Physical media is officially back | Hacker News Reader

Physical media is officially back

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16 pointsherbertl12 comments

Creates conversation starters in homes. Enables sharing and trading with friends

Provides protection against digital censorship and content removal. Serves as souvenirs and memories from travels

Offers a more intentional way to consume content

Concerns about streaming services removing content. Desire for true ownership rather than licenses

Support for creators who earn more from physical sales. The decorative and social aspects of displaying media collections

Right on. I can definitely appreciate collecting media.

I've been buying cassette tapes from artists on Bandcamp. I am already buying their digital album, it's usually only a few bucks more to also get the tape. They're small and I've got a cool Bluetooth player[0], but they're mostly for show.

On the other hand, I don't buy physical media for movies or shows. Those are backed up digitally and served with Jellyfin for when they're inevitably unavailable on paid streaming.

[0] https://www.wearerewind.com/products/lecteur-cassette-blueto...

But how is development of new forms of media? Which hold even more data, write and read it faster, and last longer. And thus can be used as long term backups?

How much innovation and progress is happening in that?

Microsoft has Project Silica but that's crazy expensive. Only huge corporations, government and maybe churches could afford it. Not individuals.

What are the chances we some day see something like Project Silica as a cheap commodity product, femto lasers and all?

I was promised hologram cubes!

I’m not convinced that’s really a market. Consumers are in cloud storage and don’t want to go back to buying and managing hardware. Enterprises want, well, enterprise solutions.

We need a media that offer us at least 1 to 5 TB of Data, that is fast, low enough latency ( not tape ), cost less than $1 per TB to manufacture, durable that last longer than 50 years under ideal conditions and smaller than the size of our palm.

And right now we don't have something like that. Not even on a roadmap.

Not economically feasible. You'll never replace them periodically. You'll never buy a second time the files that you wouldn't loose when they won't be unreadable.

The industry expects you to buy SSDs that you write once, keep 5 years while having nightmares about going bad at the same time as the backups, then buy another set, worse than the current set but you'll never know until too late, and replace them all. Rinse and repeat.

Woo Hoo! I just got a 10 record set of Boston Pops concerts. But they're special to me. I grew up hearing all these pieces on the FM radio.

Feel like there will be a resurgence in demand for physical media over the next 10-15 years.

Blueray is being discontinued slowly, the only manufacturers of drives left are LG (terrible reliability) and Pioneer (great reliability but slow if you are backing up and for 4K usually locked down blocking ripping). Ironically I hear DVD sales are still going somewhat strong because of the the last cohort of boomers clinging onto physical media. It feels like maybe we got a few more years left and then its over. The only people using physical media then will be hipsters looking for nostalgia.

I try to support it as much as I can, buying vinyls on Bandcamp not to listen to them but to look at them, support indie artists, and collect stuff but if companies stop releasing the new stuff then what do we do?

Wait until you find out what happens to physical media after 20-30 years.

After 20-30y they keep looking good on the shelf. I listen/watch their digital copies from NAS, now the 4th generation of HDDs I used for media storage.

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