Maybe it's because I was born in the 80s and lived through cassette tapes, VHS, CDs, laserdiscs, game cartridges, DVDs, and Blu-rays... or maybe because I'm part of a (possibly dying?) breed of...
Maybe it's because I was born in the 80s and lived through cassette tapes, VHS, CDs, laserdiscs, game cartridges, DVDs, and Blu-rays... or maybe because I'm part of a (possibly dying?) breed of consumers who like to regularly revisit media and consume it in a very focused and mindful way (no staring at my phone during movies, for example)... or maybe I just have hoarding tendencies... but for me, owning something on physical media adds an intrinsic value to it that streaming services can't recapture.
I love and take great pride in my music and movie collections--even though I've ripped pretty much everything and consume it all digitally, there's just something about knowing that I can access and enjoy these things forever, even when all the streaming services shut down or replace everything old and good in their catalogues with new exclusive self-produced drivel, this copy of this thing I like is legally mine and I can enjoy it whenever and however I please. I do watch movies and listen to music on streaming services, but it's almost always with the mindset of "is this thing good enough that I want to add it to my collection?" The transient and uncertain nature of online content spoils it for me. To the extent where if something is completely unavailable to own and consume outside of streaming I feel compelled to either dismiss it as worthless or else get kind of upset about it (like the fact that there's no Blu-ray release of Idiocracy, and that RRR is probably never going to have a physical release of any kind, makes me so sad).
At the same time I'm sure there were folks who felt similarly about the loss of horse-and-buggies when automobiles started taking off. Just the cost of technological progress, I suppose.
I don't think movies on discs are going to go away completely or anything — physical collections are always going to be important to people who are seriously into movies. There's the permanence...
I don't think movies on discs are going to go away completely or anything — physical collections are always going to be important to people who are seriously into movies. There's the permanence aspect you mentioned, but I think another big element is social signalling; a shelf full of blu-rays is a lot more useful for telling people about yourself than your netflix queue.
I'm pretty convinced UHD Blu-ray is going to be the last ever format for home video though. As the market dwindles to enthusiasts only, all the work to put together a new standard just doesn't seem worth it. It's a bit of a bummer that we'll probably never be able to play 4K 3D or 3D HFR movies at home, but it could be a lot worse.
Maybe it's because I was born in the 80s and lived through cassette tapes, VHS, CDs, laserdiscs, game cartridges, DVDs, and Blu-rays... or maybe because I'm part of a (possibly dying?) breed of consumers who like to regularly revisit media and consume it in a very focused and mindful way (no staring at my phone during movies, for example)... or maybe I just have hoarding tendencies... but for me, owning something on physical media adds an intrinsic value to it that streaming services can't recapture.
I love and take great pride in my music and movie collections--even though I've ripped pretty much everything and consume it all digitally, there's just something about knowing that I can access and enjoy these things forever, even when all the streaming services shut down or replace everything old and good in their catalogues with new exclusive self-produced drivel, this copy of this thing I like is legally mine and I can enjoy it whenever and however I please. I do watch movies and listen to music on streaming services, but it's almost always with the mindset of "is this thing good enough that I want to add it to my collection?" The transient and uncertain nature of online content spoils it for me. To the extent where if something is completely unavailable to own and consume outside of streaming I feel compelled to either dismiss it as worthless or else get kind of upset about it (like the fact that there's no Blu-ray release of Idiocracy, and that RRR is probably never going to have a physical release of any kind, makes me so sad).
At the same time I'm sure there were folks who felt similarly about the loss of horse-and-buggies when automobiles started taking off. Just the cost of technological progress, I suppose.
I don't think movies on discs are going to go away completely or anything — physical collections are always going to be important to people who are seriously into movies. There's the permanence aspect you mentioned, but I think another big element is social signalling; a shelf full of blu-rays is a lot more useful for telling people about yourself than your netflix queue.
I'm pretty convinced UHD Blu-ray is going to be the last ever format for home video though. As the market dwindles to enthusiasts only, all the work to put together a new standard just doesn't seem worth it. It's a bit of a bummer that we'll probably never be able to play 4K 3D or 3D HFR movies at home, but it could be a lot worse.