Digital Download or Physical Copy?

[Neo Emolga]

Whenever you get media like music, movies, or games, do you prefer going with the digital download, or do you prefer having a physical copy, such as a CD, DVD, or Blu-Ray?

For me, usually I prefer having the physical copy, but I'll settle with a digital download if it's cheaper or comes with other bonuses that the physical version doesn't have. I've had times where sites I've purchased digital download copies from went down and it was impossible to get them back. RealArcade was a good example of these. There were several games I brought on there, but when the site went down and had to merge with another one, access to those games was gone.

[Noblejanobii]

I think it depends.

Books I prefer physical copies for several reasons. 1) I can read during class without risk of losing the item for 24+ hours. 2) I'm nearsighted and my eye sight is only getting worse. As such, I can't stare at a screen for long periods of time without getting bad headaches, so physical copies of books solve that issue for me.

Music… it varies. If I am driving the car, I will want CDs to put in my stereo since my car doesn't like to sync with my iPhone, so I prefer the CDs in that case. If I'm just riding along in the car, then digital because I can listen to my iPhone with no issues.

Video games… I still to this day love the feeling of cartridges, but my proneness to having them stolen or losing them makes me lean towards having digital copies as a better idea.

Movies are physical copies. I like the whole digital copy thing, but it takes up so much memory that I barely use them anyway, so I find physical copies are better because they don't take up memory storage.

[EmeraldSky]

Books--I love the convenience of an e-reader, but nothing beats a physical book in your hands

Music--Downloads all the way--I've found that buying the whole album for one song is silly when you can just download the one song you want

Games--Physical copies if possible, but I do like being able to download off of Steam and similar services

Movies--Physical copy if it is a movie I really liked/wanted to see, download if I'm not sure I'll like the movie

[Bulbasaur]

Books - Physical - E-readers are nice but since they are fairly new I don't want to buy the books I own again on them.
Music - Physical - You can easily rip CDs into digital, so it's really a question of if you want a digital copy or a digital AND physical copy.
Games - Digital - It's easier, and you don't have to worry about something happening to the game CD.
Movies - Probably physical. It's a tough choice for me, though.

[Pokemon Trainer Sarah]

I like physical copies of everything. I never buy digital copies because most of the time you can download them for free P: If I really like something, I'll buy it and if I'm gonna buy it, I want to actually have something I can hold in my hands!

[Plasmalpha Arceus]

Physical copies of everything for me too. They can last longer and don't eat up hard disc space. Plus it's not as easy to erase a commercial DVD than to accidentally delete it off your phone.

[Otter Mii-kun]

I've always preferred physical hard copies of media if I can get my hands on it. The thing about purchasing digital copies of most media that annoys me is the fact that most of the time, your purchase is locked so that you can only use it on the computer you originally downloaded it to. Besides, what if something were to happen to your hard drive? At least with physical CDs, you can re-rip them if you lose your original ripped files. And with DVDs, you can pop them into any DVD or Blu-Ray player to play them as you wish. As for books, although I rarely ever read these days, it's better to have a physical hard copy, so that you have something to fall back to and do in case you lose power and are unable to use the computer or Internet.