I remember back in 1999, when The Internet was still a new-ish, shiny thing. Before Twitter, Facebook, and much of what it is now, when the interwebs was a wild, amazing place, you could find almost anything. That year, an incredible blockbuster movie, The Matrix, was set to be released. A friend showed me a Zip disk, and this particular Zip disk contained, allegedly, a downloaded bootleg trailer for The Matrix. I never found out exactly because my computer didn’t have a Zip drive, so I couldn’t borrow the disk and watch the trailer. But it wasn’t too much after that that The Matrix was released and blew us all away. Again, allegedly. I didn’t see it then because it was rated R and I was 12, but hoo boy did it blow my mind when I did see it.
I recently saw an advert for a new special release of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? on Blu-Ray. It will be 4K resolution and have all the bells, whistles, and extras, but I admit that my first thought was “Really? Physical media? In this day and age?” Now, I am sure that all the digital media storehouses on today’s World Wide Web that have Who Framed Roger Rabbit? in their library will also offer the 4K release for streaming and download. However, I suppose there are plenty of people in the world that use physical media. I am just not one of them.
But the juxtaposition of a movie trailer in 1999 contained on a Zip disk, which was able to hold about 250 megabytes worth of information my hasty scouring of Wikipedia tells me, and a 4K release of a film, which may be about 33 gigabytes, is incredible. Oh the strides entertainment technology has made in the last twenty-two years!
I never really owned many DVDs. I had about twenty-five I think at the height of my ownership. Never mind paying for them, which I didn’t obviously because I never had much money, but playing them and storing them quickly became the bigger challenge. I have used Apple devices exclusively since early 2004, and it wasn’t long before Apple started to remove the CD/DVD drives from their computers. Besides that (as even today you can still get a USB DVD drive for your computer) I wanted more movies available to watch than I wanted to actually move around. It became trivial (relatively) to download movies (ahem: illegally) and store them on a hard drive. So I did.
At the height of my digital piracy, I had over 400 movies stored on an external hard drive. Most I, erm, stole from Netflix, which back at that time sent you DVDs in the mail. (Crazy, right?) I would borrow the movies on disc, rip them to my computer, store the digital files, and send the DVDs back and get new ones. Rinse and repeat. But then this digital pirate had a change of heart. And an income. Both happened about the same time, and as luck would have it, Apple also started selling movies via iTunes then, too. I started to purchase films, download them, and replace the pirated copies that I had stored. Which, by the way, I no longer have. That hard drive? It bit the dust long, long ago with no backup and I lost most of the 400 some-odd films I had. C’est la vie!
Today I have a new library of about 200 films purchased legally from Apple over the years between then and now. But mostly I do what a lot of people do in 2021: I stream movies from Disney+, Netflix (which no longer offers DVDs as far as I know), Apple TV+, and a variety of other streaming platforms. This is why I was surprised to see Who Framed Roger Rabbit? available soon in a new Blu-Ray format. We have all but left physical media behind and are firmly in the streaming wars now.
Who will emerge victorious? Hard to say. But back in the day you had many different physical media, even before Blu-Ray won out, or DVDs replaced VHS. It will be the same with streaming because who can afford all the various subscriptions to each platform? You have unique content being made now for the world of streaming, but people will want to watch their content without having to subscribe to all of the different company’s offerings. I know I do and don’t. I sign up for Paramount+ to binge new Star Trek shows, then cancel my subscription. I do that, too, for other things. I only pay consistently for Disney+ at the moment. (I piggy-back my sister’s Netflix account, and currently have a free subscription to Apple TV+). I am happy to wait for the mega, or the comprehensive, streaming platform to emerge, and then pay for that. It may be more than any one individual platform, but as long as it’s less than them all, I will be happy. Especially if it delivers the content I want. Which, by the by, is why I love Disney+. It has Disney, Pixar, Star Wars, and Marvel! Almost everything I love under one roof.
And now we come full circle, as a new trailer for the fourth Matrix film, Matrix: Resurrections, is about to be available and I will definitely see that movie in theaters as soon as the film is released. (For one thing, I’m old enough to see R rated films on my own now). I may even pay for the 4K, albeit digital, version of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, too, when it comes out. What can I say? I like that wacky old film!
A postscript: I am absolutely certain that this post will be an anachronism itself very soon. All this talk about physical media versus digital media will be passé when they beam entertainment directly to our brains or however it will be available in the not so near future. Then it will be neuronic media or whatever they will call it. The visual quality is constantly increasing, and the storytelling is always exciting. When I remember how bad the VHS I grew up on was, and how good 4K is today, with 8K around the corner, I can’t imagine what it will be in another twenty-two years. Maybe we will interact with our media a la the holodeck from Star Trek. However it happens, I hope to be there for it. No matter what, I am excited for the future of visual storytelling.
(Just not for The Matrix: Who Framed Mr. Anderson? mashup sequel which I hope never gets made.)
a simple man 