Did people really watch movies/shows on DVDs that forced them to watch ads before even starting? Like you go to the store and pay for a movie disc and when you go home you have to sit through like 10 minutes of ads. Did people really have to watch ads before they could even watch the movie they paid for a copy of?!
𝙏𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝘿𝙞𝙨𝙣𝙚𝙮 𝘿𝙑𝘿 𝙞𝙨 𝙚𝙣𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙚𝙙 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝘿𝙞𝙨𝙣𝙚𝙮’𝙨 𝙁𝙖𝙨𝙩𝙋𝙡𝙖𝙮. 𝙔𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙢𝙤𝙫𝙞𝙚 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙖 𝙨𝙚𝙡𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙤𝙛 𝙗𝙤𝙣𝙪𝙨 𝙛𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙚𝙨 𝙬𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙗𝙚𝙜𝙞𝙣 𝙖𝙪𝙩𝙤𝙢𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙮. 𝙏𝙤 𝙗𝙮𝙥𝙖𝙨𝙨 𝙁𝙖𝙨𝙩 𝙋𝙡𝙖𝙮, 𝙨𝙚𝙡𝙚𝙘𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙈𝙖𝙞𝙣 𝙈𝙚𝙣𝙪 𝙗𝙪𝙩𝙩𝙤𝙣 𝙖𝙩 𝙖𝙣𝙮 𝙩𝙞𝙢𝙚. 𝙁𝙖𝙨𝙩 𝙋𝙡𝙖𝙮 𝙬𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙗𝙚𝙜𝙞𝙣 𝙞𝙣 𝙖 𝙢𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩…
Even on VHS there were ads (you could fast-forward through them though), and Blu-Ray also has ads despite being a "more modern" standard (it's not it's just HD-DVD with a different branding). Also you can't even use the disc without paying for a special disc reader that reads that shit for you (tbf a lot of devices came with a disc reader, but it still persisted despite the fact that USB storage was far cheaper and more efficient). You'd also have to navigate the terribly slow menus just to get to the part you were at.
Also if you buy a DVD/Blu-Ray whatever the fuck they call it nowadays in one part of the world and you travel to another, say you have family that lives in one country and you live in another, you can't play that disc because it's "region-locked."
Ok maybe it's region locked because different countries probably use different displays/standards or whatnot. NO! It's region locked for NO MATERIAL REASON besides "ensuring copyright distribution of the holder". This is even more mind-boggling for "blu-ray" the supposedly new format.
Also most Blu-Rays don't even come with all the goodies that normal DVDs had like behind the scenes/deleted scenes etc, so it's not like Blu-Rays have any other advantage besides being incompatible with your dvd player. "Just buy a PS3" yes I will buy the SONY product to play movies on a disc also created by SONY.
How is it considered physical media when the devices to play it are not being sold anymore? I'm sure there are a lot of Sony walkmans being sold nowadays. I can totally pick up a VHS player right now at the store and enjoy my treasure trove of vhs tapes that haven't already withered to dust.
People older than me (I was born after Al Gore lost the election) are having nostalgia for the "age of physical media" when really it was an age of physical bullshit compared to streaming bullshit. It's always capitalism, capitalism will burn down all art if it means that someone didn't get to skip paying for it. Here's what I say, just pay a couple a dollars a month for a VPN with port-forwarding and just torrent all your media. Your torrented file has done more for media preservation and archival then any DVD bullshit ever did. The only use for physical media is to digitize it and share it.
The bootlegged Cinderella movie sold in the Global South has done more for media preservation than Disney ever has. A seedbox in Russia is more of a art library compared to any video store.
Don't get me started on video games. Where every generation of devices there's a new standard and new way to do things. Nothing says media preservation like buying a disc from a store and then waiting an hour for your device to download updates online.
This has always made me mad. Like you say, at least with VHS you could fast forward but on modern systems you just get the little smarmy 🚫⏩ symbol that fills me with an unbridled rage while suffering through ancient advertisements. Thank goodness they preserved an unskippable ad for Disney's Cars, I'll be sure to head out to theaters in 2006 to see it.
A scratched CD is the most unwatchable piece of media ever created. Once that disc player starts buffering it's all over.
Sure lets keep selling this garbage format to people because law and order. Totally not like we could have saved so much waste if it were a USB system instead.
Like even if we needed to put DRM to appease the capitalist gods of art, a USB that you plug in at the store to receive a movie is far better than having to sell so many plastic cases, paper covers, and manufactured discs that if dropped will be lost forever.
People don't give a shit so we can have nerds in their basement with shelves of DRM'd bullshit that'll get crushed when the regularly scheduled climate change disaster happens.
degradation is just as much of a concern with flash media, just takes a different form. + with all your data centralized like that, your shit is more at risk.
Plus, it's really only relatively recently that flash and other solid state media storage density approached (or surpassed) the density of the best commercially available optical media. BlueRay as a format was invented in 2005, when a nice USB thumb drive would have been like 512 megabytes.