How is your experience buying movies and TV in your country? Hello, I’m from the United States and I’m trying to do some research to see how experiences differ in other countries. For example if you buy a digital movie or TV show, is that locked into a single service such as iTunes/Vudu/Google Play or does a single purchase give access across multiple services? If you do buy movies/tv do you buy physical media or digital? If you buy physical media, does that come with a digital key as well? What service do you typically buy movies and/or tv through?
In the United States we have a service called “Movies Anywhere” that allows for movies from a certain few bigger production companies to be owned on multiple services (iTunes/Vudu/Google Play/Amazon) simultaneously once you buy a single copy. Do you have anything similar in your country? “Ultra Violet” used to do this and had nearly every production company on board but then shut down back in 2019, but I’m unsure if that was only available in the United States or if other countries had access as well?
Based on your accessibility or restrictions does this encourage or discourage you to pirate movies/tv?
8 comments
I can’t remember the last time I bought a film, digital or physical. Everything I watch now is streamed.
To be honest, apart from torrenting and Google play I wouldn’t even know where to buy a digital film
I don’t think we have that yet, but I’m not sure if I’d trust it – if I buy something, I don’t want it to still be able to be taken away from me. There was a very public case a good few years ago about Amazon remotely deleting copies of a Kindle book from people’s devices – Orwell’s 1984, if you want some easy jokes.
I still buy CDs, for example – they’re still readily available and apparently making a bit of a return – but as I’m not too fussed about films and TV, I’m happy to stream or rent them.
We had Ultraviolet, but it’s a perfect example of the problem I have with buying things you never get control over.
Back in the 90’s and first half of the 00’s I had loads of CDs, DVDs and VHS.
But then along came streaming and spending nearly £20 per film/album was just daft.
So since then I get all my music and film needs through streaming subscriptions. And if there is something I want to watch that is not on streaming? *Yo ho ho*
Yes, we had Ultraviolet in the UK, DVDs often came with free codes for digital copies using it.
If I buy a movie at any point, physical or digital, I feel no guilt whatsoever in obtaining a copyright protection free version from another source.
I always buy stuff physically if I can. DVD, Blu-Ray, UHD Blu-Ray, whatever’s available. Netflix could go down tomorrow, my disks won’t vanish.
Same with games. Game preservation is so important, and anything which relies on the internet to access has an automatic shelf life.
I tend to buy movies/TV shows second-hand via eBay UK or rent/buy them on Amazon UK. I prefer to wait until I can get them second-hand or via a sale rather than pay full price at release. Call me a tightwad if you want, but I like to make my money go as far as I can.
M60+, retired. Been buying music since 1970s, first VCR entered the family household in 1984, so since then have recorded and bought films on VHS, DVD and Blu-Ray.
Currently have a combo satellite TV / Streaming package from Sky, the primary satellite provider in the UK. They offer a service called Sky Go, wherein we could watch movies and other content on tablets or other devices. Never used it. They have options to pay extra for movie channels, which we’ve never used, we only watch what’s on the channels within a ‘standard’ subscription. They offer on-demand streaming movies at a price, and we’ve never made any use of that.
If I’m going to pay for a movie, I will pay for a physical product that is mine, and which I can watch over and over with no further payment, for as long as I can do that.
I remember Ultra Violet and I had a couple films there but I never used it. It was no loss to me when it shut down.
The only physical media I buy is films, but once in a blue moon and only my favourite films that I’ve watched 4/5+ times so it’s an extremely small collection. The only other time I’ve bought a physical DVD is when we’re after a certain film, and I buy an old copy from a charity shop or CEX (second hand entertainment media store), as it’s £1 versus £4+ on Amazon Prime/etc. I just counted how many DVDs/blu-rays I own and it’s 24, plus 2 box sets (Game of Thrones and LotR extended editions).
I haven’t bought a physical CD since 2009/2010 maybe and there’s not a single CD in my home. I don’t even buy digital movies, I rent them for 48 hours if they’re not available to stream.
I don’t bother pirating as streaming is accessible and convenient. I am lazy and haven’t done it since I was a teen.