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Comment by mghackerlady | Hacker News Reader

Why do people buy movies digitally anyway? I can understand digital movies (they are convenient) but renting or streaming seems far more reasonable. If you truly want to own a movie as I suspect people who buy them digitally do, the only way to ensure that is to buy it on DVD/Blu-ray and rip (or redeem the digital code version that often comes with modern releases, though those tend to have DRM). Even then, why do people buy from the playstation store? I could maybe understand that when the Vita was still around, but nowadays it seems like an odd choice

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I "bought" a few digital kids movies because kids want to watch them over and over and I didn't want to deal with handling physical media.

17,059,798,573 views for Baby Shark and climbing ...

If I ever have kids, I'm only letting them watch PBS kids and the disney movies I own

Convenience is 99% of the answer.

Plus, when "renting" a movie costs $3.99, and "buying" it costs $5.99, there's not a particular reason to not click the "purchase" button.

I wish more platforms would let you rent for $4, and then show you an "upgrade to buy for $3" or similar for a week afterwards.

Why would they? They make more money if you pay the $7 up front.

Sure, but if it's buy now $6, or rent $4, upgrade to buy $3, they make a bit more the other way.

Depends on your habits. I don't re-watch most of the movie I see.

Yes, it doesn't sound like a wise decision given what we know about the usual practices of those services. But the average consumer is not as savvy as us HN users. I would not blame someone for expecting to own permanent access to the content if they purchase it. This only happens because big Sony and such are not held accountable of their actions, they are the one to blame.

> Why do people buy movies digitally anyway? I can understand digital movies (they are convenient) but renting or streaming seems far more reasonable. If you truly want to own a movie as I suspect people who buy them digitally do, the only way to ensure that is to buy it on DVD/Blu-ray and rip

You're forgetting there's a slice of people who want to "own" a movie library but don't have the technical acumen to rip and/or (more importantly) host (consider that you'd have to stand up a Jellyfin server and have a good amount of HDD space -- I personally have 50TB).

Again, it's not _that_ hard in general but daunting enough and with high enough startup costs to dissuade a lot of people.

And time. I have archived some of my collection, but it does take a lot of time to rip the disks, test that they worked correctly. Then years later find out you did something wrong and there is no sound anymore, or you just got stereo and the surround mix is broken.

Streaming is so easy, don't need to find a disk. Load it, watch all the ads and warnings.

I have the technical acumen and money, but zero desire or time to spend ripping discs. It's far too easy to raid the "five dollar bin" at MoviesAnywhere (like I used to do at Wal-Mart and Best Buy).

Licensing issues like Sony's aside, the studios did MoviesAnywhere right. I can buy the disc (often used) and redeem the code, or buy digitally, and download/stream everywhere that matters to me and my family.

Owning a shelf and a blueray player requires zero "Technical acumen" and gets you far cheaper media than any of the online services, but requires you to plan at least a couple days ahead of time. That's the crux.

People are willing to give up everything for not having to wait a couple days to watch a movie.

Because I’m actually not going to lose much sleep if Apple revoke my license for the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and given I’ve had digital purchases from them since [checks notes] literally two decades ago and not one of them has to my knowledge been revoked I’m reasonably comfortable that they’ll probably stick around for as long as I do, after which I’m going to rapidly cease caring about my collection of films and TV.

For me it's usually just a cost thing. Some movies I just know I'm going to watch multiple times, certain ones even annually. Clicking buy generally already makes sense if you're going to watch it twice. Wouldn't buy it from the PS store though, it seems like such a niche outside their core business that I'd be worried they would pull exactly what they pulled here.

Kids and convenience. 99% of the movies I’ve bought from iTunes are kids movies. Some of them were watched over and over and over.

DVDs and Blu-rays I purchased from the same era required a) advance planning and b) care. To the second point, most of the physical media is now destroyed (scratched, stepped on, lost, or just degraded), but I still have access to the copy of Cars I bought almost 20 years ago from Apple.

If you're going to watch it multiple times it's cheaper to buy than rent (especially if you see it on offer). With streaming you're relying that at least one of the providers has what you want and then you have to pay for a month to watch it if you're not already subscribed. I've also found streaming services are way more likely to censor older content.

>Why do people buy movies digitally anyway? I can understand digital movies (they are convenient)

You answered your own question very efficiently.

Right, but I was referring to the concept of watching a movie digitally in general, whether that be streaming, renting, buying, torrenting, ripping, whatever. My question is why do people buy movies digitally as opposed to any of those other options

It's hard to find newer movies on laserdisc, vhs, or home film projection, so analog is out.

I buy or rent media from online services occassionaly. Much content I would like to watch isn't on subscription platforms, or is sometimes on streaming platforms I don't want to use. Some content isn't available to rent, and some content I feel like I'm likely to watch more than once. I prefer to buy discs, but some discs are difficult to obtain and sometimes I don't want to wait. When the buy price isn't much more than the rent price, I consider it. Or if I have amazon credits to use.

If your _overriding_ concern is convenience, digital purchase wins. No monthly thing to sign up for and eventually cancel, no little expiration window, no need to find and download a torrent.

Digital movies are convenient, that’s why we like them. You are right. Why wouldn’t we like the _most_ convenient form of them?

I don't own any way to play physical disc media anymore, and for the handful of movies I watch multiple times (so far 2), it made sense to buy them.

I only buy through Amazon Videos, with the logic being Amazon is going to be around awhile.

> I only buy through Amazon Videos, with the logic being Amazon is going to be around awhile.

Sony will be around a while too, but as you've just seen here, it's not about how healthy the company hosting the video files is.

Yeah but Sony has a decade long history of being schizophrenic with long term media format support.

Amazon has spent more money on prime video that Sony has on the entirety of PlayStation. Videos sold on the PlayStation store are a bullet point in a PowerPoint of Sony's finances.

Convenience. I don’t buy many movies digitally but it’s usually because the family is over and they want to watch something new.

Of course I may then pirate it afterwards so I can keep a backup of my purchased movie.

Right but wouldn't you just stream or rent it then? afaik PlayStation, amazon, and itunes all have a rent option

Most of the movies I would rent I just wait until they’re part of the included movies. Nobody is going to worry about waiting 3 months for that.

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