For movies- Brick and Mortar, online dvd or Stream?

DK - I greatly prefer "Brick and Mortar" stores! They might not always have what I desire - however, when they do, it is such a treat! :)

I bought the 4k combo from Walmart because it was a little bit cheaper. But I ordered an internal 4k drive for my multimedia PC from Amazon because not even Frys sells it in the stores. Now crossing my fingers to see if I can get it to work because it needs very specific hardware specs.

joylitt Is 4K backwards compatible with blue ray or DVD? I could research but figure here it is more conversational. 

I'm sure it is. I really don't worry much about that because I have another drive installed that plays blu ray, cd and even the defunct HD DVDs. 

I stream, for a few reasons.

1. I have about 600 movies and 50 TV series. This would take up a huge amount of space in my relatively small house.

2. It's really easy to find what you're looking for.

3. They never get lost.

hox Where do you store the media.

hox I am about where you are. I have more than 400 dvds and blue rays and most are stored away but take up a good amount of real estate. I wonder if it is possible to put at least dvds on an external hard drive.

dk Be careful with that. Because if you damage your hard drive everything will be gone at once. If I ever do that again I would probably try solid state hard drives because the regular ones are not forever.

joylitt That is my fear. I once had more than 300 CDs on an external HD so I could dump on an MP3 player. The problem was I did it all with Vista. I later upgraded to Win 7, plugged in the HD and everything started to reconfigure and delete automatically. All I could do was sit and watch.

I normally stream but for something I really love like Alien films etc Ill go and buy a physical copy :)

IRaptus That is part of my attitude and maybe it is a generational thing. I like to have a physical copy. I have noticed that streaming can vary- sometimes I could have an entire season of something or a movie and come back later to watch and things are gone due to what seem to be contractual agreements and such.

@joylitt, I stream from iTunes purchases. At home on my Apple TV. At work, when nobody's looking, on my laptop. As a precautionary measure, I also have a portable 2TB hard drive containing my most cherished movies.

A lot of people slag off Apple, but they are pretty good in this respect. For example, all my purchased movies and most apps are available to the rest of my family. So, when my son is abroad at university, he can trawl through my large collection of movies as he likes.

Annoyingly, I have a handful of iTunes movies in my Wish List that are not available in HD in the UK iTunes Store. E.g. Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources. I refuse to buy SD movies at DVD resolution because I am used to HD quality, and DVDs look really rough to my eyes now.

I shudder to think about the days when I had a DVD collection. Adverts on those things drove me insane, especially when going back a few years to watch an old movie. You don't get adverts on iTunes movies.

At this point, I buy the hard-copy of what I want! I try to limit it nowadays, because there are some DVDs from my childhood that just have no place here anymore, but I don't get rid of them for some reason! As for place of purchase, I don't have a preference between online or in-store. I f it is something like an Alien film, I will just go to a store on release day. It is a bit trivial, but I always want to watch it tha tday, so I don't risk the shipping from online stores taking too long, you know? 

I do the same with CDs too (mostly. I do rip the purchased CD to have on my devices and a backup copy everytime), but I still enjoy going out and getting the hard copy of something I loved in the cinema!

For now, steaming services or cheap rental deals on Google Play or iTunes and my lmiting of what I buy hard copy keeps the collection manageable. I am sure that in the next 5-10 years I will begin just purchasing a digital copy of some movies. As the technology keeps improving and gaining steam, I will have to assimilate. 

ALWAYS order my stuff online. Always have, even back to the early days of the 90's when Amazon and lots of other DVD stores like DVDplanet, etc were booming.