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[Mossybrew]

Makes sense. I just started building a small curated anime Blu-ray collection early this year, and I have most Disney Classics on Blu-ray, but otherwise I haven't bought a movie or tv-show on physical media since probably mid 2008. I mean, pretty much everyone I know who collected DVD's and movies and such has long since stopped collecting. All except for one.

Yeah I pretty much learned my lesson after dvds became obsolete. I spent way too much money on a collection that's now basically worthless. I do have a very small blu ray collection but I've been much more strict over the years in what I buy.

 

[MiguelItUp]

Even if that is the case, they seem pretty happy with the end result.

I mean, if you're forced to do something, you might as well get used to it, haha. It would be such a waste of emotion to be constantly upset about something that isn't going to change.

For me, it was easier to digest because you can typically find games on PC much cheaper via digital outlets. So, it made it easier. Way easier.

 

[Moriarty1889]

I've never seen people so eager to rush towards a future where they own nothing.

Most people today are mindless sheep just waiting to be told what is good for them and what is not. Sad but true.

 

[squidilix]

Good

 

[rapid32.5]

And Target stores are closing out, so no big deal.

 

[Optimus Lime]

All of these 'it's the death of physical media' people are kidding themselves.

Unless you are the biggest normie in the entire galaxy, and your tastes in movies are basically whatever Marvel slop is being shoved down your throat this week, physical media is as vital as it has ever been.

Release labels like Arrow, Indicator, Severin, Synapse - they are where physical media absolutely shines. The demand for 4K reference-quality copies of movies is currently so high that limited editions sell out very quickly, and are traded on eBay for massively inflated prices.

And, most of this is happening online through highly profitable web stores. There's obviously Amazon, but there's Diabolik, Deepdiscount, and directly from the labels themselves. You don't need fucking Target to get this stuff.

Think you've seen 'Robocop'? Try watching the Arrow 4K remaster. It's like a movie from 2023. You won't get that with streaming. Ever.

Of course, you need the hardware to take advantage of the quality. Maybe you don't have that. Maybe you're some poor, sad bastard streaming Netflix '4K' on your iPad and you think you're living the cinephile dream. You aren't.

As always, drones are gonna drone. Idiots will claim that discs are 'coasters' because their own garbage hardware and have no fucking idea what they're talking about. But, physical media - for film - is a big deal right now. Stop listening to what the paid of MSM tells you. They WANT you to throw everything away and become a slave to their subscriptions.

 

[Quasicat]

Sure, when I'm dead. Most of it will probably be tossed in a dumpster anyway.

On second thought you can have my collection of hundreds of dvds, which I've been too lazy to ever try to sell for a fraction of what I paid for them, they're just taking up space in the closet.

Just stuff that fills up closets, boxes, shelves. Overrated, as I said.

I have a couple of friends that have literally thousands of CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray’s, game cartridges, those really high quality anime figures, etc and all I think about when I go to their houses is “I feel sorry for whoever has to go through this stuff when they die.” I keep my movies in a binder in the closet and run them all on a Plex server. It’s convenient and I don’t pay a monthly subscription to watch my stuff.

 

[March Climber]

It would be such a waste of emotion to be constantly upset about something that isn't going to change.

If only this sentence could be seen when anyone opens this website.

For me, it was easier to digest because you can typically find games on PC much cheaper via digital outlets. So, it made it easier. Way easier.

Agreed, and to your earlier point, honestly I always found it to be more organic of a move due to a combination of factors with users and tech, rather than just PC gamers being forced into a situation. CD and DVD installations were becoming increasingly annoying for most. Torrents, Peer2peer, Piracy outlets, etc. were increasing as the internet grew. Something like steam would have been an inevitability, much like music desperately needed a digital outlet to combat places like napster and limewire.

I just find it interesting that people here are turning on digital simply because of the fact that the onus to host and provide the content has been put onto the corporate side rather than the user side, when the PC gaming market, and especially Steam(and how happy people are with it) were solid proof that this was always going to end up being the case.

The real issue people have with this is exclusively in regard to console storefronts, because they still have faster degradation and obsolescence than Steam, due to their past of not having an agreed upon physical format and also treating the industry itself as disposable as the toy industry. However, blaming all of that on digital as a whole just seems...odd...especially odd if you game on Steam.

 

[DryvBy]

All of these 'it's the death of physical media' people are kidding themselves.

Unless you are the biggest normie in the entire galaxy, and your tastes in movies are basically whatever Marvel slop is being shoved down your throat this week, physical media is as vital as it has ever been.

Release labels like Arrow, Indicator, Severin, Synapse - they are where physical media absolutely shines. The demand for 4K reference-quality copies of movies is currently so high that limited editions sell out very quickly, and are traded on eBay for massively inflated prices.

And, most of this is happening online through highly profitable web stores. There's obviously Amazon, but there's Diabolik, Deepdiscount, and directly from the labels themselves. You don't need fucking Target to get this stuff.

Think you've seen 'Robocop'? Try watching the Arrow 4K remaster. It's like a movie from 2023. You won't get that with streaming. Ever.

Of course, you need the hardware to take advantage of the quality. Maybe you don't have that. Maybe you're some poor, sad bastard streaming Netflix '4K' on your iPad and you think you're living the cinephile dream. You aren't.

As always, drones are gonna drone. Idiots will claim that discs are 'coasters' because their own garbage hardware and have no fucking idea what they're talking about. But, physical media - for film - is a big deal right now. Stop listening to what the paid of MSM tells you. They WANT you to throw everything away and become a slave to their subscriptions.

I always say this. 4K quality in audio and video is superb vs streaming. Streaming is only convenient. Your sacrifice for streaming is getting compression or lower bit-rates. If you have a $95 Roku TV, this probably isn't a concern but for people with taste, physical is king.

The other huge benefit is resell. You can't resell a game on Steam or whatever. "I don't want to", well you never know what tomorrow brings and if you'll need to dump a collection of old games that have some gems in them to pay a mortgage.

 

[Hero of Spielberg]

Just because you can’t buy them at Target, they aren’t going to disappear. You can still buy newspapers, books, send letters, etc. The option will be available to buy physical media.

 

[Rocco Schiavone]

Maybe it's not that people don't want physical media anymore.

Maybe it's that they charge 35 fucking dollarydoos for garbage movies that are already available for free on streaming services

Yeah or maybe you find movies and CD's somewhere else for a cheaper price with free shipping.

 

[Syphon Filter]

Physical dinosaurs gonna cry

 

[The_Observer]

You will own nothing and you will be happy.

*laughs in Schwab*

 

[Diddy X]

Physical media is nothing but plastic garbage, I don't want any of that in my house.

 

[March Climber]

Hipster vinyl earns more these days. If they pressed new movies in Laser Disc they would probably earn more than DVD.

In a perfect world, movies and games would have found their own versions of Vinyl.

Vinyl just looks so damn cool.

Laser Disc also looked so damn cool.

I think modern hipster movie watchers would have been all over a modern version of laserdisc if it were a real format:

 

[Optimus Lime]

I always say this. 4K quality in audio and video is superb vs streaming. Streaming is only convenient. Your sacrifice for streaming is getting compression or lower bit-rates. If you have a $95 Roku TV, this probably isn't a concern but for people with taste, physical is king.

The other huge benefit is resell. You can't resell a game on Steam or whatever. "I don't want to", well you never know what tomorrow brings and if you'll need to dump a collection of old games that have some gems in them to pay a mortgage.

You're absolutely right. The idiots in this thread who are laughing about 'physical dinosaurs' have no fucking idea what they're talking about. They've bought the kool aid, where the illusion of 'convenience' is offered up in exchange for picture quality, audio quality, extras, and ownership.

If you seriously think that streaming is in any way a replacement for full fat optical media, you are outing yourself as a cretin with shit gear, who probably shouldn't even be having this conversation.

 

[Naked Lunch]

This goes hand and hand with certain manufacturers stopping production of bluray players in general. I believe I read samsung?

I pretty much only buy blurays of stuff I really really like and will watch over and over.
Much better than jumping thru the hoops of subscription services. Movies will be on one service for a limited time - disappear - then pop up on another one. I aint dealing with that shit. I bought the movie I like and can watch it any time.

 

[ShadyAcshuns]

They also seem to be shutting down entire stores in places.
https://apnews.com/article/target-t...l-federation-2355eb9fa3f323e13691d6061bb81019

 

[ShadyAcshuns]

Physical dinosaurs gonna cry

Digital drones are gonna cry even more when gaming sales plummet compared to previous days.

 

[tinear]

Good

I think you dropped your tinfoil hat. Honestly some people here would have called the Industrial Revolution an elite conspiracy. Is streaming the future? Yes. Will physical media ever fully die? No. Look at vinyl.

 

[Dacvak]

When I was younger, my friends and I would troll around Walmart late at night, since it was the only thing open 24 hours.

We always had a ritual of heading to the electronics section where that gigantic tub of $5 DVDs usually is. We’d each stick our arm deep into the bin and randomly grab a DVD and pull them out at the same time. Whoever got the best movie would win.

And sometimes, whoever got the worst movie (or a completely unknown movie) had to buy it, and we’d watch it that night.

Good times.

 

[StereoVsn]

Meh, 4K Blu-ray is still so much better va streaming. And I don’t have to pay Netflix and others 4K surcharges.

 

[XOMTOR]

You're absolutely right. The idiots in this thread who are laughing about 'physical dinosaurs' have no fucking idea what they're talking about. They've bought the kool aid, where the illusion of 'convenience' is offered up in exchange for picture quality, audio quality, extras, and ownership.

If you seriously think that streaming is in any way a replacement for full fat optical media, you are outing yourself as a cretin with shit gear, who probably shouldn't even be having this conversation.

Whoa. I doubt physical media is going anywhere entirely; it will simply be increasingly rare at brink & mortar retail. No biggie, b&m is itself becoming more of a niche everyday. As for the discs themselves, most people don't want those. Personally, I ripped my small, heavily curated selection of favorite movies, slapped them on my NAS and stream them in house via PLEX. Quality is the same as what was on the original disc.

Even if physical discs disappear, studios will still find way to sell you the full-bitrate files. My music collection consists of a lot of FLACs; quite a few of those songs were purchased online as a digital file.

 

[IAmNotFromDelaware]

I'm one of those people that loves his surround sound system. Can't live without it. I've tried watching movies through streaming services but the sound is just simply not the same. I need physical discs. Although I haven't noticed a difference in sound with games if I'm using Game Pass or if I'm using the physical disk. But for movies, the sound quality is obviously much lower.

 

[Kdad]

Time for Movies on vinyl to make a comeback!

 

[The Pleasure]

Owning things is overrated.

This you?

 

[Optimus Lime]

Whoa. I doubt physical media is going anywhere entirely; it will simply be increasingly rare at brink & mortar retail. No biggie, b&m is itself becoming more of a niche everyday. As for the discs themselves, most people don't want those. Personally, I ripped my small, heavily curated selection of favorite movies, slapped them on my NAS and stream them in house via PLEX. Quality is the same as what was on the original disc.

Even if physical discs disappear, studios will still find way to sell you the full-bitrate files. My music collection consists of a lot of FLACs; quite a few of those songs were purchased online as a digital file.

Here's the problem - everything is becoming increasingly rare at brick & mortar retail.

And, studios aren't going to be streaming 80gb of video and audio anytime soon, if ever. If you actually care about what you watch, and you have invested in the equipment, you have one choice, and that's optical media.

The only people who deny this are idiots who have never seen what 4K blu-ray on a Dolby Atmos system can look and sound like.

 

[Optimus Lime]

I think you dropped your tinfoil hat. Honestly some people here would have called the Industrial Revolution an elite conspiracy. Is streaming the future? Yes. Will physical media ever fully die? No. Look at vinyl.

Streaming media is a future. And, it's already starting to curdle from a value perspective. The TV and movie cartels do not want to let themselves be decimated the way the music industry did, so expect an ongoing war of rights and ownership that will never, ever be resolved.

That is, unless you buy a movie. Then none of it applies to you.

 

[Topher]

I understand this is somewhat inevitable, but I don't understand the apparent cheerleading from some consumers.

That's what I don't get. I don't buy movies anymore, but I'm not going to hope that those who do buy movies, can't. Why would I want to steal someone else's joy?

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Target is obsessed with retail theft, and those were very common high theft items. I'm not that surprised. Target is also closing 9 stores in high theft cities next month (Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and New York City).

This particular thing isn't about the death of physical media or whatever.

 

[charles8771]

Windows 11 got physical release months later in USB flash drive

 

[ManaByte]

It's really only for hipsters

And Nicolas Cage. He buys his Just For Men at Target.

 

[violence]

Inevitable. A couple years ago I took advantage of all the 3 dollar blue rays at pawnshops.

 

[El Muerto]

Last time i checked the game section at my local Target, all they had were sports games, at the original $59.99 price. They were just like Sears with their electronics department, never updated prices and kept old stock.

 

[HeWhoWalks]

Same at Best Buy. It’s weird.

I've not seen this. Plenty of discs at multiple local stores. Target on the other hand...

 

[Zuzu]

I know that it didn’t mention them in the OP but 4k blu rays are superior to any movie streaming service. If you wish for the death of this medium then you’re wishing for the highest quality version of films (at a mainstream level) to be inaccessible to consumers.

 

[HeWhoWalks]

I know that it didn’t mention them in the OP but 4k blu rays are superior to any movie streaming service. If you wish for the death of this medium then you’re wishing for the highest quality version of films (at a mainstream level) to be inaccessible to consumers.

Shhh...

We're busy saying "good" to things because we don't like them. You are not allowed to like choices!

 

[Dream-Knife]

Physical media has been dead for a decade.

 

[HeWhoWalks]

Physical media has been dead for a decade.

If you've been living under some dead horse, sure.

 

[Dream-Knife]

If you've been living under some dead horse, sure.

No one buys physical media except Nintendo fans.

 

[HeWhoWalks]

No one buys physical media except Nintendo fans.

Okay Luther. I guess I'll take your word for it.

 

[charles8771]

Physical media has been dead for a decade.

10 years ago was 2013, when the PS3 and Xbox 360 got games released

It was dead for PC gaming, but not for consoles


Why many games on PS3 didn't got digital releases? Because it wasn't even mandatory

 

[R6Rider]

I buy all the movies I really like on BluRay/4kBluRay.

Most of them I just order online.

 

[Dream-Knife]

10 years ago was 2013, when the PS3 and Xbox 360 got games released

It was dead for PC gaming, but not for consoles


Why many games on PS3 didn't got digital releases? Because it wasn't even mandatory

Besides consoles, physical media was dead.

Now it's dead for everything but Nintendo.

Also that thread aged horribly. I guess that guy learned that consoles aren't the same as Steam.

 

[Elder Legend]

Windows 11 got physical release months later in USB flash drive

Yes and then when you try to set it up after the install it mmediately tells you to connect to the internet. Imagine building a new PC and not being able to get into Windows 11 after a fresh install because your pc isn't connected via ethernet or something. Not everyone puts a PC into same room as their internet. And you cannot do WiFi on a fresh install unless you are able to install the drivers for WiFi. Regular consumer is not going to look for a way to bypass that (even though you could if you look on YouTube) and it's very annoying to do so.

 

[OCL]

Good.

Fucking weirdo

 

[simpatico]

I've never seen people so eager to rush towards a future where they own nothing.

It's more about parsing what we physically hold. Movies, music, video games, less concerned about. Guns, gold, guitars, yeah I want those in my house. Plus you console guys are kinda on your own here. Happened on PC a decade ago and it's been really stable tbh.

 

[Muffdraul]

I've never seen people so eager to rush towards a future where they own nothing.

I had this humongous collection of games going back to the 16-bit era, movies on VHS, movies on DVD... Eventually it all turned into nothing but a ton of old relics that I would never, ever, ever, not in a million years actually use ever again in my life. I will never connect a SNES or a PS1 to play those OG games. I will never set up a VCR to watch some shitty old tape. I will never play a DVD unless it's something that's literally impossible to stream or get on 4K or even blu-ray... which, at least in terms of what I have, is a pretty small list. I amassed this huge amount of physical crap that aged out. And I know damn well that's going to happen to my newer physical media too at some point. Why should I give a fuck if I still have my old SNES F-Zero cart from 1991, or my MGS1 CDs from 1998, or Akira on tape from 1990... ultimately it had all become a bunch of literal garbage I had to get rid of when I moved a couple years ago. The physical copy of FFVII Remake PS5 I own right now is no different.

 

[Winter John]

I recently traded in my Xbox series S for an X. Man it was worth it for the disk drive alone. I got a shit load of dvds and blu rays in a drawer. Looking through it I discovered I had every David Lynch movie. The complete series of Twin Peaks, The Sopranos, The Wire, Northern Exposure, American Gothic, Boardwalk Empire, OZ, NYPD Blue, Arrested Development, Seinfeld, Cheers and most importantly The Larry Sanders boxset.
To all those sneering at physical media go try and find the complete Larry Sanders series streaming anywhere. You can’t because they never worked out the rights for all the bands who appeared on it. So any fans of the show are shit out of luck as far as streaming goes. Apple have the most episodes but even they are missing a bunch of them.

 

[charles8771]

Besides consoles, physical media was dead.

Now it's dead for everything but Nintendo.

Also that thread aged horribly. I guess that guy learned that consoles aren't the same as Steam.

Analyst says digital sales made up 92 percent of PC game market in 2013

It might be time to reconsider the idea that digital distribution is the future. According to analyst firm DFC Intelligence, it actually stopped being the future quite some time ago, as nearly all PC game purchases made in 2013 were done digitally.

www.pcgamer.com

Well i couldn't tell how many game sales on consoles were digital in 2013

The fact that many games in 2011 didn't got digital releases on PS3 tells another story
Wasn't even good downloading digital games on PS3 due for slow download speed of PSN and requiring bigger storage on HDD than physical counterparts.