Prices

[Wolfie65 1275xp 0]

The picture books – ‘visual companions’ – as well as the soundtracks for An Unexpected Adaptation and The Desolation of CGI are all available at relatively reasonable prices, while the soundtrack & book  to go with The Battle of the 5 Billion Pixels go for rather insane amounts only crazed completists would pay.  Any idea why this huge difference ?

[limburger 22420xp 3]

because that’s the one thing people actually want ?

Never heard of any of these things. Google only gives me your thread as a result 😀

oooh … you tried to be funny (insert lame ‘ha ha’ emoji here).
You were referring to the Hobbit trilogy movies (‘an unexpected journey’, ‘the desolation of smaug’ and ‘the battle of the 5 armies’).

I’m not seeing any insane prices when I look for that one. 15 Euro for the paperback version of the movie photo book ?
That’s not bad given the format.

I think you’re searching for more exclusive variant ?
Maybe stop trying to be funny and list the things you are looking for.
No one can help you if you make it needlessly difficult to understand what it is you are ranting/complaining about.

[admiralandy 1672xp 1]

Well quick look at Ebay, soundtrack £25-30 so you could get it, not collector item prices, and the Visual Companion under £5 and as new.

 

 

[limburger 22420xp 0]

25-30 is a bit steep for a soundtrack … unless that’s for the entire trilogy.

otoh … try finding any physical media for music. All music shops in my area have gone out of business for at least a decade.
It sucks to have to rely on streaming services for music. 🙁

To me that’s so much worse than the cost of the soundtrack TBH.

/rant

[pagan8th 14181xp 0]

You can get soundtracks as a download. That’s better than streaming as only download once.

Some games I bought provided a link to the soundtrack and you can download them as mp3 and burn them to CD if you need to.

Places like Amazon and Itunes allow purchase although sometimes it’s actually cheaper to buy the CD.

[admiralandy 1672xp 0]

£25-30 is same price bracket as a rulebook, so whilst I agree view pricey it’s a normal disposable income amount not silly money in the 100s.

Depends how much actually willing to spend, but not an out of normal everyday reach is all I was saying, compared to some other oop items.

[Wolfie65 1275xp 0]

Looks like I finally found Visual Companion # 3 for about $9, a little high for a used book, but manageable. The cheapest soundtrack for movie #3 I’ve seen on Fleabay is over $ 30, still more than I’d like to spend on 2 used  CDs. Other listings have it for $ 60+

[Wolfie65 1275xp 0]

I remain highly suspicious of downloads, physical product is always better, even if it is digital.

[Wolfie65 1275xp 0]

I got the 2-disc editions for soundtracks no 1 + 2 for between $15-20 each, which is a little steep for used CDs, but they do come in nice ‘limited edition’ packaging, so I guess it’s ok.

Stores of pretty much any kind have disappeared at an alarming rate in my area over the past 15 years or so – book stores, bike shops, skate shops, hobby shops, night clubs, even many restaurants have closed. Other than grocery and pet  stores, I hardly go anywhere anymore.

[limburger 22420xp 0]

it is a bit steep for ‘used’ cd’s but then … cd’s don’t degrade a lot through use.
I’d be more worried about all the extra not-so-re-usable bits.

@pagan8th I prefer to buy physical media whenever possible.
Yes, it’s possible to do that with mp3’s but when that site goes down you won’t have any backups at all.
And you really want to be sure that those digital media are free of the DRM crap that companies like to add in order to add all the negative issues of physical media to a digital medium.

Plus you never know what quality encoding was used … until it’s too late.
With physical media I can rip it to a lossless format or a high quality lossy format if I want to.

[grantinvanman 9603xp 0]

Vinyl or die.

[limburger 22420xp 0]

nope … never ever touching vinyl. I prefer not to hear the static hiss of a needle.

The only negative about compact discs are the tiny covers.

 

[Wolfie65 1275xp 0]

When they first came out – after the short early 90s interlude of laser discs, if anyone remembers those –  of  we were told that CDs and DVDs were basically indestructible, which they are most definitely not.

In ye olden days of the 80s and 90s, buying movies was still relatively uncommon, most people rented them from video stores, so VHS tapes went through a LOT of different hands, which did, eventually, lead to some decline in quality. Tapes are somewhat stretchy and you can only play, rewind and fast forward a tape so many times before it’s going to develop some issues.

However, buying used DVDs or CDs often carries the risk of smudges, scratches or even invisible glitches, despite the fact that these discs had, in most cases, only ONE previous owner. They had not been passed around among hundreds or even thousands of people renting them from a store.

Conclusion: far from being indestructible, digital media may actually be more prone to weird problems – and in a shorter period of time – than analog media.

My basic observation is that the more buttons something has, the more likely it is to break. The more sophisticated an apparatus, the more likely it is to fail under real world conditions.

I miss the static hiss of needle on a record. I do own a record player, but records have become virtually impossible to find since Hastings, a large media chain, went out of business and even thrift shops do not carry them anymore.

And I love those smudged, flickering, almost watercolor black&white movies from the 1920s and 30s, complete with the background crackling and hissing, but unrivalled acting and plots that actually meant something, as opposed to today’s mass market slop. Watching one of those almost feels like you’re watching someone’s dream

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