Physical Media: Down, But Maybe Not Out

jfruh writes: "For many tech-savvy folks, it may come as surprise that physical media like DVD and Blu-Ray still generate more movie revenue than streaming services. But PriceWaterhouse Coopers is predicting that the the lines will cross in 2017 as physical media sales and rentals decline; already, fully half of those revenues come from supermarket Redbox kiosks. Still, there are signs that physical media won't vanish entirely, including the obsessive needs of collectors and the music industry's increasing suspicions of digital sales."

Comments

Re:stupid premise

[lgw]

Exactly this. Cheap bastards torrent (understandable if you're broke), but if you have money? You rip the physical media. Personally, I rip it into a "visually lossless" format since I'm sure players and disk capacity will catch up to file sizes and formats over time, but that's obsession not convenience. There's just no beating the convenience of a normal filesystem with normal media files.

But then, I tend to watch stuff more than once. DRMed streams are fine, really, if you never plan to watch something again.