Anyone find some physical media is ridiculously costly?

[Judge]

Audacity in Linux Mint 21.3. Wouldn't be without it.

 

[Mary Terry]

Fortunately I do not watch movies multiple times.

Films can be art. Have you listened to Beethoven's 5th symphony only one time and dismissed it thereafter because you've already heard it once before? Or looked at a photograph of Rembrandt's Mona Lisa painting one time and dismissed it thereafter because you once saw a photograph of it?

I hate to think what you are missing by dismissing some of the greatest art in modern times. I do understand that some people have zero appreciation for art and that's okay. But sad.

 

[Ronald Zeeman]

I do not read books more than once either. I see movies as entertainment watch them on TV and that's it.I prefer to see how the music was constructed of how painting was made what techniques were used.

 

[Mary Terry]

I do not read books more than once either.

I don't consider books to necessarily constitute art. Very few rise to that level in my opinion. Do you view books as vessels to impart factual knowledge or totally fictional scenarios on which you base genetic explorations of your own family? Films, paintings, music are artistic endeavors, many worthy of revisiting over lifetimes because one learns more from each exposure to the subject. Art is not a mere intellectual exercise like reading most books.

 

[Lemon Zing]

Yeah. A lot of early 80's movies got banned in Britain, whereas movies now are torture porn. Saw III for example has these pig carcasses being dropped into blades, pouring all over this guy trapped below.

It is like they do it to see who can make the most grim film possible, then pass it off as "art".

 

[FilterFreq]

It kind of sucks, but when people feel like they have a hot commodity on their hands, they're more likely to raise the price and just leave it there. Then their competitors think, "Hey, all I have to do is beat that guy by a dollar!" and the pricing war begins. It affects nearly all old media at some point in time, if you've lived long enough to see it!

I have a pretty rare PC 'game' (it's kind of just software in gamers' clothing) that was selling on eBay for something like $20 by one other person, for example. I raised my price by about $20 and listed it, because I figured someone might swoop in, buy his, and I'll be the last man standing. Well, other people started coming out of the woodwork with their own copies of the same software, raising their prices to about $1 under mine and eventually even the original seller conformed to our new pricing standard. I wasn't sure what I had done, but I eventually removed mine due to a moral dilemma and it's still sitting on my shelf because that doesn't sit right with me anymore.

Also, I have some old books on my hands that I picked up for (not kidding) about $5 that have since become $80-ish within just a few years due to some sort of inflation price war of their own. Rather than cashing in (which would technically be kind of cool, I guess?) I still don't really like the idea of taking advantage of people who are desperate for a copy of the book, so even if I'm not going to read them ever again, I kind of don't even want to sell them.

The stress of it all makes me just want to never use eBay or any of those sites ever again. Because, how much time am I going to spend researching trends and playing price check with other people just to make a buck? I'd rather do something fulfilling with my life and let those people live with whatever karma they bring in.

There's nothing wrong with buying and selling, but when it comes to old books and things, the rarity tends to outweigh the price of the information and starts feeling awfully corrupted to me. Maybe I'm the weird one, but it just feels like some form of gambling or something. I don't want to live with, "Gah, I should've cashed out later for more money!" on my mind.

 

[Lemon Zing]

I had a look on Amazon today and to be honest, some of their Blu-ray prices ain't too steep. However, I think they may be recent prints. £8.99 is reasonably cheap. The ones that were released years ago that have yet to be re-issued, are going for £50 a pop.

On the streaming services though, Arrow does appear to have their whole library available. Italian movies though tend to not have the dubbed version as an option in spite of physical media often including it, which I don't like. I do not like subtitled movies.

 

[AspieChris]

Another aspect of owning older media vs streaming/renting, is retroactive censoring. I have run across a couple of older movies that have been censored in newer releases because they have become "offensive", when they may have been quite mainstream when they were released. That would be like taking an old classic book and censoring it. (Oh wait, that's been done too.)

There’s a scene in ‘Dennis The Menace’ where they accidentally light a huge fart. It lights up a whole underpass. It’s absolutely hilarious!

I noticed a few years ago that it had been removed, presumably to avoid teaching children how to do it and set themselves on fire.

 

[Lemon Zing]

I seen a weird movie with Edward Albert last night. It's about a family in Japan, and three ghosts haunt them.

Yeah. Do check out the magnitude of content on Prime. There's certainly a lot to watch.