DVD is better than Blu-ray in that regard - I’ve ripped DVDs that look like they fell off a truck and got run over multiple times and had no problem, meanwhile about 1 out of 5 Blu-rays I got from Netflix would have problems despite looking pristine. It has to do with the data density, Blu-ray packs so much more in the same amount of space, one microscopic scratch wipes out so much data…
Of course some DVDs suffer from bad materials. I was re-ripping my collection recently, and I have a few that have sat in a closet untouched for years, not a scratch on them, but the drive won’t even recognize there’s a disc. Probably oxidation of the reflective layer.
Katana314@lemmy.world 4 months ago
This is what’s made me a little more okay with digital video games. The chance that some bizarre event will lead to that game becoming unplayable is non-zero. But, that’s the case for physical game discs as well.
I’m upset at events like The Crew’s removal and hope for more laws to make such things unlikely. Still, I’m generally accepting that by and large, publishers don’t try to delete or remove access to people’s games. There’s no specific motivation in it for that particular evil.
Movies, however, I’m reticent. I liked being able to buy a few cheap movies on digital services, but Sony’s mass deletion of their library makes me hesitant to continue there.
AA5B@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Also, you don’t have to worry about some random service shutting down. There are so many online dependencies with modern consoles that of the service shuts down, you gave an unusable brick, regardless whether you possess the bits they sold you
zarenki@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
Likewise, I’m far less hesitant to accept buying digital console games than video because I generally can expect that once I download a game on my one device that I’ll pull out the same device whenever I want to play it and it’ll keep working when offline and even after the servers are gone, until the hardware fails. Modern games’ physical releases rely so heavily on updates and DLC that the cart/disc you get isn’t complete anyway; buying physical effectively becomes a digital game with an extra point of failure (and partial resellability). PC gaming complicates things but at least some games are available completely DRM-free there.
With video content sold online, streaming directly from some server is always the focus. As soon as the server disconnects you become unable to watch by default. Even if some service lets you pre-download within its app and watch offline (which probably won’t work indefinitely without checkins anyway), that’ll defeat the portability expectations for watching your videos on any device interchangeably.
Blu-ray video isn’t ideal considering you cannot watch it on a phone, tablet, or linux system without cracking its DRM, but that’s still way better for lasting access than anything else major movie/TV studios are willing to let consumers access without piracy.