It isn't. The number of books I've read again, that I've wanted to have my children read. Music. Shows. The old VHS tapes were only disposable because the format was so deteriorating. It was inconvenient because of the physical size.

But, if people realize that media could be non-disposable, how could the recording industry get rich selling you the same albums you'd already bought a half dozen times before? I've been storing everything as FLAC... it'll be good for centuries. Books already have a "good for centuries" file format. I suspect very strongly that 4K is the ultimate res for all media made up until today (no way to do 8k remasters). It doesn't need to be disposable, it just is because there are people who want to get rich off of you renting your own culture back from them.

>How many people would ever store years worth of movies on SSDs no less?

Send me a boxfull of these 245TB SSDs, I'll show you. My film count surpassed Netflix's about 12 years ago, and I haven't slowed down once.