You Should Buy Physical Media

 I… may have killed my PS4. It’s not starting and asking that I reinstall the system software. Which isn’t great, but it’s not the big disaster one might think–I only just started Ghost of Tsushima and the Ubisoft games like Assassin’s Creed should be saved in the cloud. Still! Not good!

Anyhow I’m hoping to have finished 60 books for 2022 by the time the month ends.

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You Should Buy Physical Media

So I had thought about this topic before, but with a bajillion different articles and video essays being produced about the “The Fall of Netflix” because of their scramble to react to loss of subscribers–and by the way, they’re handling this very badly. They slashed their animation department, including canceling their Bone adaptation, and holding up their Boss Baby show (which they don’t produce, just distribute) as the model for how they want their animated shows to go. They are considering having a cheaper version with ads. And of course, they’re trying to crack down on password sharing, because they’re convinced that if they demand you pay extra for it when one of your family members who happens to live in a different location uses the same account, they’ll win more money.

I don’t want to say go back to pirating everything, but it’s tempting.

But thinking about streaming again is making me think about how streaming is overrated. It’s not bad, in general, but it’s become the de facto way to watch movies. And that’s… not actually good. And it’s part of a trend we see with media that’s kind of bothersome. Mainly, we don’t own a lot of the media that we consume, and it’s actually kind of messed up.

Because you don’t own it. If your Internet craps out, your library of movies is gone. And that’s also true if your power does too, but I feel as if websites and online databases are a lot more fragile than the power grid, in general. Furthermore, you don’t have to pay to watch movies that you personally own. You buy them, and they’re yours–you just have to keep paying the power bill. Which you are also paying with streaming.

Streaming services also don’t always keep the same libraries. Movies regularly go in and out of services like Netflix and Hulu. Roku has a handy feature that lets you search what streaming services have different movies, but it’s immensely frustrating to decide to watch a movie on Netflix, only to find out that it’s no longer on Netflix, or any other streaming service you own. And in theory those services won’t remove their own original content, you don’t actually know that for a fact. They might decide a piece of media is too controversial for whatever reason and remove it without notice.

And then there was this weird thing that happened recently, with the upload of the Netflix Defenders serieses to Disney+, where it edited out the gore from certain episodes of Falcon and the Winter Soldier, presumably for the child-friendly version of Disney+, and it got added to all accounts? And recently episodes of DuckTales and Agent Carter just disappeared off of the platform? This doesn’t happen if you own DVDs or Blu-Ray versions of these serieses.

There was a time a few years ago that one of the ads you’d see on movies released on video before the menu popped up was for the preservation of old movies. Because there are tons of movies, especially silent movies, that have been lost because no one bothered to update the way they’re stored. And now we’re seeing a point in which most of us don’t even own our favorite movies and television shows that are coming out–we just stream them. And a lot of big releases aren’t released on physical media, in part as an effort to try to convince you to buy into streaming services.

The crackdown on password sharing, acting as if it’s somehow criminal: it’s stupid! Because when you own a movie, it’s not insane to hand it to someone and let them borrow it for a while. You can do this with library books and rented movies too, as long as they’re returned on time. It’s blatant greed, because these streaming services are convinced that they need to monetize everything, and are convinced they need to keep growing at all costs, even if it’s unsustainable.

What’s infuriating is that this isn’t just happening with streaming. Video games for instance. So many games are bought online and downloaded directly to the console, and it turns out that you can’t play those games if you’re not connected online. And do you remember when the Xbox One was announced, they pitched it so that your game discs would only be installed to YOUR console, and you could only share it with five other people registered as friends on your profile? Meaning you can’t share with anyone, and you definitely can’t resell it to a used game store if you don’t want the game anymore.

Music? Yes, it’s great that records made a comeback, but you notice that people often use Spotify and they don’t own the music? That’s a bit weird!

And books! Luckily buying books is still in fashion, but you don’t technically own Kindle books, you know. I’m told that it doesn’t hold up in court, but in the terms and conditions, Amazon can actually just yoink a book from your Kindle if they feel like for any reason at all. It used to be that you could look at the files on your Kindle if you plug it to a computer, and if you wanted to move digital books to your Kindle (and if you have the right program you can reformat it!), but in the more recent Kindle that I noticed that the books I’ve bought don’t show up in the files when it’s hooked up.

I’m not saying there’s an overarching conspiracy to take ownership away from consumers. I don’t think there was a massive decision by the black suits in charge of the entertainment industry or something like that. But it is a trend, and it’s annoying and dumb, because it’s more and more pushing for people to rely on their paid for constant services like streaming rather than just turning on a device and playing the media that belongs to them.

And if something happens to online collections, then you’re up a creek! Because if you can’t get on Netflix or Disney+ accidentally deletes your favorite show, you’re better off if you can just put in your own disc to your Blu-Ray player and watch it. Or if the Kindle app is fritzing out, to be able to load up the same book on another device, without the app, and reading a book like a normal person. Or being able to lend a cool game to your friend who doesn’t want to spend the money because he or she is unsure about it.

Just buy physical media again. I’m not saying don’t stream stuff, or don’t buy digital games, but also keep in mind the limitations and definitely buy physical media.

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