Steven BersonTangible versus Virtual. Here's a great example of how the promise of streaming has been betrayed by cartelized corporate greed. First photo is my recently delivered box set of "The Expanse", 19 DVD's all for $32.40 USd including tax & shipping. Second photo is the cost to stream all 6 seasons contained in the DVD set, from Fandango at $59.99.
I acquired a bit ago a nicely working DVD/BluRay/CD player with HDMI & spdif audio outputs for $15 from my local Goodwill, hooked into the 55" display & big speakers in my studio, for a home theater vibe. Nice thing is that it is also easy to rip DVD's to digital video files, and with Jellyfin on my OpenMediaVault server, easy to stream to other devices too. Versus a bigger payment for just a corporation's potentially rescinded promise towards future viewing access.
Once upon a time, given the relative costs of materials/time/energy/labor needed to create tangible formats like optical discs, made one of the big selling points of streaming, besides obvious 'convenience', was that it was almost always less expensive for the consumer. While streaming certainly has costs to produce - needing lots of servers & CDN's for encoding, hosting & delivery - this should still end up being a fraction per stream compared to what it takes to manufacture, package & deliver optical discs made out of plastics and metals. So seems to me what we've seen of late is the media corporations raising in concert rates for streaming, with profit margins on these ballooning, while the last of the optical disc manufacturing plants, have reduced their profit margins to the bare minimum. The result is an inversion in pricing between the tangible & virtual options for many releases now. And for those of us interested in lasting & ready access to specific works of art, and for those of us that value "digital sovereignty", against a marketing system working to make these things more scarce, the tangible options are looking increasingly attractive.
#TheExpanse #dvd #streaming #corporategreed #opticaldisc #blueray #economics #movies #scifi #enshittification #ownership #intellectualproperty #digitalsovereignty #jellyfin #ripping #media
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