Overlooked reasons to still buy physical media

https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/09/overlooked-reasons-to-still-buy-physical-media/

by surprisetalk • 3 years ago

46 57 3 years ago

brainbaking.com

Khelavaster• 3 years ago

Physical games install onto modern Gen consoles, so you don't even need them for booting up!

mrcolumbian• 3 years ago

I still need the disc on my Xbox unless that game is part of Game Pass.

danbolt• 3 years ago

I quite like that the new PlayStation 5 model has a detachable disk drive. Or, in the case of a drive failure, there’s a chance that it can be more easily replaced.

I hope this becomes an added perk for people’s physical libraries as time goes on.

jonhohle5• 3 years ago

After the initial run, I have a feeling those drives will be hard to find and cost a bunch second hand.

csours• 3 years ago

If we move outside of games, you should buy TV shows you love because the streaming versions get edited and the original music is often replaced due to rights issues.

xanamander• 3 years ago

Definitely. For example, I was quite disappointed to find that the Blu-ray releases of Neon Genesis Evangelion don’t include the various renditions of “Fly Me to the Moon” over the end credits, though they’re present on the platinum collection DVD release.

judge2020• 3 years ago

Unfortunately TV shows no longer seem to include a digital code for digital library redemption. The only reason I buy physical movies is so that the physical media acts as a "backup" to watching it while relying on MoviesAnywhere syncing for the ease-of-use that comes with the digital versions.

boomboomsubban2• 3 years ago

Has the music being replaced happened to shows made post streaming era? All the shows I know that had that issue were from before even DVD box sets were common, so the physical releases suffer from the same issue.

bentley3• 3 years ago

A sibling comment mentions Neon Genesis Evangelion, which was “made” in the 90s but still had the original end credits song “Fly Me to the Moon” on the ADV Films DVDs (2008), losing it in the Netflix release (2019) and the GKIDS Blu‐Ray (2021).

defrost• 3 years ago

Yes, absolutely, although I currently lack good examples thanks to "tip of my brain".

The reason I'm certain is I spend an hour or so most days cleaning up and resyncing subtitles .. and there are often discrepancies between subtitles for first release Vs later streaming Vs DVD Vs BluRay releases still to this day.

This happened for a recent (within last two years) TV series that had a sound track that went from great (first release in country of origin) to "blah" on second international streaming release.

Probably UK? - It'll come to me (dammit).

Point being, yes, this stuff still happens.

Even older TV series differ between 10+ year old DVD box sets and this years streaming release - entire episodes get dropped, others get recut with scences dropped.

rchaud3• 3 years ago

A really interesting example of this is the MTV animated series Daria (1997-2002). The show would play licensed music and the pop/alternative hits of the day, making it feel very 'of its time' -- this was when MTV was at the height of its cultural relevance.

Then years after the show went off the air, they released DVD versions that stripped out every single song and replaced it with random royalty-free music. It really hurt the episodes.

charcircuit• 3 years ago

This person is out of touch. Most consumers do not want to pay more for games, increase the difficulty of buying it, having to spend extra time searching for the game, or having to put it into a console.

Digital has made the user experience better and provides more revenue to developers and platform holders. It's a win win for everyone involved.

zoklet-enjoyer2• 3 years ago

I stopped buying physical games when I got a PS4. It's so much quicker to just download games and I can store them all on my external hard drive. It's not like I would ever try selling my used games to GameStop for a couple dollars anyway.

amatecha• 3 years ago

Will you want to play those PS4 games in 10-20 years? To give an example of how this goes, Xbox Live, which launched in Nov 2002, stopped supporting the original Xbox in April 2010. If you had digital purchases and didn't already download them to your Xbox, they're gone forever.

While the lifespan of online services is typically a bit longer now, chances are that game consoles and game discs will long outlive their respective online services. Xbox 360's store is shutting down July 2024[0], making purchases on that console impossible (though downloads of existing purchases will keep working, for however long). The 360 was released Nov 2005, so it's had a much longer online-service lifespan of 18 years, but it's easy to guess that it probably won't hit, say 30. Probably not even 25, I'd wager.

Just to put the PlayStation 4 in perspective, that system was released in Nov 2013. Already 10 years old. I'd like to think it will easily have another 10 years of being able to purchase and download titles online for it, but who knows?

I mean, fortunately I never have to care about this issue - I always purchase the physical version of any console game for this exact reason. I'll deal with a little inconvenience if it means I get to keep my games for decades.

[0] https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2023/08/17/xbox-360-store-will-c...

porridge_• 3 years ago

I disagree with many of the author's points. But I'm still in camp physical.

Really, the draw of physical media for me is in tangible ownership—that is, ownership that doesn't require a separate entity to confirm after sale.

Having tangible ownership over something gives you the freedom to do with it what you wish. That means ripping CDs, copying programs, lending copies, etc. It's enabling second-order actions without (greatly) hindering primary actions.

toast0• 3 years ago

Digital makes the experience better while things are supported. But you must buy all the games you want before they're delisted or the shop closes.

The vast majority of physical releases are available on secondary markets at reasonable cost. There are a small number of games that are very expensive because of supply and demand, though... but that's better than not having any option other than a time machine to get games like NFL Blitz and Daytona USA for xbox 360.

bentley3• 3 years ago

I know a family with multiple Nintendo Switch handhelds who now only buy physical game copies, because that’s the only way the game won’t be locked to one console.

(Myself, I’m a “GOG games on the Steam Deck” kind of guy.)

matheusmoreira2• 3 years ago

You don't "buy" games, you license them. Digital distribution via DRM'd platforms makes it that much easier to enforce license terms against you. It's only "win win" if you see no problem with living in a corporate dystopia where you own nothing.

ahoka• 3 years ago

Physical disks have DRM too.

jrmg• 3 years ago

Physical games are more expensive. I think that’s a feature, not a bug.

Physical games are cheaper if you buy used.

xkekjrktllss• 3 years ago

How disappointing!

AraceliHarker2• 3 years ago

The argument is flawed, for though digital copies of new games are rarely discounted on platforms like the PS Store, physical copies are often sold at a reduced price at brick-and-mortar stores.

jonhohle5• 3 years ago

Why is it flawed? Physical price is often cheaper, used or new. You can buy in different marketplaces (imports) and then can be resold if desired. I suppose it’s possible to buy from different digital marketplaces, but may not be straightforward on some platforms.

koito17• 3 years ago

Maybe I'm just a weird person, but I am surprised DRM is not mentioned at all here. (I guess it's due to the article being mostly focused on video games?)

When I want to purchase books, comics, music, etc., I steer clear from anything with DRM that can only be decrypted by a proprietary service. For books and comics, I would rather be able to obtain an EPUB that I can load directly on any device I own, and when it is simply impossible to do so (e.g. Book Walker or Kindle DRM), then I buy physical copies and avoid digital copies entirely. I don't care if I pay a marginally higher cost, because I see value in being able to take the book with me anywhere. Likewise, for music, I would much rather pay $1 on Bandcamp for some FLAC file than pay $10/month in perpetuity for temporary access to said song (which can be revoked at any time). And if that is impossible, then I check if there is a CD I can purchase and, if not, then simply avoid paying money.

lazide• 3 years ago

Don’t BluRAYs have ‘remote bricking’ functionality/DRM built in?

squeaky-clean2• 3 years ago

There is encryption based DRM which is built into both the disc and player. But the player cannot brick your disc without a way of destroying it.

Also just don't ever connect your bluray player to the internet.

jonhohle5• 3 years ago

There are several UHD drives that are “unlocked” and those with the ability to extract encryption keys from others (or software players). I doubt this will be a concern, as I’m fairly sure UHD will be the last physical video format.

simpaticoder• 3 years ago

I agree with you, and I buy physical media for similar reasons. I also like that its so cheap! But the problem for people like us is that it doesn't matter. This whole subject is about entertainment access, and on the list of things that matter that's pretty far down. It's like the drive for prisoner human rights - people care, a little bit, but it's so far down the list of priorities it never gets attention. I believe that media companies are THE smartest companies in the world on the subject of selling and human psychology, and they know EXACTLY what they are doing and how much they can get away with, and they probably even have accurate models that describe how long it takes for new constraints on a population to be normalized such that anyone who complains is alienated by their peers, and the central authority need do nothing.

squeaky-clean2• 3 years ago

It's titled "overlooked reasons to still buy physical media". DRM is basically the primary reason to buy physical media, so it's not overlooked.

stakhanov• 3 years ago

Physical media also yield a marketplace that's more "democratic" and more efficient.

For example, if you're a hobbyist musician, then it's pretty favourable economics to put your songs on a CD, go out busking on the street, and sell the CD. The CD is a perpetual license to play the music as many times as you want, whenever you want, including the right to lend it to other people, pass it on to your children as part of an inheritance or otherwise, etc. etc.

So that's just about the widest possible legal right that the artist can possibly give to the listener, and, consequently, it should also command the highest possible price. You can charge, say, $10 for the CD, as opposed to, say, receiving $0.01 (don't know what the actual number would be), on each streaming-play of one of your songs.

Dealing in the wider right is much more advantageous to the artist who is low on capital: They've had an up-front cost in creating the music and recording the CD, and selling CDs will amortize that investment a lot quicker than selling streaming-plays. Streaming plays may pay more dividends later, if the music gets listened to a lot for a long period of time, but the redistribution of that cashflow towards the earliest possible point in time is financially much more advantageous.

So, if you have listeners paying for streaming plays, and artists requiring the largest possible payment at the earliest possible time, you require some moneybags intermediary to convert the one kind of cashflow into the other, and that opens the door to everyone getting ripped off in the process.

Obviously, one could interject that this is talking about the buy vs. rent distinction rather than the physical vs. download/streaming distinction. You could imagine the artist selling MP3s from their website through a paywall and charging for it as if it was a CD. But that opens problems on the listener's side, in the sense that it creates overhead and friction to look after an MP3 collection well.

But those two things are highly interdependent: Physical media is the technology that pretty much makes it the most frictionless on both sides of the transaction for customers to collect and use media over large time horizons. Once you walk down the path of download/streaming, you get into the territory where the thing you need to provide to the customer in order to exercise their legal right starts looking more like a service and less like a product, opening a whole can of worms and changing the economics fundamentally.

clnq• 3 years ago

For TV and film - Blu Ray has much higher bit-rates than anything streaming. The compression artifacts are practically gone.

Also, second hand, Blu Rays cost less than buying the media from an online marketplace.

Also, collecting and hunting for specific physical releases is a nice hobby.

jonhohle5• 3 years ago

My local thrift store sells blu-rays (HD) for $1-$3. It’s bonkers. I’ll pick up movies on a whim because other than the library, there’s nowhere cheaper.

pkulak• 3 years ago

I don’t know why no one mentions this, but it’s nearly the only reason I buy physical:

The ownership of a physical game is tied to a physical token (the disk or cartridge) not an account on some server that can be closed or locked whenever for whatever reason. Nintendo actually ties a digital game to an account AND a device. My son got locked out of his Sony account forever, for a reason I’ve never been able to find out, and getting a human on the phone is not possible.

I’ve had so many problems trying to play digital games I’ve paid for. Physical always works, and sure, I probably need the internet, but I don’t need an account.

simion3145• 3 years ago

My son got locked out of his Sony account forever, for a reason I’ve never been able to find out, and getting a human on the phone is not possible.

My son got a 2 months ban while at the same time I paid a full year subscription, so they robbed us for 2 months of subscription. Same thing we do not know a reason but we suspect some guy mass reported him and I suspect that Sopy has no or very few and bad moderators in our native language.

Edit: I hope at least EU will force companies to give your money back in such cases , also force them to offer real customer support

msh4• 3 years ago

If the ban was valid i don't think they should have to do refunds. But i think that they need to provide the reason for the ban.

nottorp• 3 years ago

Yeah, there’s no guarantee you’ll have access to your digital purchases in the future. Trust Sony? Good joke.

With PC games you can fix that with torrents, but with a console just get the good titles on disc.

sys_64738• 3 years ago

Agree with this. Physical media is the only thing I buy.

rchaud3• 3 years ago

Single-player games that work without a central server of some kind appear to be going extinct. I used to be a big gamer in the 2000s but then local-multiplayer started to disappear, and pretty soon many games were becoming online-only.

AraceliHarker2• 3 years ago

The current PS and Xbox consoles use discs for mere authentication, while installation to the disc is mandatory. Additionally, many games are online-only or have their value greatly diminished without online access. Therefore, the claim that discs save storage space or that physical media retains value is at best applicable to only some Nintendo Switch games.

Animats• 3 years ago

What's the oldest "purchased" but remotely stored content you own?

rusk• 3 years ago

I have a promotional minions Christmas special I got in some “12 days of Christmas” promotion over 10 years ago. It pops up everywhere an apple device accesses my movie library. It’s actually a good comfort marker that indicates I’ve everything set up right. But it is kind of like an old decorative sticker I picked up somewhere.

jonhohle5• 3 years ago

I bought Half-Life 2 physically, but it was effectively (and now is) a digital license. Nearly 19 years.

jasonkester• 3 years ago

I like this idea of owning tangible physical media in concept. But it occurs to me that in practice I'm choosing to go the other direction.

I have floppy disc copies of the original Civilization, Master of Orion and Alpha Centauri, presumably somewhere in storage, that I spent $60 each on back in the '90s. But I've also spent the $5 to buy digital copies from Steam, GoG, etc. so that I can actually play them today. I wouldn't have the first idea how to proceed in getting a 5 1/4" floppy up and running these days.

Same for music. I have a cassette tape of AC/DC's Back in Black. And a CD. And an iTunes download. No idea where, but I paid real money for each of them and thus, presumably, own them. In the car, I stream it from Apple Music. Just last night I was practicing guitar so I played it off Youtube, which appears to be the fastest way to get music to come out of a computer these days.

So yeah, when I pull out the old CD collection, I look back fondly to being able to rattle through them in the center console of the car and swap in a new one without ever taking my eyes off the road. (and having it actually play instead of invent some new form of bluetooth/cell communication error).

But in practice, I don't have a single cd in the car.

bentley3• 3 years ago

It takes intent. When it comes to DRM‐free digital copies (similar in spirit even if they’re missing many of the “benefits” described in the article), it took some practice at first for me to get used to copying books to my ebook reader over USB, periodically updating a USB stick with music for the car stereo, installing video games from GOG instead of Steam. Intellectually, I wanted the independence of DRM‐free media, but it needed a change in habits, and like any habit, the two hardest things are getting it started and keeping it going. But it all comes naturally to me now, and I do enjoy reaping the benefits of having media on all my devices, working when my internet connection is down, clipping and copying and editing all my files with no restrictions. Every now and then I see some new headline—swathes of music pulled from Spotify due to licensing changes, scenes cut from or ads inserted into movies, more strenuous Kindle DRM—and feel happier dealing with my inconveniences rather than those inconveniences.

The one part that remains difficult for me is robust backups. I got a big 14TB external on Black Friday at Best Buy, but that won’t do me any good if my house burns down.

SethMurphy• 3 years ago

I have a single CD in the car. That would not be an endorsement of anything except the album (Paul's Boutique) and my lack of daily driving.

rchaud3• 3 years ago

The article uses video games as the example of physical media that suffers if digital is the only option. I'd like to add books to that list.

When the first Kindle came out in 2006, the marketing indicated that e-books would be cheaper than paperbacks, for the same reason a 12-track album on iTunes was $12 instead of $18.99 for the CD. So you would put up the DRM and Amazon's remote deletion features for potentially lower prices.

Almost 20 years later, this has not borne out as planned. Ebooks are almost the same price as paperbacks! In some cases, a new paperback is cheaper $12 than the Kindle version ($14.99), such as the Theranos expose book Bad Blood:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=bad+blood+book&crid=3J4CU652CO2WM...

Overlooked reasons to still buy physical media

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