Poll of the Day > So, Playstation is eliminating the buy/rent movies thing

(+) Yeah! (+)

I guess we can buy a whole digital library and one day they're just going to say, "Sorry, we will be ending functionality on this date too." When's that gonna be? 2025?

I was warned not to buy all those movies on there by a relative. I should've listened. I bet all these digital games I've bought for PS4 will be gone one day too, huh? "You will own nothing and be happy."

https://imgur.com/a/AB5Rtcw

I guess I should stick to physical media again.

Straughan posted...

I guess I should stick to physical media again.

even that wont work forever

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It's in the TOS somewhere, and why would anyone buy a movie that they can't download? If that's the case just rent or stream it.

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InfernalFive posted...

It's in the TOS somewhere, and why would anyone buy a movie that they can't download? If that's the case just rent or stream it.

Because I'm a Sony fanboy and I wanted to consolidate my media.

Can you imagine if the politics get so bad one day that violence is banned? Imagine not being able to watch 80s 90s comfort films like Predator. No one will know to get to the chopper. Aliens will move right in.

That's the risk with digital media, they can pull it from the servers any time they want. Look what they wanted to do with the ps3 store earlier this year. Physical won't last forever either. Game discs are literally just copyright protection, you still have to install the game on your drive.

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Not being able to play ps3 digital games on ps4 didn't tip you off to console digital being shit?

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dragon504 posted...

Not being able to play ps3 digital games on ps4 didn't tip you off to console digital being shit?

I have a PC too, I just prefer to sit on a couch and hold a controller. When I play PC, it's for games consoles can't handle good like MMOs, simulation games, even Minecraft due to memory issues. If I can't have 10,000 cows on the screen then that's not Minecraft to me.

Either way, it's just what I fell into. Sure I could hook my PC up in the living room, but it belongs in the office with my 27" monitor and office chair. My console and my 75" belongs in the living room.

I think I'll just keep letting them screw me over. As long as I make money to buy more shit I'll be ok. I do like the ease of digital vs putting a disc in each time. Who knows. Maybe the world will change somehow and all this will be solved.

digital is a no go with me unless it's

1. on steam

or literally the only option to play a game

We tried to warn you.

Yeah, this worries me. Consumers should be rewarded for choosing digital, rather than penalized. It's a more environmentally friendly option, plus the costs of packaging and physical media aren't there. The LEAST companies could do is ensure that the online availability of what you purchased will remain forever.

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Mead posted...

even that wont work forever

The universe won't work forever. So what? I have plenty of records from the 60s and 70s that work just fine. Same with CDs and video games from the 80s. I'll be dead of old age before my Blu-rays stop working. And if not, they're really easy to make backups of.

CaptainStrong posted...

The universe won't work forever. So what? I have plenty of records from the 60s and 70s that work just fine. Same with CDs and video games from the 80s. I'll be dead of old age before my Blu-rays stop working. And if not, they're really easy to make backups of.

cool story bruh

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Mead posted...

cool story bruh

cool response bruh

CaptainStrong posted...

cool response bruh

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It literally says you can still use it.
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Straughan posted...

I guess we can buy a whole digital library and one day they're just going to say, "Sorry, we will be ending functionality on this date too."

Welcome to the future. You've just described the entire spectrum of entertainment and informational media for the rest of your life.

One day you'll wake up and something you've loved and owned for years will simply be gone, because someone you've never met in a place you've never been to decided the time has come to shut down servers you've never seen. And it will keep happening, over and over and over and over and over again. And there's pretty much nothing you can do to stop it.



Mead posted...

even that wont work forever

In theory, the lifespan of physical media can potentially outlast the lifespan of the person who owns it. When DVDs were first introduced, they were generally assumed to be capable of lasting something like 70+ years.

In practice, bitrot tends to set in faster than that. I know a bunch of my old backup archive CD-ROMs from the early 2000s have become unreadable, and I haven't checked any of them in like 5+ years, so they could all be duds now.

Another major problem is tech evolving in general. Most of the digital media from the 70s and 80s became nearly impossible to access once cassette and tape-based media stopped being produced and old readers died. Original floppy disks became difficult to access once we switched to the smaller sturdier disks, and then those went out the door once CD-ROMs and Zip Drives took over. And then those went obsolete once DVDs, flash drives, and memory cards became the medium of choice... and all of those are becoming harder to access now that everything's going to fully digital or "The Cloud".

And that's not counting other hardware changes, software updates, lack of core programs and drivers, and other things that make it extremely difficult for old programs to play even if you manage to find an old reader to access them. "PC Master Race" types tend to love to gloat about how they don't suffer from changes in console generation (or need backwards compatibility) the way console gamers do, but I've got multiple PC games from the 90s that won't even remotely play on a modern computer without a hell of a lot of tweaking and work-arounds (hence why things like DOSBox exist). And that's PC - you'd have an even harder time getting old TRS or C64 games working these days.

Humans have pretty much spent the last thousand years or so slowly specializing all of our communications media to become more and more ephemeral. Thousands of years ago people carved stuff into stone tablets and monuments that still exist more or less exactly the same, then we mostly switched to papyrus/parchment/paper that is much more easily damaged or destroyed, and over the last hundred years or so we've started printing most of our books with incredibly cheap paper and ink (which becomes brittle and faded in only a few decades, versus how books used to be able to last for hundreds of years). And we've spent the last couple decades going crazy about the idea of copying literally everything into computers to store "forever", when data loss over time is almost inevitable even without a total crash.
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What does it mean when it says you can still access what you bought for on-demand playback.

Redfeather posted...

What does it mean when it says you can still access what you bought for on-demand playback.

Usually when content gets taken down like games or movies that you already bought they still allow you to access it since you're grandfathered in. For now you'd be able to go through your account history or library and find it but no one will be able to purchase it in the immediate future.

Personally, I feel morally justified in pirating anything I've paid for a digital copy of if access to that copy has been taken away for reasons beyond my control. I recognize that maintaining distribution servers indefinitely isn't altogether practical, especially when companies go under, but I'm also not about to buy an additional copy from a company that arbitrarily decided my access wasn't worth honouring.

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I can still watch stuff I bought nearly 15 years ago on the Xbox marketplace so I havent been too worried. Figure one day it will be gone though.

Who buys or rents movies off the PS store when services like Netflix/Hulu/Prime/Disney Plus/etc exist?

I've personally never known anybody that does that

InfernalFive posted...

Physical won't last forever either. Game discs are literally just copyright protection, you still have to install the game on your drive.

This is something people who favor physical over digital tend to forget

Yeah you'll still have access to it but without any patches you have a glorified coaster

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captainjeff87 posted...

This is something people who favor physical over digital tend to forget

Yeah you'll still have access to it but without any patches you have a glorified coaster

Most games aren't like Skyrim on the PS3 and work well enough without patches.

adjl posted...

Personally, I feel morally justified in pirating anything I've paid for a digital copy of if access to that copy has been taken away for reasons beyond my control. I recognize that maintaining distribution servers indefinitely isn't altogether practical, especially when companies go under, but I'm also not about to buy an additional copy from a company that arbitrarily decided my access wasn't worth honouring.

The issue is any purchases like this should be tied to the account itself. Not the fucking service.
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Hell, it's hard to find some movies at all these days. There's only one service or two I saw hosting this old Rip Torn movie I saw as a kid. I rented it a month back just for nostalgia. Where the River Flows North. 1993. Not to be confused with A River Runs Through it from 1992.

Revelation34 posted...

The issue is any purchases like this should be tied to the account itself. Not the fucking service.

They should also be downloadable and DRM-free.

CaptainStrong posted...

They should also be downloadable and DRM-free.

and they should award you prizes for watching

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Straughan posted...

A River Runs Through it from 1992.

Never saw the other one but I watched this.
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Revelation34 posted...

Never saw the other one but I watched this.

It made me want to move to Missoula, Montana and learn to fly fish. Also to listen to the river and hear what the rocks say or whatever Redford's line was at the end.

Mead posted...

and they should award you prizes for watching

CaptainStrong posted...

The universe won't work forever. So what? I have plenty of records from the 60s and 70s that work just fine. Same with CDs and video games from the 80s. I'll be dead of old age before my Blu-rays stop working. And if not, they're really easy to make backups of.

Nah discs rot.

Sycophant posted...

Nah discs rot.

And they're really easy to copy. Disc rot is only a problem if you refuse to back up your discs before they rot 50+ years from now.

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