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

How do you buy your music/TV Shows/ movies?

  • Physical Media (i.e. CD, LP, DVD, Blu-Ray)

    Votes: 40 81.6%
  • Digital Media (i.e. iTunes)

    Votes: 9 18.4%

  • Total voters
    49

tomswift2002

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

This is because I have several hundred gig of films dl'd from Internet Archive, and a similar number of purchased and original 3D assets, all in limbo right now because they're on a hard drive that crashed over a year ago, and that I haven't been able to see if any of the data can be recovered.
 
Physical.

Digital is very compressed. Although, I do like the background noises some of the remasters picked up. Right down to the puff of whatever they were smoking.
 
CDs and DVDs (and BDs and Laserdiscs!). I have a few things digitally, but I don't consider them "real" assets. Digital is ephemeral. One EMP and everything you own is gone.

Maybe it's because I'm old and grew up with physical, tactile media, but I need the shelf-full of things to look at, to choose from. To hold in my hand and put into a player.
 
Both.

I download some things. For example I download episodes of justified and watch them at the gym.

Other things like the complete series of Batman I bought on Blu-ray to keep.
 
Not sure how to answer your poll...

Music - mostly digital, with the *very* occasional CD
Movies & TV - entirely physical
 
Right now, neither. I've been out of work and am trying to conserve what money I have. When I am working however, I tend to restrict my purchases to only the films and shows I know I'll want and will re-watch, and hopefully editions of these that come with digital copies as well.

I do buy CDs though, and quite enjoy collecting them. Much as I enjoy iTunes and Amazon digital music, I doubt I'll ever give up on my CD collection entirely.
 
Music is all digital for me now. I make CD copies for my car, but that's about it.

Movies and TV are still DVD/Blu-ray, save for a couple of digital movies I got for free a few months back when I opened a VUDU account. Of course, I don't consider the VUDU movies mine, simply because all they have to do is invalidate my account and I'll never see them again. That's why I still buy physical media when it comes to movies and TV.
 
When it comes to music, I buy mostly digital. It's just too damned easy to Shazam whatever is playing and then download it directly to my phone. If a band I've loved for decades puts out a new album, I might buy the CD for posterity. I've been toying with the idea of buying a record player though. It may be a fad, but a lot of albums are getting vinyl releases.

For movies and TV, I've spent years buying DVDs and Blu-Rays and have quite a physical library. However, I don't re watch things as much as I used to, and I'm edging towards non physical media to save space. However, data corruption, failing hard drives, etc. are issues to consider.
 
A mixture.

Some music I'll buy digitally, but if it's something special I'll but the CD.

Movies and TV, all physical media. I won't buy them digitally unless I have absolutely no other choice.
 
I've never been a collector of videos, as after watching something once or twice, I rarely have the urge to see it again. And if I do, it's typically just to see key scenes I really enjoyed. So these modern streaming sites like Netflix and even YouTube fill most of my needs and preferences.

Does that count as digital?

And as for the person bemoaning the possibility of an electromagnetic pulse... really? I'm pretty sure if that was a genuine concern, you'd have far more to worry about than losing some media files when you got hit by one.
 
Movies and TV shows: Blu-ray (and DVD)
Video games: about 50/50
Music: I still buy CDs from a few artists. However I download most of my music.

I voted for physical.
 
Physical. Digital is easier to lose permanently and the amount I would want to download would eat up a massive amount of my hard drive. Though, what I'll do with a lot of music is I'll listen to it on a streaming service until I'm sure I like it enough to want to have it permanently, and then I'll buy it physically.
 
Physical.

I've only really downloaded things I can't get on physical media, and I intend to burn them to disc at some point...
 
When it comes to music, I buy mostly digital. It's just too damned easy to Shazam whatever is playing and then download it directly to my phone. If a band I've loved for decades puts out a new album, I might buy the CD for posterity. I've been toying with the idea of buying a record player though. It may be a fad, but a lot of albums are getting vinyl releases.

For movies and TV, I've spent years buying DVDs and Blu-Rays and have quite a physical library. However, I don't re watch things as much as I used to, and I'm edging towards non physical media to save space. However, data corruption, failing hard drives, etc. are issues to consider.
I use a Western Digital Green hard drive. It's a terabyte and will hold about 400 DVDs worth of movies and TV shows. Some folks might recommend a SSD, but they're still really expensive.

Music is all digital for me now. I make CD copies for my car, but that's about it.

I'm the opposite. Since my car has a USB port, I buy CDs and rip the tracks I like to a thumb drive to play in the car.
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.
 
One thing that I noticed in those articles that I posted, and a lot of you seem to echo, is that with a digital copy, you are just getting a license and a non-tangible asset for the stuff, while with a physical object you are getting both a license and a tangible asset.
 
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