How Long Do You Want To Live...


Hey! Me Too!!!
(...so far, so good )

30 years working for a LARGE telecom & I can assure you that every single click is recorded. Latest data mining (machine learning artificial intelligence etc) software will handle 100,000 ...I guess you would say variables that will be able to crunch against.

BTW, this is not a new problem, just a smarter one:

(I'd insert an emoji here, but I can't decide between laughing, crying, or freaking out)

So, when the discs are no longer made ...and the player mfg will probably have stopped even sooner, What current player (that mortals can afford) would you like to have stockpiled that will play the most formats, be of quality build & output the best??? (Might be a while before i find that oppo at goodwill.)

We'll probably all be downloading 4K DCPs to our cinema style servers from the studios someday soon to watch at home, but at what price?

My guess is that if physical media does die completely then piracy will increase. Because without something nice to collect and sit on your shelf, many will wonder why they should spend money to download something when they already spend money for an internet connection and can obtain the equivalent thing illegally. Of course some will still prefer not to engage in illegal activities.

I highly doubt piracy would increase if physical media dies. Quite the opposite actually.

Piracy had its highest point when physical media was dominating and everyone kept on asking for digital services. The direct answer to that was iTunes. Later on we've gotten Netflix, HBO, Spotify, Crunchyroll etc and most people have at least some sort of subscription. And most people don't care for physical media anymore neither though it's certainly not dead. At the same time, piracy have overall decreased if we're discussing mainstream films. I believe it's partly due to legal services available but the companies also seem to have eliminated most leaks. So far, DCP haven't been cracked a single time AFAIK.

Digital services are fine if your connection is good enough to support everything at once. The average person doesn't think about it until all the kids and adults in the house are trying to stream all kinds of different content plus online gaming too, and then wonder why stuff isn't working the way it should.

Plenty of internet connections over here aren't all that good and from what I understand there are enough over in the US that don't have good connections either.

As for piracy, movies are still available before retail BD release.
TV shows that aren't broadcast are available. I'm not aware of anything movie or tv that isn't available, but maybe there is some stuff unavailable as I'm not into anime, sport, reality shows and some other things.

Also I just had this conversation last night with someone.
When we hooked up our internet the first thing they asked was if we were going to use netflix or had other things to drain the internet.
If so they wanted us to get a more expensive internet.

It all comes down to money, they want more and we have less and we keep buying the same stuff over and over again like movies or games.
Other issue is that they change our stuff so we can't watch or listen to the old stuff anymore unless you can fix stuff to keep our
"investments" running or buy it again with no interest.

The average person that has less disposable income generally likes the idea of having something physical. You can watch it, lend it to a friend, sell it or even give it away as a present.

Collectors like physical for obvious reasons.

Maybe it's possible to go digital only and still have most of that, but the selling is unlikely. So poorer people won't be able to buy/trade on the cheap.

Yeah it probably will happen eventually but it's really sad. All I can hope is that physical media will survive as long as I'm alive, because I don't want what the powers that be are pushing.

yeah man I'm poor in the scheme of australian things and the only reason I could get into LD was that it is a poor man's format now.

I agree with this. It's easy to get tunnel vision because this site is of course entirely collectors. Though Zeta may wish to use a different word for himself and he might call Reino a "regurgitator" you all get my point. The average person doesn't even want physical media at this point. Many kids I know see it as space consuming and pointless.

Idk if I already mentioned it but my internet is fairly bad as well. Even if it were great I would still prefer physical but I'm old.

It's very important to understand that many people nowadays aren't really interested in owning stuff anymore. We see subscription services becoming very popular, cars are leased, Creative Cloud replaced the Creative Suite and you cannot buy any Autodesk software anymore. Sure if you buy DVDs or CDs at flea markets you can get around very cheap but I pay equal to 5 USD per month for Spotify and I use it for 90% or more of all of my music. Is that really to be considered an unreasonable alternative for someone with a less disposable income? Sure that's 60 USD per year but I use it at least 5-7 hours per day and if I would've bought every single album I'm listening to on CD or vinyl, even in the bargain bin, it would've costed me a fortune.

And then I know someone will say that artists don't make much money off streaming and that's true but that's a completely different discussion. TBH, how many of the people you know (aside from those you may share very similar interests with) are using physical media more than streaming? I'm seriously asking this question because I've never had a subscription for any streaming services for movies or such, only music. I buy all of my films on physical discs or watch them in the theater, and there's not a single person in my enviroment who's like that with the exception for my grandmother or someone like that.

The only people I know that want physical media are people on collector sites like this and a few others I am on. Other than that a couple friends I know in person, that are also collectors. The common theme here: collectors/archivists. Everyone else is more than happy with the compromises of digital.

When people find out I have an actual MP3 player and pay for media people look at me like some kind of tool who somehow hasn’t figured out that my phone does all that stuff. They aren’t interested in my collection at all. It doesn’t matter how old they are or how much money they make or where they come from. The prevailing majority of Americans I know think we now live in a post material universe even though when they visit my house they can see I have more viewing material than all of Netflix, they just don’t care because it’s all old anyway. Hand drawn cartoons, black and white movies, SILENT movies even, movies with stunt men. It’s all buggywhips to most people. They fear it.

I’m not saying they are correct and yeah I would/will be funny to see how a single random astrophysical phenomenon could break global high speed Internet for a century and my how that would instantly make all recorded media that they use broken for the rest of their life...but they aren’t counting on that. Most people are too afraid of death to watch a movie older than they are so as long as they can somehow see the same NFL game, listen to (but never buy) the same music and of course all worship Beyoncé together then they’ll never have any interest in their own libraries.

I'm in my late 40's and everybody I know buys physical, even a couple of people I know that get netflix. Because netflix here doesn't have everything, no service does.

At work we sell DVDs like hotcakes, people are constantly asking if we have more stashed out the back and can we bring out more.
These are not all old people, they're poor people.
People rarely ask about VHS tapes, vinyl etc which are the things that collectors are after.

Cash Converters doesn't sell DVD now but they sell used BD, they move heaps.

JB Hi-Fi sells DVD, BD (also 4k) and CD. You don't see many people looking at CD now and less are looking at new DVD, but the aisles are fairly narrow so people are always getting in the way of each other looking at BD.

Generally people don't like streaming around here because you would need to spend like $100aud per month for internet (even spending that doesn't guarantee your connection will be solid enough to deal with a bunch of teenager users) and then probably pay for at least 2 services, plus if you have kids you'll be paying for extra stuff like Xbox Live or PSN...and in some cases both of those examples.


Digital services for movies/tv shows are like video games that require online. The people that are pushing this s**t are convinced every single person in the world can use it but that isn't true.

Edit:
A couple of irl examples I can think of when digital services were a fail...
Girl at work said The 100 latest episodes weren't available yet, another guy was pirating them because that was the only way to keep current (otherwise he'd spend all his time trying to avoid spoilers online) - this was some time ago though, maybe a year.

A friend at work has been catching up on Star Wars stuff, at the moment it's Rebels series but not all seasons are available (can't remember which service he uses but it's just one service iirc).

It would have sounded better though

Not gonna lie, I've just taken the route of piracy on the high seas when it comes to music. I doubt a lot of the stuff I listen to is on itunes or whatever anyway. Unfortunately that hasn't been an option when it comes to a lot of the more or less obscure 90's eurodance which is a lot harder to find on peer to peer networks (this is a much less common problem with 80's stuff for some reason) so I took it up to myself to track down the CD singles when they've been available for cheap and I have to admit, the biggest benefit in owning physical copies is that I can rip them according to my specifications.

I don't even remember the last time I bought a new release CD though, since modern music doesn't really hold any interest to me, and I'm not interested in the "best of" collections of yesteryear's artists since those are the "best of" according to someone else. Plus they're probably "digitally remastered" to sound like a**. The only other CDs I've bought in recent years have been those Deluxe Editions of old Black Sabbath albums.


I can understand why this is the case. DVDs are dirt cheap nowadays, especially releases that aren't new anymore, and they probably cost less than a Netflix subscription, and once they own it, it's theirs to keep; they don't have to worry about having the same amount of money available each month.

Spotify probably only has lossy stuff anyway, which is ok if you don't care but leaves you no choice if you want higher quality listening.
I do use mp3 in my car (I have a mechless player) or if I'm doing a lot of mowing, using the chainsaw etc.
I sometimes even use lossy at home if I'm doing crap around the house and can't be bothered swapping out discs...but I do have a small CD collection if I feel the need for louder high quality listening via my old Richters.



Those are used DVD and the people buying them either can't have netflix (their internet is crap) or if they do it isn't there. Netflix doesn't have everything and from what I've been told our domestic netflix isn't the same as OS. Hell, years ago we didn't have it at all and people were using VPN and crap to get around geoblocking.

It goes back to what I said earlier: people pushing these things seem convinced everyone can use it. Nope.

The internet in the USA is pretty horrible too in a lot of places. I always hear about people exceeding their bandwidth caps and with stuff like streaming becoming increasingly prevalent, I don't understand how they expect that to work out. I live in Finland and despite being relatively sparsely populated, I think most everyone here can get pretty good internet speeds, except maybe somewhere up in Lappland, and apart from some mobile connections, I don't think any of our ISPs have monthly usage limits.

I haven't had a data cap for way more than 15 years, but my connection is ultra slow (1.5Mbit).
People with the higher speeds here, yeah they usually have caps but sometimes you can get high tier without a cap. But the fastest speeds here are rubbish, in fact I've heard some people (with loads of money and in the big cities) have resorted to getting multiple connections and marrying them to get 300Mbit (maybe more idk, wouldn't be much though).