Technology

Best Buy number crunchers care. Profit is relative to floor space required.

The cheaper drive-less PS5 and Xbox Series S are the more popular models.

And people who “have the option” clearly are not buying disks like they used to. If that floor space was a cash cow, they’d keep it around. Best Buy isn’t a charity. Floor space needs to be driving sale somehow.

In the case of Chromebooks, they could be the entry level price point that inevitably upsells someone to a more capable Microsoft or Apple machine. Or hell, for all I know, that table could be a negotiated requirement from Google. Want to sell Pixel, Nest, Eero, and Chromecast product? Then you need to give us that 8x5 oak table for these shitty laptops.

Edit: also, Google could also be straight up leasing that floor space.

There is actually DRM baked into BluRay that can prevent playback under certain circumstances. BD+ is one of those.

Some players require updates from the Internet to work with newer discs as the cryptography keys can rotate or be revoked. And then there are updates like where they can remove playback features.

I actually had an issue where a disc wouldn’t play in any of my players and I had to crack and rip it just to watch the content I purchased. I recommend people backup their blurays because newer players or internet updated ones can revoke access to playback.

Just a reminder that anything digitally bought you don’t own.

I wish people would stop saying this. There's a middle ground for digital media people should be reminded of: DRM-free digital media. In that situation it's much like a physical DVD/blu-ray or the like, you own a copy of it, you can back it up, share it (though the terms & conditions will often discourage this), and so on.

This all or nothing talk of digital media only encourages people to give up and give in to restricted digital media via streaming or limited downloads/installs, both of which do better enable them to diminish your ownership.

So if it’s going to take up space I’ll just rip the 4k disc directly and keep the menus, extras and know that I’m not transcoding it to keep the original quality.

An Android device with Amazon's malware installed

Honestly, most people can’t tell a difference. Heck, I know what I’m looking for and I can’t either half the time. Convenience over quality will win every time.

I only stream music while driving. I've got about 600 vinyl and 400 movies in the various disc formats. I've been buying more of them than ever, after watching streaming sites remove content.