“Disc rot” is only an issue with CDs. The manufacturing process changed for DVDs and then again for Blu-ray. Unless it’s stored in a garage in Florida, a Blu-ray disc will likely outlive us all.

You’re probably right. All I know is I did see some posts about Blu-Ray discs having issues over time across Reddit and in that forum. I imagine it’s likely a similar situation to storing things on portable drives where faults occasionally happen and their frequency depends a lot on how you store them.

If you’re asking if anything can compare to stealing movies for free, no, there aren’t many things that can compare to free.

Buying Blu-rays is legal. The actors and writers receive residuals for their work, which allows them to eat. It votes for content with your wallet, encouraging studios to produce more like that (whatever your thoughts on the movie, Oppenheimer sold very well on physical 4K UHD and Blu-ray, and it wasn’t a superhero movie).

Many people also rip the digital files to their Plex server or whatever after buying them to have the convenience of local streaming.

Look, if you want to pirate movies, that’s your personal decision; you don’t need to justify it to me or anyone else.

I’m not trying to justify piracy to you. I am also not trying to be an internet elitist who tries to flex his jailbroken Firestick that’s full of 240p streams of movies. I’m indifferent about your stance on it and it doesn’t effect me. We were talking about Blu-Ray and I genuinely don’t know if it would have an advantage. Like if there is typically a noticeable reduction in quality when people rip their Blu-Rays. I’ve bought movies in the past that came with download codes and I don’t know if the two would be on par when it comes to quality. Maybe they would tone things down to work smoother without a Blu-Ray player or to reduce the file size.

That’s what I am getting at.