9mo ago

Physical Media (Blu-Ray, Music CDs)

Ever since I got my Michael Jackson Thriller CD, I've been thinking, I have started to prefer physical releases more when it comes to films and music, because it's nice to have something you own in your hands, lend to a neighbour, and rip to your devices.

With streaming, I've cut off some services as I got tieed with the price hikes and removals of specific titles, sure, your music might be lost if you lose your phone and you can just resign in with your account on say, Spotify.

But even those have issues where they can remove the track, with CDs and Blu Ray, it ain't going away if you keep looking after it.

What are your thoughts on this? Are you big into streaming due to convenience, or do you go physical? Or maybe a bit of both?

Let me know in yer comments!

27 comments

I'm an old fart, and the minute I can digitize something, I do it. I've had thousands of 45s, LPs, CDs, etc, over the years, but most have gone by the wayside.
I still buy physical media, often at gigs, or online, but once it's ripped it collects dust, seldom to be handled again.
- It's your license. Keep it in storage.
- It's your license. Keep it in storage.
- It's your license. Keep it in storage.

I buy FLAC files on Bandcamp. I have the highest quality at a cheap price, and it hopefully won’t rot if stored properly on my NAS.
- This is what I was going to say. I don't have physical space but I have digital.

I got caught up in the vinyl revival, so I enjoy collecting that media. But even then, I consider it more of a novelty.
Generally speaking though, I prefer locally stored digital media without DRM over physical media. It's just more practical.
That being said, I'm glad that physical media exists and hope it continues to be made. Choice is good.
- Its the best when you buy an LP and get a download code for the album as well.
  I listen to LPs mostly when I want music to be the primary thing im doing. There is a whole ritual involved with putting a record on. Whereas, sometimes I just want to listen to something while I'm doing dishes or driving, and then playing an MP3 over a Bluetooth speaker from my phone is just infinitely more convenient.
- How does the sound compare to streaming and what is your setup?
  
  As long as the record is in good condition, I find the sound comperable. I've played the same song on a high bitrate digital audio file and on vinyl and I found both equally pleasing to listen to.
  I have a Fluance RT80 turntable, and am using the built in preamp. It's connected to a home audio receiver (Sony STRDH590) with a 2.1 speaker setup (Polk Audio Monitor 60 Series II Floorstanding Speakers and a Polk Audio PSW10 10" Powered Subwoofer). A pretty midrange setup in others words. And I'm no audiophile, so weigh accordingly.
  Edit: I realized you asked specifically about streaming. This link https://support.spotify.com/us/artists/article/audio-file-formats/ indicates that Spotify does up to OGG 320kbps/AC3 256kbps which is comparable to my personal audio library. So, statement holds.

I always rip my CDs and blurays so I can stream them from my server. It's much more convenient and I don't have to worry about the disks getting scratched. The disks are only used as a backup or if I want to re rip with a different video codec in the future.
I will not buy digital media if access can be taken away from me.

I own physical copies of whatever I can. And I have a Jellyfin server that hosts all my media. Owning it yourself rather than renting it from a corpo is the way to go.

I rip physical media and then store it for legal reasons. my nas is much better than trying to find whatener disc.

The biggest problem I have with physical media nowadays is that the players are slowly getting enshitified
You can't buy a tape deck anymore you can hardly find a reasonable quality record player that's not audiophile level.
There's very little choice in DVD / Blu-ray players now. I don't expect that media to be easy to maintain forever so drm free digital is a much better choice.
- Thrift stores are your friend for bluray and dvd players.
  Tape Decks can be aquired there too, but are a bit more prone to damage in the components.
  
  I probably bought 500 discs when Blockbuster went under. And they're still in an okay market for players they're not gone yet, but at some point they will go the way of the dodo

About a year ago, I started buying DVD's from thrift stores. I rip them all and put them on my Plex server. I recently aquired a Bluray player and starting to collect those too. Since those take up MUCH more diskspace, I only watch bluray with the physical disk (storage in Europe is unfortunately more expensive than in the USA)
I also started collecting CD's again (mostly from thrift stores too). I rip these to FLAC and also put them on my Plex.
The beauty of this system for me is that I still have to physically flip through stuff to build my collection. Since it takes up physical space, I limit myself to stuff I actually really want to see/listen to. But by digitizing it, I have the advantage of having acces to that curated content everywhere. The added timesink of ripping and metadata correcting gives me more satisfaction and appreciation for what I bought. A sense of pride and accomplishment, if you will.
So I buy Physical to make sure the collection stays curated and manageable, but digitize most of it for the convenience.
Due to the appreciation of my collection, I now watch more movies and listen to more music than when I had acces to netflix or Spotify.

This community pops up on ALL from time to time : https://feddit.uk/c/homevideo

Nowadays I buy digital music (mostly via Bandcamp but there's also HDTracks, Qobuz, etc.) & play the music that way. Can also stream my own music library if I want via Jellyfin or other applications.
re: physical CDs, yes I've got a ton of those too from before you could buy digital music but have already ripped them. Haven't had a need to touch the physical discs in years but still keep them in CD binders just in case.
Also not sure if it matters but for me I'm always living in small apartments/rooms so I absolutely avoid collecting physical items, there's just no space for that.

Buy physical. Because you have a physical backup, you can watch it without Internet, and they can’t change the media. Like removing scenes or episodes.

Physical media can have certain bonuses that digital content cant/wont. Album art, bonus features, easter eggs, etc, but also the analog sound of vinyl.
The main thing I see these days though, is that the content cant be edited, censored, or modified in any way. Locally owned digital content also benefits from this.

I have a 50 terabyte NAS for storing my movies and TV shows. And access it from any of the TVs in my house.
For music…I have a music streaming subscription for convenience, but also have some vinyl records for the small-ish number of albums I want to keep forever.

I've recently been buying a lot of blu rays and mp3's so I own the media I like. I used to steam a lot with Spotify and Netflix and was very happy for a long time. Then Netflix did that password sharing garbage and I started just finding my shows online. I hate that there are so many streaming platforms as well so I would have to chase the movies I love to watch them again, because they would constantly get moved to different platforms. Then a few years ago I bought a used blu ray player and started picking up my favorite's. The quality is fantastic and I don't have to wait for buffering. Best part is whenever I want to watch again I can just pop it back in the player and it doesn't cost me any more money than I did to watch it before.
The streaming age started out great, but I think physical media could make a serious comeback. Not like I care if it does come back though. I would rather keep getting my blu rays for a few bucks on eBay. I would hate if blu rays became like the retro gaming market where the price of old games can skyrocket

I try very hard to buy everything on physical media. I subscribe to a few streaming services, but I never buy non-physical media. You don't really own anything that can suddenly disappear because a company changes policies, get bought, or goes out of business.
Everything I buy is then ripped and stored on my local media server. That makes them more convenient and allows me to store the physical media out of the way. If something goes wrong, I can always re-rip.
It is worth noting that optical discs age and can become unreadable over time. If that happens, I can always go in the opposite direction and burn a new disc from my digital copy.

CDs are fantastic if you have the space for them

I do both. I buy the media, usually a physical release, and then put it on my Jellyfin server to stream to my devices. Benefits of streaming, but with the piece of mind that my favorite music, movies or tv shows won’t go away.

I much prefer physical books, and have quite a big library. But most of my textbooks would be either hard or outright impossible to get in paper, so they go onto my e-reader as DRMless pdf and djvu files.
As for movies and music - I don't see much appeal in physical, since there is no difference in experience between playing from a CD/DVD or from my drive. I still keep my DVDs from childhood, but no longer have any device that can play them (removed the CD drive from the old laptop a while ago). However, I would never rely on streaming like you mentioned either. Only local, DRMless collection. Streaming is just for discovery.

27 comments