Digital vs Tangible

[ABED]

With a disc, you have it forever.

Not always. Things can happen to the discs. Conversely, streaming services can lose shows. For instance, Netflix no longer has Psych. There are plus and minuses for both.

[rereboy]

. With a disc, you have it forever.

I could have said that about my VHSs and I would be wrong. Even if nothing abnormal happens, after 15 or 20 years, it would be perfectly normal for the format to be absolete or for the product to start failing (they do have lifespans).

In that regard, I would expect that a digital buy from a company like Amazon, in normal circunstances, would last at least 15 or 20 years since I don't see the company going under any time soon. Something abnormal could happen, like the account getting hacked, but hey, so could our house get robbed or flooded.

[ABED]

One of the discs from my copy of Alias Season 2 got ruined. I didn't do anything to it. I don't know what happened. There was no sign of physical damage, but for whatever reason, the disc doesn't play. Things happen with physical discs. I had to buy the season again, just to get one single disc.

[Lord Beerus]

Count me in the tangible/physical group. Nothing beat having the actual manga/book in your hands.

[Theophrastus]

. With a disc, you have it forever.

I could have said that about my VHSs and I would be wrong. Even if nothing abnormal happens, after 15 or 20 years, it would be perfectly normal for the format to be absolete or for the product to start failing (they do have lifespans).

In that regard, I would expect that a digital buy from a company like Amazon, in normal circunstances, would last at least 15 or 20 years since I don't see the company going under any time soon. Something abnormal could happen, like the account getting hacked, but hey, so could our house get robbed or flooded.

That's one thing that always kind of annoyed me about the "you don't really own it! They could take it away anytime!" argument against digital. Like...if you're purchasing from a financially solvent company that gives a shit about their brand image (Amazon/Google Play/iTunes/Steam/whatever) the odds of you arbitrarily losing access to your purchases and not being able to recover them are roughly the same as the odds of your house getting hit by a freak lightning strike and your physical collection burning up in the ensuing fire, or any other catastrophic event that could result in the loss of your physical collection.

Even in situations where a game or book or song or video is removed from sale on a digital store for licensing reasons or whatever, that typically doesn't result in them removing it from the libraries of people who've already bought it.

[rereboy]

I still have my VHS of Jurassic Park in the garage somewhere. It's probably from around 1995, so about 20 years old. I don't even know if it works because I no longer have any functional VHS player, nor would I know where to buy one or where to go to repair one.

And somewhere along the line I got the blurays for the Jurassic Park collection.

Any longer than 20 years for the lifespan of these kinds of products (with perhaps the exception of books) is not realistic.

[Jinzoningen MULE]

One of the discs from my copy of Alias Season 2 got ruined. I didn't do anything to it. I don't know what happened. There was no sign of physical damage, but for whatever reason, the disc doesn't play. Things happen with physical discs. I had to buy the season again, just to get one single disc.

I always back up ISO's of my disks to at least one extra drive, usually two if I can. If you keep blank discs around, it's easy enough to reburn a DVD or Blu-ray quickly if one fails.

[ABED]

One of the discs from my copy of Alias Season 2 got ruined. I didn't do anything to it. I don't know what happened. There was no sign of physical damage, but for whatever reason, the disc doesn't play. Things happen with physical discs. I had to buy the season again, just to get one single disc.

I always back up ISO's of my disks to at least one extra drive, usually two if I can. If you keep blank discs around, it's easy enough to reburn a DVD or Blu-ray quickly if one fails.

I'm not technologically adept.

[thejeremymenace]

. With a disc, you have it forever.

I could have said that about my VHSs and I would be wrong. Even if nothing abnormal happens, after 15 or 20 years, it would be perfectly normal for the format to be absolete or for the product to start failing (they do have lifespans).

In that regard, I would expect that a digital buy from a company like Amazon, in normal circunstances, would last at least 15 or 20 years since I don't see the company going under any time soon. Something abnormal could happen, like the account getting hacked, but hey, so could our house get robbed or flooded.

That's one thing that always kind of annoyed me about the "you don't really own it! They could take it away anytime!" argument against digital. Like...if you're purchasing from a financially solvent company that gives a shit about their brand image (Amazon/Google Play/iTunes/Steam/whatever) the odds of you arbitrarily losing access to your purchases and not being able to recover them are roughly the same as the odds of your house getting hit by a freak lightning strike and your physical collection burning up in the ensuing fire, or any other catastrophic event that could result in the loss of your physical collection.

Even in situations where a game or book or song or video is removed from sale on a digital store for licensing reasons or whatever, that typically doesn't result in them removing it from the libraries of people who've already bought it.

To clarify, I was referring to streaming services, not digital copies bought from online (which are essentially permanent). Streaming services can and have taken things off, especially in the case of anime. Hulu had a massive purge just last year.

[Jinzoningen MULE]

One of the discs from my copy of Alias Season 2 got ruined. I didn't do anything to it. I don't know what happened. There was no sign of physical damage, but for whatever reason, the disc doesn't play. Things happen with physical discs. I had to buy the season again, just to get one single disc.

I always back up ISO's of my disks to at least one extra drive, usually two if I can. If you keep blank discs around, it's easy enough to reburn a DVD or Blu-ray quickly if one fails.

I'm not technologically adept.

I learned how to do it in an afternoon, it's not difficult.

[ABED]

Well, my blu ray and DVD collection is gigantic. I have well over 2000 of them and that's being conservative.

[rereboy]

I could have said that about my VHSs and I would be wrong. Even if nothing abnormal happens, after 15 or 20 years, it would be perfectly normal for the format to be absolete or for the product to start failing (they do have lifespans).

In that regard, I would expect that a digital buy from a company like Amazon, in normal circunstances, would last at least 15 or 20 years since I don't see the company going under any time soon. Something abnormal could happen, like the account getting hacked, but hey, so could our house get robbed or flooded.

That's one thing that always kind of annoyed me about the "you don't really own it! They could take it away anytime!" argument against digital. Like...if you're purchasing from a financially solvent company that gives a shit about their brand image (Amazon/Google Play/iTunes/Steam/whatever) the odds of you arbitrarily losing access to your purchases and not being able to recover them are roughly the same as the odds of your house getting hit by a freak lightning strike and your physical collection burning up in the ensuing fire, or any other catastrophic event that could result in the loss of your physical collection.

Even in situations where a game or book or song or video is removed from sale on a digital store for licensing reasons or whatever, that typically doesn't result in them removing it from the libraries of people who've already bought it.

To clarify, I was referring to streaming services, not digital copies bought from online (which are essentially permanent). Streaming services can and have taken things off, especially in the case of anime. Hulu had a massive purge just last year.

Well, those aren't really comparable. A streaming service is closer to a subscription to a package of TV channels than buying physically or digitally something. In fact, the only real difference between a subscription to a package of TV channels and a streaming service is the "on demand" aspect of the streaming service. Without it they would be essentially be the same. And nowadays, at least in my country, subscriptions to cable channels already include some "on demand" capability, and it's possible to playback basically anything that was on the TV up to 7 days ago.

One of the discs from my copy of Alias Season 2 got ruined. I didn't do anything to it. I don't know what happened. There was no sign of physical damage, but for whatever reason, the disc doesn't play. Things happen with physical discs. I had to buy the season again, just to get one single disc.

I always back up ISO's of my disks to at least one extra drive, usually two if I can. If you keep blank discs around, it's easy enough to reburn a DVD or Blu-ray quickly if one fails.

Hard drives cost money and it's impratical when you have anything other than a small collection.

Let's say a guy has 60 blurays discs (quite an easy collection to achieve, since just one series can have multiple discs. Just my Band of Brothers and The Pacific blurays have 5 or 6 blurays discs each). One bluray disc holds up to 25 GBs. That means that just to backup all the data, it would be necessary 1.500 GBs. That means that that guy would have to own a 2 TBs hard drive practically just for that. Two of them if he wanted to backup more than once. And checking amazon.com, it would cost him around $70 to get just one hard drive like that.

Now imagine a guy with a more serious collection. Let's say, 450 blurays discs. That's 11.250 GBs. He wouldn't even be able to back it up in one single hard drive, he would have to get a two 6 TBs ones or 8TBs. And double that if he wanted another backup. Which means hundreds of dollars just for that.

Now imagine a guy with 1000 bluray discs...

Not to mention all the time lost just backing it up.

[ABED]

Any longer than 20 years for the lifespan of these kinds of products (with perhaps the exception of books) is not realistic.

Perhaps for the product lifecycle, but the actual products themselves work fine. The first DVD I ever got is about 20 years old and it plays as well as it ever did. My Super Nintendo works great and I've had that for 25 years.

[rereboy]

Any longer than 20 years for the lifespan of these kinds of products (with perhaps the exception of books) is not realistic.

Perhaps for the product lifecycle, but the actual products themselves work fine. The first DVD I ever got is about 20 years old and it plays as well as it ever did. My Super Nintendo works great and I've had that for 25 years.

Those kind of products might still work fine after 20 or 25 years, but they can also, just as easily, not work, either due to their natural degradation or because the format is obsolete and you can no longer get proper support (like me not even knowing how to get a VHS player anymore even though I still have plenty of VHSs which might still play fine).

So, even though they can still work after all that time, expecting them to be viable for that long, as in "I'm going to buy this product today and I fully expect for it to be fully viable 20 or 25 years from now", is not realistic, imo.

IMO, when buying those kind of products, a person should be expecting them to be viable, at best, for 15-20 years.

Books, however, are a different beast. With care, a person can expect them to be viable for his or her entire lifetime because, even with damage/degradation, they are still probably perfectly viable. That's one of the reasons why I enjoy getting books and comics.

[ABED]

I think DVD's and CD's have a longer life cycle than VHS. I have CD's that are almost as old as I am and they play just fine. Sure, everything degrades over time, but the average life span of discs is longer than you assume, especially if you take simple precautions like proper storage.

[Theophrastus]

Those kind of products might still work fine after 20 or 25 years, but they can also, just as easily, not work, either due to their natural degradation or because the format is obsolete and you can no longer get proper support (like me not even knowing how to get a VHS player anymore even though I still have plenty of VHSs which might still play fine).

DVD Player/VCR combos were a thing for a pretty long time. ...Seems like electronics companies finally stopped producing new ones a while ago, though, so you'd have to pick up a used/refurbished model from somewhere.

[rereboy]

Those kind of products might still work fine after 20 or 25 years, but they can also, just as easily, not work, either due to their natural degradation or because the format is obsolete and you can no longer get proper support (like me not even knowing how to get a VHS player anymore even though I still have plenty of VHSs which might still play fine).

DVD Player/VCR combos were a thing for a pretty long time. ...Seems like electronics companies finally stopped producing new ones a while ago, though, so you'd have to pick up a used/refurbished model from somewhere.

Oh, I don't doubt that it's possible to find a way to get a VHS player, even today. But it's more of a novelty than anything else. Clearly, for my VHS bought in 1995, 20 years later, there is no longer proper support. Even for early VHS tapes, which were sold in the early 80s, 25 years later (2005 and beyond) the support was already starting to become problematic.

[Jinzoningen MULE]

Hard drives cost money and it's impratical when you have anything other than a small collection.

Let's say a guy has 60 blurays discs (quite an easy collection to achieve, since just one series can have multiple discs. Just my Band of Brothers and The Pacific blurays have 5 or 6 blurays discs each). One bluray disc holds up to 25 GBs. That means that just to backup all the data, it would be necessary 1.500 GBs. That means that that guy would have to own a 2 TBs hard drive practically just for that. Two of them if he wanted to backup more than once. And checking amazon.com, it would cost him around $70 to get just one hard drive like that.

Now imagine a guy with a more serious collection. Let's say, 450 blurays discs. That's 11.250 GBs. He wouldn't even be able to back it up in one single hard drive, he would have to get a two 6 TBs ones or 8TBs. And double that if he wanted another backup. Which means hundreds of dollars just for that.

Now imagine a guy with 1000 bluray discs...

Not to mention all the time lost just backing it up.

Admittedly, I'm not much of a collector. However, I'm not sure if you're aware how cheap memory actually is these days. It wouldn't be all that expensive comparatively if you're already collecting hundreds of disks. Time is the only problem, but it's easy enough to run in the background. I'm just not getting the issue.

[thejeremymenace]

Now imagine a guy with 1000 bluray discs...

Not to mention all the time lost just backing it up.

This. I don't have 1000 (I think) but my collection isn't small. It'd take a shitload of hard disks & a shitload of time to rip every single disc I own. For instance, ripping a single-layer BD takes around 25-30 minutes. Completely not worth it.

[rereboy]

Admittedly, I'm not much of a collector. However, I'm not sure if you're aware how cheap memory actually is these days. It wouldn't be all that expensive comparatively if you're already collecting hundreds of disks. Time is the only problem, but it's easy enough to run in the background. I'm just not getting the issue.

I stated in my post that presently a 2TB hard drive would cost around 70$, so I am aware of the prices. Backing up something like 12Tbs would imply spending hundreds of dollars (just a 8TB hard drive on amazon costs $200, at best: https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Expansio ... hard+drive).

I don't consider hundreds of dollars a cheap price for something like that.

In short, the issue is:

- Any significant collection would imply spending hundreds of dollars to back it up.
- Hundreds of dollars is not cheap for that purpose.
- Those hundreds of dollars would be spend just on backs up, nothing else, no other benefit, because the hard drives would always have to be full with just the back ups.
- Backing everything up would take an huge amount of time.
- Commercial Blurays and DVDs actually have a longer lifespan than hard drives, so, actually, the most likely scenario would be the hard drive dying before the dics did, and backing up the collection twice to make sure nothing is ever lost would imply twice the costs and twice the time.
- Just buying the individual series/movie again once we notice that it has failed would almost surely be cheaper than backing everything up over the years and replacing hard drives once they fail.