I might be asking a rhetorical question here but I was curious as to the overall consensus on physical media. Do support it because, unlike streaming, media can’t take away what you’ve payed for? or are you against because it’s a waste of money when you can “acquire” it through “alternative means?” I’m also thinking about getting a 4K Blu Ray player for when my wife and I get a new place; preferably one that can also play self hosted media. What do you guys think?
A lot of physical media has DRM. I am for anything that can’t be taken away, whether it is a torrented file, a DRM-free stream, or a DRM-free physical copy.
How can I tell if a piece of physical media (Blu Ray in particular) has DRM on it as to avoid purchasing it?
If I can’t find something I want to pirate, I will sometimes break down and buy it, but always in physical media, which I immediately rip into my collection. I don’t use physical media, it’s too inconvenient, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay some megacorp so I can rent media and pretend I’m actually buying it.
Keep in mind that the average longevity of laser disks is 10-20 years. After that the data gets corrupted and will become unreadable at some point.
Thats why I don’t use cd/dvd/bluray.
Books on the other hand, I love as a physical media.
My mind directly went to Laserdisc before I realized you were talking about the generic category 😅.
cd/dvd/blueray doesn’t become bad that fast, properly stored they can easely live to 50+ years (except the writeable variant). they are physically etched which helps with longevity.
VHS or other types of magnetic storage is more of a chore, they often don’t survive the passing of time.
I read it’s more like 20-200 years. But there are differences. Recorded CD-Rs are worst. Burn DVDs if you can. And bought (pressed(?)) disks perform considerably better. But don’t expose them to UV light or scratch them too much.
With books it depends on how people store these. They can mold. But if you take care to store them right… I mean there are books that are hundreds of years old. I think books are usually lost to things like a fire, flooding, or people deliberately getting rid of them. Otherwise, printed information will survive for quite some time. And I too think it’s the better collectible. And they are fun to use. I like them better than reading on a screen.
If you’re going to pay for media, yeah physical disc is the way to go.
Id rip it to digital anyway just for the convenience though.
I’d disagree when it comes to games. Owning a game on Steam is more valuable than having it on a disk:
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You get updates automatically without having to think about it at all.
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You get cloud sharing, making it easily to share things across different platforms.
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You can play it easily on the Steam deck.
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You always have access to it anywhere you have an internet connection, and are unlikely to lose or damage it.
All of these things can be accomplished with enough dedication by a pirate (except cloud sharing, but you can use SyncThing to accomplish something very similar)… but it’s a lot more time and effort, enough that buying a game on sale is often worthwhile just from a practical standpoint.
I think that Gabe Newell’s statement that “piracy is a service issue” is correct. Steam partially discourages piracy by simply offering a better experience.
Like, yes, in theory, Steam could go out of business tomorrow but in practice the chances of that are much lower than me dropping my disks and breaking them, or losing them, or scratching them, or any of the other risks that come with physical ownership.
