Earlier this year, I started purchasing physical copies of movies again. I was big on streaming when it started becoming a thing, and I own quite a few digital movies, but I started wondering what would happen should I lose access to my digital movie collection. One of the providers I used for many years was Vudu. They were purchased by Walmart about 8 years ago and then Walmart sold Vudu off to Fandango a few years ago. I think it was earlier this year or late last year when I had to go through the process of merging my Vudu and Fandango accounts together.

I think that was the moment when I realized that I’ve been lucky so far, but I really don’t have a guarantee that my digital movie collection will be there 10 years from now. It made me rethink the idea of digital ownership. That was when I decided it was time to go back to buying something physical. The best part is, every movie I have purchased so far has a digital code that I can also use allowing me to enjoy having an actual copy and still being able to enjoy the convenience of streaming.

I realize that in 10 years time, the format I am buying my movies in may change. I think that was one of the reasons I started liking digital copies because I didn’t have to worry about some physical media format being killed off. However, I’m not as worried as I used to be. I have DVDs that I purchased 20 years ago that I can still watch. I guess it is just nice to know that I can actually hold what I purchased.