Physical media in the modern age

[ForgedBlades]

I'm curious to hear what Kiwis think of buying and collecting physical media in 2018. Blu-ray, DVDs, vidya, CDs, vinyl, books, magazines. Whatever you got. I wasn't sure where to post this, as it falls under a lot of categories in our subforums, so if a mod thinks it should be moved, feel free.

I'm huge on physical media. I still buy physical books and CDs, and even subscribe to a few magazines that come as paper in my mailbox. I use Amazon Prime music, but if it's an artist that I'm really into, I will still purchase a CD to put up on my shelf. I think my love for physical media is born from two reasons.

1. I like to look at things on shelves. It brings me a sense of comfort, and collecting stuff serves as a good hobby. I often find myself getting lost in my thoughts, just thumbing through my CDs or video games or books.
2. Having a physical copy serves as a backup if shit hits the fan with streaming or publishing rights.

I'm also a sucker for the cool bonuses that often come along with buying a physical copy. A lot of my favorite artists will include an autograph or t-shirt or another gimmick if you buy a physical CD from their official stores. I'm also one of those idiots that fawns over video game collector's editions. I'm not huge on movies, but I know that similar bonuses and collector's editions exist for Blu-ray as well.

I can understand people who shy away from physical music and movies in favor of streaming services, but people who skip over physical console games in favor of digital downloads are crazy in my opinion. Not only because of the question of what will happen to people's games years or decades down the road when servers are taken offline, but anyone who follows the retro market should know that it's a good bet that these games are going to be worth a pretty penny in the years to come. I'd still buy physical PC games if I could.

I also enjoy the hunt for physical media. Visiting used movie and video game stores in search of out of print or hard to find copies is great fun. And wandering around a bookstore on a Friday night is a great way to pass the time.

I think the culture is shifting back to physical media, or at least it's carved out a large enough niche to sustain itself. The rebirth of vinyl is exciting, and I think I've read that bookstores are making a bit of a comeback.

Thoughts? Feel free to post some pics and sperg about your collections.

 

[NOT Sword Fighter Super]

I'm not opposed to physical media, but it sure does take up a lot of space and takes time to find what you're looking for vs doing a search.

I fucking hate the buffering that comes with streamed media though, and I'll frequently have to pause what I'm watching and then press play again so that the audio and video will be in sync.

Also, if you lose your internet you can listen to/watch anything if you have no physical media.

I think physical media is better in some ways but waaaaay less convenient.

 

[DumbDosh]

I only keep physical media I care about and stuff like art books. Unless you like the feel of books in your hands, kindles are just the best, especially since I can download stuff like the original Halloween 4 script and read it like a book the same day I find out about it. I used to hate the idea of digital games because you can't sell them but steam stuff is so cheap that I don't even think about that anymore.

I just like having it take up less space too, like I can still access my steam games offline, I can access all my books from my tiny tablet and I don't have to worry about storing all that when I have enough trouble storing all the consoles and shit I already have.

 

[Crunchy Leaf]

We managed to lose three physical copies of Sim City 4 in my house, so getting the digital version was a good idea.

It's hard for me to read e-books at length, so I prefer physical books.

 

[Positron]

The OP should start a poll.

For me it is physical all the way. I love reading the liner notes of CDs (for classical music it is mandatory; that's why I will never buy reissues that don't come with notes). The only downloaded music I own are the monthly free albums for subscribing to the Naxos mailing list.

 

[Hell0]

good when the world ends and we have no computers,
also it just feels right pop in a disc and start going wild in vidya

 

[Kari Kamiya]

I'm a bit conflicted, honestly, as I prefer physical over digital, but I do happen have a lot of digital media on my computer (which may have contributed to it slowing down after a while--I have an external drive, but it's getting old, too, and it's a clunky Seagate. Been meaning to get a new, better one). I love the idea of streaming (as long as Internet's good, of course), but I also still love the television, so that's why Netflix on the TV is nice and watching weeb shit through the Xbox in the living room just has a better immersion feel to it. Popping in a DVD/Blu-Ray is still the best bet for good quality, though, to avoid that pesky buffering/space-wasting data. Bonus points for laptops that keep the CD port.

CDs are up in the air for me, still, for it's nice to have something to play in the car when a radio station's not cutting it, but it's become a lot harder now to get good quality non-skippable CD players for like the radio alarm clocks (I like waking up to music when I can--though maybe I'm just shit at picking out good radio alarm clocks). MP3 files are much more convenient, but I can't leave my computer on all the time, and I don't have a great MP3 player to carry around.

Meanwhile, I prefer physical books over digital any day, it just feels good. It's partially the reason why I have read so few manga compared to the hundreds of anime I've consumed because I'm so damn picky about it and just have to collect them. I've also just out-right refused to get a Kindle. Just fucking hate touch screens in general.

Sooooo as long as I can help it, I will continue to uphold tradition with physical copies. VHS will have to be shelved for the time being thanks to the death(?) of our DVD/VHS combo not long ago, though we've still yet to get a Blu-Ray player, so any and all Blu-Rays go in the Xbox/Playstation.

 

[Neil]

Harddrives and machinery fail all the time. Physical media will always be needed, because there will always come that one eventual day, when the cheap glue and sticks that keep your machine together fail and you lose everything you haven't backed up/can tangibly access.

 

[Gordon Cole]

There are some things that I prefer digitally. Steam, Spotify and Netflix/Hulu are my main go-tos for their respective mediums. Despite that, I still collect physical copies of vidya, vinyl and DVDs/Blu-Rays as well.

And I'm uncompromisingly sticking with physical books. Fuck Kindle.

 

[sasazuka]

If I want to spend money on music, I still want it on compact disc. I don't care if it's an uncool format. I'm an uncool guy who likes owning music on a durable format (most of my CDs from the 1980s still play perfectly; I think the peak of CDs that were affected by glue rot was the early 1990s).

I know there's talk about phasing out compact discs entirely so that you won't even be able to buy new ones on Amazon anymore. I hope that doesn't happen but if it does, well, to be honest, most of the (non-classical, non-anime) music I like listening to is from the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s anyway so it really wouldn't affect me that much.

And, yes, there's also vinyl, and I like listening to music on vinyl sometimes but my preferred format is still CDs since it's a much more universal format playable on nearly anything with an optical drive. Also, my peak childhood years were in the mid-1980s, when CDs were still state-of-the-art, so some of my attachment to the format may also be nostalgia, I fully admit.

 

[UselessRubberKeyboard]

I was gonna say that I prefer physical media all the way, but most of my music and film collection is digital now (despite still having a whole bunch of cds, cassettes and vinyls from years back).

I can't read comfortably from a screen. When some things are only easily accessibly digitally (academic research documents, for example) of course I'll use them, but it feels very hard on the old eyes to read this way. I'm sure it's just me being silly, but that's how it feels. While you can markup and bookmark lots of digital documents, I can never get used to this way of working - I'm much more comfortable with a book, a notebook for notes and a couple of coloured pens for copying down direct quotes etc. Maybe this is a generational thing, though? I'm sure kids that're brought up reading academic texts digitally and using computers for note taking probably work just fine with the digital markup stuff, and using a pen and paper with a physical book would slow them down.

I buy a craptonne of books each year. Having the book there to browse through, being able to effortlessly flip between pages to compare and contrast, and just seeing the artwork and layout in front of you in physical form feels a lot more comfortable to me in a way I have no logical explanation for. I would much rather read history books in physical form than online. Art and photography books are made for physical form, and it just doesn't seem to do the subject justice to have it on a screen instead of in your hands. Our house has bookcases in every room, and when we moved house recently it was an absolute ballache to shift endless boxes of heavy books, but somehow it doesn't feel like home without them. Maybe it's habit? I grew up in a house with lots of bookshelves and books.

I dunno, there's something magical about a book. Going into a thrift bookstore with the smell of the dusty old books, and browsing through all the faded old book spines until one catches your eye. The way the information is set out on the page. The way the story slowly unfolds as you turn the pages. That you can pick a book up at any time and entertain yourself, without needed electricity or internet or mobile phone coverage. There's just a sort of exploration feeling that digital media doesn't satisfy.

Music is a little different because music is better quality when it's digital (as compared to vinyl, for example). But without the physical cd, tape or vinyl in your hand you miss out on things like liner notes, printed lyrics, daft dedications and messages that artists do etc. The artwork is probably the main thing that's either missing or nowhere near as good in digital music. There's been some amazing album covers over the years, and many bands saw album artwork as fundamental to the album itself. And you miss out on those weird short messages scratched into the centre of the vinyl, too. Do artists still do that?

Music is much more convenient digitally, though. Yeah, there are sometimes problems with buffering from streaming services, and some digital formats not being supported by players or software. Despite that, it's amazing just how much music you can have almost immediately when it's digital.

There's also something to be said for making digital copies of films, music and even books as a method of ensuring the media never gets lost due to degradation over time.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

I've always preferred physical because it means that whatever I have, I have it forever. The problem I have with digital is that most digital services don't last forever; when the service goes down, then most of the time your collection goes too. It is true that physical media requires that you actually take care of it, but that isn't that hard to do in the long run. To me, a physical copy is like proof that I legitimately own something and that it's mine to keep.

Furthermore, physical media almost always comes with added benefits not typically seen on digital media. DVDs for example almost always contain commentaries, behind-the-scenes footage and interviews, scene selects, among other things.

There's also a joy to be had in organizing your physical media collections; I love setting up my video game collection for example, and it looks cooler than how I organized the ones I downloaded.

 

[Red Hood]

I hate the idea of "collecting" and the amount of space it takes up. I used to be someone that collected all kinds of nerd shit. Then one day I had to move to a smaller place and ended up basically jettisoning a lot of that crap at Goodwill so my essentials would fit in the moving van.

However, I like having physical media in some cases. Recently my internet service was out. So I was kind of fucked over in regards to streaming, but thanks to not having thrown my DVDs out I was still able to be entertained for a few hours. So I like having physical media because of the unreliability of streaming tech.

 

[Trilby]

I've always preferred physical because it means that whatever I have, I have it forever. The problem I have with digital is that most digital services don't last forever; when the service goes down, then most of the time your collection goes too. It is true that physical media requires that you actually take care of it, but that isn't that hard to do in the long run. To me, a physical copy is like proof that I legitimately own something and that it's mine to keep.

Furthermore, physical media almost always comes with added benefits not typically seen on digital media. DVDs for example almost always contain commentaries, behind-the-scenes footage and interviews, scene selects, among other things.

There's also a joy to be had in organizing your physical media collections; I love setting up my video game collection for example, and it looks cooler than how I organized the ones I downloaded.

Count me in the physical camp as well. There was always something to appreciate from finding an odd record at a garage sale you haven't heard before, or a tape of a movie you didn't see yet.

 

[Hatoful Dandy]

I like physical media but I've complemented it with some digital content here and there, usually if it's a movie/game/comic, etc i can't get a physical copy of due to them being out of print or simply out of convenience. I still occaisionally burn cds to listen to while driving (my car doesn't have a dock for an mp3 player which I normally use)

 

[AnOminous]

I love the smell of old books. I also have a 1968 Encyclopaedia Britannica from right before they did that shit where they ruined the entire thing by splitting it into that Micro/Macro shit. Fuck whoever made that decision.

Even 50 years later, it's still more accurate than SJWpedia, that fucking jizz-gargling excuse for an Internet encyclopedia.

 

[John Titor]

Digital versions usually are a last resort for me. I collect artbooks and looking at them is so much more different than staring at a PDF. And in case of a blackout, physical media will still be there to entertain you.

 

[Elwood P. Dowd]

Digital for me, but not necessarily by choice.

Spoiler: Massive Powerlevel ahead-You were warned.

I was a day or two away from being homeless at one point, and wound up living in basically a human sized rabbit hutch. Had to give up around 300 vinyl albums (about a 150 Jazz LPs my late father had that I never really listened to, he was a Buddy Rich/Stan Kenton guy, not really my thing, but,eh, all the feels), 600 books, a few hundred CDs, both for space reasons and the fact that I couldn't really haul them around, I figured I'd be doing multiple moves.

Never been much into physical copies in vidya terms. I'll just buy something, play it for a while then give it away or sell it. Plus the bitch the wonderful woman responsible for the above situation happening decided at one point she didn't like looking at all the Wii and XBox cases. Without telling me she bought a travel holder for the discs and tossed all the cases. Something like 30 Xbox titles and 20 Wii titles rendered boxless. So, not a huge collection, but I guess enough to be noticed. And at that point I was so cucked I thought this was cute. Foreshadowing for what was coming, more like it.

...blah, blah, blah... anyhoo, I've just gotten used to it. I still prefer reading nonfiction on paper, but for fiction I'm fine with digital nowadays. I'm even okay with GNs and comics digitally at this point, though the color sometimes seems a bit off.

 

[XYZpdq]

I like physical media less and less each time I move.

 

[KO 864]

I'm personally in favour of physical but that could just be the reptile part of my brain only seeing stuff that's there as being important. For books, while I find reading websites and when I was a bit younger fanfiction, on screens, If I'm reading a proper story I like the physical form as I just find it easier to read. Maybe my attention is less distracted and stuff. I also feel taht physical stuff is just more real.