EntertainmentThe physical media is fashionable again – and it is to blame for the services of streamingcolers, new and veterans, tell Rolling Stone that there is nothing like the feeling of holding their favorite art in the hands of writing

On August 4, the fans of the series Love Lifefrom the HBO MAXthey got a gift. The program was added to Netflixending a three -year drought that left the public without access to the anthological series starring Anna Kendrick and William Jackson Harper.

For the Creator Sam Boydthe return of Love Life The streaming was a welcome change. Since the cancellation, fans had been looking for him repeatedly to ask what would be the best way to watch the production. For a while, he was in HBO MAXthen in Amazon Video for rent, and even passed the Tubiwith ads. He is happy that those who loved the series will have another chance to watch it, but this experience reinforced why he started-and still maintains-the habit of collecting physical copies of his favorite programs and movies.

“I used to buy series dvd boxes I loved and had lasted only one or two seasons,” he told Rolling Stone. “That was something formative for me. There was something that looked fun and special. It made you feel that I had seen something that went unnoticed.”

It is not surprising, then, that, while Boyd expects a new wave of fans of Love Life be a click on Netflixthe culture of film and series collectors is online. When streaming services began to emerge in the mid -2000s, they promised the public a new world, in which the movie night would not have to start with a trip to Blockbuster And expensive cable TV packages could be abandoned without abdicating the favorite programs. Almost two decades later, the streaming became the pattern, and no longer the “alternative” competitor. According to Pew Researchabout 83% of adults in the US sign at least one streaming service, and the number only grows.

Today, however, consumers are not totally satisfied with this exchange. Licensing contracts make a movie available for two years in Netflix can go out and end up on a platform you don’t pay; Old productions may have cut -out controversial scenes; or original series may be canceled and disappear completely. For many of these productions, as Love Lifeboxes or DVDs have never been released, which means streaming is the only way to see them. When they leave the platform, they practically disappear to the common consumer. Physical media, on the other hand, does not suffer from this problem. And although streamings are not necessarily losing subscribers, collectors of Blu-rays, DVDs and VHS tapes tell Rolling Stone That this trend is not cheap nostalgia: it is about participating in the digital world recognizing the value of having something concrete in hand.

GINA LUZI33, began his physical media collection without realizing it. Grew up going to Blockbuster with the father for movie nights and keeps good memories of strolling through the corridors of the Barnes & Noble Behind books and CDs. But in 2018, he started collecting more seriously. Its focus: Italian terror and mystery films from the 1980s – the so -called Giallos – many of which are not available on streaming.

“If I find something that only one distributor has released, or a movie for the first time in 30 years, it makes me very excited,” he says Luzi. “Living in Los Angeles is a privilege when it comes to physical media. We have so many old cinemas, still active video rental companies, so many spaces dedicated to VHS. My love for physical media is very linked to my love for Los Angeles.”

To Severe Maddythe collection began with frustration with streaming. “I got tired of paying for new services”, account Bass26 years old. “I can’t justify having more than two or three. Why do I need to pay for Paramount+ just to see Twin Peaks?

She always had a pile of DVDs at home, but her collection changed when she found an old tube TV with a built -in VCR. Now she looks for VHS tapes of the most watched movies. (The Rush Time, the Rush Time 2 and the silence of the innocent are their favorites.) Bass He believes that the growth of collecting comes from distrust about platforms.

“I think the boom of physical media collections reflects what is happening in the economy and also what people feel about the media in general. It’s good to be sure, and it’s cheaper,” he says. “Having a movie in your collection instead of depending on the emptiness of the internet, it just looks safer.”

Starting a collection can be as simple as entering a thrift store and buying a box of The spicy. But the digital archivist KD Kemp It states that there is a large deficit of knowledge among younger generations, which have grown in the midst of technological jumps. At Tiktok, she shares tips for those who want to collect old media as well as archiving favorite digital content – such as YouTube videos or unreleased songs.

“I get a lot of questions like ‘how I start it?’. There is a lot of curiosity about things that older generations consider basic,” she explains. “How: ‘How is a CD record?’ This was common to us, but it is a knowledge that is getting lost as everything migrates to digital. ”

Interest in physical copies is also driven by digital phenomena such as Letterboxd and the CRITERRION COLLATION. THE Letterboxd It is a movie registration application in which users mark what they have watched, write reviews and discover new works. Your series of interviews at Tiktok, FOUR FAVORITESin which celebrities say their four favorite beating films, often viralizes. Already the CRITERRION COLLATION won enormous popularity with the series The Criterion Closetin which stars, directors and writers choose DVDs in a crowded closet. The success was such that they created the CRITERRION VAN – A “mobile cabinet” that runs through cities, attracting hours of hours to buy discount DVDs and record your own version of the interview.

Josue Arellano27, says that much of his collection is made up of titles from CRITERRIONwhich often relaunches or restores movies he always wanted to see but couldn’t find. When the CRITERRION VAN He was in his city in June, he and a friend arrived at 3:30 am. It was the sixth of the line.

“Even today, in the age of streaming, it is very important to be able to have your media, because you never know what these companies can decide,” he says Arellano. “The issue of editing is already huge-how streamings change movies to make them more ‘friendly’ to children. This is censorship.”

What Arellano It mentions is just an example of various situations where digital copies have been adjusted to meet modern sensitivities. Since 2023, Disney was accused of changing historical films, such as Fantasy, Lilo & Stitch and Star Wars. THE Peacockfrom the group NBCremoved comedy episodes that used Blackface, including The Office, 30 Rock and Scrubs. Companies claim that these changes are important to remove offensive content, but many collectors see this as the creation of more “lost media” – and the elimination of an important historical context.

“There is this false notion that everything is online and accessible. This is just not true,” he says Kemp. “There is a lot of content that has never been scanned or made available online. Or, what is most common today, productions that were born digital were taken down. Licenses were revoked. Something happened that made this content come out of streaming, and now it is actually lost.”

One of the devices that platforms have used in recent years is to remove original productions such as tax maneuver – many of them never released into physical media. (Batgirl2022, was filmed and edited, but never displayed, allegedly discarded for that reason.) It was a destination of which Love Life escaped, why Boyd He likes the idea that physical media collecting is on the rise again.

“There will always be people, especially young people, curious about the past,” he says. “Interested in the whole history of amazing movies, series and albums. I was this kind of child. So it makes sense that these people still exist. The idea that someone will want only what is new forever has never made sense. There will always be people willing to go against it.”

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