In today’s day and age, digital media is skyrocketing. From being a niche in the early 2000s, it became a go to form of media consumption if you were not a fan of having piles upon piles of discs collecting dust in your household. But even though physical media such as Blu-Ray discs have been in the decline over the past few years, they have not vanished completely. For many, it is still a preferred method over streaming services and digital media shops, but why is this the case?

First of all, with physical media, you actually own what you purchase. While you may pay a digital service to, for example, watch a film that you really like, that film may not be available at a later stage to watch, perhaps forever on that digital platform. But with physical media, if you bought a film it won’t disappear overnight, meaning that you can watch it over and over again.

Second of all, quality is can be vastly better on physical media. With digital media you are relying on having a good internet connection, but what happens if you connection is poor or your internet stops working for a while? Well that’s where physical media comes in handy. With discs such as 4K Blu Ray, you can get high quality picture off the disc, requiring no internet connection! All you need is a compatible disc player and a display. Latency is also lower on physical media than with digital media as you don’t need an internet connection to watch the media.

And lastly, you don’t need to pay a recurring fee to watch your favourite media on means such as physical discs. If you purchase a film on Blu-Ray or DVD, you can watch that as many times as you want over any period of time by paying only one price – the price of the media itself. But with digital media, you can have to pay a recurring fee to use the platform to watch your media. This media access goes away after you cancel your subscription, which is less than ideal if you want to watch a film that is only on a streaming service but you don’t want to pay a recurring fee.

So in conclusion, physical media is still preferable to people as it gives you true ownership, has better quality and lower latency and it is only a one-time fee.