5 ms·

Physical Media Is Cool Again. Streaming Services Have Themselves to Blame

56 points by coloneltcb 1y ago

pryelluw 1y ago
To this day I refuse to buy digital only media. Hoping DVDs or blue rays take off again. Maybe something else? I’m not up to date with the modern physical media formats. Correction: I meant to speak of my refusal to buy downloadable media like tv shows, movies, video games or music. As penance, I shall force myself to write maven config for old Java projects.
- slyfox125 1y ago
  Likewise. UHD blurays are still quite common; perhaps not in physical stores so much, but that holds true for many products.
- hmry 1y ago
  Optical disc media is pretty great, if only they didn't scratch so easily... Or get completely destroyed if something sticks to the label side and you try to pull it off... Or delaminate themselves from old age... Enclosed discs like Minidisc solve most of those, but still die from age. Still hope they can perfect those "laser-created point clouds in glass cubes" media someday
  - i80and 1y ago
    I recently started an effort to make backups of all of my DVDs and blurays, and it's not a lot but I do have a number of older discs of both sorts that now have errors or even can't be read at all despite only leaving their cases a handful of times and having no visual damage. It's been sobering for me.
    - pradmatic 1y ago
      What software are you using for this?
      - beej71 1y ago
        Not the parent, but I've been using Handbrake for DVDs and good old CD Paranoia for CDs.
      - btrettel 1y ago
        I'm not them, but I've had good success with ~20 year old CD-Rs using GNU ddrescue. https://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ https://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ Not everything was recoverable, but the vast vast majority was.
      - i80and 1y ago
        MakeMKV
    - vel0city 1y ago
      What brand/model of discs had high failure rates? I've yet to lose any data after validating a good burn on any M-DISC DVD even well over a decade now. I have also not experienced any loss in data for Verbatim Blu-rays after validating the burn.
      - 14 1y ago
        I remember back when I was making xbox 360 back ups buying a cheap dvd just would not work most of the time getting to many errors. I think it was the Verbatim brand also burned at a slow speed that seemed to be the most successful. My thought with that is that being cheap to save a few bucks on on discs might cost you your data. Buy the trusted brands who have a proven track record.
        aspenmayer 1y ago
        Yeah, I remember finding a good supply of Verbatim DVD+/-Rs and +RWs, and iirc the -Rs seemed to work better for my particular stock internal optical drive, and a slow burn speed was key. Once I got FTP setup to my desktop and sorted out the FATX situation, I upgraded my internal HDD and didn't really mess with disc-based backups for 360 as it didn't seem worth the hassle once I got it ironed out, which I'll admit was a decently complex project involving hot-swapping, but not much more complicated than the initial drive firmware flash. They're fun machines to mod, especially as I had just finished an OG Xbox softmod project at the time (~2007). Edit: This might be relevant to your interests, and to others interested in 360 modding. https://github.com/grimdoomer/Xbox360BadUpdate https://github.com/grimdoomer/Xbox360BadUpdate > Bad Update is a non-persistent software only hypervisor exploit for Xbox 360 that works on the latest (17559) software version. This repository contains the exploit files that can be used on an Xbox 360 console to run unsigned code. Addendum: Modern Vintage Gamer's video of the exploit, which is amazing to see. I had no idea 360 softmods were a thing, and the exploit can run against a free trial version of a retail game, which is just chef's kiss. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycY09EUm8wA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycY09EUm8wA > Any Xbox 360 can now be hacked in less than one minute > A look a the newest V1.2 Badupdate Exploit - Xbox 360 software only Hypervisor Hack that we covered back in March 2025. It requires an Xbox 360 - any model including the later Winchester revisions! A USB flash drive and Rock Band Blitz Trial. This updated 1.2 hack runs much faster and reliable and is now a recommended option to hack any Xbox 360. In today's episode we take a closer look at the BadUpdate V1.2 exploit.
  - cosmic_cheese 1y ago
    Minidiscs are the most practical physical media I’ve come across. The used discs I’ve bought are 20-25 years old and don’t have a case or anything and still play like they were recorded yesterday, even when their contents make it clear that they were recorded to shortly after the disc was manufactured. The CDs and DVDs I’ve burned of the same age are comparably in much poorer shape, some being entirely unreadable. Their size is great, too, being about as small as you can get while still being easy to handle across the gamut of human hand sizes yet too big to easily lose, and they’re more fun than SD and CF cards with their outer plastic casings coming in all sorts of colors and patterns. A new media format that takes these strengths and fuses them with those of flash storage would be wonderful. The only thing is that I don’t know how you’d solve is the bit rot problem flash has when spending extended time powered down — maybe dedicated storage for parity data? Capacitors that hold just enough juice to keep the flash “alive”? Redundant flash chips? This isn’t my area of expertise so I’m just throwing things at the wall haha.
- nayuki 1y ago
  > I refuse to buy digital only media. DVDs are digital-only media - "Digital Versatile Disc". There is no analog component in it. The disc stores data digitally. Furthermore, if by digital you mean online distribution, well, you aren't buying media by definition. You're downloading bits from a wire (or radio wave) and storing it on your own physical media. Among the general public, there is rampant terminology abuse and devaluing of what the word "digital" means - it is in contrast to "analog", not in contrast to physical, non-electronic, non-online, etc. For example, you can make digital logic gates out of mechanical LEGO; you can deliver digital data on floppy disks via sneakers.
  - linotype 1y ago
    This is an absurd level of pedantry, everyone knew what OP meant.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      I think it’s valid to distinguish between digital (downloaded) and digital (streamed), which OP and the article fail to do. The problem is owned (for practical purposes) versus leased content. Not digital or physical.
    - acheron 1y ago
      Words mean things.
      - Dylan16807 1y ago
        If we're going to be super pedantic about exactly what words mean, then a DVD is digital but it's not "digital only". Every single owner has a physical disc with the movie on it. Digital only ownership is a few bytes abstracted into some database somewhere, and the movie files themselves are also very loosely correlated with hardware.
        nayuki 1y ago
        > a DVD is digital but it's not "digital only". Every single owner has a physical disc with the movie on it. That satisfies the definition of "digital only" - every person who has the movie (conceptually speaking) has a digital version of it. This holds true as long as no one tried to print the movie onto paper as an analog image, or export it to VHS or something like that. Note that digital does not contrast with physical. A DVD is a physical object that holds digital data. A sequence of pulses on an Ethernet cable conveys digital information via waves of electromagnetic energy. > Digital only ownership is a few bytes abstracted into some database somewhere And somebody still ultimately has to store at least one copy of the movie on a physical medium somewhere. > Digital only ownership I think we can all agree that if you own some coins/tokens/NFTs on Bitcoin/Ethereum/etc., that is a very pure form of digital-only ownership. There is no intuitive physical object that corresponds to the ownership of a digital token. Yet, that blockchain database is publicly available and mirrored millions of times; it is not locked up behind a single company. This differs from what you were trying to say, where I interpret your notion of "digital-only" to mean that "the movie studio hosts the file on its server and streams it to you on demand, but you can never download a copy of the movie to keep for yourself". Ultimately, "digital" just means that the information you wanted is a finite sequence of 0s and 1s, as opposed to some analog signal with infinite variation. "Digital" says nothing about who owns it, how many copies exist, how it is delivered, etc.
add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
Are they really blaming anyone? This is a good thing, but it's destined to remain pretty niche. The vast majority of people do what's easiest and what everyone else is doing. They like streaming and watch whatever is put on their home screen. Tons of people watched Electric State, Red Notice, The Tomorrow War. Citadel got a season 2.
- xg15 1y ago
  Some people used to have the TV running constantly, solely as "background noise", without any interest in what's on screen. Those same people will likely also prop up viewer or listener numbers for literally whatever the streamer put up on screen next. But this does not tell you anything about the actual interest in the media.
  - add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
    Right. At least with cinema it takes a certain amount of intention to choose to go out and see something. Not that there aren't successful bad movies anyway, but at least the audience has agency.
nayuki 1y ago
I'd say the article is largely correct, but I have at least one nitpick: > ‘How do you burn a CD?’ It’s something that was common for us growing up, but that’s knowledge that’s being lost as everything is sort of transitioning to digital.” This paragraph is using a colloquial but wrong definition of the word "digital" - in this context it seems to mean "online audio/video distribution". This is wrong because CDs, by definition, hold digital data. Some of us who are old enough to have lived through the transition from unapologetically analog audio media - vinyl records and magnetic cassette tape - to digital, optical compact discs. That was the real transition to digital, not the transition from digital physical media to digital online downloads (both are still digital). Likewise, the transition from analog broadcast TV and analog VHS tapes to digital TV and VCD/DVD/BD was less than 20 years ago. (Side note: LaserDisc stores video analogly but audio digitally.) Digital is a word that fundamentally contrasts with analog - where analog means infinite variation, no resistance to noise, and imperfect copies. Digital simply means being composed of integers, which further implies finite information and allows perfect copies. The misuse of the word digital to mean superfluous things is a mockery to the monumental human achievement in inventing and perfecting digital machines and methods of storing/transmitting images and sounds, being much higher quality than previous analog technologies (e.g. photographic film) and allowing information to be delivered reliably across wider space and time. Digital does not imply electronic, new and high-tech, virtual, or communications-based (as opposed to transporting matter-based recording media). Mechanical LEGO logic is digital. DNA is digital and very old. Alphabets are digital (we agree today there are exactly 26 letters in English). The telegraph network was digital and messages were relayed by humans. A "virtual" meeting involving digital videoconferencing could just as well be held using analog NTSC video channels; the fact that digital technology happened to be used doesn't define the virtual meeting. "Digital marketing" is understood as doing business on the web/Internet through electronic online communications, but I could argue that a paper brochure designed on a digital computer is also "digital marketing".
- idorosen 1y ago
  Languages change over time.
  - 1y ago
unnamed76ri 1y ago
I cancelled Spotify when they stopped paying me any royalties on my music. I’m a small time artist and didn’t hit their 1,000 streams per year per song threshold for most of my songs. I know I am just one small example, but their decision to cheat me out of a few dollars has cost them hundreds in subscription fees.
- m463 1y ago
  how can they do that? It seems it would be more fair to pay a listing minimum, then royalties if they meet a certain criteria.
  - physicles 1y ago
    Why would Spotify care about what’s fair?
    - m463 1y ago
      I was thinking more of "fairness/justice" by some authority that is not spotify.
  - unnamed76ri 1y ago
    They can do it because the hundreds of thousands of artists they did it to can’t afford to sue them. All the big name artists and the record labels (that own part of Spotify) are all benefiting from the scheme so they won’t do anything about it.
daft_pink 1y ago
It’s not physical media, but I’ve been buying iTunes copies of Movies and TV Shows instead of streaming. I feel it’s better to own my favorite classics from the golden age of film and tv vs paying by the month for the latest stupid remake. It’s a huge shift from how I felt a few years ago.
- m463 1y ago
  > own my favorite classics Does apple say you own them, or does it say "you are licensing the content" like amazon says with kindle books?
  - daft_pink 1y ago
    I would say that my experience purchasing stuff from Apple iTunes/TV and Amazon Kindle is that they generally don't cheat you. I think the convenience is worth the risk.
FMecha 1y ago
Odds of Limited Run Games-style "exploitation" of this trend? That was already concerning for games.
- m463 1y ago
  Didn't disney do that? Decades ago they would have various movies available on DVD only at certain times, then they would be pulled.
  - FMecha 1y ago
    I didn't have Disney Vault thing in mind when I came up with that. LRG's (and similar companies) schtick was that they're semi-upfront about pandering to collectors, especially with the extra goodies (sometimes of varying quality when they finally delivered). EDIT: Especially for physical releases of streaming-only shows/films, since these companies mainly do that for digital-only games.
m463 1y ago
Tell that to say, Target. They got rid of DVDs in their stores. although strangely I saw them selling vinyl albums.

56 points by coloneltcb 1y ago

To this day I refuse to buy digital only media. Hoping DVDs or blue rays take off again. Maybe something else? I’m not up to date with the modern physical media formats. Correction: I meant to speak of my refusal to buy downloadable media like tv shows, movies, video games or music. As penance, I shall force myself to write maven config for old Java projects.

slyfox125 1y ago
Likewise. UHD blurays are still quite common; perhaps not in physical stores so much, but that holds true for many products.
hmry 1y ago
Optical disc media is pretty great, if only they didn't scratch so easily... Or get completely destroyed if something sticks to the label side and you try to pull it off... Or delaminate themselves from old age... Enclosed discs like Minidisc solve most of those, but still die from age. Still hope they can perfect those "laser-created point clouds in glass cubes" media someday
- i80and 1y ago
  I recently started an effort to make backups of all of my DVDs and blurays, and it's not a lot but I do have a number of older discs of both sorts that now have errors or even can't be read at all despite only leaving their cases a handful of times and having no visual damage. It's been sobering for me.
  - pradmatic 1y ago
    What software are you using for this?
    - beej71 1y ago
      Not the parent, but I've been using Handbrake for DVDs and good old CD Paranoia for CDs.
    - btrettel 1y ago
      I'm not them, but I've had good success with ~20 year old CD-Rs using GNU ddrescue. https://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ https://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ Not everything was recoverable, but the vast vast majority was.
    - i80and 1y ago
      MakeMKV
  - vel0city 1y ago
    What brand/model of discs had high failure rates? I've yet to lose any data after validating a good burn on any M-DISC DVD even well over a decade now. I have also not experienced any loss in data for Verbatim Blu-rays after validating the burn.
    - 14 1y ago
      I remember back when I was making xbox 360 back ups buying a cheap dvd just would not work most of the time getting to many errors. I think it was the Verbatim brand also burned at a slow speed that seemed to be the most successful. My thought with that is that being cheap to save a few bucks on on discs might cost you your data. Buy the trusted brands who have a proven track record.
      - aspenmayer 1y ago
        Yeah, I remember finding a good supply of Verbatim DVD+/-Rs and +RWs, and iirc the -Rs seemed to work better for my particular stock internal optical drive, and a slow burn speed was key. Once I got FTP setup to my desktop and sorted out the FATX situation, I upgraded my internal HDD and didn't really mess with disc-based backups for 360 as it didn't seem worth the hassle once I got it ironed out, which I'll admit was a decently complex project involving hot-swapping, but not much more complicated than the initial drive firmware flash. They're fun machines to mod, especially as I had just finished an OG Xbox softmod project at the time (~2007). Edit: This might be relevant to your interests, and to others interested in 360 modding. https://github.com/grimdoomer/Xbox360BadUpdate https://github.com/grimdoomer/Xbox360BadUpdate > Bad Update is a non-persistent software only hypervisor exploit for Xbox 360 that works on the latest (17559) software version. This repository contains the exploit files that can be used on an Xbox 360 console to run unsigned code. Addendum: Modern Vintage Gamer's video of the exploit, which is amazing to see. I had no idea 360 softmods were a thing, and the exploit can run against a free trial version of a retail game, which is just chef's kiss. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycY09EUm8wA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycY09EUm8wA > Any Xbox 360 can now be hacked in less than one minute > A look a the newest V1.2 Badupdate Exploit - Xbox 360 software only Hypervisor Hack that we covered back in March 2025. It requires an Xbox 360 - any model including the later Winchester revisions! A USB flash drive and Rock Band Blitz Trial. This updated 1.2 hack runs much faster and reliable and is now a recommended option to hack any Xbox 360. In today's episode we take a closer look at the BadUpdate V1.2 exploit.
- cosmic_cheese 1y ago
  Minidiscs are the most practical physical media I’ve come across. The used discs I’ve bought are 20-25 years old and don’t have a case or anything and still play like they were recorded yesterday, even when their contents make it clear that they were recorded to shortly after the disc was manufactured. The CDs and DVDs I’ve burned of the same age are comparably in much poorer shape, some being entirely unreadable. Their size is great, too, being about as small as you can get while still being easy to handle across the gamut of human hand sizes yet too big to easily lose, and they’re more fun than SD and CF cards with their outer plastic casings coming in all sorts of colors and patterns. A new media format that takes these strengths and fuses them with those of flash storage would be wonderful. The only thing is that I don’t know how you’d solve is the bit rot problem flash has when spending extended time powered down — maybe dedicated storage for parity data? Capacitors that hold just enough juice to keep the flash “alive”? Redundant flash chips? This isn’t my area of expertise so I’m just throwing things at the wall haha.
nayuki 1y ago
> I refuse to buy digital only media. DVDs are digital-only media - "Digital Versatile Disc". There is no analog component in it. The disc stores data digitally. Furthermore, if by digital you mean online distribution, well, you aren't buying media by definition. You're downloading bits from a wire (or radio wave) and storing it on your own physical media. Among the general public, there is rampant terminology abuse and devaluing of what the word "digital" means - it is in contrast to "analog", not in contrast to physical, non-electronic, non-online, etc. For example, you can make digital logic gates out of mechanical LEGO; you can deliver digital data on floppy disks via sneakers.
- linotype 1y ago
  This is an absurd level of pedantry, everyone knew what OP meant.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    I think it’s valid to distinguish between digital (downloaded) and digital (streamed), which OP and the article fail to do. The problem is owned (for practical purposes) versus leased content. Not digital or physical.
  - acheron 1y ago
    Words mean things.
    - Dylan16807 1y ago
      If we're going to be super pedantic about exactly what words mean, then a DVD is digital but it's not "digital only". Every single owner has a physical disc with the movie on it. Digital only ownership is a few bytes abstracted into some database somewhere, and the movie files themselves are also very loosely correlated with hardware.
      - nayuki 1y ago
        > a DVD is digital but it's not "digital only". Every single owner has a physical disc with the movie on it. That satisfies the definition of "digital only" - every person who has the movie (conceptually speaking) has a digital version of it. This holds true as long as no one tried to print the movie onto paper as an analog image, or export it to VHS or something like that. Note that digital does not contrast with physical. A DVD is a physical object that holds digital data. A sequence of pulses on an Ethernet cable conveys digital information via waves of electromagnetic energy. > Digital only ownership is a few bytes abstracted into some database somewhere And somebody still ultimately has to store at least one copy of the movie on a physical medium somewhere. > Digital only ownership I think we can all agree that if you own some coins/tokens/NFTs on Bitcoin/Ethereum/etc., that is a very pure form of digital-only ownership. There is no intuitive physical object that corresponds to the ownership of a digital token. Yet, that blockchain database is publicly available and mirrored millions of times; it is not locked up behind a single company. This differs from what you were trying to say, where I interpret your notion of "digital-only" to mean that "the movie studio hosts the file on its server and streams it to you on demand, but you can never download a copy of the movie to keep for yourself". Ultimately, "digital" just means that the information you wanted is a finite sequence of 0s and 1s, as opposed to some analog signal with infinite variation. "Digital" says nothing about who owns it, how many copies exist, how it is delivered, etc.

add-sub-mul-div 1y ago

Are they really blaming anyone? This is a good thing, but it's destined to remain pretty niche. The vast majority of people do what's easiest and what everyone else is doing. They like streaming and watch whatever is put on their home screen. Tons of people watched Electric State, Red Notice, The Tomorrow War. Citadel got a season 2.

xg15 1y ago
Some people used to have the TV running constantly, solely as "background noise", without any interest in what's on screen. Those same people will likely also prop up viewer or listener numbers for literally whatever the streamer put up on screen next. But this does not tell you anything about the actual interest in the media.
- add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
  Right. At least with cinema it takes a certain amount of intention to choose to go out and see something. Not that there aren't successful bad movies anyway, but at least the audience has agency.

nayuki 1y ago

I'd say the article is largely correct, but I have at least one nitpick: > ‘How do you burn a CD?’ It’s something that was common for us growing up, but that’s knowledge that’s being lost as everything is sort of transitioning to digital.” This paragraph is using a colloquial but wrong definition of the word "digital" - in this context it seems to mean "online audio/video distribution". This is wrong because CDs, by definition, hold digital data. Some of us who are old enough to have lived through the transition from unapologetically analog audio media - vinyl records and magnetic cassette tape - to digital, optical compact discs. That was the real transition to digital, not the transition from digital physical media to digital online downloads (both are still digital). Likewise, the transition from analog broadcast TV and analog VHS tapes to digital TV and VCD/DVD/BD was less than 20 years ago. (Side note: LaserDisc stores video analogly but audio digitally.) Digital is a word that fundamentally contrasts with analog - where analog means infinite variation, no resistance to noise, and imperfect copies. Digital simply means being composed of integers, which further implies finite information and allows perfect copies. The misuse of the word digital to mean superfluous things is a mockery to the monumental human achievement in inventing and perfecting digital machines and methods of storing/transmitting images and sounds, being much higher quality than previous analog technologies (e.g. photographic film) and allowing information to be delivered reliably across wider space and time. Digital does not imply electronic, new and high-tech, virtual, or communications-based (as opposed to transporting matter-based recording media). Mechanical LEGO logic is digital. DNA is digital and very old. Alphabets are digital (we agree today there are exactly 26 letters in English). The telegraph network was digital and messages were relayed by humans. A "virtual" meeting involving digital videoconferencing could just as well be held using analog NTSC video channels; the fact that digital technology happened to be used doesn't define the virtual meeting. "Digital marketing" is understood as doing business on the web/Internet through electronic online communications, but I could argue that a paper brochure designed on a digital computer is also "digital marketing".

idorosen 1y ago
Languages change over time.
- 1y ago

unnamed76ri 1y ago

I cancelled Spotify when they stopped paying me any royalties on my music. I’m a small time artist and didn’t hit their 1,000 streams per year per song threshold for most of my songs. I know I am just one small example, but their decision to cheat me out of a few dollars has cost them hundreds in subscription fees.

m463 1y ago
how can they do that? It seems it would be more fair to pay a listing minimum, then royalties if they meet a certain criteria.
- physicles 1y ago
  Why would Spotify care about what’s fair?
  - m463 1y ago
    I was thinking more of "fairness/justice" by some authority that is not spotify.
- unnamed76ri 1y ago
  They can do it because the hundreds of thousands of artists they did it to can’t afford to sue them. All the big name artists and the record labels (that own part of Spotify) are all benefiting from the scheme so they won’t do anything about it.

daft_pink 1y ago

It’s not physical media, but I’ve been buying iTunes copies of Movies and TV Shows instead of streaming. I feel it’s better to own my favorite classics from the golden age of film and tv vs paying by the month for the latest stupid remake. It’s a huge shift from how I felt a few years ago.

m463 1y ago
> own my favorite classics Does apple say you own them, or does it say "you are licensing the content" like amazon says with kindle books?
- daft_pink 1y ago
  I would say that my experience purchasing stuff from Apple iTunes/TV and Amazon Kindle is that they generally don't cheat you. I think the convenience is worth the risk.

FMecha 1y ago

Odds of Limited Run Games-style "exploitation" of this trend? That was already concerning for games.

m463 1y ago
Didn't disney do that? Decades ago they would have various movies available on DVD only at certain times, then they would be pulled.
- FMecha 1y ago
  I didn't have Disney Vault thing in mind when I came up with that. LRG's (and similar companies) schtick was that they're semi-upfront about pandering to collectors, especially with the extra goodies (sometimes of varying quality when they finally delivered). EDIT: Especially for physical releases of streaming-only shows/films, since these companies mainly do that for digital-only games.

m463 1y ago

Tell that to say, Target. They got rid of DVDs in their stores. although strangely I saw them selling vinyl albums.