DVDs -- I still enjoy them.

[hunter]

Nope, not the same quality as Blu-ray, just 480 lines, but I don't have a fancy home theater setup and my eyes never were that discerning.

DVDs work even when the internet is down or after a movie's copyright owner decides not to stream it anymore.

Brand new DVD players sell for about $25. These often include a usb connection that allows you to play movies from a usb drive too. Google "mini dvd player."

Or you can buy a used DVD player in a thrift store. Unfortunately many of these don't have an HDMI output. Many modern televisions only have HDMI inputs.

My desktop computer has a DVD drive and I can use Handbrake to copy DVDs to a file. I can transfer those files to my laptop and watch them when I'm traveling. A typical DVD movie comes out to about 500 megabytes so you can easily fit a dozen movies or more on a cheap 8 gigabyte usb stick.

I'm getting really irritated with the newer "smart" televisions, streaming devices, blu-ray players, etc.. They all try to sell you dozens of "free" streaming services as soon as you turn them on. What they are actually doing is selling YOU to advertisers. My wife and I quit all advertising supported television more than a decade ago.

My ideal streaming device would only display icons for the DVD player and the two or three streaming services we subscribe to at any given time. Maybe I should make my own streaming device.

I'm hopeful DVDs will never go away entirely. Maybe they'll stick around like vinyl LP records have, as a cool "retro" way of watching movies.

[NJCher]

1. Public libraries

Have a huge selection of dvds, too. Complete tv series, movies, how-to videos, college level courses…more than any one person could watch in a lifetime.

[bif]

2. And your library may offer Hoopla and Kanopy

streaming services for free. Great selection of movies, commercial free!

[hunter]

3. If one doesn't have unlimited high speed internet...

... DVDs are just about your only option for commercial-free movie viewing.

I love that our library provides access to movie streaming services and ebooks but I'd hate to see paper books and DVDs go away.

The other great advantage of DVDs is that they can be shared with friends and family. Our family did quite a lot of that in days past, especially when we were visiting relatives who did not have high speed internet yet. Some didn't even have modern HDMI televisions.

Our children and their cousins mostly live in big cities now, have high speed internet, and stream almost everything. Curiously, a few of them collect vinyl records.

[llmart]

5. I'm a bit late to this discussion but...

you may find it interesting that public libraries have recently started to "weed" their DVD collections since the interest in them is waning and they don't circulate much. However, at least in my library's case, when they pull them from the collection they give them to their Friends group who sell them to the public during their used book sales. Ours go for $1 each. Our Friends group has been getting tons of used DVD's from people as donations because many people are just using streaming services. They come in every day in bagsful or boxes. At any given sale we have hundreds and hundreds of DVD's to sell.

[Coventina]

4. I also love DVDs and still collect them.

You'll pry my DVDs from my cold, dead hands!!

I lost my Netflix, and I would be going crazy if I didn't have my Lucifer DVDs!
Same with Arrested Development!!