In an era dominated by video streaming platforms, physical media still holds a special place in my heart. However,  in the realm of physical formats like Blu-ray, it offers a definitive viewing experience that enhances the enjoyment of films, which means you shouldn’t snub owning your favorite shows/movies on a disc.

Owning Your Movies

Whether it’s a movie like The Gorge (Apple TV+), Netflix show like Cyberpunk: Edgerunners or recently released movies in the cinema is the fact that you pay for something that you don’t own. Streaming services can often removing titles without further notice, leaving viewers losing access to their shows/movies that they may want to watch.

Lost Details On Streaming

Collecting movies might seem daunting, but the effort is worth it when you focus on high-quality content, especially 4K UHD, which streaming services tend to compress. Not only do you get to keep your own collection, but you also enjoy the benefits of uncompressed visuals and audio.

Every time you stream a movie (4K or not) from a streaming service, you are paying for a service “that just works, if you have a good Internet” service. The quality can be vary, depending on your network conditions.

Better Bitrates and Details

That’s so true.  Physical 4K often outperforms streaming in many ways, even surpassing standard Blu-rays, which is why I started to collect 4K UHDs for some titles. This is where bitrate, HEVC, HDR comes into play. Streaming services like Netflix often aggressively compress content to save some money in order to charge you more when you could just own the content for ever when buying a physical media.

Compression are not just done to videos, audios are also suffering from compression. Not all physical discs includes PCM, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS-HD. But the ones that do is still better than streaming if you have a high-end audio set up to enjoy it.

Extra Content/Bonus Stuff

One of the perks of owning physical Blu-rays is that they often come with extras, depending on the version you choose. Blu-rays typically include additional commentary and behind-the-scenes content. Most 4K UHD releases also come with a standard Blu-ray version. Collector’s editions frequently feature bonus items such as booklets, toys, posters, steelbook cases, depending on the movie or show. Which streaming services just only showing you the show or movie.

Multiple platforms

Having multiple streaming platforms can be very costly, especially if you’re only watching one show and then unsubscribing after finding the service isn’t valuable anymore. Why would anyone subscribe to multiple platforms just for a single show or even a couple of shows? It’s reminiscent of the PC gaming landscape, where users often face a convoluted array of game launchers just to enjoy titles from specific publishers.

Backups

You want to watch a movie from remote area with no Internet connection? Physical media are the choice of cause. If you have access to MakeMKV and a 4K UHD drive that supports reading those discs, you can back them up to a HDD and bring with you on the road to watch them. With KODI library setup, you are ready to go.

Of course, some people may find that the convenience of streaming over owning physical media. But I’d rather spend money on more polished version with uncompressed visuals and audio over heavily compressed versions that I don’t even own.