Disc vs. Streaming

Recently I mentioned the Disney+ video streaming service. After playing with it for a while, I now have to ask myself what to do with all of the Disney DVD and Blu-ray discs I have. This is not a new problem as I originally owned them all on VHS video cassette. Over the years I have systematically replaced all of my favorites with the DVD and Blu-ray equivalents. Now I don't need any of them as I can get them all on Disney+ wherever I am in the world.

The move from physical copies of media is something the music industry faced over the past decade. Go try to find a CD of your latest favorite song. It can be tough because people have stopped buying CD discs. For a while, people were buying individual songs on services like iTunes. Now everything has gone to streaming. If you want to listen to a specific song, you just go to YouTube and pull up the music video which may or may not actually be a video.

I don't plan to get rid of my Blu-ray collection of movies any time soon. There are a number of my favorite movies that are tough to find on any streaming service. I am still looking for one of my favorite movies on disc that I used to have on VHS. Most people would think it is not that great of a movie but I really enjoyed it as a teenager.

I am also waiting how long it takes for people to tire of paying the monthly fee for access to movies. If you watch a movie several times a week, then paying for the streaming service makes sense. However if you only watch once or twice a month, there are some people that will justify pay-per-view, owning a disc, or owning the digital rights to favorite movies.

Ultimately I think the movie industry will follow the music industry and we will stop purchasing physical discs. While my current preference is to own physical media, I may be in the minority soon. The writing is on the wall.

Enjoying a Solo Roadtrip

Thursday last week I drove my car from San Francisco back to Salt Lake. It is a trip I make about twice a year. Once I drive from Utah to California and then I drive the other way. I do it as I take a lot of vacation at the end of the calendar year and don't want to leave my car unused for such a long time. It is also a great time to do maintenance and take care of licensing.

There are a number of strategies I have used to combat boredom on the trip. On occasion I have enlisted one of my children to drive with me. My youngest daughter often shares with others about the time she flew to San Francisco and only stuck around for an hour or two before driving home. We had a fun time and listened to book on CD. We both enjoyed the fictional story and could talk about it as we drove the 11 hours.

Unfortunately my car is 17 years old and does not have a Bluetooth nor other type of audio connection. That eliminates being able to use a service like Audible. So before my trip on Thursday, I went to the local bookstore and purchased a non-fiction book on CD and loaded up the 6-disc changer in the trunk. At around the 5-hour mark, I swapped out CD's and loaded the remaining 3 as my book required 9 discs. The system works well but books on CD are more expensive than other sources or services.

My chosen listening material recounted the non-fictional story of Apollo 8. There are some familiar characters if you have seen the movie Apollo 13 and I enjoyed the references found in both. The story kept me entertained and the miles seemed to pass quickly. Of course, the 80-mile-per-hour speed limit in Utah and Nevada helped a lot too. If you find yourself wanting to go back and learn a bit about America's space program, I highly recommend the book. It is called "Apollo 8: The Thrilling Story of the First Mission to the Moon" by Jeffrey Kluger.

I plan to bring my car back to California after the new year as soon as I catch a weather window where I don't have to worry about snowstorms closing the freeway around Lake Tahoe. When I do, I will be sure to get another book to listen to. With enough warning, I can probably find a better source for the stories so I can play it from my smartphone instead of on CD. That should save me some money.

Christmas Music

This year I have tried to be a bit more proactive when it comes to helping my wife set up all of the Christmas decorations. Yesterday we put up the outside Christmas lights and today we put up the Christmas tree. As we were working today, my wife wanted to listen to Christmas music.

In the past my wife has kept a ton of Christmas music on her iPhone. For some reason she took it off and so she left it up to me to figure out how to get some Holiday music going while we put up the tree. I thought about setting up a Christmas station on Pandora. However that would have required finding speakers for my tablet or smartphone and so I pulled out an old boom-box with a built-in CD player. My wife then located about 20 Christmas CDs and we put one in.

It worked quite well and we enjoyed the music for about 40 minutes. Then the music stopped. We were still working on decorating and so my wife changed CDs and we kept going. Once again we were good, but only for about 40 minutes. It took us several hours to set things up and the music helped speed the process along. The only problem was that it felt like we were constantly changing CDs.

I'm not sure what is more annoying: listening to commercials every few songs that come with the free version of Pandora or having to swap out CDs every 40 minutes or so. Ultimately I decided that MP3 players like the iPod have really spoiled me and it is tough to go back to older music formats like CDs.

Music CDs in an MP3 World

I love living in the United States but it is also fun to visit other countries and experience other cultures. This evening I will be headed from Tokyo back to the US, but I have expanded my understanding of the Japanese people. One phenomenon here is the pop music group AKB48. It is a group made up of nubile young ladies ranging from the mid teens to the early 20s. I'm not sure where the number 48 comes from as there are 67 members of the group. They are split into 3 groups with 22 in Group A and 22 in Group B. The rest of the girls are trainees. As the girls get older, they graduate and younger girls audition to take their place.

The genius of the group is how members are voted in. When you purchase the CD single for one of the group's songs, you get a voting ticket that you can cast for your favorite member. So if there is someone you really like, you can purchase multiple CD's and stuff the ballot box in her favor. It is not uncommon for fans to purchase many copies of the same CD simply to cast more votes.

Everybody loves cute young girls and so you can't help but become interested in them. The music isn't bad and their music videos are fun to watch. I have to hand it to their producer as he has also figured out how to sell music CDs in an MP3 world. I wonder if it would work back in the States?