I was chatting the other day with a friend and he's moving home, and he was saying that he has to pack up all his games into boxes and such. Then he asked me jokingly, "How many boxes would it take to move my game collection?" I just said "One, I'm all digital since about halfway through the PS3's lifecycle. I can't even remember the last time I went into a Gamestop and bought a game."

I buy all my games via PSN and Steam. So we chatted about the whole digital versus physical arguments as people tend to do and I concluded that the reason I'm all digital is that its convenience. I have high-speed internet so download a decent size game this generation doesn't take that long.

Then he threw a question at me, "Why haven't you switched to all digital when it comes to movies?" It's true my physical collection of films well outnumbers my digital side, and I started to think about it and came to the conclusion that physical is still the best way to watch a film.

When to buying games digitally it's the same product as the physical disc. The game runs at the same framerate and same resolution. If I had two PS4's running the same game side by side, one digital one physical, you would be able to tell the difference. But if you do it with a film, there is a difference.

I find there is a big difference in both picture quality and sound quality when it comes to watching a film either via blu-ray or iTunes or Netflix.

Let's just get sound out of the way, while both Netflix and iTunes can both do standard Dolby Digital 5.1, the basic standard since DVD's came on the market in 1997, they create this sound field at a compressed bitrate of (usually) 640Kbps, which to 99% of the ears out there is fine and does the job. But with blu-ray, it's completely uncompressed with Dolby True HD and DTS-HD and averages out between 2-5Mbps. And now with the advent of Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, the sound fidelity is getting even better, while digital platforms continue to stay at the standard Dolby Digital 5.1.

With picture quality, and this is in regard to 1080p, I've noticed a big difference between the three platforms. Netflix streams at a bitrate of about 5Mbps, while iTunes streams at a rate of 8Mbps. So there is a slight bump in the image quality, it's noticeable in a few films but not every film. Physical, on the other hand, plays its media at a bitrate of 20-25 Mbps. To me, it's a night and day difference, and that's why I continue to invest and support physical media when it comes to films. Maybe it's just the film buff in me that wants to see a film with the best possible picture and sound, and try to recreate that "cinema experience" at home.

Why do you think? Have you gone all digital, for games or movies? Or do you continue to use physical media?