Having grown up in the generation of DVDs and Blu-rays I'm cursed with the inability to ignore streaming video compression artifacts such as blocking, banding,

Having grown up in the generation of DVDs and Blu-rays I'm cursed with the inability to ignore streaming video compression artifacts such as blocking, banding, and ringing. They alone can get me annoyed enough that it breaks my engagement with the film. Any sort of hiccup from packet loss resulting in complete distortion of the video or buffering sends me into a "fsck this sh!t" rage. It completely ruins the experience for me. That means I will never watch a film that I really care about via streaming. I don't have a lot of time to watch films these days, so when I do I always opt for a physical disc to make sure I actually enjoy the experience. In addition I've noticed that it often costs $20 to "rent" a new release via streaming and $30 to buy an actual disc, so it doesn't make any financial sense to me at all to "rent" a crap streaming experience for 2/3 of the cost of buying a high-quality copy of the film. But now there's another problem. I've noticed that many films being released today are streaming-only. One I looked at last week could be "rented" from a streaming service for $20, "bought" from said streaming service for $30, or bought on physical media in JULY 2025. That's right, an entire year from now. In years past I've frequently made it a habit to head down to the local Target in the late afternoon to see what new releases they have in the electronics department. However the last time I went there the Blu-ray section had been completely removed. No doubt because studios are no longer releasing new films on Blu-ray until a motherfscking YEAR after they make it available on streaming. When I asked an associate where the films were he apologetically stammered, "Uh, yeah, sorry, we're, uh, turning down our film section. There are a few stragglers left at the end of the aisle over there." Now there is no way for me to legally get a new release film that I can tolerate watching within a reasonable amount of time. I would garner that it's primarily an artifact (no pun intended) of the current generation having grown up with crap streaming videos, and so they are adapted to it and don't have expectations for quality like those of us from the DVD and Blu-ray generation have. I suppose this is another way it goes to show that knowing how bad most things are and precisely how they're bad is more a curse than a blessing. As I walked out of Target empty-handed I admit I did have a feeling somewhat like wanting the Earth to be steered into the sun. And then I jumped on VPN and pirated the film I wanted to watch.