I can't imagine content owners wanting the physical media to continue any longer than they can get away with. The control they have from digital only must make them feel so powerful. At least as long as everyone continues to buy into their DRM systems.
I've recently looked into purchasing a dedicated 4K Blu-ray player to start building a disc collection again. I'm assuming there's some pretty decent deals in the used bins now. One by one, I keep canceling my streaming subscriptions. At some point, that physical media will be the only thing left. Makes me feel like a prepper of a different sort
I do this. I'll buy used disks and rip them to a personal media server. It works great. A friend actually created an eBay bot which monitors listings of disks he wants and will automatically buys them.
The ripping part is a bit annoying and time-consuming though. Ironically, it would probably be easier to buy a disk then download a file rather than ripping.
> Ironically, it would probably be easier to buy a disk then download a file rather than ripping.
This is basically what mp3.com tried to do: treat the physical (music) disc as a license key that gives you access to a digital copy online. Sadly, the courts did not agree with their interpretation of copyright law.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMG_Recordings,_Inc._v._MP3.co....
I've been doing this as well. Occasionally I'll have a disc that fails to rip for some reason (maybe my drive is more sensitive to defects than my player is, or there's some stupid copy protection scheme), and then I'll torrent it. Torrenting is always easier and faster, though it's hard to find special features this way.
> The control they have from digital only must make them feel so powerful.
I hope they continue to feel this way. WEBDL can come faster.
Why not just get everything on the high seas for free, instead of paying for used-bin stuff which is cheap but still costs something? I’m a huge cinephile with a collection on my hard drives of ripped Blu-ray and DVD images, a number running now into the four figures, and I have almost never paid for a physical disc; I own something like 6 that are in a box somewhere.
Because within my job/industry, getting caught pirating would end my career.
That's part of what I was thinking. The idea of digital-only must be very attractive for content owners, so I don't think they will put much effort into preventing that outcome.