Going Digital: The Final Chapter

DVD overtook VHS very quickly, but it was a transition with an ending. And a transition that made sense to me. We can see it because they don’t produce VHS tapes anymore (except for special occasions), and people are throwing them away, which may be a bit drastic because they have value. I actually know a friend who only has his collection on VHS, but that’s a different story. This one is about my quarrels with going digital.

I feel like we are caught in a civil war amongst media platforms. We have DVDs, Blu Rays, Digital Copies, and Streaming. Streaming is another animal entirely, and it’s winning the war. It’s nice because you really don’t have to think too much about it, and you get excited when you find something you’re interested in. But, the downside, you don’t own it, and you may not get a chance to watch it before it gets taken off of Netflix/Hulu/Amazon. Or maybe you’re more of Fandor/Shudder kind of person. Regardless of what streaming option you have, there is a small hint of fear that I feel all cinephiles think about, that someday you’ll look for a movie that used to be in the streaming library is now gone.

Let’s switch gears again before I get too out of hand. Back to talking about digital movies. Thinking about this change was one of the hardest things I had to think about. That may seem dramatic, but it’s true. I like to think I’m a big movie guy (especially horror), and I have a decent sized collection; 418 movies to be exact, and yes, you better believe that I fucking counted. Plus, I have an app that keeps track of all my movies because I don’t want to double dip, which is obviously very helpful. It’s called My Movies (By Blu-ray.com). Now, how did I decide to go digital, you might ask.

One day, I was looking at my bulky bookshelfs, and thought, “how the hell am I going to have room for anymore?” I have limited my purchases to mostly horror lately, but, even then, I will eventually run out of shelf space. So, I had to take to Google and figure out what was best. I found the best option to be Plex, which is really hard to explain, so excuse me if I do a piss poor job. Plex is a media server that allows you to download movies to your home server (a base if you will), and you can watch all of those movies if you configure the different platforms you want to use correctly. After I read about it, I felt like I needed to clone myself just to do all this work. Definitely above my pay grade. So, I was forced into a corner and had to choose something less techy.

My options were limited to iTunes, Google Play, Amazon, and UltraViolet. UltraViolet may seem as odd to you as it was to me. UltraViolet is essentially the movie studio’s answer to digital purchases because Apple was just destroying them with digital sales. UltraViolet on paper seemed like the best way to go at this point. Afterall, the only studio not backing it was Disney. I liked their disc to digital option, but that’s going to set you back a few bucks for each one and not all titles would be compatible. The good thing about this was you could combine libraries (so I imagine you could combine with a spouse’s account or pass it along to your children), and there were multiple apps you could use to access your movies. Vudu (owned by Walmart) and CinemaNow (owned by Best Buy) are a few of those apps. However, there was something about it I didn’t like. Simply put, they just didn’t look good. Very aesthetically unpleasing. And all of my options to obtain digital movies are priced the same, so that wasn’t a factor in my decision.

Since I eliminated Ultraviolet, I was left with the big three, and Amazon was my favorite choice. I found it to be the most versatile of the three. You could pretty much get it on any device and stream your library anywhere. The icing on the cake was that it had one of the biggest libraries for digital movies. It seemed perfect, but surprise, I didn’t go with that one either. I begrudgingly went with Apple. I have an iPhone so I thought maybe that would make things easier. The answer to that is… not really. I can watch my digital purchases, but I have to download them onto my phone first, which I didn’t like. Who has that kind of space on their phone? The only thing you could really stream your movies on was Apple TV. And that’s your only option because you can’t stream them from any gaming devices. The upside to all this chaos is that some of my Blu Ray purchases were on iTunes already because of those digital codes you probably forgot about. It seems like Apple has been pretty good at getting horror titles, even some obscure ones which I was pleasantly surprised by.

Plus, I won’t have to worry about deterioration of any discs. Unfortunately, there will always be horror movies that most likely will not appear anytime soon in the digital world. I also feel like owning the physical copies holds a special place in horror fans’ hearts because of the cover. I love a good movie cover. It makes my collection look interesting, and it’s really an art form because of the wild ones that are out there. You lose that with a digital copy. It still has a cover, but it just feels different. Maybe I’m just afraid of the change? But in the end, I’ll probably still stick to digital purchases for convenience and storage sake. Except when you get blatantly ripped off because sometimes getting a physical copy is way cheaper and has bonus features (which iTunes is doing too but not as much).

How is this related to horror films you may ask. Great question. As a horror podcast we keep things to horror content only. This one slipped in-between the cracks. But dealing with this transition was a nightmare and I couldn’t help thinking about “Videodrome” the whole time I was typing this.