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Is Digital Content Safe?

 

https://www.playstation.com/en-us/legal/psvideocontent/

Read the Fine Print

    My first experience with loosing digital content was back around 2013. I had bought a digital game for 99 cents from the Apple App store. The content was not updated for the latest OS so it was digitally removed from the store. I never went after the company because I was not playing hardly at all by then. I had another time where I may have gotten digital codes from an online company and noticed a few weeks later that the content was back in my wish list. Fortunately, the online company gave me new codes that are still working today.

    So what is the fine print? If you read about digital content, the companies license and distribute from the studios. While this relationship has gone on for years with hardly any notice, Sony PlayStation users are taking notice now of the fine print as their purchased digital content from the Discovery Channel will be removed at the end of 2023.

    I always questioned Sony having digital content on the PlayStation and on other platforms but being separate. Let me explain. Sony is part of the Movies Anywhere group so you can stream their movies on iTunes, Vudu, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft to name just a few. However, their PlayStation videos are not part of this. I always wondered why and have not found any good answers.

    So is your digital movie collection safe or should you go back to physical media. I don't argue the fact that physical media will work so long as you have a player for it. For instance, you own all of your VHS tapes and no one can remove them from you. However they can stop making VHS players which is what they did in 2016. Granted DVD and Blu-ray players are not going away anytime soon but they will eventually go away.

    I don't think either is 100% safe. Physical media can be damaged and no longer be available to replace. I know of two movies in my collection I had to replace the physical media due to damage. Same can be said about digital content when studios remove or change content. Changing content I have seen thanks to Disney putting their label on everything they own. Is the change bad? I don't think so. In fact, I would love to see Disney updated my Star Wars A New Hope with Han shooting first but I doubt that will happen.

    As a movie collector, you choice of media is your preference. Does this new move by Discovery and Sony PlayStation give people pause about buying digital only content? I am sure it does. What happens with digital in the future is anyone's guess. What the physical media will be in the future is also anyone's guess. For me, I am sticking with digital but I will have some favorites that are still on physical media that I will keep. This is especially true for TV series that are not part of the Movies Anywhere group that I only have digitally on one cloud service.  

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