DVDs & Blu-Rays: who needs em? No one. TV, movies, & media promote our consumeristic nature, conveying the idea that flashing the newest, greatest, & trendiest as the American way. That's why we all spend, spend, spend to fill the void our lives with materialistic things. Some may say that people drive luxury cars and wear name brand clothes to define themselves. If that's the case, then we grow our dvd collection and display them as a trophy, as a conversational piece, to establish our artistic perspective and maybe even, our personalities?Or at least that's what society seems to force upon us.
The HD-DVD and Blu-ray war was a way to trick us, to keep us in anticipation. Even though, they didn't know who was going to win, they knew the winner would be the one to lure us into believing that a physical digital media is still needed. Blu-ray is by far superior in video and sound quality than anything in terms of physical discs, but at $25+ a pop, it is by no means a cost-effective way to enjoy movies.
Piracy. With the high cost of building a good Blu-Ray/DVD collection, it may seem better to download movies illegally. Finding these movies online or on the black market is easy, if you know where to look online, or if you visit a 3rd world Asian country. I admit I used to download all my movies (illegally) in the past, but file storage became a problem. I would burn most of them to CDs, DVDs, or store them in an external hard drive. So when I wanted to watch a movie, I had to either 1) skim through my 200-disc cd holder, put it in the dvd, watch it, then put it back or 2) search and retrieve the movie from one of my multiple external hard drives or even 3) download the movie, and wait for it to download(usually a couple hours), taking up time and bandwidth from my internet connection. Storage space, time, and bandwidth is valuable! Downloading or buying pirated movies is just too inconvenient to download, store, organize, and watch.
Cost. A collection of 10 blu-rays will set you back $250. DVDs still cost about $15, so a collection of 20 is worth, on average, $300. I took a look at my dvd/bluray collection and found 6 blu-rays and over 50 DVDs, worth about $900+!!!
Future. Eventually, broadband internet & streaming technologies will evolve to the point where physical discs will no longer be needed and everything will be available online. So, DON'T BUY BLU-RAYS OR DVDS!
Join me for my next segment: Alternatives to Buying Blu-ray/DVDs & Cable/Sat TV service
Charles,
ReplyDeleteI love you brother, but I feel that I may need to defend the dvd and blu ray format. Although I agree that DVD’s and Blu ray are completely overpriced and needs to be taken down maybe 7-15 dollars each of what they cost right now, here are some point I think are a reason why people (including myself) still indulge ourselves with buying Blu ray and DVD’s:
With the way computer are being made for the typical consumer these days (i.e. crappy and underpowered), as well with how the American economy is going, you cannot stream high quality (high definition) movies without having to buy high quality computer equipment (i.e. Video cards, etc... ) Sure you can say that, we can probably build a great quality computer for a few hundred dollars, but with the way society works right now, they have no time to wait for sales to show up and buy one piece of the “perfect” PC at a time. The people want their things right here right now (which is probably why not everybody is embracing online stores as much (also probably due to the possibility of identity theft)), and waiting a few months to years to be able to obtain all their computer parts will be torture.
Also, People who watch their movies over and over again (yes even 10-20 years later on... I still watch godfather on videotape and on laser disk), streaming videos for a certain amount a pop is just not that economical, not to mention with the very slow internet connection, compared to other technologically inclined countries, streaming a 2 hour movie can be very time consuming, and can take up to a half a day just to watch a movie.
In addition, if we wanted to watch the latest movies (especially if we have no time to go and spend 10-15 bucks on the movie theatre), we have to wait half a year to almost a few years to actually see it on a “streamed” website for free. Actually owning great movies such as the godfather or iron man and yes, even jackass the movie for 15-25 bucks a pop isn’t that bad, especially if you watch 16-20 times... Granted this may change in the future, but you and I both know those greedy movie studios will not release brand new films to the internet public for free.
Now downloading movies (illegally) are a great way to solve this dilemma. However, one cannot be sure of the quality of move one is downloading. Also, I have noticed that downloaded movies don’t have that “reusability” factor that DVD’s and Blu ray’s have. I was looking through all my old boxes and saw old movies that were burned into DVD’s that I forgot that I had, and they were all scratched up and destroyed beyond use, sure that may have been my fault, but without that DVD box or that Blu ray box, the movie just isn’t worth keeping for a long time.
Another thing I love about Blu ray’s and DVD’s is that it makes such a perfect gift for friends and loved ones. I love giving movies to people because you know it’s one of those things that people love, but do not want to buy for themselves. Sure, it has always been the thought that counts, but giving an actual DVD or movie is better than giving a gift card from Netflix or some blockbuster to let them stream movies in the internet. Plus during the holiday seasons, these blu ray and DVD go onsale for like 5 bucks a pop… plus there is no shame buying used, especially blu ray movies, I bought half of my blu ray collection for like 7-10 bucks a pop at amazon.com… its great and not a scratch on them.
Sure a few years from now there probably will be a newer format that will make DVD and Blu ray obsolete, making majority of our DVD and Blu ray collections worthless (Yes I had a respectable DVD collection before I was swept into the HD DVD/Blu ray wars. Now that it’s over, im slowly building a Blu ray collection). At least when we are old and our kids will be able to enjoy some of the classic movies that had come out in our generation since our hard drives that stored all our streamed and downloaded videos have been destroyed, or they pulled the movie off the list...
I know Blu rays and DVD’s are expensive, especially since it only cost movie studios like 2 dollars to make these things, giving them almost if not over 200% profit every time they sell one. Because trust me, that just seems unfair to me, and I would love to stick it to them bastards as much as the next guy. But unless the computers become so much better and a hell of a lot cheaper than, as well the internet becoming maybe 50 times better than it is now, I’m afraid people are still going to keep buying DVD’s and Blu rays over streaming movies over the internet.
Btw, I stream tv shows and movies off the internet too, and I have to say that even though the contents is there, the video quality, lag and all them blasted commercials, just doesn’t do it for me. NOW cable Pay per view on the other hand is one hell of a concept that has been thriving since the 80’s, maybe even the 70’s. If the cable company can send us a physical copy of the movies we purchased on demand, then we might have something here.
Dude, Love the website, looking forward for the next one…