Digital vs Tangible

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Digital vs Tangible

Post by ecrockedboston » Sat Feb 04, 2017 9:33 am

Ok, guys. The age old question. Digital vs tangible. Lately, all my videogame purchases have been digital. If you lose, break, have a game stolen, you need to buy it again, whereas a digital purchase can be downloaded infinite times.

Here's the controversial question. Have you ever been tempted to torrent the series? Hundreds of dollars averted in one download. I'm not advocating this method, but $2.99 for orange brick episodes is insane. I personally prefer tangible when it comes to the show.
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Re: Digital vs Tangible

Post by successoroffate » Sat Feb 04, 2017 9:45 am

Tangible and legal...
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Re: Digital vs Tangible

Post by Luso Saiyan » Sat Feb 04, 2017 10:45 am

ecrockedboston wrote:Ok, guys. The age old question. Digital vs tangible. Lately, all my videogame purchases have been digital. If you lose, break, have a game stolen, you need to buy it again, whereas a digital purchase can be downloaded infinite times.
Unless there's some form of online authentication/ping to server protection, in which case your purchases are nothing but rentals and you never own them. Digital or otherwise.

Unlike videogames, movies and series on home video don't use any kind of online authentication, not to mention they have far better quality than digital versions of the same work. So yeah, Blu-ray > all. Although as far as Dragon Ball goes, only the most recent productions got a proper release.

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Re: Digital vs Tangible

Post by coola » Sat Feb 04, 2017 10:58 am

Physical copy whenever it is possible, about year ago someone hacked into my PSN account, and registered 2 PS3, i had to wait 6 months to be able to reset my account, and until then, my entire PS3 digital collection was useless, and i was able to use PS4 only :cry:
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Re: Digital vs Tangible

Post by ecrockedboston » Sat Feb 04, 2017 11:15 am

coola wrote:Physical copy whenever it is possible, about year ago someone hacked into my PSN account, and registered 2 PS3, i had to wait 6 months to be able to reset my account, and until then, my entire PS3 digital collection was useless, and i was able to use PS4 only :cry:
I think I'm going to change my passwords today :silent:
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Re: Digital vs Tangible

Post by SHINOBI-03 » Sat Feb 04, 2017 11:27 am

I much prefer having a tangible copy when affordable. Space and money can be an issue, sure, but having a collection on your shelves feels more satisfying than folders and digital files on your disk.

Also regarding the "digital purchase can be downloaded infinite times", that doesn't work all the time. What if the source was gone like in a DMCA takedown or original license expired and series/game is no longer accessible? What to do when that happens? That's why I prefer the tangible because it stays with me. And in case something happens to them, I can rip the files and store backups prior to that so I wouldn't lose the content.
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Re: Digital vs Tangible

Post by TheGreatness25 » Sat Feb 04, 2017 12:27 pm

I like having tangible. I like to actually see what I own. That's really the only reason. I have Apple Music and there are times where Apple decides to take the song off of its digital library. So I would have to look for the same song from a different album (if it exists). Or like how Netflix or Hulu take shows off. I feel like digital is always iffy. If you pay for an actual digital version, they wouldn't be justified in taking it away, but I always feel like it's possible or it to just disappear.

It's never crossed my mind to own anything related to the series illegally. I've put in way too much money for that, unfortunately. The only things that I've ever illegally owned in my life was music, and now with Apple Music, I don't do that anymore, thankfully.

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Re: Digital vs Tangible

Post by Kokonoe » Sat Feb 04, 2017 12:31 pm

For manga? Prefer digital because I can see higher quality images and much larger depending on my screen. Having books are cool, but I prefer things to take up less space.

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Re: Digital vs Tangible

Post by Kamiccolo9 » Sat Feb 04, 2017 12:39 pm

I have over well over 5,000 books in my home at last count (2011 or so), so space is a pretty big issue for me. I've basically come to accept that, for me, physical copies are for work and work-related stuff, while my entertainment is digital. As for gaming, I only play one multiplayer game, and I'm not too attached to it that when it goes down my life will be destroyed, so the whole "They may shut down our servers" thing doesn't really bother me. I'll get physical copies for collectors' editions and whatnot every now and then, but everything else is digital. Same with movies.
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Re: Digital vs Tangible

Post by rereboy » Sat Feb 04, 2017 12:46 pm

Physical is better, but space is a problem. So, I'm enjoying the digital more now.

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Re: Digital vs Tangible

Post by Nejishiki » Sat Feb 04, 2017 12:48 pm

Physical releases are my preferred choice. I enjoy displaying items dear to me, even though storage is troublesome. I try to avoid digital purchases, if I can help it. As it currently stands, a single digital item I possess lacks a reliable backup... for now!

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Re: Digital vs Tangible

Post by eledoremassis02 » Sat Feb 04, 2017 1:25 pm

I prefer physical for a few reasons. Once I read how amazon can take your ownership of say a kindle book away I lost faith in the digital market.

Two if I always loose interest or dont like the item I can sell it off where I am stuck with digital unless I delete in which case that is throwing money away.

Three it's a great back up is my devices crash and I can't accress my digital copy.

Four, space limiting is not so bad because you really have to consider the purchase.

However, digtal is great rentals and pretty cheap!

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Re: Digital vs Tangible

Post by Kamiccolo9 » Sat Feb 04, 2017 1:31 pm

eledoremassis02 wrote:I prefer physical for a few reasons. Once I read how amazon can take your ownership of say a kindle book away I lost faith in the digital market.

Two if I always loose interest or dont like the item I can sell it off where I am stuck with digital unless I delete in which case that is throwing money away.

Three it's a great back up is my devices crash and I can't accress my digital copy.

Four, space limiting is not so bad because you really have to consider the purchase.

However, digtal is great rentals and pretty cheap!
See, my situation is the exact opposite of yours. I'm far more likely to have water damage or a pet ruin a physical copy than for Amazon or Sony or whatever to just remove my ownership or something. As for if a device crashes, I can still get all my stuff back immediately once I replace it, as opposed to if a large number of books or movies get damaged in a flood or something, and I have to replace them all individually.

I mean, both have their benefits and drawbacks, but I feel that a lot of people here are really selling digital ownership short.
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Re: Digital vs Tangible

Post by Theophrastus » Sat Feb 04, 2017 2:57 pm

I've been in the digital camp for a while.

- For anime/other TV shows, I'm not a huge stickler for audio/visual fidelity, so paying a yearly fee (or just putting up with ads) to stream stuff on Crunchyroll/Hulu/whatever is preferable to buying physical releases. I don't really re-watch stuff often enough to where a series potentially getting removed from the service is that much of an issue for me.
- For music, any storefront worth a damn offers DRM-free MP3 downloads anyway, so I can back up my music myself if I suddenly get paranoid about it.
- For books (specifically comics/manga in my case) cost, physical space, and convenience issues win out for me. I'm a fan of a lot of long-running series, and very much want to support them by buying the volume releases, but...fuck, man, I'd have to dedicate a whole wall to something like One Piece if I bought physical instead of digital. Pretty much everything I've bought can be read online on either Viz's website or Comixology, so if I ever really feel the need to I can spend hours manually screencapping individual pages in my web browser and back them up myself.
- Video games...well, I mostly play PC games these days, so digital distribution is the de facto standard.

As far as Dragon Ball stuff in particular...I've bought the full 42 single volumes from Viz digitally. I also have a full collection of the Orange/Blue/Green brick DVD sets from Funimation for the anime, but I got those a while before digital distribution had really "matured" to its current state.

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Re: Digital vs Tangible

Post by eledoremassis02 » Sat Feb 04, 2017 4:29 pm

Kamiccolo9 wrote:
eledoremassis02 wrote:I prefer physical for a few reasons. Once I read how amazon can take your ownership of say a kindle book away I lost faith in the digital market.

Two if I always loose interest or dont like the item I can sell it off where I am stuck with digital unless I delete in which case that is throwing money away.

Three it's a great back up is my devices crash and I can't accress my digital copy.

Four, space limiting is not so bad because you really have to consider the purchase.

However, digtal is great rentals and pretty cheap!
See, my situation is the exact opposite of yours. I'm far more likely to have water damage or a pet ruin a physical copy than for Amazon or Sony or whatever to just remove my ownership or something. As for if a device crashes, I can still get all my stuff back immediately once I replace it, as opposed to if a large number of books or movies get damaged in a flood or something, and I have to replace them all individually.

I mean, both have their benefits and drawbacks, but I feel that a lot of people here are really selling digital ownership short.
Yea it's not bad thing at all and I feel I'm one of those left behinders as a lot of people now prefer digital. It's all good tho. The other plus is you usally get movie releases like a month earlier on digital

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Re: Digital vs Tangible

Post by Gog » Sat Feb 04, 2017 5:14 pm

I prefer tangible, I prefer holding, and flipping the pages rather than swiping, which is the only thing the ipad offers over that. I also just like the physical version more

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Re: Digital vs Tangible

Post by Cipher » Sat Feb 04, 2017 8:17 pm

Depends on the medium. I don't care either way when it comes to music and video-games, and if anything I prefer the convenience of digital media, but I absolutely cling to physical media for books and movies, despite having multiple boxes of each with no place to go for the foreseeable future (thanks for the storage, parents! I swear I'll pick all those up someday). I have too many books by a ridiculous amount, but I've never found a digital option that compares to the experience of having actual pages in your hand, especially if you want to mark passages for later (I know there are services with bookmarking features, but it doesn't compare to just pulling something off a shelf and finding a notched page).

In the case of Dragon Ball, there are multiple physical releases of the anime absolutely priced to move, so pick one of those. You don't have to buy it all at once. The manga is pricier, but there are still cheap options around, at least relative to any other comic.

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Re: Digital vs Tangible

Post by Dragon Ball Ireland » Sat Feb 04, 2017 8:26 pm

I go for physical wherever possible. The only parts of this franchise I've felt compelled to download are products that have never got home releases like the Westwood and Blue Water dubs but since I've bought Z and GT it's not as bad because I'm still supporting that part of the series and I can't support said dubs because without a home release, or even airing on TV currently there is no way of legally doing so. Although I'd certainly buy them in the 0.01% chance they ever do get a DVD/Blu-Ray release. I also like having collections, it just makes being a fan of this franchise so much more rewarding if you have something to show for it.
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Re: Digital vs Tangible

Post by Anonymous Friend » Mon Feb 06, 2017 1:48 pm

A couple years ago, I had someone break in and steal all of my anime, movies, video games and such.

Since then, when it comes to game's, I'm all digital. I have about 250 game's on my Xbox One and only three of them are from disc.

For movies and shows, I prefer discs. Pretty much everyone has a Blu-ray player. And every Blu-ray player plays DVDs. I don't have to worry about downloading some app to sign into a profile to download or stream something when I'm away from home.
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Re: Digital vs Tangible

Post by TheGreatness25 » Mon Feb 06, 2017 2:13 pm

Anonymous Friend wrote:A couple years ago, I had someone break in and steal all of my anime, movies, video games and such.
What kind of a petty asshole does that? Usually break-ins are to find money or sell valuable stuff. They stole DVDs and video games? Seriously? That's just malicious against the person that you're stealing from. And if they're DB fans, then I guess we come in all forms: good and bad.

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