(no subject)

[raincitygirl]

Would anybody like a slightly used domestic shorthair cat? Because she is working my last nerve. Yesterday she managed to jump on the kitchen counter and knock a full plate of food to the floor, breaking the plate and scattering my dinner all over the linoleum. AND she knocked over her water bowl, walked through the ensuing puddle of water, and then tracked muddy paw prints all over the bed sheets, which meant I had to strip the bed. She's not usually LIKE this. I want my normal cat back, not Ms. Klutzy McClumsyson.

Does anybody on my f-list/dwircle have any experience with buying movies and TV shows on iTunes, rather than buying physical DVDs and Blu-Rays? I am running out of bookshelf space on which to put my plentiful collection of geeky media. If you buy the thing on iTunes, do you have to watch it on your laptop screen, or can you hook up your laptop to your television? And if the latter, how difficult is it to do, on a technical level? What are the pros and cons of having media stored digitally rather than physical discs? Thank you in advance for your expertise and advice.

I feel gross and don't wanna go to work. I'm going to drag my carcass there, but I intend to bitch about it.

Comments

[madripoor_rose]

From what I understand, the problem with digital media is that you don't own it. You're renting the right to view it. There's some kind of locking code? that only lets you download the file so many times, and the way devices brick/need upgrading, the files themselves get corrupted...

I'm somewhat suspicious of the concept. Especially having videotapes in decent working order from the late 80s, and yet I hear people having problems with downloads constantly. I suppose it would save room for something you might watch once or twice, but I personally wouldn't trust it for fannish archiving something you plan to keep for years.

Sorry to hear yMW is being a brat-cat.

[raincitygirl]

I see. I didn't realize that you're basically leasing the digital media from iTunes, rather than owning it. Yeah, not going there.

She's gotten over being a brat-cat by now, but she was being very bratty while the incident lasted.

[newredshoes]

I learned the hard way that you can only watch iTunes purchases on an Apple TV outside your computer or Apple devices. I imagine you can do some sort of screen mirroring thing, but I wanted to have these purchases in the cloud, rather than clogging up my hard drive with downloads (which iTunes does), so I went to Amazon for buying season passes of TV I wanted.

That said, I bought both seasons of Agent Carter on streaming because I wanted to make a point to the company about spending money on it. I much prefer having DVDs for shows I very much always want access to. Netflix rarely has shows I really care about, and it's happened too often that the show will go away or they'll only have S2 but not S1 or something.

Oof, good luck with the kitty. I'm the doggiest dog person ever, so I'm no help whatsoever on this.

[raincitygirl]

Ah. I see. Thanks for letting me know. I'll be sticking with hard copies, in that case.

Kitty has calmed down, thank goodness. I love dogs. I don't have a dog, but maybe one day... In the meantime I get my doggie fix from my mother's visits (she has a dog), and making friends with dogs who are out for walks with their owners.

[wanderer]

As a traveller, I've switched entirely to digital media, and I find it very convenient? Not perfect, but I don't miss dvds and physical media - except for the opportunity to lend them out. I've hooked my tv up with an apple tv (the old style one works perfectly well!) which makes it dead simple to watch, but also means I can stream directly from my computer for anything that's not iTunes. The Apple tv also makes Netflix very easy, which is a plus. There's a simple media connector if you'd rather just hook up your computer physically, and same if you want to do if from a phone etc.

I'm not a big fan of the iTunes interface on the computer (why is it so complicated and unintuitive when Apple prides themselves on being the opposite?) but it's worth it for the simplicity and lack of stuff to store/pack/dust.

Sorry to hear about the cat-troubles! Mine are the same at the moment... maybe it's the season?

[raincitygirl]

Yeah, my brother has switched entirely to digital media, and he is also a traveller. He finds it very convenient for much the same reasons you mention.

For myself, I'll have been in the same apartment for 14 years come mid-November (oh God, I'm SO OLD!!!!), and so I think hard copies still make sense. What I need to do is to go through my piles of hard copy books, and give away those I already have on Kindle/iBooks/Kobo, and also give away the books I haven't read in a decade. Then I'll have more room for DVDs.

My cat has stopped being a brat-cat, at least for now, and I'm very relieved. I hope yours have also gotten over it. Could be the heat....

[twistedchick]

I use iTunes to play things, but not to buy them. I have been hearing from friends that, once activated for buying media, iTunes will go through your media on your computer, reorganize it and in some cases delete it -- those cases being original media not related to iTunes. So, I am wary of that.

[raincitygirl]

Ai yai yai yai yai!!! Okay, I'm DEFINITELY not switching to the iTunes thingie in that case.

[out_there]

I don't know about iTunes, but I found that hooking a laptop up to the tv was as easy as buying a hdmi cord, plugging one end to the laptop and one end to the TV. You then find the hdmi input setting on the tv (we have a source button for tv vs av vs hdmi) and setting the laptop to play on a projector (for our laptops, it's just pressing F4 until you get to"duplicate screens").

I thought it would be hard, but once I worked out how to do it, it was easier than hooking up a dvd player.

[raincitygirl]

The other replies I've received suggest that iTunes is not the way I want to go, owing to the fact that you basically are just leasing the content, you don't actually OWN it. I like owning stuff.

But that's very useful to know about the HDMI cord. I connect laptops to projectors and videoconference systems all the time at work, so theoretically I could do it at home too.