The Five Forms of 'Defenders' Rallying Behind Disc

11 Sep, 2014 By: Thomas K. Arnold

I’ll call them the disc defenders.

Lately, I’ve been running into people who are talking up the benefits of physical media — Blu-ray Disc as well as DVD — to anyone who will listen, often citing their own disappointing experiences with digital delivery.

And the more I listen, the easier it is to categorize these disc defenders into groups — groups that appear solidly committed to discs for some very valid and logical reasons.

The first group is made up of diehard Blu-ray Disc fans. They never cut back on buying discs, and they’re the ones most likely to ultimately replace the bulk of their DVD libraries with high-definition discs, even if half those old DVDs are still shrink-wrapped. They are driven chiefly by the quality of the picture and sound and more than likely have invested big bucks in elaborate home theater systems that really show off what high-definition discs are capable of. Despite advances in digital technology, they say, the fact remains that for the optimum high-definition viewing experience nothing can match Blu-ray Disc.

The second group is the gift-buying market. They love to give — and receive, for that matter — movies as gifts, which they later trade among family and friends. They’re the ones at Best Buy or Walmart or Target on Black Friday with a shopping cart full of discs; they use the cheap ones as stocking stuffers and the heavily discounted movie collections, new releases or TV series as gifts. Giving someone a digital download, often through an email notification, simply isn’t the same as giving someone a neatly gift-wrapped box with a movie or two inside, they say.

The third group is the collector. Yes, even though everything’s now on the Web or in the cloud, these people still like to collect physical things. They have their photos printed out and put into albums; they still have a rack of CDs in the family room, by the stereo; some of the rooms in their houses, by God, even have bookshelves filled with books with actual paper pages. And while I can’t swear to it, I’ve heard some members of this group also collect Franklin Mint plates.

The fourth group is the shell-shocked downloaders who due to a hard drive failure have lost their entire music or movie collection, generally back in the days before everything could be backed up into the cloud. They’ve never gotten over their loss, and they’re not about to be burned again.

The fifth and last group is what I’ll call the disenfranchised Netflixer. Like so many of us, they jumped at joining Netflix for subscription streaming. But after a while, the novelty wore off. Maybe it was the lack of current product — you can only watch so many ‘B’ movies from 2005 or long-canceled TV series. Maybe it was the incessant buffering problems. But whatever the case, the honeymoon’s over and the old Blu-ray player’s being fired up, once again.

The disc is dead. Long live the disc!

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About the Author: Thomas K. Arnold