Would you rather buy a movie on disc or download a movie of the same quality?

[Pincho Paxton]

According to Microsoft, we are going to see downloaded movies taking over from Blu Ray, or DVD. So what do you prefer?

Download, saves you going to a shop to buy a movie, possibly cheaper without all of the packaging, quite convenient at night when you are bored.

Disc, has nice packaging, can be in tins, or special limited edition offers. It's physical, you can hold it, takes up space however.

So let's get a poll going!!!

[bradavon78]

I'd rather buy it on disc, but then I collect films, most of the general public don't.

[AML]

I also prefer to buy discs simply beacuse I like owning something phisical. I can also collect discs and watch them anytime.
I also like having all my discs lined up on my shelf. (like a book shelf)

BUT
I admit that i hardly ever watch a disc more than once. Im also paranoid about scratching and dust.
And ive also been known to re-buy the same film on more than one format. (ie. Blu Ray/HD DVD as well as DVD)

So I do think that downloads have a future.
It all depends on how its done. And if streaming is possible.
After all nobody wants to wait days for a 1080p film to finish downloading.

Something else that botheres me is that most internet conections are not always stable or reliable. My conection can at times slow down to a crawl and ive also lost the conection altogether untill I called up my SP.

Theres also the problem of storage. HDD's arent really all that cheap. And it wouldnt take many films to fill up a 500GB HDD.

Over all I think a single disc (ie A blu ray) is more reliable. And if looked after can last for a long time. (I beleive Blu Ray has a hardcoating which will enable each disc to take a lot of punishment before it stops working)

Im sure both can co-exist. But I really dont see myself downloading any 1080p films in the near future.

[Dan Smiffy]

When I first got into DVDs I went mental on them, at my collecting peak I owned 1100+ but have sold and sold and sold them in the last year or so and am down to 300 or so. I still need to shift another 100 or so to leave the hardcore of a 200 I watch often, or believe I will watch often. Other than those my spare room was crammed with hundreds of little dust magnet boxes containing films I was never gonna watch again. So I've voted download - because from expensive experience, 90% of what I buy I'll only watch once.

[cj]

Downloads - physical media is such a waste of resource and space. I consigned my 600+ DVD collection to the loft a long time ago, and my family get the convenience of playing any film on any screen by choosing the artwork. And actually the only discs that get repeated plays are the kids' films and cartoons. Have been trying to get out of the collection mentality with HD media.

The downside of course is storage (my Home Server is currently 11 Terabytes), but hopefully in the future we won't even need a local copy - if you had access to all films at anytime on any screen, why would you even need a local copy (unless it's for the car of course)? I think most people would save money with a "pay per viewing" model - how many films do you actually watch more than once, and how many times?

[Azzin]

Shouldn't you have posted this in the Movies forum rather than the High Definition DVD Players forum?

[kingfats]

Moved to HD Movies.

[SILVERBACK]

download,i like the flexibility (and laziness of swapping discs lol) of having films i can just click and watch on one hard drive as opposed to having shed loads of discs on a shelf taking up space.

[andythescientis]

I'd rather own a piece of physical media. That way you can also lend it to family etc.

I still buy many cd's each year and have not touched downloads, despite now being on my 3rd mp3 player.

[y2k]

It should be a good bit cheaper to download so I would rather download.

[richard plumb]

I'm not voting as IMO the question isn't a reasonable reflection of reality.

Its not a question of disc or download of the same quality. its disc or download of noticably less quality.

HD movies on appleTV (haven't checked out xbox live but sizes seem similar) are about on par with skyHD IMO. On a good day, they can look great. But they are 720p and so aren't archival quality IMO - just a step up from DVD, which isn't what I'm looking for.

for rental, fine - the convenience is probably worth it. but for keeps I'd rather have a disc. And include a digital version for my convenience - whatever happened to HDDVD/bluray 'managed copy'?

[MikeK]

Originally Posted by y2k

It should be a good bit cheaper to download so I would rather download.

There is no download service for Bluray/HDDVD equivalent quality downloads!
When there is, it won't have been set up to save us money - it'll be to make more money for the companies involved.

Personally I won't be holding my breath on price - let's not forget there are more charges involved here than just the sticker price charged by the download company. There's the broadband charges - just 4 films a month will likely be around 80-100GB or so! Then there's the cost of what you are going to store it on, long term.

All this is also assuming that people forego all the extras and interactivity features the studios currently insist we can't do without, and that people will be happy with the DRM measures!


I would be happy to download in preference to buying a disc IF

- the quality is broadly comparable
- it's cheaper (to offset my greater costs)
- the DRM is fair (ie no tighter than what is currently employed on disc)

Until then, I'll be buying the disc!


A side effect of this of course is that unless they actually sell more movies, each download will be a lost disc sale - eventually that will put upward pressure on disc prices

[y2k]

Originally Posted by MikeK

There is no download service for Bluray/HDDVD equivalent quality downloads!
When there is, it won't have been set up to save us money - it'll be to make more money for the companies involved.

If they were the same price then I would buy the discs of course, but I think that they would be cheaper because you (the customer) would have to download it. I have already downloaded quite a few HD quality movies from the net so it wouldnt be to hard for the big companies to do the same but I think that the downloads might be a problem because they will be a lot easier for people to make copies of and give them to friends or family.

[chelsea.tone]

I prefer discs

[BenchyUK]

Definately discs.

Downloads are simply no where good enough. I've tried some HD and SD Movies on xbox video marketplace and there's simply no comparrison.

SD transfers (Oceans 13) the PQ i found to be less than DVD. HD Transfers at maxed at 720p but look no better than an upscaled DVD. The fact that alot of te films are only 2 channel sound is disgusting.

Apparently this is the same with Apple TV

All these films are on a rental basis too. By the time you've rented a film twice you've paid wat it costs in the shops to buy


I will NEVER be a fan of downloads ad will always protest against it. People complain about region coding but my God it's going to be worse with downloads which are riddles with DRM

I hope other people don't go with downloads as although people think it's the future..... it's a very expensive and limited future