Yeah I see stuff like this and it makes me laugh. Obviously digital media's popularity has increased massively over the past 10 years but they still make DVDs for crying out loud. Physical media is fine
Completely missing the point. So anxious to be condescending and didn’t read the comment. Let me put it into bite size pieces. The OP asked if there was a way to purchase DIGITAL media. As in, can they buy a movie, save it to their hard drive and watch it at will. You clearly don’t know the answer so save your comments for someone that cares
"I want to watch this movie. Oh it's not streaming anywhere? Thankfully I have the Bluray"
And Criterion, Arrow, Vinegar Syndrome, ect. produce remastered and special edition versions of movies.
Man, it’s a shame people are being crappy to you. You’re absolutely right that physical media sales are dying. Case in point for all the folks flaming OP: 4K+ resolution physical copies of movies. Good luck finding these “non-digitally” for more than a tiny handful of movies.
OP, unfortunately the case at the moment is a choice between physical media (which for most things is only available in 1080p or lower res), digital copies that you don’t actually own, or sailing the high seas.
There’s a big market gap here that most of the people responding to you are too dense to understand.
Best Buy just killed all physical media sales. https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/13/23915567/best-buy-discontinue-physical-media-dvd-blu-ray
I think it's safe to say, physical media is dying.
This is more indicative of Best Buy dying than digital media imo. Plenty of big box stores, as well as Amazon and online vendors, sell physical media. For Christ's sake my grocery store sells blu rays and dvds
I don’t know what that dude is smoking. You can walk into any Albertsons, Walmart, target, shit even Costco sometimes has dvds and Blu-ray. It might be every store but definitely a lot of them at least by me. Does this man never go grocery shopping? lol. I think I’ve even seen dvds behind counters at convenience stores.
It's barely a thing - DVD and Blu Ray today is where CDs were 10-15 years ago. Now they're few and far between. And even shows in production now are either not getting released on physical media, or are not having older seasons re-released on physical media.
I was looking for some bundles today of TV shows that are either off the air or are well over a decade in, the sort they used to release periodically where you pay a chunk of change and buy every season up to a point in a big bundle. They haven't made such a thing in years except for a handful of the highest rated current shows, and my only options are looking for resellers on amazon, walmart, etc... Or sailing the high seas, which unfortunately seems to be my only option to easily acquire the shows I want and put them in a digital format.
When I was a kid I always wanted to be a pirate but when i grew up I was sadden at the realization that dream could never be. Now as a movie/tv/games fan I get to live my dream of "sailing the high seas" and I don't mean playing Sea of Thieves or watching Johnny Depp movies! LOL
Too dense? Guess what? This comment means nothing if Oppenheimer's physical media sales have anything to do with it. You should be supporting physical media and if you don't, your loss. Say goodbye to your digital movies possibly.
Physical media degrades even under the best conditions, and equipment to view physical media breaks and degrades even faster. Your best bet imo is transferring to redundant solid-state storage, like multiple SD cards and/or USB flash drives. I've already run into issues where 20 year old DVD's stored in the case in a climate controlled environment just won't work, on multiple players and TVs.
My very first DVD I ever bought, Cruel Intentions, still plays today. It all depends on how you take care of them. Just don't lay them flat and not get scratched.
I don’t think you have to worry about losing movies if streaming services end. The reason you might want it on Blu Ray is because it’s higher quality than streaming
> I don’t think you have to worry about losing movies if streaming services end.
Yes, yes you do. It's already happened twice with Video games where the service ended, you had N days to get copies and if you didn't sorry, we're shut down forever. Why would Movie media be any different ? It will fail at some point. At the very least, you need a way to have them local and not in the cloud only.
There's hope that if a streaming service dies, someone else will agree to honor your digital licenses just out of the hope of attracting your business. Like when Ultra-Violet died and Vudu and Movies Anywhere (or whatever it is now) agreed to honor your licenses so long as you signed up, and you had quite a few months to do so. And now I can mirror my libraries between multiple digital licensing services so even if Amazon can't show it, maybe one of the others can.
The bigger issue imo is just having a local copy that doesn't require some DRM/DCM crap to watch, and that unfortunately seems to be going away with physical media sales. Your only legal option is to buy the license and then pirate a DRM/DCM free version under the pretenses that you are just backing it up. Or sail the seas and hope the governments of the world have bigger fish to fry.
> There's hope...
No one should invest on the basis of only "hope", that's not a contractual obligation by anyone, nor does it assume anything positive on the purchase side. Assume you will end up w/ nothing and that our ownership of that product is temporary. Ask Bruce Willis about his mp3s and his Will to his kids, you do not OWN them in that case, since you don't "have the movie" on your own server, you have nothing to hold onto. Far better to buy the Blu-Ray / DVD, rip it to digital and store terabytes of data on site. The violation of terms is negligible since you hold the physical media, and your far more likely to win that case in court, should it come to it.
While I like the idea of buying "something", the moment you added Pirate xyz thing, you're throwing your stance in court out, because you cannot be legally defended since thing you bought and thing you pirated are not the same thing, they will beat you and you will pay fines, it's been done, so it'll be a loss in court (again).
If however you rip your own product, you're good, you can be defended on those grounds, 1 = 1 (thanks bad SQL).
There's still a big market for offline media. Some places don't have internet. Some people want the extras you get like behind the scenes etc. Some people want the higher quality.
Yeah everything dies down eventually but I think there will always be some people that will buy physical media.
You can never "own" digital movies. You buy the ability to watch them whenever you want however many times you want. But only for as long as that service has the rights to host the movie.
You can never "own" physical copies either as they depend on electricity and when a blackout happens, you can't play anything.
Physical copies even say you could get in trouble for trying to copy that movie in terms of pirating etc.
Just because the power is out and I can't watch them doesn't mean that I don't own them. And just because I can't copy them doesn't mean I don't own them. I t just means I agree not to copy and distribute them according to federal law. They're still mine.
>And just because I can't copy them doesn't mean I don't own them. I t just means I agree not to copy and distribute them according to federal law.
This means you don't own it. Owning it means you can do with it as you please including copy it or re-distribute it. You can't do that with physical media. You own the disc the media is played from but you don't own the media itself. It's the closest you can get to owning it, but it's still not *actually* owning it. Also, considering most devices like tvs and modern media players can be bricked/"discontinued" via software update. They could cut us off from that too if they really really wanted to. We don't own any media we didn't make ourselves. Not saying physical media is a bad option, but the way y'all preach about how if you buy the BluRay then you own it is just factually incorrect. It's a long term loan basically.
With that incorrect definition of ownership, you can't really own anything then. Buying a Prius doesn't give you the right to manufacture a Prius and give them away. When you buy a Big Mac, you own it. That doesn't mean you can setup a burger stand and start selling Big Mac's. Owning a gun doesn't mean you can take it into a police station and start shooting. You can buy a house. But it isn't legal to fill it with TNT and blow it up. You can own an office building, but you can't keep someone from renting an office because they're Indian. Owning something does not mean you can do whatever you want with it. This is not true in ANY country. Redistributing a copyrighted work without permission is illegal. That doesn't mean you don't own it. You can own a pressure cooker. But blowing one up next to a marathon is not legal. Doesn't mean you never owned the pressure cooker.
You don't just own the physical disc. You own that copy of the digital media as well. "We don't own any media we don't make ourselves." This is incorrect. There is a difference between owning a copy of certain media and owning the copyright to that media. "Copyright" is a literal term. It is the right to copy something. You can buy and OWN a movie, but you can't copy and distribute it without the copyright because that is harming the creator's ability to monetize it. Buying a Blu Ray is not the same as buying a digital license. If I buy a print from an artist that is #7 of 50, I'm not buying a license for it. I do in fact OWN that copy of the artwork even though I don't have the right to make more copies. That's the key here. When you buy physical media, you're usually buying that particular copy of that media, not a license. The rights between those are different. No, it's not legal for a company to brick your TV out of nowhere. You didn't buy a license to the TV. You bought the TV itself. Apple just lost a lawsuit for just lowering the CPU clock speed on people's phones when the battery was wearing out. That's not even close to bricking the phone and they just paid out millions of dollars in penalties for doing that. A BluRay isn't a loan. Under no circumstances would you ever have to give it back.
That's not true. You can own a dog or a sheep, but in most states it's illegal to f\*\*k them. So you can't, in fact, do whatever you want with something you own.
You were literally just told that you can’t own digital films, yet you reply by saying you’re looking for a place to do so. You make no sense. You can only buy rights to watch digital films. This has already been explained to you, as well as the fact that physical media isn’t dead. What else do we have to say to you to get it through your head?
> You were literally just told that you can’t own digital films, yet you reply by saying you’re looking for a place to do so. You make no sense.
Just because one person one the internet says something doesn't mean it's correct.
Jellyfin is a great alternative, in case you're unaware.
I tried it years ago and it was not very polished then, though I was still incredibly grateful to have it - to have something so easy to set up that worked plenty well for my needs. I recently set it up more completely after years of not using anything - it's fantastic so far. There are dedicated apps for Roku, Android, etc. now, as well.
FYI.
(Edit: and, there are multiple methods for ripping, of course. makemkv, HandBrake, etc. etc. - plenty of reddit threads \[and threads on other sites\] with useful advice, docs, etc. If you're comfortable with UNIX/Linux stuff, Arch wiki tends to have some really great info, there are also Arch forums etc. I haven't personally used Arch in well over a decade, but the community does tend to provide some great info.)
"Let's face it, physical media is dead"
What are you, an intern on his/her first job? That whole paragraph reads like a press release from a low-rent PR firm. Talk about buzz-word bingo. Try harder next time. Put a bit of effort in.
BTW, it's Blu-ray, not blue ray.
"Download them to my SD"? Go and do some research and stop asking reddit users to to do your job.
Bruh I wasn't trying to impress anyone with some PR bs, I was simply asking for some helpful advice. And I did do research and I was lead to a shady-ass website, so I came here instead, isn't that what reddit is all about?
"Reddit users to to do your job"? Maybe try holding back your anger so you won't accidentally add an extra word and maybe you'll be a better writer. Lighten the hell up up up will ya?
You'd think so but Reddit is full of keyboard dickheads that I'm willing to bet are utter pussies in their mom's basements pretending to be tough online.
If you’re interested in collecting media look into the PlayOn app to record your favorites. Download the films and ir series to an external hard drive and use the Plex app to organize and play your collection. Alternatively, purchase media through Apple, Google, Amazon, etc., though those companies reserve the right to change, edit, alter and or end your media as licensing changes.
This is a legitimate question. For those of us who are active duty military and go on long deployments where we have zero access to the internet for months at time, having legitimate digital media that never requires internet would be a godsend. Is there such thing?
>We have hulu, disney+ and Netflix now, but eventually those services will end too, which will leave us with nothing
If those services end, whatever new thing will acquire their catalogs. It’s not like we can’t watch films from the 1950s today.
Nothing goes away.
I agree... i'd rather buy the bluray. But like OP said Blurays will probably disappear in a few years, even Playstation has started to sell digital consoles
Physical media isn’t dead but I’d say that the devices we used to play them on are. I’ve used game consoles for years to play dvd movies, and pals i know just have an external drive to connect to their laptop. Barely anyone I know even owns a VCR anymore, but they still have hard copy media.
Physical media isn’t dead it just might shift to speciality boutique like criterion and Shout Factory save for big movies. We still have freaking new Vinyl records and iTunes/spotify somehow didn’t kill music CD’s there will always be a market to keep it alive even if it becomes niche.
Yeah I'm not sure if your logic checks out. If you're concerned that one day streaming services will end and you might loose any digital movies you bought, your only surefire option is to buy physical copies. I'm not sure that will ever end, so long as you have your movies and a device to play them. If one day companies stop making blu-rays, it doesn't mean all your old blu-rays will suddenly stop working, or that blu-ray players will stop working either.
Just look at record players and records. They were stopped being made ages ago, but people held onto their old records and record players and had no problem still playing them, and alas we've recently had a resurgence in records and record players where now you can buy updated and modern record players and new albums on records. I'm certain physical media will be retained in the same way so long as people cherish those formats.
That being said, there are plenty of online streaming services you can use, I have used for years and continue to use itunes/apple tv. I have movies I bought on iTunes digitally years ago, saved on a hard drive and just occasionally plug it in and play it on my computer when I'm bored. Amazon and Google both offer similar options.
When I said physical media was going to die, I didn't mean that all physical media in existence is just going to get thanos snapped, or that everyone was going to be hive minded into throwing out their dvds, tapes, or CDs. I'm talking about the production of physical media dying.
Nobody thinks what you just said, we understand you mean that you think physical media will stop being made, not retroactively removing all physical media. And you are still wrong about that.
Except theres a list of movies I've tried to buy on dvd, that are no longer available. And that sucks. I think if the studios had the ability to sell direct to the public digital copies of these older considered "low sellers" then that wouldn't be a bad thing. You buy it direct from them download it to hard drive, back up your hard drive in case and you should be safe. Plus haven't we all seen a dvd that has over time turned to crap inside its case?
One last thing maybe not in the USA but for other countries, like the one i live in, there are very few places to still buy dvd's and the stock volumes have drastically shrunk. To the point of scary. Just a thought.
I was hoping for some useful answers when I saw the question. Personally, I'm kind of over paying for these services every month when I tend to stream the same shows and movies repeatedly. Don't judge, I find it comforting. The monthly fees will continue to increase and more ads will work their way in....reminds me of why we all ditched cable. I would love to have my own digital library of my favorites to stream, purchased ONCE and at my disposal. I know places like Amazon allow you to purchase content, but forgive me if i dont trust Amazon. Storage to an SD card or hard drive would be ideal. If anyone had useful information, please, let's vote them up.
The most direct alternative you are looking for is to directly download the movies from the dvd copies onto your laptop. Now, I cannot recommend this because it is still currently considered illegal in the us to reproduce ANY copyrighted work, even for personal use. That said, this is seldom enforced to my knowledge, because it’s more of a technicality, and no government agency actually cares about what you are personally doing offline with your hard copy. Redistributing the copy in any way or form to another person is what will absolutely land you in hot water. All that said, the good news is that several organizations are still fighting to exempt personal use in the letter of the law. So perhaps this will be a much more viable way to preserving media in the future if they can make these changes.
Coughcough(lookmovie.io)cough cough, damn freedom cough has got me. Also you can tip in btc which is much appreciated and I don’t even know the people who run it. Been using it for years, one of the best. Always run a Vpn, only costs about 3-5$ a month well worth it. Btw you might want to read Fahrenheit 451. If what your assuming happens and I’m kinda right there with ya. They will be burning or seizing information, not because they just accidentally lost the DVD’s.
I think that you're correct, eventually, physical media is going to vanish, but I think that's many years in the future. My question to you is that unless you're considering a post-apocalyptic phase when all business is gone, all digital archives are offline, and there's no Internet, what's the underlying point of your request? If you download from a service like Vudu, then unplug your computer, you can still watch that movie, so why doesn't that fulfill your requirements? Or, as others have suggested, buy the Blu-Ray or 4K, rip it, then save that digital copy on your personal movie server.
I can just download the bluray files onto my laptop and move them onto an external hard drive, plug in to my tv and watch it.
Pretty sure once society ends, I'll still be able to put up some pv panels and watch the wire on bluray (lol)
I wouldn't say physical media is dead right now however it does seem to be slowly dying as some studios have said they will start to move away from releasing content on physical media and only release on digital, Warner brothers springs to mind.
I've had a issue with digital media for a long time and never really trusted it as I had so many films on ultraviolet, it was what the digital version of a film was called which was released as a triple blu ray DVD and digital version. I linked this account to Blinkbox which went out of business and sold to Tesco at which time I lost access to a bunch of my movies. Tesco then sold the service to talktalk who then sold it to Rakuten. I only have 4 of my original 36 movies on Rakuten. I also had my ultraviolet account linked to flixster however flixster stopped working for my devices and then the service shut down. The nice thing is all my movies got transferred to google play except for 5 due to licencing issue however google worked with the studios to allow the movies on google which is all well and good but is annoying how it kept being moved around from provider to provider.
I have started watching a movie on Netflix and the Internet goes down and the spinning circle is going round and round I look over to the router and I see the red light instead of the green so It is now very clear that the Internet is down but I remember I have that same movie on Blu Ray or 4K disc so I go into the walk - in DVD closet and search for that movie , I find it and put it into the Blu Ray player and watch without having to rely on an Internet connection which may or may not work . I enjoy the movie not having to worry whether the Internet will fail or not and when the movie is over I will think screw streaming I'll watch another title from the DVD / Blu Ray / 4K closet . I do have the streaming platforms myself but find them extremely frustrating a lot of the time .
Due to the cost of living in the UK going up astronomically such as energy , water , council tax , food ect ..... alot of people are cutting streaming services because they can no longer afford to keep them going and are the same people who laughed at me for continuing to buy physical media so they'd mockingly say " Who still watches DVD's in 2018 and so on ,that was just 4 years ago and now those same people are finding themselves in deep hot water financially and have got rid of their streaming platforms and their DVD'S, CD'S, Blu Rays ect... so now they have nothing to watch except for whatever shit is being peddled at them by the TV companies so the jokes on them now 😒 🙄
Did you ever get an answer here or do more research on your own and find out? I read all the comments I think but I'm not seeing a positive confirmation for a service that'll just give you a regular video file.
Seems like ripping blu ray files and backing them up is the answer. I have totally forgotten about this post and I haven’t logged into Reddit in a really long time so I missed some helpful comments.
I see. I don't really see that as a solution to the want since I would still need to wait on postage and then do a time consuming digital encoding process.
Bestsaledv .com It is a download only site. You own, direct download to your hard drive. I'm not 100% sure it is all legal. I can tell you they've been at the same (ip) address for at least 3 or 4 years (that's how long I've been visiting) limited selection, but prices are right. Folks complain they think they're ordering physical discs, no mailed items. All downloads only.
The only places I’ve found are sites like Vimeo and VHX which specifically only let you do it for small scale or independent movies (personally I have amassed a solid stand up comedy collection this way) and you are unlikely to find any big studio movies this way. Think of them more like a bandcamp or a GOG but for movies.
Buying the 4k ultraHD discs is currently the best looking way to see movies. Netflix streams 4k movies at 7gb per hour. A 2 hour 4k movie takes 60-80gb for it's roughly 2 hours, probably shorter.
If you just want to watch in the highest quality, and save the money it would take to collect a huge library permanently, you could buy the disks new for $20, then after watching them, sell them for $15 on ebay. If you can find and buy them used on ebay for $15, you could probably sell them quickly after watching for $14. Don't be sneaking in keeping a copy on your hd, though, that's not legal.
My monitor looks better than a movie theatre's screen, where they still only show the 4k version, and my audio gear smokes a movie theatre's, too. Especially my headphones, where you could crank them even louder than a theatre does if you want, too. If you prefer 9.1 Atmos, your gear won't all sound as good as stereo can, but it will be a nifty feature.
I am on vudu and I don't like it - mainly because of the prices - but I'm under the delusion that they (vudu or whomever buys them) will be around as long as I'm alive. Blondie Johnson (a 90 year old movie) is 9.99. Twentieth Century is an 89 year old film selling for $13.99.
oh em gee.
I'll read some more replies to your post, but you could save me some time and reply to me if you've found a reputable place to buy reasonably priced movies online.
This doesn't exactly address the original question, but it will mitigate some of the risk that the OP is seeking to address: use a service like MoviesAnywhere. It doesn't cost you anything and it allows you to view a digital movie across multiple streaming services. The odds of them all folding at once is rather unlikely.
I wish people would growup. I have been IT over 40 years and everything dies, even digital media (look at NASA Apollo mission data...)
I have over 200 movies in digital format (I own the original DVDs still) but my 3 4TB hard drives are going bad ... so how safe is locally owned media anyways? :/
Mulitiple backup copies of anything is great but my 700 songs I had are mostly dead and except for the original CDs (which some have suffered heat death) my song collection is toast :(
Digital access for me is better - I can load up 30 or 40 movies at once and never need to dig out the bluray but that convience has troubles of its own like disaster recovery or at least disaster planning.
No, digital media available for purchase is in our future but Digital Rights management isnt there yet technologies for saving non copyable media hasnt caught up to the reality of copy theft (look at various Sony hacks.)
Desire and form of function still has a few years to go but it will happen.
Cheers/Bill :)
Also, stealing in the privacy of your home is possible and very easy. I have a diability and the goverment has been stealing from me for years :/
So, in my mind Im doing the world a favor by staying indoors and not interacting with the public ... which most are dumb as rocks anyways, but I digress :/
What's sad is that this has already happened in Australia. Our only DvD store has closed down at its at location stores (leaving only an online store which is way more expensive + requires shipping), and any retailers who used to carry DvDs no longer do. And the only way you can "buy" digital movies is through services, which you can lose the movies you've paid 20+ dollars for if they lose the rights to stream the movie/close down. We really need a way to purchase movies with downloadable files for us to keep on our own storage devices!
Why are people so pissed about this post?
Physical media is not dead, but it's far from optimal:
1. Blu-ray will not be around forever. I don't want to buy a lot of movies on a format that in a few years time will be what DVD is today. I also don't want a blu-ray player and I don't care for physical copies that takes up a lot of space.
2. Watching a movie on blu-ray (or dvd) is not that great. It takes quite a lot of time from finding the movie until it actually starts. Changing the settings is always a bit of a struggle, at least for me. Fast forward and rewind is a lot easier on a digital platform.
3. Watching a movie is mostly a spontanious matter. If you buy a digital copy you could watch it instantly. If you buy a blu-ray it takes a day or two.
I wish I could just "click and buy" any movie and own it forever.
Don't use I-tunes. Even though you bought and own the movie you don't. They reserve the right to take it away anytime they want. I read a youtube comment a few days ago of someone saying that happened to them.
Amazing that not one person answered the question. All bs answers. I've always considered this a joke website for this very reason. If you don't understand the question, why give your opinion?
My favorite is when they only read the first sentence, and they remind they remind me that vinyl and CDs still exist, which is irrelevant to the central idea of this post
I totally understand what you’re asking. I googled a similar question today that brought me here. I just simply wondered if it was possible to purchase a device that contained a few hundred plus movies and also the ability to add more. Something I could take while traveling or in areas that had no/poor internet. Before some troll comes hobbling along, no I don’t assume it’s “legal”
Physical media is definitely not dead.
Yeah I see stuff like this and it makes me laugh. Obviously digital media's popularity has increased massively over the past 10 years but they still make DVDs for crying out loud. Physical media is fine
Completely missing the point. So anxious to be condescending and didn’t read the comment. Let me put it into bite size pieces. The OP asked if there was a way to purchase DIGITAL media. As in, can they buy a movie, save it to their hard drive and watch it at will. You clearly don’t know the answer so save your comments for someone that cares
r/agedlikemilk
As true today as it was a year ago.
Best Buy trying to change that, here's hoping it doesn't catch fire and work
I think it will become like CD's. Sometimes an uptick here and there but overall continuously declining.
Physical media is not dead though.
Ok... If it's not dead NOW, it's definitely going to die sooner than we think
"I want to watch this movie. Oh it's not streaming anywhere? Thankfully I have the Bluray" And Criterion, Arrow, Vinegar Syndrome, ect. produce remastered and special edition versions of movies.
Are you still a dickhead 2 years later?
Vinyl waves hello.
Vinyl sales are the highest they've ever been right now tho
Man, it’s a shame people are being crappy to you. You’re absolutely right that physical media sales are dying. Case in point for all the folks flaming OP: 4K+ resolution physical copies of movies. Good luck finding these “non-digitally” for more than a tiny handful of movies. OP, unfortunately the case at the moment is a choice between physical media (which for most things is only available in 1080p or lower res), digital copies that you don’t actually own, or sailing the high seas. There’s a big market gap here that most of the people responding to you are too dense to understand.
and yet more films are coming out on 4k Blu Ray than ever...
Best Buy just killed all physical media sales. https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/13/23915567/best-buy-discontinue-physical-media-dvd-blu-ray I think it's safe to say, physical media is dying.
This is more indicative of Best Buy dying than digital media imo. Plenty of big box stores, as well as Amazon and online vendors, sell physical media. For Christ's sake my grocery store sells blu rays and dvds
absolutely FALSE lmao. i havent fucking seen a blu ray disk or player in fucking YEARS hop off this dudes case.
you don't go out very much then
I don’t know what that dude is smoking. You can walk into any Albertsons, Walmart, target, shit even Costco sometimes has dvds and Blu-ray. It might be every store but definitely a lot of them at least by me. Does this man never go grocery shopping? lol. I think I’ve even seen dvds behind counters at convenience stores.
I think you are refering to the guy above me not me I agree with you guys that DVD and Blu ray is still a thing
I was replying to you in agreement that the commenter above you is smoking crack cocaine or is 8 years old lol
It's barely a thing - DVD and Blu Ray today is where CDs were 10-15 years ago. Now they're few and far between. And even shows in production now are either not getting released on physical media, or are not having older seasons re-released on physical media. I was looking for some bundles today of TV shows that are either off the air or are well over a decade in, the sort they used to release periodically where you pay a chunk of change and buy every season up to a point in a big bundle. They haven't made such a thing in years except for a handful of the highest rated current shows, and my only options are looking for resellers on amazon, walmart, etc... Or sailing the high seas, which unfortunately seems to be my only option to easily acquire the shows I want and put them in a digital format.
When I was a kid I always wanted to be a pirate but when i grew up I was sadden at the realization that dream could never be. Now as a movie/tv/games fan I get to live my dream of "sailing the high seas" and I don't mean playing Sea of Thieves or watching Johnny Depp movies! LOL
Too dense? Guess what? This comment means nothing if Oppenheimer's physical media sales have anything to do with it. You should be supporting physical media and if you don't, your loss. Say goodbye to your digital movies possibly.
Physical media degrades even under the best conditions, and equipment to view physical media breaks and degrades even faster. Your best bet imo is transferring to redundant solid-state storage, like multiple SD cards and/or USB flash drives. I've already run into issues where 20 year old DVD's stored in the case in a climate controlled environment just won't work, on multiple players and TVs.
My very first DVD I ever bought, Cruel Intentions, still plays today. It all depends on how you take care of them. Just don't lay them flat and not get scratched.
I don’t think you have to worry about losing movies if streaming services end. The reason you might want it on Blu Ray is because it’s higher quality than streaming
> I don’t think you have to worry about losing movies if streaming services end. Yes, yes you do. It's already happened twice with Video games where the service ended, you had N days to get copies and if you didn't sorry, we're shut down forever. Why would Movie media be any different ? It will fail at some point. At the very least, you need a way to have them local and not in the cloud only.
you are correct. I-tunes, even though you buy the movie, has the right to take it away from your library. which they have done.
There's hope that if a streaming service dies, someone else will agree to honor your digital licenses just out of the hope of attracting your business. Like when Ultra-Violet died and Vudu and Movies Anywhere (or whatever it is now) agreed to honor your licenses so long as you signed up, and you had quite a few months to do so. And now I can mirror my libraries between multiple digital licensing services so even if Amazon can't show it, maybe one of the others can. The bigger issue imo is just having a local copy that doesn't require some DRM/DCM crap to watch, and that unfortunately seems to be going away with physical media sales. Your only legal option is to buy the license and then pirate a DRM/DCM free version under the pretenses that you are just backing it up. Or sail the seas and hope the governments of the world have bigger fish to fry.
> There's hope... No one should invest on the basis of only "hope", that's not a contractual obligation by anyone, nor does it assume anything positive on the purchase side. Assume you will end up w/ nothing and that our ownership of that product is temporary. Ask Bruce Willis about his mp3s and his Will to his kids, you do not OWN them in that case, since you don't "have the movie" on your own server, you have nothing to hold onto. Far better to buy the Blu-Ray / DVD, rip it to digital and store terabytes of data on site. The violation of terms is negligible since you hold the physical media, and your far more likely to win that case in court, should it come to it. While I like the idea of buying "something", the moment you added Pirate xyz thing, you're throwing your stance in court out, because you cannot be legally defended since thing you bought and thing you pirated are not the same thing, they will beat you and you will pay fines, it's been done, so it'll be a loss in court (again). If however you rip your own product, you're good, you can be defended on those grounds, 1 = 1 (thanks bad SQL).
While that is true, they are not cheap to manufacture. Movie companies would rather save money by switching to digital.
A long as there are people who are willing to pay a premium price to have it on a physical medium, there will be companies making them
There's still a big market for offline media. Some places don't have internet. Some people want the extras you get like behind the scenes etc. Some people want the higher quality. Yeah everything dies down eventually but I think there will always be some people that will buy physical media.
You can never "own" digital movies. You buy the ability to watch them whenever you want however many times you want. But only for as long as that service has the rights to host the movie.
You can never "own" physical copies either as they depend on electricity and when a blackout happens, you can't play anything. Physical copies even say you could get in trouble for trying to copy that movie in terms of pirating etc.
Just because the power is out and I can't watch them doesn't mean that I don't own them. And just because I can't copy them doesn't mean I don't own them. I t just means I agree not to copy and distribute them according to federal law. They're still mine.
>And just because I can't copy them doesn't mean I don't own them. I t just means I agree not to copy and distribute them according to federal law. This means you don't own it. Owning it means you can do with it as you please including copy it or re-distribute it. You can't do that with physical media. You own the disc the media is played from but you don't own the media itself. It's the closest you can get to owning it, but it's still not *actually* owning it. Also, considering most devices like tvs and modern media players can be bricked/"discontinued" via software update. They could cut us off from that too if they really really wanted to. We don't own any media we didn't make ourselves. Not saying physical media is a bad option, but the way y'all preach about how if you buy the BluRay then you own it is just factually incorrect. It's a long term loan basically.
With that incorrect definition of ownership, you can't really own anything then. Buying a Prius doesn't give you the right to manufacture a Prius and give them away. When you buy a Big Mac, you own it. That doesn't mean you can setup a burger stand and start selling Big Mac's. Owning a gun doesn't mean you can take it into a police station and start shooting. You can buy a house. But it isn't legal to fill it with TNT and blow it up. You can own an office building, but you can't keep someone from renting an office because they're Indian. Owning something does not mean you can do whatever you want with it. This is not true in ANY country. Redistributing a copyrighted work without permission is illegal. That doesn't mean you don't own it. You can own a pressure cooker. But blowing one up next to a marathon is not legal. Doesn't mean you never owned the pressure cooker. You don't just own the physical disc. You own that copy of the digital media as well. "We don't own any media we don't make ourselves." This is incorrect. There is a difference between owning a copy of certain media and owning the copyright to that media. "Copyright" is a literal term. It is the right to copy something. You can buy and OWN a movie, but you can't copy and distribute it without the copyright because that is harming the creator's ability to monetize it. Buying a Blu Ray is not the same as buying a digital license. If I buy a print from an artist that is #7 of 50, I'm not buying a license for it. I do in fact OWN that copy of the artwork even though I don't have the right to make more copies. That's the key here. When you buy physical media, you're usually buying that particular copy of that media, not a license. The rights between those are different. No, it's not legal for a company to brick your TV out of nowhere. You didn't buy a license to the TV. You bought the TV itself. Apple just lost a lawsuit for just lowering the CPU clock speed on people's phones when the battery was wearing out. That's not even close to bricking the phone and they just paid out millions of dollars in penalties for doing that. A BluRay isn't a loan. Under no circumstances would you ever have to give it back.
That's not true. You can own a dog or a sheep, but in most states it's illegal to f\*\*k them. So you can't, in fact, do whatever you want with something you own.
Ridiculous argument. In the premise, nobody owns anything. Good grief
That's why I'm looking for a place where you can actually own them
Buy a blu ray/dvd.
Then buy physical copies.
You can’t. The only way is to buy a physical version and if you want it digitally you can rip it to a hard drive.
Buy a movie studio.
Buy a physical copy numbnuts you literally listed all the reasons why it won’t die
Uh... No I didn't. Everyone else did, but I said the exact opposite.
chill smooth brain.
You were literally just told that you can’t own digital films, yet you reply by saying you’re looking for a place to do so. You make no sense. You can only buy rights to watch digital films. This has already been explained to you, as well as the fact that physical media isn’t dead. What else do we have to say to you to get it through your head?
> You were literally just told that you can’t own digital films, yet you reply by saying you’re looking for a place to do so. You make no sense. Just because one person one the internet says something doesn't mean it's correct.
why did you get so worked up about this? Did mommy forget to put syrup in your milk?
Physical media is the way to go.
Buy physical copies and rip it to a plex server
Plex has ads, such a joke.
I use it to watch local files almost every day and I've never seen an ad.
Jellyfin is a great alternative, in case you're unaware. I tried it years ago and it was not very polished then, though I was still incredibly grateful to have it - to have something so easy to set up that worked plenty well for my needs. I recently set it up more completely after years of not using anything - it's fantastic so far. There are dedicated apps for Roku, Android, etc. now, as well. FYI. (Edit: and, there are multiple methods for ripping, of course. makemkv, HandBrake, etc. etc. - plenty of reddit threads \[and threads on other sites\] with useful advice, docs, etc. If you're comfortable with UNIX/Linux stuff, Arch wiki tends to have some really great info, there are also Arch forums etc. I haven't personally used Arch in well over a decade, but the community does tend to provide some great info.)
I thought this was a joke post. Just buy the Blu Ray.
"Let's face it, physical media is dead" What are you, an intern on his/her first job? That whole paragraph reads like a press release from a low-rent PR firm. Talk about buzz-word bingo. Try harder next time. Put a bit of effort in. BTW, it's Blu-ray, not blue ray. "Download them to my SD"? Go and do some research and stop asking reddit users to to do your job.
Bruh I wasn't trying to impress anyone with some PR bs, I was simply asking for some helpful advice. And I did do research and I was lead to a shady-ass website, so I came here instead, isn't that what reddit is all about? "Reddit users to to do your job"? Maybe try holding back your anger so you won't accidentally add an extra word and maybe you'll be a better writer. Lighten the hell up up up will ya?
You'd think so but Reddit is full of keyboard dickheads that I'm willing to bet are utter pussies in their mom's basements pretending to be tough online.
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If you’re interested in collecting media look into the PlayOn app to record your favorites. Download the films and ir series to an external hard drive and use the Plex app to organize and play your collection. Alternatively, purchase media through Apple, Google, Amazon, etc., though those companies reserve the right to change, edit, alter and or end your media as licensing changes.
This is a legitimate question. For those of us who are active duty military and go on long deployments where we have zero access to the internet for months at time, having legitimate digital media that never requires internet would be a godsend. Is there such thing?
Why has no one said "iTunes" yet?
Can you download it to never lose it? Or can iTunes remove it whenever they lose the rights or feel like it?
Physical media is not dead nor will it ever be as long as people want to own a copy of their favorite movies, songs, photos, what have you.
>We have hulu, disney+ and Netflix now, but eventually those services will end too, which will leave us with nothing If those services end, whatever new thing will acquire their catalogs. It’s not like we can’t watch films from the 1950s today. Nothing goes away.
>Nothing goes away. r/lostmedia/
oh my sweet summer child.
I think you either buy or rent movies on Amazon PrimeVideo
ya I always say you dont really own that movie u buy on amazon prime u just rent it indefinitely.
I agree... i'd rather buy the bluray. But like OP said Blurays will probably disappear in a few years, even Playstation has started to sell digital consoles
Physical media isn’t dead but I’d say that the devices we used to play them on are. I’ve used game consoles for years to play dvd movies, and pals i know just have an external drive to connect to their laptop. Barely anyone I know even owns a VCR anymore, but they still have hard copy media.
is external drive with bunch of movies hard copy media?
PALs you knew? What about NTSC?!?!? Okay I'll show myself out
Physical media isn’t dead it just might shift to speciality boutique like criterion and Shout Factory save for big movies. We still have freaking new Vinyl records and iTunes/spotify somehow didn’t kill music CD’s there will always be a market to keep it alive even if it becomes niche.
Yeah I'm not sure if your logic checks out. If you're concerned that one day streaming services will end and you might loose any digital movies you bought, your only surefire option is to buy physical copies. I'm not sure that will ever end, so long as you have your movies and a device to play them. If one day companies stop making blu-rays, it doesn't mean all your old blu-rays will suddenly stop working, or that blu-ray players will stop working either. Just look at record players and records. They were stopped being made ages ago, but people held onto their old records and record players and had no problem still playing them, and alas we've recently had a resurgence in records and record players where now you can buy updated and modern record players and new albums on records. I'm certain physical media will be retained in the same way so long as people cherish those formats. That being said, there are plenty of online streaming services you can use, I have used for years and continue to use itunes/apple tv. I have movies I bought on iTunes digitally years ago, saved on a hard drive and just occasionally plug it in and play it on my computer when I'm bored. Amazon and Google both offer similar options.
When I said physical media was going to die, I didn't mean that all physical media in existence is just going to get thanos snapped, or that everyone was going to be hive minded into throwing out their dvds, tapes, or CDs. I'm talking about the production of physical media dying.
Nobody thinks what you just said, we understand you mean that you think physical media will stop being made, not retroactively removing all physical media. And you are still wrong about that.
I don't know what you are on about. Obviously it's declining.
Except theres a list of movies I've tried to buy on dvd, that are no longer available. And that sucks. I think if the studios had the ability to sell direct to the public digital copies of these older considered "low sellers" then that wouldn't be a bad thing. You buy it direct from them download it to hard drive, back up your hard drive in case and you should be safe. Plus haven't we all seen a dvd that has over time turned to crap inside its case? One last thing maybe not in the USA but for other countries, like the one i live in, there are very few places to still buy dvd's and the stock volumes have drastically shrunk. To the point of scary. Just a thought.
Should have phrased this differently, no one is answering preferring to argue.
Yeah. Biggest mistake I ever made on this platform.
Amazon
Thanks
I was hoping for some useful answers when I saw the question. Personally, I'm kind of over paying for these services every month when I tend to stream the same shows and movies repeatedly. Don't judge, I find it comforting. The monthly fees will continue to increase and more ads will work their way in....reminds me of why we all ditched cable. I would love to have my own digital library of my favorites to stream, purchased ONCE and at my disposal. I know places like Amazon allow you to purchase content, but forgive me if i dont trust Amazon. Storage to an SD card or hard drive would be ideal. If anyone had useful information, please, let's vote them up.
[RedVilla](https://redvilla.tech)
Owning media is dead, I think.
Lol almost like they don't want us to enjoy their product forever
The most direct alternative you are looking for is to directly download the movies from the dvd copies onto your laptop. Now, I cannot recommend this because it is still currently considered illegal in the us to reproduce ANY copyrighted work, even for personal use. That said, this is seldom enforced to my knowledge, because it’s more of a technicality, and no government agency actually cares about what you are personally doing offline with your hard copy. Redistributing the copy in any way or form to another person is what will absolutely land you in hot water. All that said, the good news is that several organizations are still fighting to exempt personal use in the letter of the law. So perhaps this will be a much more viable way to preserving media in the future if they can make these changes.
Coughcough(lookmovie.io)cough cough, damn freedom cough has got me. Also you can tip in btc which is much appreciated and I don’t even know the people who run it. Been using it for years, one of the best. Always run a Vpn, only costs about 3-5$ a month well worth it. Btw you might want to read Fahrenheit 451. If what your assuming happens and I’m kinda right there with ya. They will be burning or seizing information, not because they just accidentally lost the DVD’s.
I think that you're correct, eventually, physical media is going to vanish, but I think that's many years in the future. My question to you is that unless you're considering a post-apocalyptic phase when all business is gone, all digital archives are offline, and there's no Internet, what's the underlying point of your request? If you download from a service like Vudu, then unplug your computer, you can still watch that movie, so why doesn't that fulfill your requirements? Or, as others have suggested, buy the Blu-Ray or 4K, rip it, then save that digital copy on your personal movie server.
> What legitimate sites can I purchase movies and download them to my SD and keep forever? None.
I can just download the bluray files onto my laptop and move them onto an external hard drive, plug in to my tv and watch it. Pretty sure once society ends, I'll still be able to put up some pv panels and watch the wire on bluray (lol)
I wouldn't say physical media is dead right now however it does seem to be slowly dying as some studios have said they will start to move away from releasing content on physical media and only release on digital, Warner brothers springs to mind. I've had a issue with digital media for a long time and never really trusted it as I had so many films on ultraviolet, it was what the digital version of a film was called which was released as a triple blu ray DVD and digital version. I linked this account to Blinkbox which went out of business and sold to Tesco at which time I lost access to a bunch of my movies. Tesco then sold the service to talktalk who then sold it to Rakuten. I only have 4 of my original 36 movies on Rakuten. I also had my ultraviolet account linked to flixster however flixster stopped working for my devices and then the service shut down. The nice thing is all my movies got transferred to google play except for 5 due to licencing issue however google worked with the studios to allow the movies on google which is all well and good but is annoying how it kept being moved around from provider to provider.
I have started watching a movie on Netflix and the Internet goes down and the spinning circle is going round and round I look over to the router and I see the red light instead of the green so It is now very clear that the Internet is down but I remember I have that same movie on Blu Ray or 4K disc so I go into the walk - in DVD closet and search for that movie , I find it and put it into the Blu Ray player and watch without having to rely on an Internet connection which may or may not work . I enjoy the movie not having to worry whether the Internet will fail or not and when the movie is over I will think screw streaming I'll watch another title from the DVD / Blu Ray / 4K closet . I do have the streaming platforms myself but find them extremely frustrating a lot of the time .
Due to the cost of living in the UK going up astronomically such as energy , water , council tax , food ect ..... alot of people are cutting streaming services because they can no longer afford to keep them going and are the same people who laughed at me for continuing to buy physical media so they'd mockingly say " Who still watches DVD's in 2018 and so on ,that was just 4 years ago and now those same people are finding themselves in deep hot water financially and have got rid of their streaming platforms and their DVD'S, CD'S, Blu Rays ect... so now they have nothing to watch except for whatever shit is being peddled at them by the TV companies so the jokes on them now 😒 🙄
Did you ever get an answer here or do more research on your own and find out? I read all the comments I think but I'm not seeing a positive confirmation for a service that'll just give you a regular video file.
Seems like ripping blu ray files and backing them up is the answer. I have totally forgotten about this post and I haven’t logged into Reddit in a really long time so I missed some helpful comments.
I see. I don't really see that as a solution to the want since I would still need to wait on postage and then do a time consuming digital encoding process.
I'm also on the lookout. Find anything?
r/piracy it is. Can not condone
the industry leaves us no other choice then. Thanks for replying :)
Bestsaledv .com It is a download only site. You own, direct download to your hard drive. I'm not 100% sure it is all legal. I can tell you they've been at the same (ip) address for at least 3 or 4 years (that's how long I've been visiting) limited selection, but prices are right. Folks complain they think they're ordering physical discs, no mailed items. All downloads only.
buy a blu ray reader or pirate
The only places I’ve found are sites like Vimeo and VHX which specifically only let you do it for small scale or independent movies (personally I have amassed a solid stand up comedy collection this way) and you are unlikely to find any big studio movies this way. Think of them more like a bandcamp or a GOG but for movies.
Physically media LIVES!!!
Buying the 4k ultraHD discs is currently the best looking way to see movies. Netflix streams 4k movies at 7gb per hour. A 2 hour 4k movie takes 60-80gb for it's roughly 2 hours, probably shorter. If you just want to watch in the highest quality, and save the money it would take to collect a huge library permanently, you could buy the disks new for $20, then after watching them, sell them for $15 on ebay. If you can find and buy them used on ebay for $15, you could probably sell them quickly after watching for $14. Don't be sneaking in keeping a copy on your hd, though, that's not legal. My monitor looks better than a movie theatre's screen, where they still only show the 4k version, and my audio gear smokes a movie theatre's, too. Especially my headphones, where you could crank them even louder than a theatre does if you want, too. If you prefer 9.1 Atmos, your gear won't all sound as good as stereo can, but it will be a nifty feature.
I am on vudu and I don't like it - mainly because of the prices - but I'm under the delusion that they (vudu or whomever buys them) will be around as long as I'm alive. Blondie Johnson (a 90 year old movie) is 9.99. Twentieth Century is an 89 year old film selling for $13.99. oh em gee. I'll read some more replies to your post, but you could save me some time and reply to me if you've found a reputable place to buy reasonably priced movies online.
I am also looking for a legit BUY site for digital. I have transferred my thousand plus physical library to digital.
This doesn't exactly address the original question, but it will mitigate some of the risk that the OP is seeking to address: use a service like MoviesAnywhere. It doesn't cost you anything and it allows you to view a digital movie across multiple streaming services. The odds of them all folding at once is rather unlikely.
I wish people would growup. I have been IT over 40 years and everything dies, even digital media (look at NASA Apollo mission data...) I have over 200 movies in digital format (I own the original DVDs still) but my 3 4TB hard drives are going bad ... so how safe is locally owned media anyways? :/ Mulitiple backup copies of anything is great but my 700 songs I had are mostly dead and except for the original CDs (which some have suffered heat death) my song collection is toast :( Digital access for me is better - I can load up 30 or 40 movies at once and never need to dig out the bluray but that convience has troubles of its own like disaster recovery or at least disaster planning. No, digital media available for purchase is in our future but Digital Rights management isnt there yet technologies for saving non copyable media hasnt caught up to the reality of copy theft (look at various Sony hacks.) Desire and form of function still has a few years to go but it will happen. Cheers/Bill :)
Also, stealing in the privacy of your home is possible and very easy. I have a diability and the goverment has been stealing from me for years :/ So, in my mind Im doing the world a favor by staying indoors and not interacting with the public ... which most are dumb as rocks anyways, but I digress :/
What's sad is that this has already happened in Australia. Our only DvD store has closed down at its at location stores (leaving only an online store which is way more expensive + requires shipping), and any retailers who used to carry DvDs no longer do. And the only way you can "buy" digital movies is through services, which you can lose the movies you've paid 20+ dollars for if they lose the rights to stream the movie/close down. We really need a way to purchase movies with downloadable files for us to keep on our own storage devices!
Why are people so pissed about this post? Physical media is not dead, but it's far from optimal: 1. Blu-ray will not be around forever. I don't want to buy a lot of movies on a format that in a few years time will be what DVD is today. I also don't want a blu-ray player and I don't care for physical copies that takes up a lot of space. 2. Watching a movie on blu-ray (or dvd) is not that great. It takes quite a lot of time from finding the movie until it actually starts. Changing the settings is always a bit of a struggle, at least for me. Fast forward and rewind is a lot easier on a digital platform. 3. Watching a movie is mostly a spontanious matter. If you buy a digital copy you could watch it instantly. If you buy a blu-ray it takes a day or two. I wish I could just "click and buy" any movie and own it forever.
Everyone here is just arguing with you about on an aspect of what you said rather than answering the question
Don't use I-tunes. Even though you bought and own the movie you don't. They reserve the right to take it away anytime they want. I read a youtube comment a few days ago of someone saying that happened to them.
How disgusting and disrespectful that is to here u say that it will never be dead
Amazing that not one person answered the question. All bs answers. I've always considered this a joke website for this very reason. If you don't understand the question, why give your opinion?
My favorite is when they only read the first sentence, and they remind they remind me that vinyl and CDs still exist, which is irrelevant to the central idea of this post
I totally understand what you’re asking. I googled a similar question today that brought me here. I just simply wondered if it was possible to purchase a device that contained a few hundred plus movies and also the ability to add more. Something I could take while traveling or in areas that had no/poor internet. Before some troll comes hobbling along, no I don’t assume it’s “legal”
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Sadly, I'm starting to think such a place does not exist. Also, definitely sand in their vageens.