Okay, before this place explodes into a mass of debris, we need to hash something out: the shift away from physical media (DVDs, Blu-rays, etc.).

I keep hearing that this is the way of the future. Not a big deal for me personally, as long as ALL of the movies (on an international level) that are now available on physical media are COMPLETELY covered by electronic options. I'm excluding illegal downloading from this equation because a "true" shift should be totally legitimate.

But this does not seem to be the case. If physical media truly dies, I am NOT seeing an increase in legitimate electronic options. For example, Netflix keeps reducing their streaming options in favor of mainstream blockbusters and their own television series. Amazon Prime is completely useless. Hulu has been very inconsistent, just recently deleting hundreds of Korean television series from their library as well as other stuff. Criterion seems to move from place to place every other year (how long is Filmstruck gonna last?).

When physical media dies, there's gonna be a HUGE chasm where thousands of movies are no longer available to watch legally. And even IF the transition to electronic media is completed, do we really need to subscribe to a dozen different websites to get it all?

Seems like a really bad idea that's gonna bite us in the ass in the long haul.

I still get physical media. I like having something on disc in my hands.

A better comparison to dvd is itunes/xbox/vod/etc... type of renting/buying.

The comparison to streaming is more vs television.

In 2012, 45000 movies were available to buy on Itunes, once dvd stop to exist (if it happen, in say 2050, because that will not be soon) I would imagine all title will be available to buy in a way like that.

As for streaming, it will become like television now, many different streaming company, all the big studio with they're own, all the biggest one having some exclusive content, with the equivalent of a tv service now putting all of them together on your tv...

When physical media dies...It won't, plain and simple.

All the forecasting that claims otherwise is largely speculative and moreover proceeds from rather shaky premises; in its way stands some fundamentally anthropological 'human nature' arguments regarding Man's relationship with technology as a whole. In short, we use computers, yes, but we ourselves are not computers, or robots. We're individually corporeal beings. We collect things, physical property that we can entertain-and-archive separately, entirely at our own discretion and without any dependency on, or commitment to, a digital storage/network. Hard copies = total personal ownership, for which there will in turn always be a market.

Now, such a market may at most become exclusively high-end, specialized and pricy; something geared towards connoisseurs. But it's always gonna be there. They still publish reading material both and old and new in printed book form, ranging from cheap paperbacks to expensive hardback collectors editions. Current musical artists are still producing new content for trendy LP record distribution. Likewise, a certain healthy demographic of moviegoers or cultured aesthetes will always recognize the presentational (and preservational) qualities inherent in physical media, at least when practiced at its relative best.

I wouldn't worry about it.

There is a legitimate concern here, but I don't think it's just piracy. Piracy existed when you just had physical media, and was just as easily obtained as legitimate discs and casettes.

I'm concerned some suspenders-wearing 19 year old board member at Netflix, at Amazon, at Hulu, at every digital media outlet that has been getting into the game of producing content in addition to distributing it, is going to suggest their material should remain digital-access-only.

I want my DVDs, and I want them for ongoing programming. I don't want my 'copies' of these items to have to be backed-up every 3 years on multiple external units - or a subscription to their distribution center maintained in perpetuity - in order to enjoy them whenever I feel like it.

For example, many shows are now migrating to Amazon Prime, having had a successful first season on cable or satellite television (Fleabag, Fortitude, etc). DVD release info for projects like these should be out by the time their second seasons are being aired, but nothing has been announced. I've got a sinking feeling nothing ever will be, and the shows' distribution on physical media will remain incomplete.

If that's what's happening, I'm going to go ahead and call that the beginning of the end of legitimate acquisition. I'm just not interesting in paying for an easily-corruptable file that is essentially uninsured for inactive subscribers.

Fully understand what you are saying but I disagree that pirated version of movies were as easily obtained in the VHS, early DVD era, at least not were I lived (I would imagine that you could be right in urban era for popular title it was, but not everywhere else)

Secondly (I too still get blurays and prefer it that way in a sense, even thought I love having 0 loading, menu, etc... and have a movie start right away of the hard drive digital version), It would not surprise if it will be easier for the person that bought a movie on Itunes in 2010 to watch it (or have is kid watch it) in 2075 with all the latest supplement and best remastered version of the movie, than for someone that bought the dvd of the movie in 2010.

Physical media tend to have a certain lifespan, pretty much all my floppies disk of the 80's were corrupted and not working in the early 2000 for example. Will see, manufacturer talk about 100, 200 year's life span for dvd/bluray, but will have to see the survival rate.

Steam pretty much killed the physical media in PC video game a long time ago, and there is yet to have an issue (has of now it is just better than what we had before in every possible way, for people with high speed Internet and lot of monthly data)

Well, it's true a physical DVD/BD has a limitation on the number of times it can be read by laser before the damage and wear (even just from the act of being read) becomes too great for it to play without skips - although I will say I've repaired quite a few DVDs easily enough by taking them to a video rental store (in the past) where they had a machine that sanded the scratched layer off without data loss.

But as you suggest, those limitations are far less severe than the shelf-life of a file on HDD. When the upgrade to solid-state flash drives is complete, perhaps it will even match the oldest-produced DVDs, but even then the disk could become unreadable. Even if the manufacturers' promise is off by 50 years, discs will still be more reliable than mass media storage drives.

I'm sure you're correct about the quality and up-to-dateness of digitally-rented copies. I'm concerned about the quality of copies you theoretically own, viewable offline from a storage drive.

I do live in an urban area, so the 1990s VHS and DVD piracy I was talking about was perhaps much more accessible here than elsewhere. Interestingly, physical bootlegs are still a thing, even in NY. I wonder what that says about the digital revolution.

I'm concerned about the quality of copies you theoretically own, viewable offline from a storage drive.

I don't know any system that you cannot always still stream it/redownload it when needed.

That said I'm not much of a digital buyer. But stuff like Xbox/Itunes/etc... you can watch offline, but you can still have access to it even if your HD die (like you said it is too complicated for the size of a large HD movie collection to take care of that yourself)

The only system I know is steam, and when you change computer's (must be my 4th with the same steam account), you really simply reconnect yourself with your account name and all the games you ever bout will be downloaded again and installed.

I've lost a number of Steam games when I lost access to uni email accounts, so I try to avoid it when games I want are available on an alternative platform, these days.

I think the big difference with games, at least for me, is I rarely go back to a game I paid for to play again many years later, whereas there are lots of reasons I might want to see a specific scene or even rewatch a film off my shelf.

If I handled hundreds of games a year and their use became comparable to films for me, I think I'd despise something like Steam where I don't ever really own a reliable copy.

Many of the games I currently play get corrupted every other update, and I routinely have to reinstall them. I can see a situation like that happening with digital film ensembles, where the content or master, or screen-art or some little thing is getting automatically updated every few months as new contracts are made or broken.