[xienze]

> Why do people buy movies digitally anyway? I can understand digital movies (they are convenient) but renting or streaming seems far more reasonable. If you truly want to own a movie as I suspect people who buy them digitally do, the only way to ensure that is to buy it on DVD/Blu-ray and rip

You're forgetting there's a slice of people who want to "own" a movie library but don't have the technical acumen to rip and/or (more importantly) host (consider that you'd have to stand up a Jellyfin server and have a good amount of HDD space -- I personally have 50TB).

Again, it's not _that_ hard in general but daunting enough and with high enough startup costs to dissuade a lot of people.

[darrylb42]

And time. I have archived some of my collection, but it does take a lot of time to rip the disks, test that they worked correctly. Then years later find out you did something wrong and there is no sound anymore, or you just got stereo and the surround mix is broken.

Streaming is so easy, don't need to find a disk. Load it, watch all the ads and warnings.

[clintonb]

I have the technical acumen and money, but zero desire or time to spend ripping discs. It's far too easy to raid the "five dollar bin" at MoviesAnywhere (like I used to do at Wal-Mart and Best Buy).

Licensing issues like Sony's aside, the studios did MoviesAnywhere right. I can buy the disc (often used) and redeem the code, or buy digitally, and download/stream everywhere that matters to me and my family.

[mrguyorama]

Owning a shelf and a blueray player requires zero "Technical acumen" and gets you far cheaper media than any of the online services, but requires you to plan at least a couple days ahead of time. That's the crux.

People are willing to give up everything for not having to wait a couple days to watch a movie.