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- You need to subscribe to ten different services rather than just having one subscription to see the thing you want to watch. Before you just needed a DVD pla

- You need to subscribe to ten different services rather than just having one subscription to see the thing you want to watch. Before you just needed a DVD player

alt227 2y ago
> Before you just needed a DVD player However you also needed to physically buy a copy of every movie you want to watch, instead of signing up for one service and having access to thousandsd immediately.
- robohoe 2y ago
  Yes, and a lot of movies on DVDs cost $10-15
  - vel0city 2y ago
    When DVDs were new, a new release around me would often be more like $25-30. Boxed sets would often be $50+. Of late 90s/early 2000's money, so $30 back then is like $55+ today.
    - sumtechguy 2y ago
      I own lots of DVD's. DVD day was my jam. Most new releases were 20. Sometimes if they were some sort of special collectors edition they would be 25. Then usually after a few months on the shelf they would come down to 15-18. After that the bargain bin. Bluray/HD started around 25-30 when they came out. Box sets were usually like you say 50+ some as much as 200.
  - mrguyorama 2y ago
    Nearly every single individual DVD movie is less than $5 on ebay right now. Streaming will never have a secondhand market.
    - kjkjadksj 2y ago
      How many of those dvds are too scratched though? That would be like half of the blockbuster dvds we’d get. Even tried playing a dvd again at my folks and hit an unskippable scratch I couldn’t even see on the disc.
- jhbadger 2y ago
  Or rent a movie for a couple of bucks. Or check out a DVD for free from a public library.
  - jasode 2y ago
    >Or check out a DVD for free from a public library. Major downsides to that alternative. My 80-year old friend started borrowing DVDs from the local library 6 months ago as a personal protest against Amazon Prime adding ads to their streaming. So far, made 3 trips to borrow DVDs and all had various issues: 1) checked out White Collar tv seasons but library only had seasons 1 to 3. Library didn't have last 3 seasons at all. 2) then checked out a British tv series with 10 seasons. The 10th season had 3 discs and the middle disc was so scratched up by a previous borrower that it was unplayable. (The library doesn't have a bunch of duplicate DVDs like Blockbuster Video rentals.) 3) then checked out another series that has 8 discs but only got 6 because 2 of them are already checked out by another patron. Now this means repeatedly checking the library if the other 2 finally got returned so she can borrow them. On top of those problems, the library has a very small selection in comparison to streaming. She estimates she'll exhaust the DVDs sitting on the library's shelves in a few months and have nothing to watch. Another huge negative to DVDs is that she can't play them (directly) on her iPad. Her exercise bike had a mount for an iPad and she used it to watch video streams from Amazon Prime. She was spoiled by the conveniences of streaming and does not look back on DVDs with any romantic nostalgia at all. The only reason she doesn't just subscribe to Netflix or HBO streaming to get back that convenience was she didn't think she could afford it on her Social Security income. On the other hand, the Amazon Prime Video streaming (without ads) was already part of her Amazon subscription.
    - nradov 2y ago
      Even back when Netflix had a DVD rental service the media quality was kind of crap. I frequently got halfway through a movie only to have it skip and refuse to play due to scratches.
    - reginald78 2y ago
      I used to use netflix DVD as a great supplement to a few streaming services. For awhile they had just about everything and were pretty reliable, which meant the occasional extra media didn't require a separate service just a bit of waiting. But then they let it rot and stopped replacing disks before finally shutting it down. I wish they'd just sold it and let some one else run it for maintenance costs but I guess it was probably also a competitor to their more profitable streaming service.
- bamboozled 2y ago
  Renting worked fine for me
- fuzzfactor 2y ago
  For a while there, most desktop PCs came with two optical disk units, one player and one player/burner. So the original disk could be copied to writable media. There definitely would "occasionally" be a movie lover who wasn't actually buying those copies.
  - throwaway04267 2y ago
    You could manage that with only one drive, where you would just store the image on the HD temporarily. You could save space by removing unwanted content, such as foreign sound tracks, subtitles and extras. Sometimes I would even skip the end credits.
gwbas1c 2y ago
Which had "stupid geographical restrictions"
- KETHERCORTEX 2y ago
  Once you have a player and a disk, you are able to move with them wherever you want.
  - gwbas1c 2y ago
    You still had to deal with PAL <-> NTSC issues.
    - shiroiushi 2y ago
      No problem, you just bring your TV with you when you travel. /s
    - astrange 2y ago
      Computers aren't much better here. You can't display either a PAL or NTSC movie properly on a 60fps display because neither 24 or 50 divide into that.
- layer8 2y ago
  Multi-region players were always available. Many players could also be made region-free by a “secret” remote control button sequence.
layer8 2y ago
Streaming services are generally still more cost-effective, but the multiple subscriptions and different interfaces are an annoyance, as are differences between services in how easily you can circumvent regional restrictions. Physical media are more straightforward and consistent. Furthermore, once you own a disc you can use it “forever”, whereas with streaming services you don’t know what will or won’t be available in a few years. Many movies and series that are available on physical media are not available on streaming, though for newer productions that also goes in the other direction.

- You need to subscribe to ten different services rather than just having one subscription to see the thing you want to watch. Before you just needed a DVD player

alt227 2y ago

> Before you just needed a DVD player However you also needed to physically buy a copy of every movie you want to watch, instead of signing up for one service and having access to thousandsd immediately.

robohoe 2y ago
Yes, and a lot of movies on DVDs cost $10-15
- vel0city 2y ago
  When DVDs were new, a new release around me would often be more like $25-30. Boxed sets would often be $50+. Of late 90s/early 2000's money, so $30 back then is like $55+ today.
  - sumtechguy 2y ago
    I own lots of DVD's. DVD day was my jam. Most new releases were 20. Sometimes if they were some sort of special collectors edition they would be 25. Then usually after a few months on the shelf they would come down to 15-18. After that the bargain bin. Bluray/HD started around 25-30 when they came out. Box sets were usually like you say 50+ some as much as 200.
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  Nearly every single individual DVD movie is less than $5 on ebay right now. Streaming will never have a secondhand market.
  - kjkjadksj 2y ago
    How many of those dvds are too scratched though? That would be like half of the blockbuster dvds we’d get. Even tried playing a dvd again at my folks and hit an unskippable scratch I couldn’t even see on the disc.
jhbadger 2y ago
Or rent a movie for a couple of bucks. Or check out a DVD for free from a public library.
- jasode 2y ago
  >Or check out a DVD for free from a public library. Major downsides to that alternative. My 80-year old friend started borrowing DVDs from the local library 6 months ago as a personal protest against Amazon Prime adding ads to their streaming. So far, made 3 trips to borrow DVDs and all had various issues: 1) checked out White Collar tv seasons but library only had seasons 1 to 3. Library didn't have last 3 seasons at all. 2) then checked out a British tv series with 10 seasons. The 10th season had 3 discs and the middle disc was so scratched up by a previous borrower that it was unplayable. (The library doesn't have a bunch of duplicate DVDs like Blockbuster Video rentals.) 3) then checked out another series that has 8 discs but only got 6 because 2 of them are already checked out by another patron. Now this means repeatedly checking the library if the other 2 finally got returned so she can borrow them. On top of those problems, the library has a very small selection in comparison to streaming. She estimates she'll exhaust the DVDs sitting on the library's shelves in a few months and have nothing to watch. Another huge negative to DVDs is that she can't play them (directly) on her iPad. Her exercise bike had a mount for an iPad and she used it to watch video streams from Amazon Prime. She was spoiled by the conveniences of streaming and does not look back on DVDs with any romantic nostalgia at all. The only reason she doesn't just subscribe to Netflix or HBO streaming to get back that convenience was she didn't think she could afford it on her Social Security income. On the other hand, the Amazon Prime Video streaming (without ads) was already part of her Amazon subscription.
  - nradov 2y ago
    Even back when Netflix had a DVD rental service the media quality was kind of crap. I frequently got halfway through a movie only to have it skip and refuse to play due to scratches.
  - reginald78 2y ago
    I used to use netflix DVD as a great supplement to a few streaming services. For awhile they had just about everything and were pretty reliable, which meant the occasional extra media didn't require a separate service just a bit of waiting. But then they let it rot and stopped replacing disks before finally shutting it down. I wish they'd just sold it and let some one else run it for maintenance costs but I guess it was probably also a competitor to their more profitable streaming service.
bamboozled 2y ago
Renting worked fine for me
fuzzfactor 2y ago
For a while there, most desktop PCs came with two optical disk units, one player and one player/burner. So the original disk could be copied to writable media. There definitely would "occasionally" be a movie lover who wasn't actually buying those copies.
- throwaway04267 2y ago
  You could manage that with only one drive, where you would just store the image on the HD temporarily. You could save space by removing unwanted content, such as foreign sound tracks, subtitles and extras. Sometimes I would even skip the end credits.

gwbas1c 2y ago

Which had "stupid geographical restrictions"

KETHERCORTEX 2y ago
Once you have a player and a disk, you are able to move with them wherever you want.
- gwbas1c 2y ago
  You still had to deal with PAL <-> NTSC issues.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    No problem, you just bring your TV with you when you travel. /s
  - astrange 2y ago
    Computers aren't much better here. You can't display either a PAL or NTSC movie properly on a 60fps display because neither 24 or 50 divide into that.
layer8 2y ago
Multi-region players were always available. Many players could also be made region-free by a “secret” remote control button sequence.

layer8 2y ago

Streaming services are generally still more cost-effective, but the multiple subscriptions and different interfaces are an annoyance, as are differences between services in how easily you can circumvent regional restrictions. Physical media are more straightforward and consistent. Furthermore, once you own a disc you can use it “forever”, whereas with streaming services you don’t know what will or won’t be available in a few years. Many movies and series that are available on physical media are not available on streaming, though for newer productions that also goes in the other direction.