Do you use physical media?

I wanted to buy physical books and movies for myself but I have a small room (in parent's basement) and don't yet got my own place. There's no space for it, really.

When I was still playing Nintendo games up to the switch, my games were physical.

On PC I have steam. But I still have various install discs from years gone by.

And I have various CDs, DVDs and blu-rays.

I don't have any streaming subscription services. I canceled all of them a long time ago

Yep, torrented content on hard drives, using media servers like jellyfin, audiobookshelf, calibre, and navidrome. Accessible on any device, anywhere in the world.

Yes. Tons of physical music. Tons of physical movies both DVD and vhs.

Games, I sadly have only digital for the most part for pc, but I have ps1 ps2 atari n64 nes genesis snes Xbox physical games still.

To me, there is a huge push to make us own nothing and be a slave to corpos. This upsets me. And I've always loved physical media. Its much more real.

A hard drive full of non drm files is fine too (especially for tv shows, since stacks and stacks of dvds do take up space) but its not quite the same.

Oh ya and i have a small library maybe like 300 books

Most of my music comes from CDs, but I have ripped them to use on my iPod and in Plexamp. Also have a heap of books and dvds but more digital with these

I keep it around and don't use subscription services or DLC, but the physical media itself doesn't see everyday use, excluding books. When I had a bit more time during the quarantine, I digitized about half of my physical media library. Now if I need to pull something off the shelf, I'll digitize it individually while I'm at it. After that point, I just run it off a hard drive or whatever portable device it's on.

Most of my media purchases nowadays go to independent artists/developers where producing a physical copy is not always practical. Old stuff that was released on physical media often can be tracked down on archive.org since trawling eBay and thrift stores for those can get unsustainable. Everything else may be found in the high seas.

As for books, I'll take physical copies whenever I can. I can't stand prolonged reading on a backlit screen and I don't do a good enough job keeping my e-ink reader charged.

I have a huge collection of DRM free movies, shows, books, music, etc.

It's physically in my house, but digitally on my hard drives. With quadruple redundancy, including offline backups.

While I do use steaming services for tv/movies and music, I've also got reasonably large collections of DVDs/BluRays, hard copy video games, books (never liked ebooks or even audio books) and most of all, vinyl records (over 1000 in my collection and ever -growing!)

Happy with having a mix of media, and increasingly keen to make sure I own things rather than only having them available through a stream, convenient though that is.

I prefer paper books when I can afford them as I find it easier to focus when I have a physical book to hold. And it just feels like a nicer experience.

Just books

Only vinyls because I think its fun to collect. Movies/shows are streamed from my server. Games are all on steam. Books I sometimes get but I also read a lot on my eink android tablet. And I get Spotify through my work so I listen to that when I'm out

I think nowadays MP3s are physical media.
(And technically they're stored on a physical medium in your possession).

I guess it's no different to a CD really. Just a smaller file on a bigger storage medium.

Yuppers, my kids have a huge DVD and VHS collection of various kids movies and nature docs. I believe it promotes agency and choice better than picking through a never ending void of selection of media on streaming services. Plus we live like kings at flea markets, usually a dollar a tape or DVD.

100% . I also find with adhd it helps a lot, I dont like unlimited choice

I prefer buying CDs for music & physical games for my consoles when I can (physical games on PC is kind of a distant dream now...). For TV, I think the only option to actually own your media is through BluRay/DVD. The digital stores (like Amazon, Vudu i think?) only let you watch on their platform & don't give you any files.

I do have a small number of vinyls & cassettes, but that's more for novelty than any practicality.

Those aren't really the only options to own your movies/shows ;)

Physical backup media. Hot mount SATA spinning drives and also USB 3 spinning drives. Some times software on flash drives. Flash drives for emegencey boot media. I sometimes transport files on flash drives too.

The idea of classifying DVDs or videogames carts as "physical media" is twisting my brain. It's physical storage but the data is still digital.

That said, I do prefer to backup my media physically, even if I downloaded it initially, and primarily use my own library instead of streaming.

I do have a small collection of vinyl and a huge collection of books. I still have all my old CDs, too, but most artists seem to sell new albums as vinyl-with-digital-download-code these days and that's what I usually do.

Yeah so like if I put all my games on a HDD is that now physical?
- The storage is physical, the media is digital.
- Yes. Computer games have always been digital data on physical media. These days many people have access from someone else’s physical media, but if you own the media then I guess it counts.

I have a few physical books left to read and I have a lot of DVDs to watch. I would've liked to have had a few video game consoles and the amount of games I'd want to have per console, but the used video games market has been broken for a while now.

Music remains digital, I just outgrew CDs entirely.

I'm still resolutely offline when it comes to books. I also have a lot of DVDs and Blu-rays. I sometimes even still buy some. I also still have a box of music CDs in the basement but I only listen to MP3 (no streaming).

Like actually use?

No, not anymore, though I do prefer to purchase media (movies, albums and the like) on physical media. It then gets ripped to digital and the originals stored against future need.

I've had my trust broken a few too many times.

Nope, that ship has sailed years ago.

I’ll always prefer physical media over streaming for things I like.

It’s mainly Bluray nowadays, but also some older DVDs.

Yes, CD's, SACD's, DVD's, Blu-ray's, Ultra HD Blu-Ray's, and vinyl records. Also have some HD-DVD's (I regret getting into it because the discs and hardware are unreliable) and Minidiscs (also regret getting into).

Records and books mostly. But I just moved my CDs out of my storage space.

I've gotten myself setup with a DVD and BD Capable Amplifier, so I've been slowly getting a little DVD and BD Collection!