I’m a big fan of owning my own personal library of movies, shows and music, in addition to or instead of buying a subscription service. I don’t necessarily think DVDs are the best medium for that (several redundant multi-terabyte hard drives are better ;)), but getting all your media from streaming services is a sucker’s game.
I know a ~35 year old electrical engineer who doesn’t own a computer, only recently got a TV, and still has a dumb phone with a plan that charges him 25 cents per text message (sent or received).
I know several other people with high-tech brains but luddite tastes, as well. It doesn’t make you dumb or primitive. Just different strokes for different folks.
They are called “early adopters”. I know, boring.
Many people have called me a Luddite. I am just a late adopter (I do not have a smart phone, got a cell phone only after spending half the night in a car rental parking lot merely because I didn’t have one), and I wait for things to irreparably break before I abandon them.
I have at various times sewn my own clothes, darned socks, made cheese from the milk of my own goats, ground wheat to make flour for my bread, and grown most of my own vegetables, among many other things of that nature. But that doesn’t make me a Luddite, just an old back-to-the-land type hippie who doesn’t want to change.
Luddites would probably limit themselves to watching live performances.
I have both streaming and DVD service on Netflix. Streaming sucks. I mostly use it for TV shows, and when something might not be available on DVD.
-
A lot of movies and TV shows, including the best ones and classics, aren’t available on streaming. A very large proportion of the films on streaming I’ve either seen, if they are at all well known, or I’ve never heard of and have no desire to watch.
-
Streaming occasionally halts or skips, causing distraction. DVDs almost never do any more.
-
I frequently want to go back to see bits I missed. It is very much more difficult to go back to the right spot when streaming. I can’t do fast forward or fast reverse very well.
-
I often want to use English subtitles to see exactly what is being said. Subtitle options are slim to none in streaming, especially English subtitles for English shows.
-
While extras and commentary are getting more restricted on rented DVDs, they still are an option. You can’t get commentary on streaming.
I think people who don’t see value in DVDs are just not very selective in what they want to watch. If you just want to watch TV shows and any old movie for light entertainment, streaming may meet your needs. If you want a broader choice and a better experience, you need DVDs.
Colibri, how often do you receive discs that are cracked/will not play? That was a major reason I gave up DVDs from Netflix.
Also, I rarely stream a movie/tv show that doesn’t have captions. I cannot easily watch without them due to my hearing. Maybe it has improved since you last streamed.
I still watch DVDs I rent from Netflix and I buy Blu rays (although nowhere near as many as I used to) but I will say I once mentioned DVDs to a woman in her 20s recently and the way she reacted, I may as well have said I drew on a cave wall. The current generation, by and large, doesn’t care about or like physical media.
This is interesting, because my use case is exactly the opposite: the DVD service fills in the gap where streaming doesn’t have a specific thing that I want.
But otherwise, I find the streaming service far superior. In fact, I’ve used streaming to re-watch movies that are actually in my DVD collection. For me a streaming movie starts immediately, and in the case of DVD rentals there are typically a number of previews that each need to be skipped along with some DVD read time. Also, an obnoxious reminder not to be a criminal. And I’ve never had an issue with Netflix or Amazon captioning (we use it because we like the volume pretty low so we don’t wake the kids in their nearby bedrooms).
I’ve also suffered quite a bit with Netflix DVDs that wouldn’t play. It got so bad that I decided our very old player might be at fault and switched it out. Its too early for it to be statistically significant, but no issues yet.
Within the past year, my VHS/DVD player gave up the ghost after about 10 years, so I went to Target to see if they had any available for sale. To my surprise, they did; I wanted VHS availability because I use it often enough to justify having it.
I have Netflix and like getting DVDs because I’m a big documentary watcher and I often take advantage of the various extras.
Heathen! It’s supposed to be Alphabetical by Director then Chronological! :mad:
I kid! I do try to maintain some semblance of order to make it easier to find things but there’s no one single system I have for the entire library (but, yes, grouping by director then chronological is one of the sub-systems I apply).
This. I’ve got Netflix, Amazon Prime, and HBO Now, but in the same way that I buy hard copies of my favorite books, I buy DVDs (still haven’t gone Blu-ray) of the stuff I know I’ll rewatch - especially tv series, as many have a sell-buy date after which you can’t stream them from anywhere. Hell, you can’t stream or buy a complete run of Mad About You and that was a hit show. No way I’ll be able to find Pushing Daisies or Wonderfalls in a few years.
Nothing wrong with buying DVDs at all. There’s something to be said for having a library of physical media and not everything is on the streaming services, either.
Thanks for the replies, folks. A lot of what you said resonates: old movies that Netflix (et al.) wouldn’t carry, TV shows that nobody except a few of us would want, and so on. I doubt very much that online streaming services would have “The Gumball Rally,” or “Phantom of the Paradise,” or “Car Wash,” but I have each on DVD, and can watch them any time I want.
Thanks again!
PS: One DVD I’d dearly love is “Drive-In.” Again, not something you’d find in streaming, nor at your local video store.
Don’t you end up with an MP4a file that has all sorts of stupid restrictions on it? You can convert it to MP3, sure, but there’s the whole question of whether you actually own it.
The bit that makes me nervous about the general societal move to non-permanent media is exactly this: the ability to edit the past. Today it’s who shot first, tomorrow it’s who we’ve always been at war with. Thank god for the internet hoarders and neo-Luddites clinging to data to keep it all from going down the memory hole.
I’ve tried streaming and it’s sort of a toss-up for me. There are some good aspects to something like Netflix where I can browse through new-to-me material and binge-watch current TV shows (albeit with a 6 to 12 month lag), but it can be hard or impossible to find very specific things, and I have very, very limited funds to spend on subscriptions. DVD’s/Blue-Rays have their good and bad points, too.
I’m not entirely sold on streaming in its current form(s).
Is there a word for someone who has no problem with adopting new tech (although not a first adopter) but doesn’t give up old tech? I still have vinyl records and a turntable, for example, and still use the VHS players I still have. Basically, I don’t stop using old tech even as I use the new stuff.
In all honesty, I’ve never actually used iTunes to make digital copies of my CDs, so I’m not sure about restrictions; I just know that it’s possible to make digital copies of your CDs using iTunes.
I do use iTunes to manage the mp3 files on my iPod, but I’ve always used Exact Audio Copy; the only catch is that you have to fish around on the internet to find a copy of an MP3 encoder, typically LAMEncoder. EAC gets the music from your CD, pulls in song/album titles automatically from its massive database, and then calls on the MP3 encoder to make the MP3 files. Then I add those MP3 files to my iTunes library.
It’s valid, but it’s different, since they don’t come out with new, higher resolution books and paintings every few years.
The books I bought 20 years ago are still just as good as the books I could buy today. And I sometimes reread and loan them.
But I’ve replaced my favorite movies several times. I first owned them on VHS, then replaced with DVD, and when I started thinking about replacing on Bluray, then presumably on some future 4K format, then who knows, I realized that it was silly to buy all but my very favorite movies. In the last 20 years, I went from watching things on a 30" tube TV to a 92" screen with an HD projector. And 10 years from now, it’ll probably be a 130" screen (once I get that home theater built) with a 4K projector. 10 years after that? Ocular implants and rocket boots, probably.
So, for any movie that I’m not going to watch $purchase_price / $rental_price times every decade, it makes more sense for me to rent. I’m only going to keep maybe 10 or 20 movies in my personal library. I might change that position when I can buy a home format that includes every bit captured by the cinema camera in the first place.
Unfortunately, the books I bought 30 and 40 years ago are NOT as good - the paper is deteriorating due to acid content. They are slowly crumbling and there’s not a damn thing I can do to stop it.
Some of my really old books, those 80+, are not doing this as the paper back then was better quality and had little or no acid in it. My oldest book, at 160 years and counting, is in much better shape than many of my more recent volumes. Sad, really.
I’m fortunate that my local library has a very extensive collection of videos. I do purchase some movies I will watch again and again, and TV series that are hard or impossible to find as rentals or streaming.
Grin! I gave up hope long ago, and just stack 'em chronologically by purchase date – but I do give them a serial number and have a database, so I can sort the list any way I want.
Doggone, I love the Information Age!
That’s true. Although it’s still different than with movies. Videos can wear out just like books can. But even if they didn’t, even if you back your DVDs up and have every bit as perfect as when you bought it, it’s still not going to be as good as the version you can rent for $4 a decade later.
So, if you’re buying that $20 video for your personal library, are you really going to watch it 5 times before the next higher resolution version comes out?
I also get most of my videos from the library. Or I did, back before I had an infant and had time to watch movies.
Usually but not always.