DVDs are digital-only media - "Digital Versatile Disc". There is no analog component in it. The disc stores data digitally.
Furthermore, if by digital you mean online distribution, well, you aren't buying media by definition. You're downloading bits from a wire (or radio wave) and storing it on your own physical media.
Among the general public, there is rampant terminology abuse and devaluing of what the word "digital" means - it is in contrast to "analog", not in contrast to physical, non-electronic, non-online, etc. For example, you can make digital logic gates out of mechanical LEGO; you can deliver digital data on floppy disks via sneakers.
I disagree, I didn't know what they meant. It's a fairly confusing use of the term "digital media", which is almost always meant as opposed to analog media.
I assume the parent is using it to mean streaming, or other kinds of DRM.
If we're going to be super pedantic about exactly what words mean, then a DVD is digital but it's not "digital only". Every single owner has a physical disc with the movie on it. Digital only ownership is a few bytes abstracted into some database somewhere, and the movie files themselves are also very loosely correlated with hardware.
> a DVD is digital but it's not "digital only". Every single owner has a physical disc with the movie on it.
That satisfies the definition of "digital only" - every person who has the movie (conceptually speaking) has a digital version of it. This holds true as long as no one tried to print the movie onto paper as an analog image, or export it to VHS or something like that.
Note that digital does not contrast with physical. A DVD is a physical object that holds digital data. A sequence of pulses on an Ethernet cable conveys digital information via waves of electromagnetic energy.
> Digital only ownership is a few bytes abstracted into some database somewhere
And somebody still ultimately has to store at least one copy of the movie on a physical medium somewhere.
> Digital only ownership
I think we can all agree that if you own some coins/tokens/NFTs on Bitcoin/Ethereum/etc., that is a very pure form of digital-only ownership. There is no intuitive physical object that corresponds to the ownership of a digital token.
Yet, that blockchain database is publicly available and mirrored millions of times; it is not locked up behind a single company. This differs from what you were trying to say, where I interpret your notion of "digital-only" to mean that "the movie studio hosts the file on its server and streams it to you on demand, but you can never download a copy of the movie to keep for yourself".
Ultimately, "digital" just means that the information you wanted is a finite sequence of 0s and 1s, as opposed to some analog signal with infinite variation. "Digital" says nothing about who owns it, how many copies exist, how it is delivered, etc.
> That satisfies the definition of "digital only" - every person who has the movie (conceptually speaking) has a digital version of it. This holds true as long as no one tried to print the movie onto paper as an analog image, or export it to VHS or something like that.
The term "digital only" says nothing about being digital versus analog in particular.
> Note that digital does not contrast with physical.
Sure it can.
> I think we can all agree that if you own some coins/tokens/NFTs on Bitcoin/Ethereum/etc., that is a very pure form of digital-only ownership. There is no intuitive physical object that corresponds to the ownership of a digital token.
> Yet, that blockchain database is publicly available and mirrored millions of times; it is not locked up behind a single company. This differs from what you were trying to say, where I interpret your notion of "digital-only" to mean that "the movie studio hosts the file on its server and streams it to you on demand, but you can never download a copy of the movie to keep for yourself".
It's not that the lockup is a fundamental part, but in the streaming case it helps enforce the idea that the movie you get is never properly embodied and only exists in an abstract data pool.
A blockchain has lots of replicas but they're all still abstract database entries. Even a "physical bitcoin" is just the keys and not the entries.
> Ultimately, "digital" just means that the information you wanted is a finite sequence of 0s and 1s, as opposed to some analog signal with infinite variation. "Digital" says nothing about who owns it, how many copies exist, how it is delivered, etc.
I think other uses make sense and fit this context.
Your reply, while technically correct (the best kind), reminds me of a joke I wrote not long ago. I’m going to write it here from memory, so please disregard any loss of humor during the process.
A wasp is just a bee with anger management issues.
Technically incorrect as they’re not quite the same. But amusing nonetheless.
DVDs are digital-only media - "Digital Versatile Disc". There is no analog component in it. The disc stores data digitally.
Furthermore, if by digital you mean online distribution, well, you aren't buying media by definition. You're downloading bits from a wire (or radio wave) and storing it on your own physical media.
Among the general public, there is rampant terminology abuse and devaluing of what the word "digital" means - it is in contrast to "analog", not in contrast to physical, non-electronic, non-online, etc. For example, you can make digital logic gates out of mechanical LEGO; you can deliver digital data on floppy disks via sneakers.