The end of physical media is neigh

There will continue to be blue ray players and everything else. The market will determine the details. If no market, then no blue rays.

You can still buy CD players, cassette decks, record players and even rtr.

Not so sure about 8 track. How about a vcr? I still have 2.  I think they both work but frankly I hardly ever use them.   
 

I’d recommend having any old personal media digitized if you want to be able to watch moving forward  just to be safe  

Back in the day, I had a DVD collection around 1200, even had a picture binder with everything in it on the coffee table. This is back in the pre HDMI days, when Netflix did not stream, they sent you DVD's in the mail. It was so much fun to get the latest DVD in the mail the day it dropped. 

Then streaming started, things started to move to HDMI, had a yard sale with my DVD's, the rest (other than a chosen few) went to a 2nd hand store. 

Same for CD's got about 2000ish CD's they are in a huge box in the garage. All have been riped to HDD years ago. Stopped buying Cd's when iTunes came out, got my first iPod. No need for cd's anymore, enjoyed having 2000 Cd's in my pocket, also worked very well in my cars. Haven't purchased a CD in about 25 years?

However, my Kid is into Kpop, they have around 300 cd's now, the bands are marketing masters, they drop EP's of everything (come out about every 6mo) also have 4 versions of the same disc. We also both enjoy records, weirdly Target has a ton of special edition Kpop vinyl. My kid has almost 50 records now. 

Of course Blue-ray came out, started down that format, but never got even close to my love of collecting DVD's. I remember that one of the highest rated Blue-ray players was with a Sony PlayStation or Xbox, went down that path.

Now, I might have 40 DVD's and Bluerays. Hardly every play any of them, unless I can't find it streaming. However, Blueray does look good, but always sounds SO MUCH better, the dynamic range is so much higher over streaming. 

This last generation of game consoles has versions without a media player. Most games are now downloaded, and not purchased on disk. Disk sales are on the decline. They may come back up when we all get fed up with streaming services. Not sure you all have noticed, but prices are going WAY up (Hulu full is $80/mo) also commercials are popping up in every streaming service. It's starting to piss me off. 

I have hundreds of CDs still. I ripped them to a music library years ago.  They still make useful acoustic treatments stored on the walls of my office room.  Blasts from the past.  May come in useful as backups someday should I ever happen to lose my flac files.  Hopefully there will be a cd ripper available.  Probably.  

we are becoming a world without any control at all over our music or movie culture.

Nu? Market demand controls these things. Always has always will.

Very great posts! thanks

i will only add that A.I. computing intelligence has nothing to do with human intelligence with living body/soul/spirit ...

Then A.I. can only kill human culture and pilot human creativity toward the Hive model...

Our social fabric is immature totally, we dont understand it, and we are not ready to become the craddle for this birthing, a "monster" presented to us as if not a true god at least as an inevitable progress...

We are the tools of A.I. not the reverse ...

LLM is built by absorbing human language and creativity and spew it out like the Bill Gates steak improper to human needs...

I have 40 years of software engineering experience and have studied AI extensively for investment purposes and can safely say that no one knows where this will lead culturally. But culture is a secondary problem. AI will first cause economic upheaval and that will have to be worked out before we settle into a new culture and leisure endeavors. There are several post-labor economic theories, all of which can either be easily debunked or proven incompatible with human psychology. As for "art", it won’t make sense for humans to do what AI can far more easily do. How many people still make homemade butter?

What humans will do for a sense of fulfillment is another unknown. Physical accomplishment will still be a thing, but most people aren’t motivated by physical accomplishment now. People without physical or dextrous hobbies will likely be unfulfilled. Or then again, AI being smarter than humans may see a path forward that I and other humans don’t see.

As for musicians and actors, they are toast. Lionsgate has already contracted with Runway AI to model their library of movies so they can make new movies using AI. And tools like Sora are getting very close to realism.

If you doubt the potential of AI, or just want to know more about how it works, I suggest a 27-minute video on a YouTube channel called 3BLUE1BROWN with a thumbnail named Inside an LLM. It is accessible without programming knowledge, but gives you a good understanding of why AI can be smarter than humans. I think this level of knowledge is essential to plan your life in a post-AI world. 99% of people do not understand what’s about to happen to them and are about to be blindsided.