My first real vacation was a weeklong excursion to Miami Beach. What I remember more than Ethel Merman in “Call Me Madam,” the menacing funnel cloud of a waterspout, or my stolen coin purse, was the direction of the guide on the Jolly Roger tour boat. “Just throw it overboard,” he said in response to a question about empty soda cups. “It’ll end up somewhere downstream.” Even at six, I knew that was wrong.
I can proudly say I’ve never dumped trash in the ocean. But what about my carbon footprint as an audio/video enthusiast? I have to wonder what effect my years of collecting packaged media is having on the environment. When I moved last year from a roomy house to a cozy apartment, only half of my 1,500 CDs and DVDs could go with me. All obsolete VHS tapes had to go, too. I left behind a regrettable amount of plastic, including discs, jewel boxes and cassette shells.
After a lifetime of collecting LPs, tapes and discs, I’m amazed to think there’s a new wave of consumers who may never own a physical scrap of prerecorded media. They can download music and videos and store them on a hard drive. Me? I now score much of my music from iTunes—and would be inspired to do more if tracks weren’t left off iTunes albums.
Although I can justify the purchase of some CDs because I’ll play them again and again, I can’t say the same for movies which, save for some classics and good demo material, I rarely watch more than once or twice. That makes the recent onslaught of video download options—without environmentally unfriendly discs or cases—that much more appealing.
I’m about to hook up a Vudu player to download movies in HD. I have Apple TV, which sends my music, iTunes TV shows and photos from the PC to the living room. I can rent standard- or high-def movies from various studios and download them to the PlayStation 3 and shuttle them over to the PlayStation Portable.
If I’m feeling especially green, I can download “near-DVD-quality” movies from Netflix rather than going the snail mail route. I can use TiVo as a window to Amazon’s Unbox video collection. New releases typically run $4 per rental and $15 for purchase, but when I buy a title for playback on my PC or TiVo, I get a smaller file, too, for playback on a portable.
Of course, there are caveats in the download world. The media you buy or rent has stringent playback restrictions, media players report back information from your PC, and if your hard disk crashes, it takes your media with it.
Green media isn’t perfect, but it’s a carbon step in the right direction.
Read more:
Exploring Your Video-On-Demand Options
Are Media Extenders Finally Catching On?
The Death of In-Store Rentals
well said lawson, having it in hand is so much more gratifying than a download. though amazon is almost drm free, as is torrent :P; and I for one prefer it on my harddrives, which I already own anyways, than on CD’s which I scratch up and lose—but all in all, having both is still preferable. I think the real way forward is SSD and multiple backups to a ‘cloud’/raid online. to put on top of the conversation, how could apple not provide a way to get back your songs when your laptop with itunes goes down, without 3rd party your ipod loses all it’s songs! what trash! seriously…
use FLAC for losless awesomeness and back up everything twice! :D
but back to the conversation, discs should go…bluray is a crap of waste, and we all know it…to really save the environment, I say f’ bluray and move toward the best options available—optical can’t be it—by the time people buy into it online speeds will be enough to buffer an HD movie in a few minutes…perhaps faster than finding and putting a disc in a drive…
oh yeah, for that canadian ####### above, shame on you for being such a belligerent moron. you take the cake on stupidity…
While downloading media is nice and handy, ans as it points out in the article is greener in many respects. There are many people who want the feel of having a actual media in their hands, be it a LP, CD, DVD ect. I would much prefer to buy real media and not virtual media stored on a huge hard drive, which as we all know can crash and take all your media with it.
What is needed is greener way to produce cd, dvd’s ect, not to mention how green is the process used to make those huge hard drivers?
All of this is not even mentioning restirictions on the media you download, DRM,
lawsonreport.info
REPLY to Tony:
I don’t give a crap about global warming. But I do hate having chemicals dumped on a lawn my kid is supposed to play on.
I don’t give a crap about global warming. But I do hate having crappy air to breathe.
I don’t give a crap about global warming. But I do hate having to pay 4 bucks for a gallon of gas.
You may not buy the supposed hoax BS, but you might consider some of these lovely side effects. ;-)
Go to globalwarminghoax.com and educate yourself. Or instead continue to believe in this political propaganda because no matter how far from the truth it is, youre unwilling to think for yourself.
Name:
Email:
Remember my personal information
Notify me of follow-up comments?
Please answer the question below:
Type the last letter of the word "cable":
Electronic House is now available in a digital edition. Learn more.
Rocky, Maybe I can suggest some glasses for you. Blu Ray will always look and… 
Stay up-to-date with home electronics. 
Weekly email offers tips, info and product news.
Get the content that's important to you.
You just have to ignore these flat-earth types or you’ll only encourage them. They don’t believe in science so you can’t reason with them. You can find a web site to support any crackpot theory.
I have an Apple TV and yes, the convenience factor is high. It’s great for ripping my old TV shows, but I wouldn’t replace my uncompressed PCM audio and full 1080p Blu-ray quality playback for it. It’s just not ready for prime time on large-screen projection systems unless you love compression.