this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2025
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I hate physical media. I was growing up with the worst type, VHS, so subconsciously I associate every physical media with VHS. lt was bulky, you always had to roll it back. If multiple things were recorded on the same tape, you had to write down where they start and you had to stop seeking at the correct time. If you copied from one tape to another quality worsened.
I don't hate it, but as someone who's had to pick up and move repeatedly it's just too much stuff. I buy digital books (would buy digital movies if buying them was actually buying them), and did buy digital music when buying it was actually buying it (back in the days of Google play music when you actually could just do whatever you wanted with the tracks you bought so long as you downloaded them).
I think part of what people are neglecting to understand is the digital media is physically stored somewhere. It's not just out there in a cloud. It has to be maintained just like physical media does. Don't store a cassette/VHS tape properly and it won't be around for a long time. It's honestly the same with CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray. I'm sure it was the case with 8tracks and Mini discs, and so on too. When the medium through which that media is housed goes, so does the media.
This discussion is pretty interesting to me because the only reason a lot of people seem to be against digital media is their view of how the license for it differs from the license for physical media. It's the same license but one of them gives the company licensing the media more control than the other and that's what people don't like. If companies would stop taking things people paid for from them, this wouldn't be an issue.
Okay, but now there are much better options besides VHS. And I for one line physical media. At the end of the day if my internet is out or something is removed from a service, I can still just pop in a disc.
Sorry about your experience with VHS.
And if my internet is out or if something is removed from a service, I can plug in an external drive that has orders of magnitude more capacity than a DVD, and not bother with having to swap them or them taking up too much space.
That's the whole point. I'm going to guess that the media on your flash drive was ripped from physical media at some point in the chain.
Having access to the physical media gives you the ability to do what you want with it... Want it on a flash drive? Great do it. Want it on your plex sever so you can stream it yourself? Cool. Want to put it on a modded ipod classic? Cool.
VS. The way the Music / Film industries want you to have to access this data. They don't want it on your plex server, they don't want it on your flash drive.
Mark my words when physical media dies they will find more ways to crack down even harder on us enjoying content the way we want. Hell now a days they even restrict what browsers you can use to access media.
A lot of the offerings say "Webrip", so not sure about that - also, a lot of media simply isn't released in physical form. Also, if I wanted to pay (hope I eventually earn enough for this), I would rather buy a DRMed copy to correspond to my DRMless one that I actually use. I do that already with Steam. Because a disk would either occupy space, have to be sold or thrown out, none of which are options I like.
And I can pop-in a thumb drive.
I never liked having to carry a bunch of shit around. Now i have a small device in my pocket with hundreds of CDs worth of capacity.