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Comment by eat | Hacker News Reader

To me it looks more like a continuation of the decline of brick and mortar retail. Even if I want to watch films on blue-ray, why would I ever want to drive to a Best Buy to purchase them?

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Browsing an enormous shelf of hundreds (at peak thousands) of films is a much better way to find new things than clicking "Next" 5-20 at a time and trying to parse a tiny thumbnail with a probably half-corrupted title.

Because you can have it now and not in three days?

Sometimes urgency is a factor.

If I really must have something right now, I'm highly unlikely to spend 30 minutes plus to drive to the nearest Best Buy to purchase a physical disc. And I don't think that's atypical. I have to believe the most common pattern for someone to buy physical media at a local store is that they're in the store for some other reason and they see a disc for a movie they want to watch.

Interesting… why wouldn’t you? Do you live far from one?

I love going to Best Buy (and most stores), but maybe that’s just because it was great growing up with them as a source for all things electronic.

Personally I get more joy from browsing stores in person compared to browsing digitally. It becomes something to do—an event of sorts. We exist in the physical world; the digital world is less satisfying to my other senses.

Because of overall efficiencies in carbon emissions and packaging waste when things are delivered by a palette load to a local-to-you retailer rather than individually packaged to be sent directly to homes?

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