Sure, I’d need specific hardware to access the media, but after I rip it, I can access it anywhere. The benefit to me of something like a Bluray isn’t the disk itself, but being able to legally buy media and rip it to a digital format at home. That’s a legally gray area since breaking copy protection measures is technically a copyright violation, but there’s also legal protection for backing up media for personal use, so it’s a bit of a gray area.

Given that there are no other legal or mostly legal alternatives, I’m satisfied with that as an option. Media companies rarely, if ever, go after people who rip media for personal use (probably because it’s not worth their time and it’s a legal gray area), so I’m okay with that status quo. If there were a legal option to get DRM-free media for offline use, I’d totally go for that. I tried that with streaming services, but the apps I used (Netflix and Disney+) failed when I actually needed them (my downloaded files “expired” on a trip when I didn’t have internet access), so that’s not going to work for me.

If this legally gray area goes away and I can’t easily rip media into a DRM-free format for personal use, I’ll go back to the alternatives I used when I couldn’t afford physical media and Netfilx wasn’t yet a thing.