DVD Rental has Risk of Bacteria & Viruses is about the risks involved with renting a BluRay or DVD disc from store rental kiosks and bringing them into your house.
During this global pandemic about the Chinese Virus (CV19), most of us are staying home and watching TV. And movies. And possibly renting movies from our local store video kiosks.
So there’s a question: are we introducing infection risk when we bring an object into our house, and handle it? Especially an object that other people have touched recently?
This article from the Argus Observer indicates that YES, there is a risk:
And that, contrary to popular belief, the CV19 virus remains more active for a longer time on slick surfaces than it does on absorptive surfaces. In other words: yes: the plastic surfaces of a rental DVD case and DVD/Blu-ray are media that can allow The Virus to live for a time, although that risk reduces with every hour since possible exposure.
According to a simple experiment conducted by the Argus Observer, they discovered that PG videos contain much more bacteria on them than R (adult) video discs. Probably due to the presumption that children are less concerned about hygiene than adults are.
Redbox indicated that they published CV19 suggested precautions to take, in terms of cleaning the discs you rent, however, that company is in no position to clean the discs for you before you rent them. Another option, with no risk of contamination (at a higher cost) would be to rent the movies online. Unfortunately, due to licensing agreements with movie studios, online rentals are often more than double the cost of Redbox DVD physical rentals. But that seems a small price to pay for zero CV19 risk.
So: I think I’ll see what’s streaming…if my lousy Frontier services can handle that.
Stay safe out there…
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In another bit of Tech drama: in case you missed it, early in 2019, Samsung announced the death of Blu-ray video disc players/ 4k video disc players.
Blu-ray players are now dead.
Why: because HD online streaming dominates the video market. It’s all cloud-based and streamed into our homes.
Now all we need is for better Internet data streaming in more remote areas that depend on companies like Frontier, that use failing antiquated hard wired systems, rather than fiber optics.