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?
All blueray will. Its built into the spec. You can rip it easily though.
Noted.
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.
I pay for games on gog.com because they are DRM free, but physical media is meh
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.
If you store them properly and create fresh backups on new discs every couple of years, they can last a long time.
I support ownership of stuff i buy.
Whether its physical or digital doesn’t matter. I probably prefer digital as computer related activities already produce a ton of physical e-waste.
you my friend … need a little trip to this rabbithole called /c/selfhosting
Be warned tho … altho it’s a fun and enlightening journey … it gets pretty expensive
Cries in 3 storage arrays across 2 bare metal hypervisors
Are you running a distributed storage software like ceph? I’m starting to think of how I should manage storage for personal files and containers, wondering if ceph is feasible for small home use and growing from there.
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.
Couldn’t agree more. Nothing replaces the feel of holding a book.
I don’t really read many books, but my gf does
And I often print her a book, like making a hard copy of it, at least a fake hard copy
For many years I would buy physical media, to the point where storage was a huge problem. Initially I ripped them to digital copies but honestly I did a terrible job ands most of them were too low of a quality to make it worth while. Pirates know how to rip stuff while keeping sizes under control and the quality top notch.
Now I can watch Blu-ray quality movies without have to deal with disks. So while I am not opposed to physical media, in most cases I still prefer digital.
If you want to support the author, why not? DRM may be a performance buster, but you can always get a physical copy to support the further development and keep enjoying DRM-free content from the alternative means. Also for stuff where it’s harder to get something in an arrrrr way, physical media is often offered with steep discounts some time after the initial launch: I bought a lot of games for Xbox on disks for $10-15, while digital copies were still $60 a year after launch. BTW, if you have a game console, there is a good chance it has Blu Ray already.
I try to support physical media when I can because it’s more consumer friendly than streaming exclusive shows. there are a lot of shows I just pirate. these days though my physical collecting is pretty much just manga.
I haven’t bought new media in years. Last time I bougth new they were LP records, new pressings. For movies I just download or buy used, for music I almost always buy used and from time to time new when I really want to support the artist.
Yhe problem with limiting yourself to either pirate or just 1 type of medium is that you miss out on good stuff. At this moment I have music from every decade between 1890 and 2020 on LP, of which most will never be available digitally.
The biggest disadvantage of physical media is DRM. With the exception of music which isn’t usually locked, pretty much all optical discs have some form of region locking. Software/video games also typically have additional DRM schemes. Some are easy to bypass (e.g. nocd cracks). Online activation is the worst because it relies on the game publisher keeping the servers alive.
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
I will happily buy anything that I can own. I pirate as a last resort, and often pay for streaming services for anything I pirate to ensure that artists get their money. Ownership and quality are important though. For example, I pay for 4k on netflix. I am lucky to get 720p even though I have a 400mbs internet connection. So I torrent to get the quality that I already paid for. I also pay Tidal every month for music, but it wont work half the time where there is no signal or where my connection isnt perfect, so I keep a local copy of everything as well.
I am in no way averse to paying for something even if it isnt physical so long as I get value from it. I’m averse to being lied to about what I am paying for and not recieving what I paid for. Furthermore, if I pay to own something, it is an absolute must that I have a physical copy that cannot be tampered with or disabled by an external entity. Anything else is not ownership. If a company says own this through our servers, I consider that false marketing and a direct lie to scam me.
I like me some music CDs. Cassettes, too
