Tasha Robinson isn’t ready to give up on DVDs and Blu-rays:
[F]or me, hanging onto discs isn’t about sentiment, a Luddite fear of technology, or even protecting a hefty financial investment in an aging medium, as so many people do whenever the market-dominating format in an industry changes. It’s a way of voting with my feet, or with my wallet.
By saying, “I’ll fully switch over to streaming when it looks and sounds as good, feels as stable, and provides as much library depth as disc options do,” I’m encouraging streaming companies to prioritize improving those things. Because media conglomerates don’t care about sentiment, and won’t hold back on progress to comfort the timid. But they do care about where people are spending money.
I’ve generally come down on the other side of the debate — shiny discs are going to go away at some point, so why not now?
But Robinson makes strong arguments I’ve never seen articulated so clearly, particularly about how the transition to streaming prioritizes consumption over ownership:
Media companies have every reason to not passively wait to see what consumers want, and to try to drive the market to places that will be more profitable and less expensive for them. And they simultaneously have every reason to drive people to value only the newest releases, and the most readily available content. They want purchasers to care about “new and now” because ideally, they want to sell you something new, right now — every minute of every day.
Robinson doesn’t address piracy, which is like discussing climate change without mentioning fossil fuels. The media companies aren’t moving towards streaming because they want to stop selling DVDs and Blu-rays. They are streaming movies because they need to compete with illegal downloads.
But from the perspective of a consumer who wants quality and selection, Robinson’s points are well-made.
Link via @LoganHard.