I’m not surprised at all, physical media is only good for the consumer. They want subscriptions so they can keep you paying constantly, there’s no benefit for them
This is false. Firstly, because people don’t subscribe to everything forever. But even in some Netflix utopia where everyone has a Netflix subscription, and they keep it forever, then what? Now you can’t make any more money, you’re making the maximum amount of money your business model can make. But you can keep people subscribed to your service by continuing to add new things, while also making extra money from those who would like to own physical copies.
Subscriptions detach income from titles, meaning all the service needs to do is exist and have things on it. There’s no budget to actually create anything special. Physical offers a way to reconnect those, making something that is more expensive and in return making more money.
The ad-based plans everyone is introducing run on the same logic. Subscriptions aren’t sustainable.
So say I buy The Matrix on DVD. I can watch it whenever I like…
If I stop paying for Netflix, then I can’t watch it anymore so I have to keep signing up again. What about when the matrix isn’t on a Netflix, I then have to go sign up for Apple TV.
Isn’t capitalism supposed to weed out the companies without a viable business? If you can’t keep improving your product or you’ve got saturation with users then that’s your ceiling. Down like it, close down.
Kinda weird take from you to be honest. Like why won’t we think about the poor struggling corporations. Perhaps they would be in a better position if they didn’t go so long with losses trying to capture the market with a view to rinse us all later down the line.
I have exactly one monthly subscription and that’s for AppleCare+ on my phone. Fuck death my a thousand paper cuts.
“There’s no benefit to physical media.” “Yes there is.” “Why are you defending corporations?”
…what?
yeah I hate owning things that I can keep and hold on to without someone revoking it away from me.
My physical media was destroyed in a fire, but I still have my backed up digital library. We all accept some risk!
If they’re anything like me it’s an overriding laziness!
We listened to the same audio cassette that was stuck in our car for nearly 6 months rather than spend the hour it eventually took sort it out.
I still love No Doubt though.
Same. I understand all of the reasons why people prefer physical media, but after buying the same movie across three generations of physical media between VHS / DVD / Blueray / 4K UHD and now Dolby, I’d just prefer to have it once and get access to the best copy modern technology allows.
It’s also supremely easier to download a purchased digital copy instead of buying physical media, rip it, find increasing storage, find a player like Plex, maintain my own Plex server and hardware, and then download it.
I’ve done Plex for years with physical media, downloading a digital copy is simply a better consumer experience.
At the risk of sounding like a corporate shill: fucking duh? Who ever thought otherwise???
Netflix. Its how their business started. DVD rentals via mail.
Nokia started as a paper mill company and sold toilet paper. With the release of the Nokia 9 PureView smartphone, nobody expected Nokia to release bog roll along with it.
I was going to make the same sort of metaphor with Nintendo until I looked it up and saw that they still produce playing cards 🙃
Burn your own copy.
Data on a HDD or SSD (without DRM) is also physical media, and much more flexible. No need to expend more plastic locking data onto a dying format.
More like dead format. I haven’t had a dvd player in my home for over a decade
No game consoles? Everything from the PS2 and Xbox forward has the ability to play DVDs.
Blu Ray starting with the PS3 and Xbox One.
4K UHD starting with the Xbox One S and PS5.
Not only a dead format, but a unstable shelf life format. CDs and DVDs were always marketed as storage for good. But technically that was never possible, not the way it was actually manufactured. The used plastics and metal laminates had a rough expected life of 15 years or thereabouts, at best. Obviously a massive increase from magnetic tapes that started degrading as soon as the recording stopped and got slowly more damaged the more you played them. But still not a permanent solution. No organized data is stored forever, entropy won’t allow this. Most if not all original compact discs are probably gone by now, and some end user burnables had even worse chemistry in their data layers than original prints.
Only actively making new copies of digital goods in new storage media regularly keeps those goods alive. We need new storage mediums that are resilient in the measure of centuries and not just a decade or so. We need commercial glass 3D optical storage now.
Why is this even a knock on Netflix? McDonald’s doesn’t serve steak and I don’t think it’s because McDonald’s bad. Netflix is in the streaming business, not the physical media business. Look elsewhere if that’s important to you?
Because they’re in the business of art and they’re perfectly happy to kill art if it doesn’t make business sense. There is a cultural cost to this stuff disappearing that isn’t comparable to the McRib going away.
They are in the business of streaming, and are making art to maintain a fresh library to stream. Just like broadcasters and movie theaters before them.
TV shows and movies on physical media was a huge change for those that required a shift in priorities that took decades and for phyiscal media to be profitable. Netflix is still making bank doing what they know how to do, which is streaming. Switching to physical media would need to be more reliably profitable for them than limiting it to streaming to encourage subs to make the switch.
I would prefer the physical media option too, but their reluctance is understandable.
Ok. But if they’re footing the bill, that’s their choice. The content creators don’t need to go to Netflix for their funding, there are many other options.
Sure, and Netflix/HBO et all are still assholes for happily sending art to the glue factory when they think it makes financial sense. They deserve to be criticized for it.
Don’t worry. Just because you can’t pay for something doesn’t mean it’s gone away. Netflix (and basically all media companies) are just shooting themselves in the foot trying to lock everyone into a bunch of subscription services. If I could pay them a couple bucks to download a movie or show with no DRM I would. Instead they get $0 from me and I do it anyway.
If you feel that way, then you should pay to support them, just like the mcribbers
Netflix will get money from me when they unfuck their decision to cancel Mindhunter
Because there’s no way to own that media that netflix has rights to. Currently, legally buying accessing any tv shows or movies digitally means the company who offered them to you can yank them away at any time, legally.
That’s not ownership.
Physical media still isn’t perfect, as it includes copy protection, but at least no one can legally take your BluRay away from you.
Okay. Don’t consume that media? Artists are not forced into contracts with Netflix. They can do what thousands of artists did before Netflix ever existed. Will they hit the same level of audience that Netflix pulls? No. People like streaming and it’s popular as hell. Why would they be entitled to that though? Artists, creators of any type really, have agency to do as they wish with their art. Consumers have a choice in the art they consume. If either chooses to engage with Netflix, why would it not be on the terms that Netflix has openly set and asked you whether you wanted to partake in?
I just do not understand this viewpoint and it’s all over the thread. To be clear, Netflix does other stuff that sucks, like killing shows and underpaying artists. Be mad at them for that all you like, I’ll be right there with ya. Insinuating Netflix is doing something ethically bad by pivoting to streaming, which the vast majority of the world’s population would rather use than physical media, just does not make a lick of sense to me. Why should Netflix pay employees, rent factory space, set up an entire vertical they’ve gotten out of, just to produce CDs that history showed hardly anyone bought after the transition to streaming?
I think it boils down to how people view and value this medium of art. Some think that the creator owns the work and can do with it what they please. Some think that art belongs to everyone and they should have a say in what happens to it.
IMO, when all digital media by its very nature can be infinitely copied and distributed, trying to DRM everything is insanity. Trying to restrict people’s access doesn’t work; people still pirate, people still get over news paywalls, etc. It’s the wrong approach. US copyright law is broken and bonkers. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is bad and insane. I don’t know how to make this a fair system under capitalism, if it’s even possible.
The current system labels me a criminal if pay for netflix, watch a netflix movie, and then circumvent the DRM in order to save that movie to my own computer. And netflix also won’t allow me pay them more to save that movie. That’s bonkers.
I mean, for as long as physical media even is a thing. Given where the control and money is I don’t see physical media being a thing for much longer.
