Physical or Digital: How do you buy your pre-recorded media?

[Mr. Adventure]

I wish you could actually buy movies without protection like you can MP3s. I really like the convenience of digital but it feels like a rip-off to pay the same price as a Blu-Ray/DVD but not have a truly portable copy. I don't rewatch as much as I used to so my DVDs just take up space more often than not. It'd be nice to easily and legally have them in my possession digitally.

I have a lot of digital games on the consoles but not ones I've purchased for the same reason. I feel the same way about PC games but when you can buy tons of games for under $5 it's hard not to build up a Steam collection. I'm kind of screwed now on the PC side if it ever goes belly up.

If iTunes had tons of movies for $1-$3 like Steam I may have succumbed to that as well but for now I haven't.

 

[Forbin]

My only ventures into DLing music was to fill out my favorite classic rock songs for my car, for singing along to while commuting. Once I'd built up a nice collection on the thumb drive via ripping from CDs, I would occasionally remember some more songs I used to love. Instead of trying to find the obscure ones on CD, or buying a whole best-of CD for one song, I finally came into the 21st century and started buying individual MP3s on Amazon. I guess I've bought less than 100, and I think I have all I need at this point. For now.

 

[Sparkle Fabulosa]

Physical for everything: music, movies, and books. There's just something about holding a copy of the product in your hands. It feels like you actually own it.

I stopped using my iPod years ago and although I now have an iPhone I don't use iTunes at all. I refuse to buy books digitally.

 

[lizlovestrek]

Physical, I like being able to display what I own. Plus my internet connection is crap, it can't handle streaming very well and downloading takes forever.

 

[BillJ]

Novels: Digital
Everything else: 95% physical

 

[Dude111]

I prefer physical media, and would rather have a shelf library.

I agree bud,same here!


I love my VHS,records and cassettes

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

Physical only for me. If I can't touch it, I don't own it, although the irony of labelling the alternative as digital, giving that the recording format on CD, DVD and BD is digital anyway doesn't escape me.

There's always the danger of servers being turned off, content being removed, when it comes to streaming and downloads, and your consumption is dictated by the owner of the content more than your personal choice. If you want to watch 'Schoolgirl Milky Crisis 2', and Webflix only has the inferior sequels, you'll probably end up watching those, or something else completely.

Incidentally, yesterday I pulled out an old DVD to watch from 1999, and noticed it had some DVD-ROM content. All I had to do was click the shockwave flash player icon and I'd be away. Stuck it in my laptop, clicked the icon, and boom... codec not found. So much for the digital video content. I'll browse the directories and click through the galleries myself for the image files and galleries... Optimised for VGA displays at 640 resolution. I can't even read the text when it's zoomed up to my laptop display, let alone at the original, large icon size of the image files.

It's only been 15 years, and digital don't mean squat. But put the same DVD into my BD player, and the non-ROM content still plays just fine.

 

[JoeZhang]

I don't buy media of any description - films and TV I stream, same with music.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

That sounds convenient! Right now my CD player's CD loading mechanism isn't working, so I'm having to use my phone connected via line out, and even with a playlist app it's a pain in the ass.

That's where iPods come in handy - the car. There's even dedicated receivers that are solely for the purpose of controlling them. Hell, I literally do not have a single CD player anywhere in my possession - my car doesn't have one, neither does my computer. I don't just buy digital, I revel in it.

 

[mimic]

My preference seems to have switched to digital.

Musics - I've purchased a few CD's recently, but those were cheaper than the MP3s and came with an instantly downloadable digital copy. They stay in my car.

Books - I've been reading ebooks almost exclusively since getting a Kindle 3.5 years ago. I have read 6 physical books in that time, and 164 digital. The major downside is lending books - I tried it once. I was supposed to get the book back after 14 days but it has instead been locked in digital limbo. Amazon hasn't resolved it.

Movies - I've started buying/renting movies from Amazon when it's not available through Netflix. I can watch it immediately and don't have to leave the house.

Video Games - If it's physical, I don't switch between games nearly as frequently as when it's digital. Roughly half of my games are physical.

 

[JoeZhang]

That sounds convenient! Right now my CD player's CD loading mechanism isn't working, so I'm having to use my phone connected via line out, and even with a playlist app it's a pain in the ass.

That's where iPods come in handy - the car. There's even dedicated receivers that are solely for the purpose of controlling them. Hell, I literally do not have a single CD player anywhere in my possession - my car doesn't have one, neither does my computer. I don't just buy digital, I revel in it.

We still have a decent stereo because my Wife has an extensive CD collection but it literally stops about five years ago and there is the very odd additional purchase but that is it...

 

[Forbin]

The major downside is lending books - I tried it once. I was supposed to get the book back after 14 days but it has instead been locked in digital limbo. Amazon hasn't resolved it.

This completely freaks me out. That some third party can control your ownership or use rights to some entertainment you paid money for and actually keep you from using it. I heard of some incident a while ago where Amazon wiped out a woman's entire kindle content remotely over some misunderstanding. WAY too Big Brother for me!

Hand a physical book to a friend and they hand it back when they're done. Totally between you and them if they forget.

 

[kirk55555]

Only physical media (outside of a few video games). I prefer to physically own something.

 

[Kemaiku]

The only reason my game library (PS3/4) is physical is that my connection is too slow to get the games in a reasonable time, or the only physical items I'd have at all are Bluray movies.

Sophie (my iPod Touch) has basically every single book, comic, song, short video/clip and "top 5" movie I love. Just not possible with physical media and I wouldn't go back if you paid me ten times her original sale price.

 

[EnderAKH]

We have moved our entertainment ecosystem almost entirely into Google Play. The convenience of Chromecast is the best. If our kid gets up at 6am on a weekend, we just cast a movie or TV show into the living room. It automatically turns the TV on and switches the input. She goes and plays in the living room, and we get some extra sleep. Our extended family and friends also have Chromecasts, so whenever we go to their houses, our entire media library comes with us. There are never scratched disks, lost disks, disks broken by a child pulling too hard to get them out of the case, no smudges, no incompatibility with players. Works perfectly. Every time. And I am reasonably certain that the outcry that would be caused if google started revoking our rights to movies will outweigh any issues.

 

[Smellmet]

Music - 100% digital
Movies/TV - 80& physical 20% Netflix
Games - 95% physical 5% downloaded from playstation store

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

That sounds convenient! Right now my CD player's CD loading mechanism isn't working, so I'm having to use my phone connected via line out, and even with a playlist app it's a pain in the ass.

That's where iPods come in handy - the car. There's even dedicated receivers that are solely for the purpose of controlling them. Hell, I literally do not have a single CD player anywhere in my possession - my car doesn't have one, neither does my computer. I don't just buy digital, I revel in it.

We still have a decent stereo because my Wife has an extensive CD collection but it literally stops about five years ago and there is the very odd additional purchase but that is it...

The AppleTV is also a big help. I have one attached to my main TV (with soundbar) downstairs - streams everything from the computer. It's how I watch TV and movies, and listen to music (when not at the computer). Also great with photos as well!

(That's another way I've gone all-digital: photos. No printed pictures whatsoever! )

 

[JoeZhang]

That's where iPods come in handy - the car. There's even dedicated receivers that are solely for the purpose of controlling them. Hell, I literally do not have a single CD player anywhere in my possession - my car doesn't have one, neither does my computer. I don't just buy digital, I revel in it.

We still have a decent stereo because my Wife has an extensive CD collection but it literally stops about five years ago and there is the very odd additional purchase but that is it...

The AppleTV is also a big help. I have one attached to my main TV (with soundbar) downstairs - streams everything from the computer. It's how I watch TV and movies, and listen to music (when not at the computer). Also great with photos as well!

(That's another way I've gone all-digital: photos. No printed pictures whatsoever! )

Sounds good - we use Sonos for digital music and the stereo in front room is network enabled.

 

[tomswift2002]

The major downside is lending books - I tried it once. I was supposed to get the book back after 14 days but it has instead been locked in digital limbo. Amazon hasn't resolved it.

This completely freaks me out. That some third party can control your ownership or use rights to some entertainment you paid money for and actually keep you from using it.

I know someone who flew from Canada to Europe and travelled through a couple of different countries. They had loaded a few ebooks on their iPhone to read while they were abroad, and as soon as they stepped off the plane and switched the phone off of Airplane mode, a number of their books were locked right away due to the publisher in the country they had landed in that published the books not being the same publisher as here in Canada, and that foreign publisher had activated the security lockout for all editions but there edition. And as far as I know they still have not been able to get the books unlocked, even though they have been back in Canada for a while.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Physical.