DVD, Blu-Ray and the physical media format

Yes, I do have a collection. Roughly 500 Blu-rays and 4Ks (85 of which are 4K), and a few DVDs. That being said, I haven't purchased a lot from Disney in recent years because they have made so many decisions that make their home media off-putting. With 4K, many of their films don't receive much of a boost, honestly. Furthermore, in Canada, the bilingual packaging is horrific (you don't have to worry about terrible packaging with streaming). To top it of, they don't do Dolby Vision on their 4K discs, and their Atmos tracks are rather anemic. That being said, their 4K disc of Cinderella looks great despite the lack of Dolby Vision. I did, however, import from the States to avoid the bilingual packaging, which costs more.

I am guessing that one of the big benefits of a streaming-only world would be the fact that the reduction of all that plastic would be good for the environment. Another thing is that even these physical discs are not necessarily permanent. In 10 years, there could be further upgrade in video quality and remastering technology, rendering the masters on your current discs obsolete. New masters will probably wind up on streaming services anyways (although, maybe there would be fewer incentives to restore movies if there is no home video market?) Some people also have trouble with discs degrading in humid environments (luckily I have never had this issue). Also, someone can burglarize your collection or your house can burn down. You don' own anything permanently. We're borrowing everything from the earth. 

That being said, I still prefer home video to streaming. I will probably have more to say about this, these are only preliminary thoughts.

I think my view is more that I prefer the title to be in the original language of the film itself, with alternate language titles in smaller font to avoid clutter (although sizing can offend one's sense of equality). I watch a lot of Asian films for example, and would prefer the original Asian titles even though I can't read them (the characters are beautiful all on their own). If a smaller English or French title is included with it, fine, but when you overburden the cover art with a ton of text it bothers my sense of aesthetics. One also needs to consider the fact there are too many languages in Canada to include all on one cover, so practicality is an issue. I actually would have loved it if Criterion retained the French title for Cocteau's La Belle et La Bete for their release. No such luck, though.

And no just....no, lol. Quebec and Alberta love to make a lot of noise about seceding, but it ain't gonna happen.



Yes, when it comes to 4K, for example, the extra pixels aren't where the noticeable difference is. The difference is in the HDR (when done right) and in the quality of the master itself. The master for Batman 89 on 4K is a noticeable improvement over the old Blu-ray.



I am not trying to encourage people to worry about losing what they have, what I am saying is that owning a physical copy provides the illusion of permanence.



Oh, I doubt they are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. But it does take a lot of plastic and energy so that everyone who wants their own copy can have one.

Here's another big knock against physical I have experienced lately (although it is basically manufactured by neglect on the part of the powers that be): 4K disc players have turned out to be less reliable than Blu-ray players. My player (which I bought in April 21) has been glitching up during playback on a handful of discs. At first, given the fact it was a smaller number of discs, I thought I was just getting bad discs. However, I have replaced some movies several times, cleaned the discs, and have even had discs that worked the first time skitz out on me on repeat viewings. I went online to see if anyone else was having these issues and it turns out a lot of people are having issues with all of the players from the major players (although there are a couple of higher-end players available from non-mainstream brands that I haven't heard much about in regards to their reliability). On top of this, the quality control on the discs has been pitiful for the past few years. Many of them show up pre-scratched, so you have to jump through the hoops of replacing them. The thing is though, I have even got discs that glitch up even though they aren't even scratched, so that is why I started to suspect my player was the culprit. There is one movie in particular I have found that no one else has issues with. But like I said, everyone is having problems with at least some movies on their player, so you can't buy with any confidence anymore that these things are going to work the way they are supposed to. Some even suspect it may be a combination of discs and players (some discs and players just don't play well together kind of thing). I was able to send my player in to be serviced because I got an extended service plan, but when I get it back I will be testing it thoroughly before I sink more money into more discs. I might even go back to regular Blu-ray simply because they are more reliable (although, some of the regular Blu-ray discs show up scratched to hell now too, so replacing them is going to be a recurrent hassle). All of this being said, I would prefer to stick with physical because I don't like having to sub to various streaming services just to watch a handful of movies I want to watch while getting a bunch of titles I am not interested in, but boy the hassle of replacing discs is reducing the fun of collecting! So yeah, we will see what happens. I thought I would warn you guys about how unreliable 4K is in case you were thinking about upgrading.