Owned physical media and/or downloaded music vs streaming services.

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Price.pittsburgh, Oct 28, 2017.

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  1. genesim

    genesim Forum Resident

    Location:
    St. Louis
    On what, a magnet, chipset? A burned disc?

    Which version are you backing up? Do you really know, or do you just trust?

    A CD/DVD/Bluray/LP is validated.

    Ok I am seriously done, I have beat this dead horse.

    I do know one thing. I was transferring some Bing Crosby and found a manufacturing error. That is getting corrected. A stream...you are screwed.

    P.S. cute puppie. I love dogs.
     
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  2. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    Dude, I have downloaded stuff from more than a decade ago stored on hard drives, and it is safe and sound, and still plays perfectly. I can burn them to CD-R, and I can even copy them onto analog tape! It's no different than if I rip a CD. People act like downloads will vanish into thin air. As long as you back them up, they won't.

    Any and all. I am not one of these people who just keep the songs they like the most and leave the rest. I back up everything.

    By whom?

    When it comes to streaming, I agree with you 100%. It's a flawed model for the consumer. One day your music can be there, it may not even be a good mastering. The next day, it can vanish without any explaination or trace. It happens with downloads, and it happens with streaming. If you see something available for download that you want, it's prudent to grab it while you can because it may be gone tomorrow, never to return. With streaming, you can't even grab it!

    I am not slagging off physical media like CDs and LPs. I collect those too. I collect them all. But, I back it all up.

    P.S. cute puppie. I love dogs.[/QUOTE]

    Me too! Arf!
     
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  3. genesim

    genesim Forum Resident

    Location:
    St. Louis
    Hard drives have horrible error reports and are destined to fail because of the moving parts. Good on the backups. Always at least 2.

    Ever had a crash? It happens, and it is ugly when it does. Even with backups, I didn't know some pictures/videos had horrible errors that could not be remedied despite the thumbnail and file size showing fine.

    The published save state, that is whom. Go to discogs pronto.

    Not 100%, but close enough.
     
  4. Schoolmaster Bones

    Schoolmaster Bones Poe's Lawyer

    Location:
    ‎The Midwest
    A backup without some kind of checksum verification isn't really a backup.
     
  5. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    As long as you keep them active and avoid excessive vibration or hard shocks, there is no reason that can't last a decade.

    Never had a crash. Corrupt files happen when you fill up a drive. Always leave at least 40 GB empty. I haven't had a corrupt files sings the Windows XP days. Seriously.
     
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  6. Gaslight

    Gaslight ⎧⚍⎫⚑

    Location:
    Northeast USA
    My digital files work fine without wifi or cell towers.

    And if you mean the power grid going down, we've had a few major outages around these parts over the last few years. Spent a lot of time with my DAP when that happened...held off on using the CD player and turntable until after the power came back.
     
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  7. JimW

    JimW In the Process of Becoming

    Location:
    Charlottesville VA
    Thanks for another thoughtful reply. My going around in circles comment had nothing to do w/ lack of understanding; just an acknowledgement that our perspectives differ so much that I don't see the value in continued exposition. I understand you fine, I believe- and you do an excellent job expressing and illustrating your views. And we agree on many things, but differ on more. E.G. I agree with this statement: "yes too much materialism is not good, but eliminating the need to possess and more importantly have accountability, is also a very very bad thing," but imagine you and I would draw the balance point at very different places. As well as view differently the causes/consequences of imbalance.

    And to be honest, you write so extensively that I don't have the energy/desire to address all your points.

    But one thing I think we can both agree on is that the loss of physical media is not a good thing. Though I don't know if you think it as inevitable as I do.

    To address one point and again illustrate how different our perspectives, let me talk Mad Men. First, to one thing- of course any one sentence taken out of context as a summation of a series could look silly. I personally believe Peggy was the main character in MM and Don was there as a foil. As an oppressor, then mentor, colleagues in a superior position, eventually equal colleagues, competitors, then as a subordinate- and always a mirror, comparing childhoods, choices and consequences- all presented believably within the culture of the time. I think Don never found what he was looking for, regardless of any epiphany on a Cali beach. Peggy, OTOH, found what she was looking for. She was the hero, Don was the anti-hero. But that's just my perspective and as always, I could be wrong. And if history has taught me anything, I probably am.

    But I think we derailed this thread enough- don't mistake that for a lack of appreciation for your eloquence.

    Im just a lot more cynical than you. To paraphrase and personalize my fave female artist: "All romantics meet the same fate. Cynical and stoned and boring someone in some dark corner of the net..."

    (NOT that I'm saying SHF is dark- just didn't wanna change too much)
     
  8. JimW

    JimW In the Process of Becoming

    Location:
    Charlottesville VA
    That is scary if it's true. And I understand your parallels w/ Hitler. Personally, I see so many echoes from Fahrenheit 451 in today's world- it's scary. I was reading a thread here on TV's which talked about a developing flexible screen that would be applied like wallpaper and fill a whole wall- just like the screens Big Brother had installed to spy on us. And sure enough, TV's do spy on us- along w/ our computers, phones, etc.

    Burning books doesn't wok as a literal translation. But what you say about how losing physical media would result in censorship and propaganda is a chilling parallel.
     
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  9. broshfab4

    broshfab4 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Long Island, NY
    No rot. Play back just the way I first heard them! Hard drives, on the other hand? I don't think so, had my share of crashes and SO glad I didn't have music on them!
     
  10. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    I've had a few CDs from the 80s which don't play now and if you scan this forum, you'll see a number of threads about CDs/DVDs, a lot more recent than mine, that won't play anymore.

    I transferred all my audio/visual entertainment to USB hard drives (2 backups) a long time ago, well over 15 years, and I keep adding the odd thing I want to keep. None of the drives have failed yet. If you dedicate the drives just for archiving, it means that 99.9999% of the time they're unpowered and unused, which extends their lifetimes enormously.
     
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  11. genesim

    genesim Forum Resident

    Location:
    St. Louis
    I appreciate your thought out comments. I have never stated I don't need an editor, but then I would probably fire them at some point because I am never satisfied.

    I can see your perspective on Mad Men, but yeah gotta disagree. Peggy I see not as Don's foil, but an extension of himself...but alas the "happy" ending version. Of course that is the issue with me. "Happy" is relative. Don's happiness comes from his struggles and while he reached a temporary nirvana, there is that Coke Commercial that was created which in some way shape or form goes back to the "business" in showbiz that is very much needed to make that hyphenated word work. That is where we differ. It is not so much that you have cynicism, it is the fact that I embrace the cynicism and say that is the beauty of it all.

    Of course that is where I circle back on physical. While I may harp on about it the value of it, in the end I am not worried one bit. I believe it all falls into place eventually, I just choose to trumpet where I stand just as hard if not harder than others.

    Truth be told, neither have I, but I have dropped or banged a hard drive (which is why I choose eternal every chance I get. The difference is that it doesn't take much to create an irrecoverable error. And while a set of backups can help, what happens when you backup a flawed version? When it comes to family photos and all of that, I don't have that risk to take. Of course all of this is just throwing that out there. I use hard drives anyway. lol. Just for my music/movies that mindset has always been different. If I could have a silver platter stored officially and cheaply done on my work I would rethink my plans.

    I would be very curious about the CD "failure". Even when data is compromised they still can often be resurfaced and recovered in part. Whatever the case, a magnet by storage design has flaws and lots of them. CD's also have flaws, but at least in most all cases (and that is the true 99%) once burned, it don't change. Whatever you say about CD goes quintuple for hard drives, the difference is that most don't know. Put it under a program and watch the flaws flourish.

    Also a thought to consider is the USB connection itself. It has microfiber boards and clued metal attached to it. Bad combination. Which again can and does cause data errors. There are so many factors on why hard drives are flawed and ways you won't even detect it, I could fill up another board.

    However, I do agree in the good enough stance and I understand why people use hard drives because of course I use them too, but my point stands that when it comes to long term storage of recorded material, a hard drive is a poor true archiver. Nothing, and I mean nothing beats M-Disc quality. Put a hard drive in the car at the wrong time and everything changes. An M-disc can supposedly be dipped in liquid nitrogen, now that is real. Failure of a CD just comes from not being put on the right kind of disc. An M-Disc bluray for a 1000 years...or at least as long as I care to care.
     
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  12. HippieDrill

    HippieDrill Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sacramento, Ca
    I’m a gen-Xer too, so I get that feeling of wanting to own a physical copy.

    But for me, the convenience of streaming (or downloading) is just too much to resist.

    I haven’t watched regular TV or bought DVDs regularly for almost a decade now. 90% of what I want to watch is instantly available on Netflix or Hulu. The only time I buy DVDs is when the show I want isn’t available on either of those services and I can’t easily download it.

    I do sometimes miss owning physical copies but it doesn’t lessen my viewing enjoyment. I think it’s mostly feelings of nostalgia that make me think owing physical copies was better. I don’t think I would have liked or enjoyed shows like Stranger things, Breaking Bad, Walking Dead, etc. any more if I’d bought the DVDs instead of streaming them.

    Same with music. I don’t think I’d enjoy the music on the albums in my digital collection anymore if I’d actually bought the physical CDs.
     
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  13. Jimmy B.

    Jimmy B. .

    Location:
    .
    I discovered Breaking Bad's greatness by simply buying the cheapest set I could find of the entire series via ebay after it had went off the air, without ANY spoilers told to me, and when it came I watched it in 6 days. LOVED it.
     
  14. HippieDrill

    HippieDrill Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sacramento, Ca
    Ah yes, binge watching. i find myself doing that more and more these days. I've seen some arguments that binge watching is bad because it takes away from the episodic value of a show. Which may be a valid argument in some ways. But on the other hand, watching an entire series that you love as if it were just one really long movie can be way more engrossing than just watching a few episodes here and there.
     
  15. genesim

    genesim Forum Resident

    Location:
    St. Louis
    You see that is where we differ. A show like Walking Dead that was filmed looks fantastic in true HD (not psuedo low bit rate horrible compressed sound) that bluray provides.

    Now that said, Breaking bad had one season released digitally that was devoid of bad Digitak Noise Reduction that marred Season 4 on bouray as I remember, but this is an exception, not the rule. The rumored 4K release thst will likely happen I am sure will rectify this.
     
  16. HippieDrill

    HippieDrill Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sacramento, Ca
    You have a point as far as high def and picture quality goes. I have noticed that an actual DVD looks better on my TV than supposed high def streaming the same movie does on Netflix. But then again, I'm still using a 15 year old 720 Samsung plasma, so...
     
  17. genesim

    genesim Forum Resident

    Location:
    St. Louis
    720p Plasma is some of the fastest refresh rates paired with completely awesome black levels. No worries ther bud. Far beyond what a stream service tryult delivers.

    A DVD has a bit rate of 7 to 9 mbps. Netflix will often stream at 5 to 6...and even lower despite what your internnet speed you pay for allows.

    It is a sad thing that so many say...just get a faster connection. Even the crappiest connections far outpace what Netflix can deliver. Youtube...dear frith don't even get me started.

    By the way, the worst blurays give you 30 mbps, but I have seen some in high 40's. A 4K bluray can got to 128mbps.

    Netflix claims they can hit 15mbps for 4K, but that is a special allocation and I doubt it. Any local Netflix speed test will show you different.

    But facts are facts, if you are showing 4K at that bit rate you are knocking out 75% of the quality and that is why you see banding, haloing, color bleed, black crush, all around pixelation...you name it.

    People that say Netflix is just as good as bluray don't understand the fundamentals of data distribution.

    For sound, again don't get me started. It is like people comparing wireless soundbar speakers vs wired true directional well placed speakers. It is like the laws of physics stopped applying? Much like Netflix laws of economics, you just can't squeeze blood from a turnip.
     
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  18. HippieDrill

    HippieDrill Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sacramento, Ca
    Makes sense. It's kind of like how MP3 sound like crap compared to FLAC. I have noticed that the sound quality on a lot of streaming stuff is even worse than the picture quality. Thanks for cluing me in on some of the video technology. It's good to know that when I tell people my old 720 Plasma with a DVD beats pretty much any picture quality I've seen, that I was actually right, haha.
     
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  19. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    You know, maybe it's because since the XP days that i've been more careful with the handling of drives. To clarify, I haven't had a drive crash on me, but I suppose I have lost data due to it being written to bad sectors of a drive that was going bad. I guess i've always replaced drives before they could crash.

    I also prefer internal drives because I have less chance of handling them, therefore accidentally dropping them. I've dropped both internal and external drives and have had them keep working for years after the fact. I guess i've been kind of lucky. I have had I drive go bad on me, but I think it was because it sat on a shelf for two years before I ever even opened the box. I have read that one shouldn't buy drives that have been sitting on a store shelf for too long. Manufacturers change their packaging often, so I suppose it's easy enough to tell how old it is when you buy it.

    I keep three backups. If one fails, I still have two. If something happens while i'm copying the contents to a new drive, I still have another copy.

    TO keep drives fresh, I have increasingly heard of using a little app called Diskfresh", which you can run on all of your drives, even while using them. The idea is that if you rewrite all the data on your drives, you can prevent it from literally fading and developing errors. The company says to run it on your drives two or three times a year, but, i'm banking on once a year. This way, running it forces every last bit of data on a drive to be accessed. If you're like most people, you have stuff on your drives that you haven't accessed since it was installed.

    I have read that SSD drives can last a decade or more. I hope so, because that's where i'm going next. I'll still use disk drives for backup. Opinions are all over the map on whether one should use an SSD for storage.

    I've never had a manufactured CD go bad on me. Never. Some people claim CD rot, but as I understand it, that happens because of poorly made CDs having long-term exposure to humidity. Good thing I live in a dry climate! I haven't been so lucky with CD-R, though.

    Data cables do go bad. I've had internal cables go bad. It is said that if an external drive fails, it is usually due to the controller in the case. Some people have had success placing the drive into another case. Sometimes, the controller on the drive itself can go bad. I've heard of people replacing them too, but it's much more of a gamble, and then you're getting into the stuff data recovery specialists do. I've seen youtube videos of people placing the platters into new cases!

    In a conversation like this, it helps to make the distinction between CD and CD-R. BD M-Disc is a good idea, but kind of impractical for those of us with two terabytes or more of music as far as cot is concerned.
     
  20. genesim

    genesim Forum Resident

    Location:
    St. Louis
    You make great points and I do support Hard Drives for sure.

    As for CD-R, I trust them less but still have thousands that are fine. Just ripped some recently actually.

    As for the space, I am mainly speaking of music/video...personal photos etc.

    To me 25 gig on one disc is more than enough for an artist. 100 gig discs are even better. But that is a different way of thinking. I just take the disc everywhere around the house or car, and keep backup on hard drive. Hard drives toting around isnt practical for me.

    As for home photos etc, a couple of blurays do it, but with discs getting better capacity, that will change.

    Man I love my collections, but 2 Terrabytes access at once is just incredible to me. Even listening to Kiss entire catalog takes weeks (month?) on my commute with one bluray layer.

    KISS studio at full wav resolution is around 18 gig. That is 40 years of recording!
     
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  21. JimW

    JimW In the Process of Becoming

    Location:
    Charlottesville VA
    That is indeed a big divergence. And that's quite a trick- how'd you manage that embrace?
     
  22. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    The difference with me is that I do not play music on CD or BD players. Everything I play comes from a server.

    Some people, like me, have that much music, as we have a very wide assortment of artists, albums, and individual songs and comps.
     
  23. JimW

    JimW In the Process of Becoming

    Location:
    Charlottesville VA
    I'm not going by bit rates, but my eyes (admittedly old and less than ideal), but I find NF beats compressed to hell cable (I have Comcast/Xfinity) and that 4K NF (and Amazon UHD) approaches bluray quality (I have a non-HDR set, so that possible positive is absent). But nothing can match a well-mastered blu-ray (I'm sure UHD discs are the next step up, but I'm drawing the line at HD- that's plenty good for me; the only reason I even have a 4k TV is to get a good HDTV now you have to move to a UHDTV).

    I don't find streaming video quality to be any limiting factor in my enjoyment (as always the quality of the source remain primary); I actually think the lower audio quality is more significant (esp. when you lose surround), but that's far from a deal-breaker. I'm fine w/ the quality of streaming for what it is for me- an alternative to cable TV. I wish I could drop cable- unfortunately, it's party of my home-owner's fees.

    But when I want to really enjoy a cinematic experience, I'll be looking through my blu's.

    I imagine one day I might get a UHD player- once this TV breaks (the life-expectancy of which is probably 1/5 of a good old CRT- what's that say about the nature of modern possession- accelerated planned obsolescence seems to be a part of the computer age). If I had a TV that did good HDR, I'd want to feed it. But I'd be surprised if UHD discs weren't the last of the physical media.
     
  24. genesim

    genesim Forum Resident

    Location:
    St. Louis
    Right but from server axes quality to one degree or another. Anythong over a network drops quality over distance. But convenience is nice, no question.

    Xxxx

    JimW,

    I hear you on digital box cable, but live antannae is another story. Without question this beats bluray. I love that my 80 dollar antannae strapped into my attic gives so many great true HD channels. Nothing, and I mean nothing like live!
     
  25. genesim

    genesim Forum Resident

    Location:
    St. Louis
    I missed this. Ok let us put it in perspective. I felt a certain way when I was younger until I was exposed to constant change. You buy a bunch of LP's and then it switches to CD. You buy a bunch of VCR tapes and then I chose to switch to LP (for quality). I then bought a bunch of DVD's and then from the previous VCR tape days and censorship understood that every batch of new formats stands to supplement rather than necessarily replace. Then of course we get to bluray where I know darn well that a lot of releases may never make it to the format.

    So here we are with the cynicism that everything is doomed. No, I think it is the natural order of progress. The same as I see the so called "Hollywood" or "The Media" or "the Government" controlling everyone like we are robots.

    I see it like I always have (or learned), there is a Yin and a Yang and just because something is a reflected a certain way today, history teaches us that things have a way of switching back.

    In the case of Mad Men as I alluded to earlier. Don Draper knew the game, and knew it well. He said some things at the end that should cost a man his job, but only because he was honest. He had faith in his own values and talents, but first he had to come to grips with who he is. That is where he embraces the cynicism of that it isn't supposed to mean something, but it also isn't like what Peggy says where you just have to endure it.

    Don found a new harmony and that is where he ended. He created something (whether he fished it to Peggy, or himself is not important) and learned how to marry it with all that he came from. The very foundation, which of course is his love for strangers more than the people around him. That is what he loved about advertising. It created a distance, that I too can identify with, because the people around him don't understand him, and actually quite annoy him.

    When he embraced that dude at the end, he came to grips that he was not alone in how he felt like any great director, actor, musician...etc. That kind of talent is something truly special. Where Don embraced the cynicism is where he knew that it was a fixed crooked game, and at the same time he accepted that and found the good in all of it...perhaps in the end to do what he always did. Serve himself, which often impacted millions. I love Coke. Great drink and never meant to be a health food.
    My grandma lived to 95 drinking it. The point is that advertising is a necessary evil, but Don didn't sell the products, he sold the interactions with the products and in a big way that reminds us of the humans that want to possess are....just like any animal on this earth.

    The difference is that many of us are more pompous into believing that just because we package it, put a name on it, or even ink it stamp it, inject full of hormones and all that....it changes the basic concept that matter is neither created nor destroyed. In the end it all goes back to the elements one way or another. I just don't see it as bleak as some do.

    What is more important to me is preserving the ideas that great men put down for inspiration. I love collecting and yes like cynicism, I embrace it entirely and love sharing my passion...ad nauseam.
     
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