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> No streaming service will guarantee you endless future access to a particular video

Apparently neither do Blue-Rays, since about 10 years from now hardware that will read them will become scarce.

In maybe another 5 years it will become an ordeal to get software that can bypass the DRM working on a recent system with whatever Blue-Ray drive you could scrounge up. This may be accelerated by such software becoming even more illegal to create and use.

Additionally these kinds of discs physically degrade within about fifty years tops. Some can become unreadable after a much shorter time. The time range "20-50 years" is often thrown around.

If you want to preserve something long term, the very first thing you should do is strip any DRM, then save it as a "dumb" format on long-term storage. Preferably decentralized with multiple backups (Torrent?).

This stuff can go incredibly quickly and it will become harder every year to salvage anything. I learned this the hard way with my library of .swf files, of which I only managed to convert a subset to video files (where applicable) so far. For now next to them I store a disk image of an OS (old debian+Firefox+Adobe Flash) that can play them - who knows how long that will keep working on future hardware?

Sometimes I wonder if this urge to preserve is patently ridiculous and we should learn to just... let things go.

In any case, the Blue-Rays sitting on your shelf aren't much better than some streaming service.

20-50 years of access is WAY better than the streaming services who all guarantee.. nothing. I'm not likely to be around in 50 years myself.

That said, saving it in another format is a good idea. Harder to do thanks to DRM, but at least plausible.

As far as letting it all just go, that's terrible. At that rate, future generations will know more about ancient Sumeria than the 2020s. I think we can do better.

> In any case, the Blue-Rays sitting on your shelf aren't much better than some streaming service.

My oldest CDs are now 38 years old and still play fine. Of course some discs are better made than other, of course storage condition counts, of course -compared to CDs and DVDs- Blurays add another layer of copy protection, but overall I find this idea of streaming services not being better than a disc on a shelf for preservation pretty "funny". With streaming services you own nothing.

I disagree about it being “not much better”; with Blu-ray, even without SGX, you can still rely on software like AnyDVD, MakeMKV, DVDFab, etc., to clone and decrypt the media. It’s “easy” for general consumers with $50 to burn on an LG WH14NS40, or similar, to backup decrypted copies of even UHD Blu-rays and then stream them locally with something like Plex, Jellyfin or Kodi. Pair that with backups and something capable of correcting corruption, like ZFS, and you’ve got incredibly long-term access to the media that you own.

Whereas when something streaming-exclusive is removed from whatever platform, you typically have no choice but to accept that it is gone or rely on piracy. Services like Netflix often make use of Widevine and restrict playback of full HD and UHD content to devices with Widevine L1 support.

While it is possible to decrypt L3 content using relatively accessible keys, such as the ones from browsers like Chrome, not only has this historically had a much higher barrier to entry, you won’t be getting the decent-quality versions. In order to do that, you’d need either some sort of exploit or insider-access at a manufacturer to get L1 decryption. They will invalidate known abused keys, so piracy groups tend to be very quiet about where and how they’ve managed to decrypt certain content.

All of that is also assuming that you’re willing to make illegal copies of content from streaming services and that you’ve thought enough about it ahead of time to do so prior to removal. And, of course, not to mention that the content available to L1 devices is often still significantly worse quality than what is available on Blu-ray (e.g., typical Netflix 4K streams are 15Mbps while 4K Blu-rays are usually around 80Mbps).

Anyway, I hope all of that didn’t come off too fanatical or ranty; I am just a bit passionate about the subject! I get where you’re coming from, and I do think it is disappointing that even physical media has so many restrictions in place.

That said, while I don’t like the DRM on Blu-ray and DVD, I think we shouldn’t be quite so pessimistic about physical media. It is not libre in any sense, and I recognize the cost of buying each and every single thing you enjoy is too cost prohibitive for the average person, I would be really sad to see this sort of thing eventually die off entirely. I think despite the annoyances, these discs are still really important for enthusiast viewers, people in remote/rural areas, and longer-term preservation.

> I think it's fraudulent for vendors to say that you "buy" a video when you don't get to keep it permanently, but it does happen.

At least one other person thinks that way and agrees with you, and has subsequently filed a lawsuit against Apple for the use of the "Buy" button which contradicts the fine print on their terms. Check out Andino v. Apple

BDs are also the absolute best for high bitrate content. For 4k UHD BDs, that's the absolute highest quality copy of a show you're going to get, including on streaming sites that offer 4K streaming.

Even if you lease the video file you're usually getting downsampled content.

There's only way to get the same quality content otherwise and it's piracy with good configuration to get HDR and surround.

But I'll be honest, I'm happy with lower quality content most of the time, and my eyesight is perfect.

FHD with modern compression is quite great.

Definitely. It’s really frustrating since I’d be willing to pay for quality — so many new shows on platforms from Netflix to Amazon have terrible bitrate and amazing production quality. The creators must be frustrated as well. For example, it’s impossible to watch something like The Wheel of Time or Peaky Blinders without bad compression artifacts in noisy and dark scenes.

I’d pay decent money for a service that has close-to-original quality in 4K HDR and a large selection. But it doesn’t exist! I wonder how the market will respond as services continue to lose content and downgrade quality with “better compression.” (Thanks for nothing, Netflix!) I can’t imagine it will ultimately go well for them.