In recent times, streaming services have become the norm for at home media viewing, causing physical media to become obsolete. This is a standard.  When a more convenient means of home media comes along, it replaces what came before. Vhs was replaced by DVD, DVD was replaced by Blu-ray, and now Blu-ray is being replaced by streaming. It makes sense, streaming is convenient, you only need to pay a small amount every month for a massive library of content all from the comfort of your own home. Why go to BlockBuster when you can get what you need from Netflix? Plus, buying Blu-rays and DVDs adds up. Especially if you want high quality products. But when you look closer, you can see the issues with streaming media and the benefits of physical media.

The biggest problem with streaming is you don’t own what you watch. And a lot of the time, that goes for the company as well. Even if you buy a movie on Amazon you are not buying the movie. You are buying a license to stream that movie, and if Amazon loses the license to stream that movie you lose the ability to access that movie. So, a movie or show could get removed in an instant. This is instantly contrasted with owning a physical copy, as you own it unless the company you bought the Blu-ray or DVD from would send someone to your house to grab it from you. It is yours to keep.

Alongside that problem, a lot of streaming services often won’t provide media for a variety of reasons. Such as George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and HBO’s Tales From the Crypt. Which are missing on streaming due to licensing issues. While sometimes it is easy to say why something is not on streaming, for a lot of the movies I listed above, the reason for their absence is just not clear However, all of them have affordable Blu-ray or DVD releases, 

Now all this is great, but it still adds up and can be costly.  I have first-hand experience with how costly physical media can get. But you don’t need to buy the most expensive copy of a film. If the film has just been released, I am sure you can find it for pretty cheap on DVD. Also, we live in Portland, Oregon. Where there are many movie rental shops, such as Movie Madness, which offers movie rentals for $3.00. Plus, they have movies that you are not going to find on most streaming services. So, even if you’re concerned about cost, I’m sure you can find ways around it that would be less expensive than subscribing to all these different services.

So why not try out physical media? Get a way to play them, go out to a local store, and grab some stuff you wanna watch or listen to. Then go home, and enjoy. Free of the fact that you could lose access to that media at any moment.