I'm in the fairly niche group preferring digital ownership (although I also strongly feel we need legal revisions and consumer protections over things we digitally own, instead of the "well if this digital shop goes bankrupt, your stuff is just gone", DRM, HDCP hellscape, wild west we're in now) primarily because I'm against the huge amount of plastic and physical materials physical media creates. I am most heavily against the "subscribe to everything, give all the companies your money, and own NOTHING" extra super duper hellscape we're going towards now.
The parity of environmental impact of a physical disc versus streaming a movie is 4 play throughs. So, if you play your blu-ray / 4K disc 5 times, it is more environmentally conscious than streaming the movie from a data server.
I think what they're talking about is buying online without physical media, but still owning what you bought, as in, the actual movie, as a file on your disk. Best of both worlds - no plastic, no servers necessary for playback after a one time download. That is how things should work.
I don't think that group is as 'niche' as it seems. People who prefer digital just go buy digital. It's harder to get nostalgic or evangelistic about digital goods, and the benefits are pretty obvious, so there's not much point in trying to convince people of it.
OTOH, physical goods do tend to elicit nostalgia and some of the benefits are definitely in the eye of the beholder. People tend to talk a lot more about preferring physical things, perhaps because they feel the need to defend their choice. There's often a lot of fear involved, like "What if they take my digital library away", etc.
Digital "ownership" is often cheaper, takes less space, and is more convenient. Occasionally something stupid happens, but in general it's pretty hard to lose your digital library.
And if you do lose it, I think most people would have no problem with using piracy to replace it. They bought it, and they deserve it.
I'm in the fairly niche group preferring digital ownership (although I also strongly feel we need legal revisions and consumer protections over things we digitally own, instead of the "well if this digital shop goes bankrupt, your stuff is just gone", DRM, HDCP hellscape, wild west we're in now) primarily because I'm against the huge amount of plastic and physical materials physical media creates. I am most heavily against the "subscribe to everything, give all the companies your money, and own NOTHING" extra super duper hellscape we're going towards now.
The parity of environmental impact of a physical disc versus streaming a movie is 4 play throughs. So, if you play your blu-ray / 4K disc 5 times, it is more environmentally conscious than streaming the movie from a data server.
Source: https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/05/discs-vs-data-are-we-helping-the-environment-by-streaming/
I think what they're talking about is buying online without physical media, but still owning what you bought, as in, the actual movie, as a file on your disk. Best of both worlds - no plastic, no servers necessary for playback after a one time download. That is how things should work.
I don't think that group is as 'niche' as it seems. People who prefer digital just go buy digital. It's harder to get nostalgic or evangelistic about digital goods, and the benefits are pretty obvious, so there's not much point in trying to convince people of it.
OTOH, physical goods do tend to elicit nostalgia and some of the benefits are definitely in the eye of the beholder. People tend to talk a lot more about preferring physical things, perhaps because they feel the need to defend their choice. There's often a lot of fear involved, like "What if they take my digital library away", etc.
Digital "ownership" is often cheaper, takes less space, and is more convenient. Occasionally something stupid happens, but in general it's pretty hard to lose your digital library.
And if you do lose it, I think most people would have no problem with using piracy to replace it. They bought it, and they deserve it.