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?
As others have noted… it is a balancing act between having the room for it and what you value enough to spend that space on.
For me, I don’t buy a whole lot of music, but when I do I insist on CD’s or vinyl and then I rip them. All the ease of digital along with a built in hard backup.
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.
Books. There isn’t any real substitute for books portability, smell, touch, ease of use.
Other than that I’m digital all the way.
I partially agree.
Reference books, with high-resolution images and diagrams, or subjects that invite constant page flipping, are great as physical objects. Most other books I prefer to have digitally. I do not need to have an object full of short stories or history lessons taking up space in my home.
I do like the feel of books and the look of a bookcase… But not as much as I like having that space for other things.
Everyone finds their own path in this, there are no wrong answers.
It’s funny I have kind of the opposite opinion. I like to keep reference books digitally because I care so little about them and tend to look at them so infrequently. But my hitchhiker’s guide series? My one volume collection of annotated Sherlock Holmes? Zoids Chaotic Century? Harry Potter, Redwall, and all the other books I raised children on? Conan by L. Sprague DeCamp? The list goes on and on.
But yes, to each their own.
I didn’t see the point into accumulating a bunch of physical shit. They are just useless things and useless things don’t define me as a human.
If I purchase music, it’ll be in the form of a CD which I’ll create a torrent out of and seed to at least 10 people have it. That takes a while though
