It’s sensible for businesses to shift from physical media sales. Per CNBC’s calculations, DVD sales fell over 86 percent between 2008 and 2019. Research from the Motion Picture Association in 2021 found that physical media represented 8 percent of the home/mobile entertainment market in the US, falling behind digital (80 percent) and theatrical (12 percent).
But as physical media gets less lucrative and the shuttering of businesses makes optical discs harder to find, the streaming services that largely replaced them are getting aggravating and unreliable. And with the streaming industry becoming more competitive and profit-hungry than ever, you never know if the movie/show that most attracted you to a streaming service will still be available when you finally get a chance to sit down and watch. Even paid-for online libraries that were marketed as available “forever” have been ripped away from customers.
When someone buys or rents a DVD, they know exactly what content they’re paying for and for how long they’ll have it (assuming they take care of the physical media). They can also watch the content if the Internet goes out and be certain that they’re getting uncompressed 4K resolution. DVD viewers are also less likely to be bombarded with ads whenever they pause and can get around an ad-riddled smart TV home screen (nothing’s perfect; some DVDs have unskippable commercials).
Sensible to who?
For all the reality of “streaming rights are a shitshow”, what percentage of the population do you think is willing to buy physical movies?
Because I don’t think it’s all that high.
Someone go make Steam for videos and I’ll pay for media again. My stipulations are:
Steam isn’t DRM free, though. Most games use Steamworks DRM.
Steamworks DRM is not a requirement though.
I know, I modified it to make more sense for video.
Companies see that as a mistake. They want you on a subscription for life that they can arbitrarily change at any time.
Profits not increasing enough for this quarter? Better cut content, increase prices, increase the number of ads.
Profits increased amazingly this quarter? Better cut content, increase prices, increase the number of ads.
Profits down? Better cut content, increase prices, increase the number of ads, and start adding extra paywalls to some content
They want you to own nothing. Oh you unsubscribed? Sorry even the content you paid extra to unlock was only available while your subscription continued, you will need to start your subscription again and then pay to unlock the content again.
A show isn’t popular enough? Better write it off, pull it from all distribution so you can claim it as a tax write off
Yarrrrrrrr
Yarrrrrr indeed
I wouldn’t even mind the subscription if all the content was there reliably, and I only needed one.
I subscribe to a music service, because all the music is there and it’s easier than swiping it.
If I had to subscribe to four different ones to get access to all the artists I listen to, then I’d still be pirating that.
Steam satisfies only your third point, though. Otherwise, no. You don’t actually own your Steam library, Steam itself is DRM, and it doesn’t have everything.
I know. I changed the terms. Pray I don’t change them further.
Pay so I don’t change them further.
FTFY
More like
I was pissed when suddenly I could no longer play any of my purchased steam games on my Windows 7 desktop that had all worked perfectly before. Eventually all your steam games are going to be unplayable on your current OS, and any game that is no longer profitable to support on the latest OS will be permanently unplayable. That’s why I always prefer to buy games on GOG over steam. When you buy a game on GOG you really do own the game forever.
Yeah, this is basically what we need.
I honestly don’t mind copy protections, I just don’t like online DRM. If the service is good enough, I’ll look past that particular portion.
I won’t. “Copy protection” is much more about restricting and potentially even removing your access to something you’ve paid for than it is about preventing copying. I am not willing to buy something that can be revoked when alternatives are available.
Offline copy protection, like the copy protection in DVDs and Bluray, can’t be revoked, they’re literally designed to be static. It’s really not an issue since, given time, it’ll be cracked (and both are, I literally just finished ripping my collection). I’m fine with that form of copy protection, I’m not fine with online-only DRM because that’s totally revokable.
Disagree. In order to keep those keys secure they can’t publish them, so they’ll have to license some sort of decryption chip. That just pushes the price up as some manufacturer ends up taking a cut from every player sale.
Also means you can’t do what you want with it. You probably can’t play it on an open source device. Etc etc.
Sure, I’d need specific hardware to access the media, but after I rip it, I can access it anywhere. The benefit to me of something like a Bluray isn’t the disk itself, but being able to legally buy media and rip it to a digital format at home. That’s a legally gray area since breaking copy protection measures is technically a copyright violation, but there’s also legal protection for backing up media for personal use, so it’s a bit of a gray area.
Given that there are no other legal or mostly legal alternatives, I’m satisfied with that as an option. Media companies rarely, if ever, go after people who rip media for personal use (probably because it’s not worth their time and it’s a legal gray area), so I’m okay with that status quo. If there were a legal option to get DRM-free media for offline use, I’d totally go for that. I tried that with streaming services, but the apps I used (Netflix and Disney+) failed when I actually needed them (my downloaded files “expired” on a trip when I didn’t have internet access), so that’s not going to work for me.
If this legally gray area goes away and I can’t easily rip media into a DRM-free format for personal use, I’ll go back to the alternatives I used when I couldn’t afford physical media and Netfilx wasn’t yet a thing.
Yeah I’m not paying for something and it still be illegal. I’d rather stick to piracy. I get your point and if it works for you that’s cool. But it’s not for me.
A good usenet setup with the Arr stack can automatically download basically anything you want and costs tens of dollars per year to run with very little, if any risk. (have there been any prosecutions for people downloading from usenet?)
With a little bit of work and an old computer for a server you can basically run your own automated piracy streaming service.
DRM = copy protection
Not necessarily. DVDs and Blurays have copy protections, but they don’t require access to any servers. Online DRM sucks because if your internet goes out, their servers are having troubles, or they just shut down the servers for whatever reason, you cannot use your media.
So I’m mostly fine with offline copy protections (someone will crack it eventually), I’m not okay with DRM that requires online access.
FYI Steam had videos a few years ago, new purchases are discontinued but one can still playback their existing library.
I buy physical dvds. Sometimes I’m all that high when I buy them.
The MBAs whose sole purpose on earth it is to inflate margins over and over and over again
For the businesses.
Yes, the costs to actually make and distribute a physical disc are relatively low on a unit basis, but the cost of distributing a digital copy online make physical media look astronomical.
Even outside of cost, the level of control they can exert is vastly higher than any physical media.
Being able to prevent someone from reselling the movie or game they bought is very appealing to rights holders.
And customers. Almost everyone prefers to consume media in a simple way and that is streaming. Almost no one will go back to physical media. If streaming becomes absolutely unbearable, people would turn to digital downloads.
*whom
😝
Says so right in your quote
Physical is practically dead.
One by one I’ve seen pretty much any shop that specialises in physical media go bust. Virgin Megastores, HMV, Blockbuster, Game. The media section in my local supermarkets have gone from several aisles of games and movies, down to a single rack of recent releases. Even in gaming, I’ve had my disc PS5 for two years now, and the only thing I’ve put in it was Top Gun on 4K disc. The other games (BG3, Talos Principle 2) I purchased weren’t even available on disc.
Consumers don’t want it in large numbers, so they stop making it.
Really? Because used media stores are booming all over the place. Stores that sell new and used records alongside CDs, Movies, and video games seem to be in every mid size town I pass through.
The smaller towns like mine feel the effects first. It’ll trickle up.
Game went that way, eventually being taken over by the used section, and now all we have left locally is CEX, which is used only. Most of the prices are about the same as buying new from Amazon. Anything really cheap is often the same stuff in subscription services.
Game still exists, but it’s tucked away at the back of Sports Direct shops in out of town shopping centres, and their main products appear to be plushies and funko pops.
It is dying, and I’m not convinced it can be saved at this point. Who has a CD player any more? DVD players have gone from a £30 box that everyone had to something stuffed in the attic and the apps are built into the TV. A 4K BR player is still £150+ even for a cheap one. You don’t even get Dolby Vision at that price point. I don’t expect the next generation of consoles to have disc drives at all.
Physical media is on life support, and it won’t be long before they pull the plug completely.
When I think small town, I’m thinking a couple hundred people. I’ve never seen such stores there. Medium is a few thousand. They usually have one.
The nice thing is that there are millions of discs and players still out there. For anyone who prefers physical media and avoids streaming (this guy!) there is no shortage. Prices could stand to come down. But even if they do quit making them, there are lifetimes worth of vintage media, and newer isn’t always better.
I’m talking a town of 35,000-40,000 people. There is not a single dedicated new physical media shop here. The most we have is the rack in the supermarkets. It all went online to Amazon, etc, and now it doesn’t look like it has long there either.
And while that old media will last a decent while, it doesn’t last forever. The discs degrade, and fairly soon compared to CDs. Like 25 years or so.
And if nobody is making discs any more, the drives won’t be far behind. It’s full of moving parts, so stock up on them. It happened to floppy discs, it’ll happen to optical discs too.
I didn’t say new store, I said vintage. If you don’t have one, I’d be surprised. There’s gonna be one somewheres nearby.
As for aging media, you’re right about that. Best make sure we reform copyright law soon. They don’t deserve to gatekeep the entire world’s cultural history.
You are really missing out then, because if you know where to look (like psprices.com) you will often find sales on only physical copies at Amazon, Best Buy or GameStop.
I’m talking like significant sales. Like AAA games less than a year old (that still costs $60 on PSN) for $15.99 kind of sales.
I cannot tell you how many PS4 and PS5 games I’ve gotten, and which, for 40%+ off. Too many to count. I’ve saved hundreds if not over a thousand dollars doing this.
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