5 Reasons Why DVDs Are Still Great in the Digital Age
There have been many ways in which to watch movies and television shows over the years. We started back with getting original prints of a film and using a projector to watch on a wall or large screen and eventually worked our way up to the current digital age. Now, even video game consoles are able to stream all of the media we consume through endless apps for streaming services.
We’re not too far removed from the days when the DVD was king, though. Even though digital has taken over for the most part, the DVD market is still very much alive. In fact, there are some people that haven’t made the jump to digital because the DVD is still a fantastic product. If you’re in this group or wondering why so many are, here are five reasons why DVDs are still great in the digital age.
No Internet Needed
First and foremost, to stream any movie or TV show, you need to have a stable internet connection throughout the entire stream if you haven’t downloaded it. Even then, you may live in an area where downloading a video can take ages and could possibly become corrupted. You also have to have storage room for all of your digital media and it can fill up quickly.
With DVDs, you don’t have to worry about that at all. Even if you’re using one of those video game consoles where you have to be online to play, you can still use a DVD while the internet is out or unstable. This makes a portable DVD player perfect for something like camping when your phone won’t connect to the internet to watch YouTube videos.
Quality
If you want a movie with better audio quality that’s better than a streaming service, watch it on DVD. If you want the best quality, watch it on Blu-Ray. Blu-Ray discs and players have Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD, making sure that you hear everything at the highest quality. Then, of course, there’s the video quality.
Unless your disc is really scratched up, your Blu-Ray player is going to have the best possible quality outside of a movie theater itself. Streaming services are often buffering and upload speeds can hiccup and make things blurry. Nobody has ever complained about a blurry screen with a Blu-Ray film.
Collecting
There are plenty of people out there who like to collect physical media, but it seems to be a dying art with the advent of streaming services for television and digital copies of video games. Those of us who are still collecting pine for the physical release of everything because of the aesthetic factor.
A solid chunk of the population will look at someone who collects DVDs or other physical forms of media as living in the past but don’t scoff at people who collect movie posters. It’s essentially the same thing, and people love to collect as a hobby. DVDs are no exception, especially with some of the covers being works of art.
Resale
Let’s say that you’re an avid collector and you’ve run out of room for your newest purchase. Because of that, there might be a DVD that you don’t particularly care for and want to get rid of. Instead of simply uninstalling it from a hard drive, you can sell it to someone to recoup at least some of the money.
In the cases of rarer DVDs, you can end up making money overall. DVDs that are still in their original shrink wrap are quite valuable to other collectors depending on what movie it is. “The Cremaster Cycle” is the rarest and most valuable DVD set, coming in at six figures since only 20 copies were made.
Forever Yours
There are going to be times when old episodes of TV shows are removed from reruns and streaming services because they were a product of their era. This includes some content that would be considered sensitive or offensive today. There may also be instances like the “Pokemon” episode which could cause seizures.
When you get the DVD collection, you don’t have to worry about losing an entire episode of a show or a whole movie. There’s also the case of streaming services losing the rights to certain movies and TV shows. This has caused fans of shows like “The Office” to simply buy the DVD box set since the streaming rights have bounced around so much.
