I was reading a few of the posts on the "No More DVD's for Simpson's" thread, and it got me to wondering, how do you buy your media these days? And I'm talking pre-recorded media here. So music, TV shows, movies, video games. Do you prefer to buy, for instance, your music on iTunes or another digital download site, or do you prefer to buy a CD or LP and then maybe download the digital files via any included download codes, or with CD's, just pop them into a computer and rip them to your iPad or iPhone?
For me, with music, unless the album is absolutely not available on physical media, I tend to purchase CD's and LP's a lot more than buy a digital copy from iTunes. I find that I spend a lot less money when I buy the CD, especially when it's older albums or the multi-artist compilations (you know, like those "Best of the 80s" albums) since I can usually pick those up for $5 (mostly single disc) or $10 (multi-disc), and most CD's have 12 or 14 tracks on them and at $5 I'm spending about 69 cents (after tax) per track, whereas on iTunes the same album is usually in the $12 to $15 range and the tracks, either what iTunes charges individually or when I calculate out the cost, are usually in the 99 cent to $1.30 range before tax. That's a lot of money for something that would take me 5 minutes to do by myself. And I see that some places, such as Amazon, are now offering you the ability to purchase the physical album online, but at the same time, instead of paying more, Amazon gives you the digital copies free. Plus with a lot of new Vinyl LP's I either get a free download code to download the album digitally, or a CD is included that allows me to listen to the LP anywhere with a CD player, or even rip the CD to my iPhone. So for me physical media is still the winner when it comes to how I want to spend my money on my music and TV shows/movies.
But with TV shows and movies, especially here in Canada, I find that sometimes only certain seasons will be released digitally here, whereas I can buy the entire show on DVD for about the same price, or a lot of times even less. Plus downloads for TV shows and movies, in order to work with the different players, must conform to certain specs, and a lot of times that results in degraded video that has been compressed way to much. Sure some DVD's have compression issues, but most DVD's are compressed to still provide you with high-quality video.
For me, with music, unless the album is absolutely not available on physical media, I tend to purchase CD's and LP's a lot more than buy a digital copy from iTunes. I find that I spend a lot less money when I buy the CD, especially when it's older albums or the multi-artist compilations (you know, like those "Best of the 80s" albums) since I can usually pick those up for $5 (mostly single disc) or $10 (multi-disc), and most CD's have 12 or 14 tracks on them and at $5 I'm spending about 69 cents (after tax) per track, whereas on iTunes the same album is usually in the $12 to $15 range and the tracks, either what iTunes charges individually or when I calculate out the cost, are usually in the 99 cent to $1.30 range before tax. That's a lot of money for something that would take me 5 minutes to do by myself. And I see that some places, such as Amazon, are now offering you the ability to purchase the physical album online, but at the same time, instead of paying more, Amazon gives you the digital copies free. Plus with a lot of new Vinyl LP's I either get a free download code to download the album digitally, or a CD is included that allows me to listen to the LP anywhere with a CD player, or even rip the CD to my iPhone. So for me physical media is still the winner when it comes to how I want to spend my money on my music and TV shows/movies.
But with TV shows and movies, especially here in Canada, I find that sometimes only certain seasons will be released digitally here, whereas I can buy the entire show on DVD for about the same price, or a lot of times even less. Plus downloads for TV shows and movies, in order to work with the different players, must conform to certain specs, and a lot of times that results in degraded video that has been compressed way to much. Sure some DVD's have compression issues, but most DVD's are compressed to still provide you with high-quality video.
