The end of physical media.

[G6Tanuki]

Tomita's 1985 rework of RVW's The Lark Ascending [on "The Mind Of The Universe"] is also deeply captivating.

Listen from 18 minutes in - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7l0Qo8_8i8

[jamesperrett]

Originally Posted by Trevor

I was broken hearted about 10 rears ago when a cd rasterman vibrations by Bob Marley failed The lp version still exists On talking with with data colleagues ias informed that Cd were and are not considered as permanent storage medium
Trev

A genuine commercially produced music CD shouldn't fail (apart from a few dating from the late 80's which had a known manufacturing defect and were eligible for free replacement). CD-R's are a little more delicate but I have good quality discs here that are over 25 years old and still work fine. It sounds like you may have mistakenly bought a poor quality CD-R bootleg. Most of the tales of data loss with CD-R have been down to poor quality discs or poorly stored discs (and a well known brand name like TDK or Maxell is no guarantee of quality).

[stevenkw2t]

I know we have been talking about audio and video content here but a domain where physical media is surviving is games. I noted that when the Playstation 5 was released it contains a DVD player and there are still plenty of gamers who prefer to own the physical disc over the right to only download the game.

[Nickthedentist]

OTOH, my kids were recently bought a Nintendo Switch gaming thing. The games purchased for them either came on a little cartridge with contacts (presumably some kind of flash memory), or as an online download... though you did get sent an empty box with all the cover artwork etc. in the post!

[llama]

When I wrote "remakes" I wasn't talking about an artist's own (or sanctioned) remix. It's their track they can do what they want with it. My own son has done some remixes on his tunes and also handed the masters to other producers to work on - in one case a 5/4 track ended up as a beaty 4/4. I mean the remakes like when Virgin got Roy Orbison into the studio to lay down new recordings of his Greatest Hits. The spokesman claimed they were "note-perfect" (so that makes it OK?). They grate on my ears. Another is the version of Sultans of Swing as played by GHR. I have a Chubby Checker CD I've had to add a post-it note to to make sure I don't air the ones that are remakes. Seeing DDD on a CD for a '50s/'60s/'70s hit is a giveaway and I regret the absence of these markings. At least on a physical 45 you get the date on the label.

I think the online remixes issue rather makes my point neatly: when Radio Free Wiltshire invites you to Nadder Island Disks and asks "Mr Tanuki, or may I call you G6(?), what is your favourite Enya track?" they don't want "well if you go to www.enyaremixes.com/f786pakje8yfd9 and select the 4th one down, they'd much rather hear "Well I've burnt it onto this CD-R for convenience"!

Finally, for now, I'm surprised no-one's mentioned the BBC promotional feature concerning licence-fee payment by SO or DD where the chap says "I'm keeping the CDs" and she says "On your bike". Even I thought she'd more likely say "You're welcome to them, I've got them all ripped onto my cloud-based storage".
Graham

[dave walsh]

The "reel" impact of streaming "services is evident in the sense that many people are already derogatory or disbelieving that anyone would still want the hardware bulky type equipment to listen, as opposed to a computer or phone. It boils down to whether you want a sense of independence in a way. If the Internet is suddenly unavailable everything it supports is gone! There's no alternative resource really. Having a radio may become rare but wrist watches didn't disappear-quite the opposite.

Dave W

[Nuvistor]

Some streaming services allow downloads to listen off line, no doubt they have DRM so if the account is closed those files will disappear.
Loss of internet may not mean loss of content for a certain length of time.

Not that it affects me, £10 or so a month is too expensive, I don’t spend £120 a year on CD’s or DVD’s.

[Junk Box Nick]

Agree with Dave and Frank

There is a move now to making you rent everything. This guarantees them a regular income so you can’t blame firms for moving that way. This started with a lot of software but when everything is digital it makes it so easy – however, when you had the disks you were still only buying a licence.

I have some old software on an old machine but the later upgrades ‘phoned home’ every so often and one day they phoned home and home flicked the off switch. This wasn't a big problem for me as the limited work it was doing – indeed continues to do – could be done with an earlier edition that wasn’t so clever. Just as well I kept all those old disks!

What Dave said reminded my of my old mom: “Show your independence” she’d say when as a kid I got too involved with someone/folk. I’ve striven for as much independence as I can manage ever since.

[dave walsh]

Well that's true I suppose Frank but again, you're subject to someone else deciding whether or not and for what period, you can hang on to the content. Even an archive can suddenly not be available. Others have pointed out that the hard copy recording eg LP or CD, might contain info not available on-line! The Internet is certainly a great research resource in itself but every silver lining has a CLOUD [pun intended]. Wait till your ATM is disabled because you have the wrong view and there's no cash any more I think I would have got on with your mother Nick. I'm sometimes, falsely, mistaken for a conspiracist but it's just a simple reality. Mobile phones were, originally, never expected to be the all "consuming" emotional support, income generating devices that they are at present. Another recent thread, about the early servicing industry, refers to people being suicidal when the TV wasn't working!
Substitute the mobile, often the new TV viewing [and everything else] device!

Dave W

[dave walsh]

Well now! Further to my outburst on Wednesday, see the last five minutes of Friday's News Night with Doug Pullman talking about reviving HMV and collecting Vinyl [also applicable to CD's and DVD's].
The presenter had no idea. He just downloads I suppose! See also the thread by electronic skip "HMV in administration 28/12/18" and my comments at post 97!

Dave W

[Cobaltblue]

Originally Posted by dave walsh

Having a radio may become rare but wrist watches didn't disappear-quite the opposite.

Dave W

True wrist watches have become something of an accessory but many people that includes most of work colleagues and my wife wear smart watches which allow them to see and send messages, their calorie burn, listen to music as well as show the time.

Many would not wear just a watch.

Cheers

Mike T

[russell_w_b]

Originally Posted by Cobaltblue

Many would not wear just a watch.

A 'smart' watch is only smart if it has electricity. Fat lot of good having a 'smart' watch if you're off in the wild for a few days.

I wear a Seiko automatic with a 21-jewel movement and have done for years. No electricity needed to tell the time. If I've to fit a link into the bracelet to get it on my wrist, then I'm getting too heavy and need more exercise. If I've to remove one when it slides about on my wrist, I need more grub. That's smart enough for me.

When I was a teenager, we all couldn't wait to ditch our old wind-ups and get our hands on the new-fangled quartz watches that kept time 'to the second'. Now accurate time is so cheap and freely available that mechanical watches have made a comeback.

The irony being that many low-end yet relatively highly accurate mechanical 'common man' wristwatches rely on precision electronic timing both for manufacturing and setting up.

Talking of physical media, photographic film is still being manufactured, improved and developed (NPI) for use by the likes of me. Long may it last! I'll get my sheet of negatives out of an A4 file when required and scan them on whatever the latest scanning technology or digital sensor has to offer, rather than be bullied into curating them, at cost, as a string of ones and zeros onto some cloud or other, or on a HDD.

[Cobaltblue]

Originally Posted by russell_w_b

A 'smart' watch is only smart if it has electricity. Fat lot of good having a 'smart' watch if you're off in the wild for a few days.

If you are indeed out in the wilds you might need the built in Compass and GPS neither of which need internet. And it runs for up 5 days. If you're more serious than that you're going to need more than an ordinary watch. Many of my colleagues who climb mountains and things (why would you do that) carry lightweight means to power their Tech.

Fat lot of good being on Dartmoor in the winter when the Fog descends with just your Seiko. You're Going to need a Map and a Compass just to get back to the car.

Cheers

Mike T

[GrimJosef]

Originally Posted by Cobaltblue

... Fat lot of good being on Dartmoor in the winter when the Fog descends with just your Seiko. You're Going to need a Map and a Compass just to get back to the car ...

I can vouch for that from personal experience, albeit on the North York Moors. The normal way of crossing, west to east, the 3-mile wide bog on Rosedale Moor is to fix on Shunner Howe on the horizon and head straight for that. Not much use if the visibility's <100yds though. I needed a combination of electronic (GPS, to tell me where I was) and physical (OS map and mag compass, to tell me where to go) media to get myself out of that one. The GPS unit claimed to have an inbuilt compass, but its performance was poor.

Cheers,

GJ

[Paul_RK]

I've not been tempted to revert from buying CDs back to vinyl to any extent, reluctant though I was to make the switch in '88-'89 when releases I wanted to hear started to be CD-only. I've been very happy, though, to ditch battery-consuming watches in favour of a mechanical Vostok Komandirskie, still in production in Tatarstan after WWII evacuation from Moscow and available for around £30 inclusive of shipping costs. Not an optional accessory for me if I'm out of the house and care to know the time, nothing else I have on my person would be able to tell me it.

Paul

[dave cox]

I want to 'OWN' media, but I don't count having the right to stream it as OWNING it. This is quite popular now but you are tied to a contract with a vendor that may go out of existence! An addition consideration is that of the 'streaming client' which you will be forced to use and the equipment you will need to own to use that client, and keep it up to date.
Quite by accident (it was free), I found myself owning streaming rights to a 'big screen movie' from one particular streaming vendor. This vendor was taken over by another vendor, and later, that vendor was bought by yet another vendor! And that wasn't the end of it, I think netflix was the 4th owner! The chain of emails, platform logins, transfer details, the different devices needed and new contracts was utterly laughable It was a real dog of a movie so I never watched more than the 1st few minutes in any case, but the potential issues were very clear!
I'm happy to download and store locally, but only if it comes without DRM, in its current forms. Otherwise I will continue to buy CDs and extract the media myself. I imagine quite a lot of my CDs have NEVER been played (but ripped)!

dc

DRM = digital rights management

[SiriusHardware]

Someone mentioned computer games - it has unfortunately been the case, going back as far as the Xbox 360 and PS3, that many games which come as a hard copy on optical on disc nevertheless 'phone home' to a server to verify your right to run them (they may for example be licensed to be 'installed' on only one XBOX 360 at a time). When it gets to the point where there is no longer a server for them to phone home to, they may well simply refuse to work any more in spite of our having both original media and the hardware to play on.

SWMBO and I have a load of old games primarily on the XBOX (original) and PS2 and there was none of that nonsense going on then so we can expect to keep playing our favourite offline games on those formats for as long as the discs and consoles keep working, but I am less certain about some of the titles we play on the newer consoles. Certainly a lot of the popular multiplayer games have already gone down when the game manufacturer has taken down the server which connected all the players together.

[agardiner]

Really loving this thread. Despite just about remaining on topic, there are so many tangents that keep appearing!

As for the end of physical media - the current owners of HMV are investing in new stores this year, so I think there will be physical stuff to buy for some time yet.

[Trevor]

Why cannot a retailer operate a download centre you chooses your music your format and then the retailer burns a cd or records a tape cuts a record you could even better have a compilation done
every one is happy no waste
New business format a down load centre !!!
people like me who enjoys having a format would be happy

Trev
Trev

[electronicskip]

Originally Posted by Trevor

Why cannot a retailer operate a download centre you chooses your music your format and then the retailer burns a cd or records a tape cuts a record you could even better have a compilation done
every one is happy no waste
New business format a down load centre !!!
people like me who enjoys having a format would be happy

Trev
Trev

Actually in Japan they used to run a similar system for video games.
The Famicom Disk system circa 1986.
You could go into a Videogame shop, purchase a disk and then download a game onto it via a disk writer kiosk
Then once you got bored with it ,you went back into the store and download/copied a new game onto it.
I have a Famicom Disk unit here with a few games on the floppy type disc.