity.
There aren't that many series I want from other regions. Bangkok Hilton, Tenko, and Brian Cox's astronomy documentaries, and I'm not sure if James Burke's Connections/The Day the Universe Changed is only a UK version or if there's a North American one. It's listed at an insane price, though.
There aren't that many series I want from other regions. Bangkok Hilton, Tenko, and Brian Cox's astronomy documentaries, and I'm not sure if James Burke's Connections/The Day the Universe Changed is only a UK version or if there's a North American one. It's listed at an insane price, though.
8-track tape's frequency response is similar to that of average cassette tape, falling off pretty sharply at about 16 kHz. Wow and flutter for 8-track is at best 0.15%, often significantly worse; cassettes can manage 0.08% or better - but, of course, actual performance depends on the maintenance of the playing device, wear and tear, and environmental conditions.
Region free players are the best.
Similar threads
