MSE Forum poll: Do you still buy physical media?

MSE_JC

Whether it's films, TV, music, books or video games, we live in an age where we can stream or buy our favourite media digitally. For many of us it's certainly convenient - we can access content wherever we are with just a few taps or clicks...unless the wifi goes down, or the platform decides to remove something from their service.

Do you still purchase hard copies like Blu rays, vinyl, CDs, game discs etc? Tell us below!

RAS

You don't have an option for newspapers and magazines?

Hoenir

The warmth of sound from a vinyl record cannot be underestimated

PocketWatchMan

A few years ago a colleague alerted me to a digital book, that had been updated after purchase. Apparently this is not uncommon with most digital media now. This published work stated as fact, that women's rights in the UK were granted by the EU. Presumably, the suffragettes were nothing but an inconvenient truth that needed to be erased from history!

Never forget, that If you don't hold it in your hand, it can be changed, it can be erased, and you don't really own it.

steven141

PocketWatchMan said:

A few years ago a colleague alerted me to a digital book, that had been updated after purchase. Apparently this is not uncommon with most digital media now. This published work stated as fact, that women's rights in the UK were granted by the EU. Presumably, the suffragettes were nothing but an inconvenient truth that needed to be erased from history!

Never forget, that If you don't hold it in your hand, it can be changed, it can be erased, and you don't really own it.

It's the same with TV shows etc. They can be removed or edited at any point even without you knowing. At least a physical copy is a copy that you own forever or at least until the copy breaks.

no_real_names_please

It's ridiculous that media, people have bought can be tampered with after its bought with little enforcement of whatever consumer rights are there

There's a couple of recent petition in the UK or EU citizens to make companies more accountable for that regarding videogames so they can't just shut it down when it suits them leaving players in the lurch.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/702074/

As you can see from the UK state response, it's full of nonsense but enough sigs were made to get it into a debate.

The europe one has also passed it's threshold but the sigs needed to be validate so the more the better in case of fakes.This is due up at the end of july.

https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home

Jenna_Appleseed

I buy a mix of both, your poll is invalid.

twopenny

I buy certain things but I can't specify in the poll so it makes the results vague and general.

For me I just got fed up with too much advertising and the endless repetition of the adverts. My concentration was shot with this every 10mins and the pace they impose when trying to relax.

It's eye opening going back to books, Dvds and CDs. I'm much more chilled and focused on life in general. 

paradigital

no_real_names_please said:

It's ridiculous that media, people have bought can be tampered with after its bought with little enforcement of whatever consumer rights are there

There's a couple of recent petition in the UK or EU citizens to make companies more accountable for that regarding videogames so they can't just shut it down when it suits them leaving players in the lurch.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/702074/

As you can see from the UK state response, it's full of nonsense but enough sigs were made to get it into a debate.

The europe one has also passed it's threshold but the sigs needed to be validate so the more the better in case of fakes.This is due up at the end of july.

https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home

The stopkillinggames movement is incredibly important to define the rights of consumers in this new era of online transactions dominating the market.

Ross and his team have done an incredible job, but it still looks to be a failing cause.  Unfortunately those that can or have the authority to help misunderstand the request (as per the last two replies to the UK petition), or in the case of the US have too close ties to the businesses that directly profit from killing games.

I hope I’m wrong, but games are going to die, and physical media doesn’t mean anything for modern games that rely on connected services and DRM to start.

vacheron

We haven't used any physical media in our house (or cars) for over a decade now.

I digitised everything we owned many years ago (music, moves, series, photos) and these are all held on, and streamed from, our home Media server. We use YouTube for most of our "TV watching" and don't have any other subscription services (or watch traditional TV).

That data still remains in our posession though, so it cannot be changed or edited or our access revoked. In that sense, I guess it is physically held (i.e. not streamed from a third party) but it is stored on an array of hard drives rather than thousands of pieces of individually stamped plastic.

The only downside to this was I repaied my mums CD player a few weeks ago, and when I came to test it, realised that I didn't have a single CD to put in it!  In the end I went out to one of the cars and found one loaded into the cars 6-disk in-dash player. When I finally remembered how to eject a CD it genuinely had dust on it! 

TimeLord1

Piracy typically uses the cheapest media format; they virtually release streaming material online of current shows as presale for all major online media companies. And the sales are high because it's a one off payment. Instead of monthly subscriptions. And by the time the official release is out the demand is very low.