MasenkoHA wrote: ↑Thu Apr 25, 2024 2:35 pm
Physical Media has its uses that streaming doesn't provide (namely you own it). There really isn't anything cable provides that you don't get from streaming. I wouldn't really compare the two.
As someone that owns hundreds of DVDs and Blu-Rays, and has easily spent four figures on Dragon Ball releases I get that. Physical media ultimately offers the best experience of any form of media consumption there is. I'm making the comparison more on the basis of both having that retro feel and could be marketed for particular niches that see them as more unique and distinctive nowadays because the market isn't oversaturated with them as it is with streaming services. Hell you even have some people wanting CRT TVs again, which is something I never foresaw happening. Ditto vinyl records.
gokaiblue wrote: ↑Thu Apr 25, 2024 4:32 pm
I think there is something that cable or linear TV does provide that can't be easily recreated through streaming: watching something at a similar pace to others around you or the experience of knowing that someone is watching this at the exact same time you are, building something of a community. It's something that's be sorta lost with how most streaming services handle their shows. Weekly releases help with this, but it’s not exactly the same feeling as when I'm say watching Toonami or a Capitals game live.
It's admittedly not an important thing to keep, but it's lost nonetheless.
Yeah, I was a big proponent of streaming and still use it, but I find the novelty of having thousands of shows and movies at your fingertips does wear off, although it was probably necessary to combat piracy which was inevitable when people wanted to be able to have content to binge and didn't have the money or space for collecting lots of discs.
Traditional TV did give people something of value though, like your analogy about a major sporting event, it offered a time for people to tune in and you knew countless other fans were doing it at the same time as you. Programming blocks and all the ways in which shows were marketed also added a lot more character to the experience rather than everything being reduced to just another app on your iPhone.
It's also much easier for things to fly under the radar now. Even for our beloved Toonami, I didn't know it still existed in Spain. Turns out the actual block shut down in 2009, but it's still available through the
Orange TV on-demand package where several shows you can stream are branded as "Adult Swim Toonami".
So yes, even attempts to recreate the feel of traditional TV or retain brands like Toonami in name only don't have the same effect. I appreciate that Disney Plus brought back releasing new episodes weekly as I think Netflix's model of dumping entire seasons at once was overkill, but I'm still pretty meh about it, other than when new Star Wars content comes out.
Call it nostalgia, I get it's easy to romanticise the past and all that, and traditional TV in Ireland is pretty much trash nowadays, but I do worry for the current generation like my son who will not know what it was like for us.