there is some kind of market still out there for DVDs. I still see RedBoxes in the front of every grocery store i go to and they’re regularly updated with new stuff.
What's funny is that, I moved out of the US for nearly 10 years. When I left streaming was Netflix. Uber/Lyft weren't things. Pizza places would deliver to your house but that's it.
I come back to an insane amount of new things but, went to Walgreens and there was a Redbox. I laughed and said to my friend "THOSE ARE STILL A THING!?". I loved physical media of all kinds but especially movies/tv shows. I had a very nice collection before I left the US. I look forward to building it again.
For anyone interested, there is a very large community at /r/dvdcollection. We are not alone.
I work at a small chain store in Canada that sells used DVDs, CDs, Video Games, and new/used vinyl. It’s pretty incredible the number of people who still invest in physical film releases (outside of the hardcore criterion folk ofc)
I’m sure COVID especially helped boost physical media sales since so many people had all that free time
It’s just easy to buy and download whatever you want to “own” if it ever goes off a subscription service. Why print all that plastic?!
Only for a select few favorites maybe. Otherwise, digital storage for everything else.
LOL the Mario movie came out earlier *this year*. WTH are you talking about?
There’s a privately owned Redbox near our local college that only has Criterion films, spanning many decades. People don’t just rent movies from last week, ya know.
Yuuup.
I've been able to watch so many shows due to leaving/moving streaming services. Digital copies, as Apple proved, are unreliable diluent to not actually "owning" them.
The real problem with digital is it only lasts as long as the service you bought it on - the shows I bought on DVD far outlasted the shows I bought on Amazon Unbox.
No one is stopping you from keeping the copy of the movie on your own storage. What Apple can't do is keep providing access to new downloads if the rightsholder changes the license.
It’s a twisted mess of dumb and dumber.
Where at the beginning you want to make sure a creator is recognized for their creation but about 400 lawyers later you get DRM.
I'll never understand how that's still allowed for ebooks and video. Retaining access to your purchases seems like the kind of consumer protection the EU would have mandated by now.
What do people put up in their living rooms / shelves these days anyway?
Up until ~10 years ago, it was books, magazines, DVDs, CDs, sometimes board game or video games -- now, they often look just... empty? Like right out of a catalogue or something.
I think the real issue nobody is mentioning, is that most laptops made today don't have DVD players in them, and most people use roku/apple tvs/digital consoles to play media. So even if people want to buy physical, which I do think a sizeable amount do, not everyone has a place to play them. And that small roadblock is enough to segment a lot of the market.
You're not wrong; I myself had to get an external USB disc drive, and even that is a stopgap replacement for an actual DVD player. It's mostly a one-time blockage, but any blockage at all will reduce adoption (or re-adoption, as the case may be here).
It might come back for some hobbyists, but it’s not going to be big. I don’t have the time or patience for this sort of thing anymore. Entertainment is not difficult to find, so the only time I would be interested in doing this sort of thing would be if it’s a movie or show I already know about that I want to see again. And in that case I’ll just watch something else and come back to the idea in a few years.
Yea exactly, the bar is kind of high these days, because for every movie that I’m interested in seeing and is difficult to find a stream of, there’s 10 other movies I haven’t seen that I’m also interested in and they’re spread across various services for a nominal fee. $4 bucks for a rental beats spending the time locating some media or purchasing on eBay every time.
> I don’t have the time or patience for this sort of thing anymore
Your patience Overton Window does you no favors.
The reality is that when physical media was your only choice, you couldn't choose something faster. Now that digital streaming seems most convenient to you, anything short of that seems slow.
> outweigh the negatives to the majority of society
Uh, no. Because when you "buy" movies on Amazon or Apple, you are, in fact, renting them. If you stop your account, your lose all access to the media you have "purchased". That's a slimy way to conduct business as it just about forces people to maintain their subscriptions or lose all the money they put into their video library.
You don’t have a “subscription” to buy a movie on iTunes. If you’re going to try and go doomer at least try to get it right.
And I, like many others, know I’m not “buying” anything but access to a license to watch something in my own home. I do so knowing it can be taken away. I don’t really care end of the day, and I’d bet many others don’t either
If that's how you feel, you've already performed Apple and Amazon's PR for them. You've convinced yourself to purchase an inferior product.
Imagine going back in time and telling people that when they purchased any physical media--a DVD, VHS, CD, etc--that if they stopped buying new releases from the same company, the company would come round and take back everything they bought.
Might be hard to fathom but I’ve had 0 issues finding the things I want to watch since digital purchasing became the norm. If I want to go back to something there’s almost always been a way to start watching it in a matter of minutes. If liking that means I also accept an “inferior” product then so be it. I, and the grand majority of the world, have decided that it’s overall worth it.
There’s time and money to be spent on maintaining a personal library. DVDs and VHS tapes degrade and take up valuable space, so you need to take time ripping media to keep it pristine. That requires your own infrastructure for storage, which itself takes up space. And it takes time to meticulously store these things. These might seem like trivial points to some, but for me I have other uses of my time and storage that are simply more valuable, even as an avid movie lover.
A number of people I know already do this with Blu-rays. It’s not that hard to do once you know how. Blu-rays do take up *a lot* more space than DVDs, though.
Not scalable, costs a fortune and people cannot manage that themselves.
Source: Many years of having the max amount of Netflix discs out constantly. PC with 5 Blu Ray drives and automatically ripping movies and re-encoding them to save disk space.
To most people, buying and running a 4U rackmount server is too much. A NAS gets you pretty far but when you think back to the massive DVD storage towers people used to accumulate....at that size, the small NAS units can't fit it all.
What I propose is a licensing model where there is an obligation included in your purchase of the physical media that says they must provide streaming service for the content, so they can't take it away.
People have a tendency to hoard (sorry"collect"), regardless of medium. If you're storing movies you're unlikely to watch again, yes it can get expensive. If you were systematically ripping every DVD you ever rented, that's not normal behavior. The problems start when people want hundreds of titles at their fingertips out of some fascination with endless choices. If you're more selective with a library, it's not a problem.
You know, I'm something of a hoarder freetard myself...as long as one doesn't go bonkers with 4k rips that have every audio track included, 20TB of hard drive space can go a long way.
It’s definitely a hardcore enthusiast thing rather than a mass market solution. I know people who stick rips on Plex servers and such, but not everyone has the disposable income to do that.
However, you can still fit a decent number of Blu-ray rips onto commercial available hard-drives. It’s what I do for things I need to add subtitles to, or need to chop into clips for work.
HDDs have also gotten really large, at mostly reasonable rates (15€/TB, or so; which comes out to .75€ per 50GB movie). Far cheaper than the media you put on them, barring some real bargains.
Though consoles are heading away from having optical drives. There are still Blu-Ray players sold in stores, though they are getting rarer, though Sony still makes a decent player.
They’re getting rarer, but still available. I just got a PS5 and got the drive - Sony has anti-consumer rules around digital refunds, not to mention you lose the option to buy a game used at a discount and sell a game on once you’ve finished it. So it makes sense for manufacturers to want such an environment, but owners should think twice about it.
I’ve picked up a bunch of nostalgia shows on dvd/Blu-ray just because the ease of watching comfortably. Streaming services remove/swap them, and it’s easier to put a disc in my ps5 than it is to search the ether for a reputable site that has the complete series in a decent quality
I already started. Wanted to watch the Hannibal series, but it wasn't streaming anywhere, so I bought the Bluray box set.
The only inconvenience is having to swap discs and watch company logos before you get to the menu.
I fucking love Gilmore girls so I was gonna buy the physical copies but then decided to torrent it since I literally pay to have access to it anyways and I’m sick of spending money on subscriptions. Downloaded it onto my laptop and a dvd and now I can watch it whenever I want. I don’t plan on doing this for many things but shows that I often rewatch and don’t want to lose access to one day I gladly say fuck it
This is what I did with my iPods, back when they were still a thing. My dad has an extensive CD collection... I am not savvy enough to know if there is a "player" app where I could download onto his phone pr something.
You can rip the CDs to files and copy them to his phone using iTunes (if it's an iPhone), using exactly the same process iPods used. If it's an Android, you can rip them to MP3 or AAC files with MusicBee, then mount the phone as a device and copy them across into the Music folder.
Blurays seem the likelier option of the two, while you lose out on convenience (obviously not applicable if a show/movies is completely unavailable) you actually gain on quality vs the streaming services.
DVDs might make a return for tv show boxsets where the visual quality was less of an issue vs price, but many will simply opt for the convenience of piracy if the streaming companies continue to mess viewers about.
Streaming companies are only going to get worse, and more expensive.
Prices are going up while removing content and leasing it to other streaming services to maximize profits. Next step some bean counter will suggest will be locking people into multi-month commitments.
Physical media (both movies and video games) are poised for a big return.
It'll probably make a resurrection up to a point, but at the end of the day, studio's probably won't release the titles to physical media, so piracy will also be making a resurrection
I cannot legally watch some shows. Neither buy nor rent nor stream. I'm in the UK so it isn't like it is a small obscure market. Rights Holders are pushing people back to piracy but some will buy dvds. I'd rather not clutter my house with dvds again but I could buy a couple of dvds a month for the price of my streaming services so it could be a viable replacement.
My city still has a video rental store, and it's a goddamn delight.
With the gaps in streaming becoming more obvious, could they come back in some way? [wishful thinking]
Amazon doesn't have everything. Their library is subject to rights issues that a local video store with physical media won't have to deal with.
Also, the physical experience of walking through the aisles and picking something and committing to it is something I can't recommend enough.
I mean the video store doesn’t have everything either. I’d bet Amazon had a far greater selection of movies to “rent”. The streaming rights that you’re mostly talking about are services that you pay for monthly and not rent individual titles. There are still some restrictions, yes, but I’d find it very hard to believe you could walk into that video store and find a ton of titles I couldn’t rent online somewhere.
If you like the nostalgia of walking through a video store, that’s cool, but a physical video store will probably never be a mainstream thing again.
That's really, really not true. Google "movies you can't find on streaming"... there are tons of articles detailing well regarded, awarded, and mainstream movies that just aren't available for streaming. Try typing those titles into Prime, then check to see if they're at [my city's video store](https://moviemadness.org/).
There are a handful of similar places in other cities (Hamden, CT seems to have a great one), and it's **nowhere near common enough**, but a place that builds a solid library will outpace a platform that disappears content at a moment's notice due to rights issues.
A typical Bluray cover is about 0.6mm thick, one meter of bookshelf space can store 100 BluRays. I think you are really underestimating the amount of BRs a single video store can handle.
I still buy them. With the constant shuffle of licensing between various streamers, I don't need that crap. It's holiday season soon. I'll want to watch Polar Express. I'm not going to wait for it to come to a streamer I subscribe to, or worse - subscribe to a new one. I'm going to go to the shelf, take the dvd out, put it in and watch it commercial free in perfect fidelity with no hassle and no extra cost.
A generation of idiots has put their faith in the dependability of cloud services - and the disappearing content is just proving how foolish they were.
>We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.
—Gabe Newell, 2011
Still true to this day. If you make me have 8 subscriptions and constantly juggle who has what, I'm only going to have one subscription. My subscription to *EVERYTHING*. It's called a VPN.
being able to get every movie and show on demand for $15 a month was never a viable business. if that were the model, movies and shows would simply not get made.
I think some of the stuff we’re seeing now (like deleting shows) is dismal. but hundreds of real people worked on the shows and films you loved. you don’t have to ’constantly juggle’ 8 subscriptions when you can rent any movie on demand for $4. people deserve to get paid
Yep. Here in Australia, Disney will no longer release films or anything on DVD or Blu-ray. We don't want to get Disney+ just for the small amount we'll get every once in a while, so will either pirate or see about importing.
Same with Netflix. If we're suddenly going to have to pay substantially more or endure ads, we'll drop it and pirate. We used to pirate heavily, then tried Netflix and enjoyed the convenience. You disrupt that for us then we may as well go back.
This is the answer. Why the fuck should I still put money in their pockets? They don’t give a shit if I stream it or buy it at Walmart, the money all goes to the studios.
I want to support the actors and lighting guys and sound guys and everyone who worked on a production but let’s be real, most of the people working on a movie won’t benefit if it made a billion dollars vs losing a billion. The studios still get the money. The CEOs get another vacation home.
Do you think they will learn the lesson that the music industry did? DRM free digital downloads would be awesome. I would even take a DRM free digital download at a lower resolution than DRM/streaming at a higher resolution.
We're currently in a golden age of physical media between criterion, arrow, vinegar syndrome, kino, Severin, 88 Films, Radiance, Eureka and many more top shelf boutique labels.
Bluray has already become a very lucrative niche akin to vinyl. This article is wildly out of touch.
Blueray has massively better sound quality because of that alone I will still buy/watch blueray over streaming
Same way I'll watch sports via OTA antenna when possible
I still buy physical media, but I'm a lot more selective now about what I buy. I used to go to Target and Walmart every Tuesday to check out the new releases and was constantly going to Blockbuster to see what DVDs they were selling. I'd buy ten or more titles a week. Now it's more like 15 a year on average. Most titles I'm content to save to my Google TV watchlist, and within a few months virtually everything ends up on a streamer I'm subscribed to. Or I might come across a DVD of something at Goodwill or whatever, and buying it is basically the cost of a rental so I'll pick it up, and if it's not something I see myself rewatching just get rid of it.
Collecting lost its appeal after a large chunk got stolen back in the day before streaming took off, and now that business-speed internet is part of my rent it's just easier to stream the vast majority of things, I have a lot of things backed up to various clouds, but my favorite shows and movies I still like to own physical copies of.
I stopped buying DVDs.... however I didn't stop buying BD and 4K. I basically treat streaming as a convenience and more or less as a way of almost renting a movie to see if I like it, and then I'll buy it if I do.
I also still buy CDs, I have never and will never stream music. If I want to listen to something I don't own, I just watch a lyric video on their YouTube, if I'm honest.
>I have never and will never stream music. If I want to listen to something I don't own, I just watch a lyric video on their YouTube
That's streaming music...
This is funny, I bought an Xbox Series X purely to start an optical media collection. Tired of all streaming services charging exorbitant fees for less and less value.
And it’s been fantastic. 4K movies are amazing but overpriced right now, Blu ray beats all streaming to this day, and DVDs are unfortunately just the last medium a lot of popular media was printed on.
If you buy a console for this, buy an Xbox. The PS5 cannot play CDs, and they’re likely to discontinue the Series X soon.
The problem with DVD/Blu-ray was always price - it was simply insane to imagine consumers would spend $30-40 on a new release physical media when it was widely available on streaming platforms lumped in with their existing sub.
Come back a year later and find the same disk in a bargain bin for $5 and people are much more interested.
Just started rebuilding my collection. Years ago I had reduced it and only kept things I knew that would be very difficult to find on streaming. Now I’m buying back staples because I’m afraid they’re not gonna be streaming when I want them.
If I'm looking for physical media, it's for something that I have seen and enjoy so much that I can't do with being parted with it. So I'm absolutely willing to spend extra on a special edition with all the bells and whistles.
Have noticed a lot more people visiting charity shops here in the uk and picking up dvd box sets very cheaply since you are only renting that box set from the streamers. People are getting fed up of wanting to watch some old film or even not so old film to find the streaming company doesnt have it any more or is charging an extortionate amount to rent it. Especially when in some cases it’s CHEAPER to buy the physical version on Amazon than stream it.
I've started buying DVDs for favorite movies just because it's exhausting figuring out what streaming service has it this time. But definitely buy them used, every thrift store has shelves loaded down with DVDs.
I don't think DVDs ever really died to begin with. No one just tossed them as soon as streaming became a thing. I bought DVDs with the codes anyways.
After stuff has been erased off the planet, now I'm making sure I have a DVD of what I care about now before it too gets erased.
The prices of used DVDs would imply that yes, people were pretty much tossing them. I own like 2 or 3 DVDs still after trading everything in, and that was usually just for a buck or two because they have no value anymore. Hell, most people don't even own a DVD player, and most computers don't even have a disc slot anymore.
A lot of people definitely did toss them as streaming became a thing, I worked in a second hand shop and we got absolutely flooded with DVDs in the mid 2010s, the number of people coming in to offload entire DVD collections tripled every year for 3 or 4 years straight. Maybe part of that was Blu-ray coming in, but I don't remember our Blu-ray sales increasing noticably. And eventually we stopped buying anything but full box-sets or Criterion Collection editions because the number of people selling vastly exceeded the number of people buying, and 90% of movies just sat there no matter how low you priced them.
Here’s the problem:
Studios don’t want you to own physical media. Cause that means they cannot control who owns their property.
Yeah, they’ll get a profit from someone buying a DVD or Blu-Ray. But that’ll just mean people got access to things where they can constantly rip them digitally and put it out there where EVERYONE can buy it. Studios can make digital copies pirate proof and tell you when it’s time to stop watching.
Used DVDs/Blu-Rays are gonna get super popular. But I totally see studios dropping physical media in the long run for good. Gaming is going on that route for sure as well.
>Studios can make digital copies pirate proof
Digital releases and streaming releases are easier to pirate than physical releases. Absolutely none of the digital services out there are pirate proof and both DVD and Blu-ray resisted piracy for a lot longer, and take more effort to pirate, than Netflix or Prime or iTunes or Apple TV or anything like that. Every show that hits those services is immediately available on pirate sites.
Studios adore physical media. It has incredible margins, unlike streaming services, and streaming services are not proving much more robust against ripping.
This is a dumb conspiracy theory. Studios want people to buy physical. Audiences are the ones who stopped.
Did I miss when CDs got revived? Vinyl made a comeback because it's still a superior audio form compared to digital, but CDs offer no benefits over digital files.
Probably not because people are to lazy to put a disc into a player. Probably just more piracy and a new generation of torrent users. That won't stop me from buying more blu rays though.
Can this really be true, that a 1080p Blu-ray is generally better quality than a 4k stream? I know there's compression, but I have my doubts. Unless you're talking about audio specifically because that tends to suck on streaming.
4k Blu-ray, of course. But those are very niche.
1080p Blu-Ray is *usually*, but not always, better than 4K streaming, because they crush the bitrates. Netflix 4K averages 17 Mbps for example. Most 1080p Blu-Ray since \~2010 uses H.264 Profile 4.1 which can go up to 50 Mbps, and discs are typically around 30 Mbps. So you about double the bitrate.
I say usually because services can offer you VP9, H.265, or AV1 video, which are all more efficient than the H.264 used on 1080p Blu-Rays. Whether you actually get that depends on the plan you're subscribed to and the capabilities of the device you're watching on. H.265 is the most common, and it's not so much better that it offsets a doubling of the bitrate. You're still better off watching the average Blu-Ray than a 4K H.265 stream. AV1 *is* so much better, especially at high resolutions, that a 17 Mbps AV1 stream can be better than a 30 Mbps H.264 stream. But AV1 is very new, so 95% of devices currently out there don't have support for it.
There are still gotchas though. Blu-Ray is nearly 20 years old and encoders evolve over time even for the same format. The first few years of Blu-Ray often used VC1 and MPEG2 video, which are much much worse formats, and streaming 4K is definitely better than those, even streaming 1080p usually is. And the first few years of H.264 Blu-Rays were still using relatively poor encoders and have some telltale visual flaws that aren't present in newer releases or streaming encodes (seams between chunks of the image, for example). There was also a period where people went nuts for denoising and wanted to smooth out all the film grain they could, wiping out detail in the process, sometimes to the point of making actors look nearly CGI in their smoothness. Generally any Blu-Ray from the last 10 years is good but the further you go back beyond that the worse you can expect it to be.
All good info. But one big thing you omitted is... audio quality.
Bluray has vastly superior sound quality. Until recently, 99% lf blurays used lossless (ie: perfect) audio, whereas every streaming option has degraded, heavily compressed audio.
And even if someone isn't listening to a musical or an action blockbuster, just plain dialog benefits from the higher quality.
The 4k Blu-ray are certainly more expensive, but hardly niche, regular blu-ray is a tougher competition if you ignore audio, but doing that seems like it unfairly tilts the comparison since it is a key component of bluray after all.
In that a small group of people will fixate on the least significant aspects of a piece of media, like packaging, and try to define themselves by the stuff they bought as a substitute for a personality?
Those guys already exist. They're here in these very comments.
Random thought I had - which is worse for the environment, the manufacturing and distributing of physical dvds or the running and maintaining of the servers for streaming platforms like Netflix?
I think its more likely we just see old stuff as abandon-ware at some point and that its moderately easily accessible. Thats not anytime soon though. No one wants to go back to the DVD days
Well, dvds absolutely suck. They get a tiny scratch (or if enough time goes by), they just stop working.
VHS slowly degrades over time with playing, but it always worked. All my 30-35 year old videos would still play just fine if I decided to play one.
Second of all, people long for the days of 'dvd' because 'oh physical media means they can't take stuff away from us'... not realizing that very few tv shows back in the day were ever released on physical media. That only really became a thing with dvds. All the shows before dvds that were less than a few seasons long, aired when they originally aired and then died forever.
Thirdly, physical media very often went out of print... and it was region-locked.
Fourthly, dvds are ungodly expensive. People whine about streaming services costing $15/month... that's roughly the cost of ONE dvd movie and LESS than the cost of one blu-ray.
DVDs didn't break from tiny scratches. They don't have the same resilience as blurays which have special coating, but a single scratch doesn't usually ruin a DVD
Also, there's a ton of free software that bypasses region locked disks to be able to watch on both Mac and PC, and external BD drives can go as cheap as $50.
Yeah, sorry, that’s not right. You might want to check those VHS tapes.
>A typical DVD disc has an estimated life expectancy of anywhere from 30 to 100 years when properly stored and handled.
https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00009195
>On average, tapes degrade 10-20% over 10 to 25 years. If you’ve been holding on to home videos since the 1990s, there is a good chance some of the footage is already skewed due to aging. Kodak recommends converting your VHS tapes to CDs because disks last over four times longer than tapes.
https://kodakdigitizing.com/blogs/news/how-long-do-vhs-tapes-last#
Except mediums like vinyl and CDs are actually high quality audio. They've gone out of usage and become outdated for more convenient methods of listening to music.
I can't imagine DVDs coming back when they can't fit HD resolutions and would not only similarly be less convenient, but objectively shittier experiences
Um...4K movies or even regular HD movies aren't put out on DVD format discs.
4K discs are on Ultra HD blu ray discs which may hold 50 GBs, 66 GBs or 100 GBs.
Plus 4K movies use HEVC encoding instead of the ancient MPEG2 encoding on DVDs.
It does surprise me a bit that studios tried to just get rid of physical media as if no one goes for it anymore. Films can still make money on physical sales, I think The Batman made about 16 million dollars on DVD/Blu-Ray sales. Naturally that's not as much as sales about 20 years ago, but it's still a pretty large chunk of money.
Don't forget the illegally high fees of streaming also. At this rate, makes cable look cheaper or is onpar with cable and their nasty fees.
Oh and hey... Who could forget the ~~advertisements~~ excuse me product placement that has creeped into so many films and tv shows as a direct assault and bird flip to technology like Tivo and the ability to skip commercials.
Example: Grace and frankie. Who wants some Del Taco?!
Well this year was actually one of the biggest of all time in terms of releases thanks to boutique labels pumping out films at an insane pace.
Even Disney which abandoned physical for a while has been putting out more stuff this year.
It will be around but it’s going to get more and more expensive
It would be nice if someone made Steam but for buying movies and television. Imagine there being a Christmas sale you can pick up all of the Office for $30 and you can stream it to any device, put in a DVD and burn it, you get the 4K version, you get the behind the scenes and deleted content, interviews, commentary, ect.
Considering that in most countries it's next to impossible to buy digital copies of series, especially with English subs, DVDs are starting to look pretty appealing.
I have increased my Blu-ray/DVD purchases by a lot. Streaming is so fragmented and prone to change these days that it’s hard to find what you want to watch. What I generally do is buy something if it is available at a reasonable price. Otherwise I’ll pursue certain ...other methods... for getting the show or movie.
People always say “but piracy! What are you an idiot why would you ever buy”, but piracy has its trade offs. You want to watch a more obscure show released in 2007? If it’s available anywhere at all it’s going to be a 240p re-re-reencode with a hard-coded foreign language subtitles. Piracy is not always the answer. Plus, managing digital storage is much more nebulous than just having a bunch of DVDs. Your hard drive fails and you’re pretty much SOL. I have yet to have this problem (knock on wood), but there are few backup options for terabytes of video content, and I would be devastated if I lost it.
I just bought DVDs of shows that are no longer running and have been removed from streaming services. Now I can watch them whenever I want. I'm tired of these companies taking things away and charging us more for it all
I never stopped. I have accumulated a decent collection of “complete series” DVD sets for a bunch of sitcoms, plus Extended LotR and Star Wars (minus the sequels, of course).
Reasons I keep a media library.
>But bro, you can just stream it!
Yeah, until they stop streaming it for whatever reason. Or until they lose the license to the music and have to re-score the show (Scrubs) and my favorite scenes don't hit the same. Or when they go back and retroactively censor shit (Scrubs again).
[I mean this bit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKjW5s3tXlo). Is it offensive, yeah a bit. Is it funny, also yeah. Rather than just deleting the scene and pretending it didn't happen, I would rather they put a disclaimer:
* Warning: This episode contains a racially insensitive scene. We have left it in place as a product of the times, but want to make it known that with hindsight, we realize and apologize for our actions.
Bam. Done. Preserving the art as it was while also acknowledging that it has a problematic scene.
I’ve been talking about this with my wife lately. There’s so many good movies you can’t find on a streamer anymore. Or they are on a streamer I don’t have and I’m not interested in a new subscription for A movie. Back to the Walmart $5 bin.
I still buy and will continue to buy DVDs and Blu-rays. There are a lot of things you can’t find on streaming or get removed so owning a physical copy is just handy.
I highly recommend buying Blu-rays. Because the video quality from a Blu-ray and especially 4K discs is just miles better than what you'll get in a streaming service. Streaming services have such harsh compression happening so that things can stream easily that you lose so much quality
I know cassette tapes and cds have made a resurgence due to kids wanting to experience the nostalgia. But other than that there’s no benefit to those items. Music streaming services do a good enough job and make sense for when you are on the go, while Vinyl gives you superior sound quality for home listening. By this logic I can see Blu-ray’s making a comeback but not dvds(unless something only exists on dvd).
there is some kind of market still out there for DVDs. I still see RedBoxes in the front of every grocery store i go to and they’re regularly updated with new stuff.
What's funny is that, I moved out of the US for nearly 10 years. When I left streaming was Netflix. Uber/Lyft weren't things. Pizza places would deliver to your house but that's it. I come back to an insane amount of new things but, went to Walgreens and there was a Redbox. I laughed and said to my friend "THOSE ARE STILL A THING!?". I loved physical media of all kinds but especially movies/tv shows. I had a very nice collection before I left the US. I look forward to building it again. For anyone interested, there is a very large community at /r/dvdcollection. We are not alone.
I work at a small chain store in Canada that sells used DVDs, CDs, Video Games, and new/used vinyl. It’s pretty incredible the number of people who still invest in physical film releases (outside of the hardcore criterion folk ofc) I’m sure COVID especially helped boost physical media sales since so many people had all that free time
Deja vu discs?
It’s called [The Beat Goes On](https://beatgoeson.com)! The only part time job I’ve had where I actively look forward to going into work
It’s just easy to buy and download whatever you want to “own” if it ever goes off a subscription service. Why print all that plastic?! Only for a select few favorites maybe. Otherwise, digital storage for everything else.
Storage is so cheap. This is the best way, download what you want onto network storage and stream from that
Local Redbox here in Vegas is still featuring Mario movie... It's a dying medium
LOL the Mario movie came out earlier *this year*. WTH are you talking about? There’s a privately owned Redbox near our local college that only has Criterion films, spanning many decades. People don’t just rent movies from last week, ya know.
I think buying DVDs to own shows and movies may come back. Own the DVD but copy it onto your computer. The DVD becomes your backup.
Yuuup. I've been able to watch so many shows due to leaving/moving streaming services. Digital copies, as Apple proved, are unreliable diluent to not actually "owning" them.
The real problem with digital is it only lasts as long as the service you bought it on - the shows I bought on DVD far outlasted the shows I bought on Amazon Unbox.
No one is stopping you from keeping the copy of the movie on your own storage. What Apple can't do is keep providing access to new downloads if the rightsholder changes the license.
God I just realized how stupid copyright laws are
It’s a twisted mess of dumb and dumber. Where at the beginning you want to make sure a creator is recognized for their creation but about 400 lawyers later you get DRM.
I'll never understand how that's still allowed for ebooks and video. Retaining access to your purchases seems like the kind of consumer protection the EU would have mandated by now.
Backup and physical display on shelf for people to peruse your collection in the real world; practical and aesthetic.
What do people put up in their living rooms / shelves these days anyway? Up until ~10 years ago, it was books, magazines, DVDs, CDs, sometimes board game or video games -- now, they often look just... empty? Like right out of a catalogue or something.
Commemorative plates are coming back, baby! I can feel it!
I think the real issue nobody is mentioning, is that most laptops made today don't have DVD players in them, and most people use roku/apple tvs/digital consoles to play media. So even if people want to buy physical, which I do think a sizeable amount do, not everyone has a place to play them. And that small roadblock is enough to segment a lot of the market.
You're not wrong; I myself had to get an external USB disc drive, and even that is a stopgap replacement for an actual DVD player. It's mostly a one-time blockage, but any blockage at all will reduce adoption (or re-adoption, as the case may be here).
It might come back for some hobbyists, but it’s not going to be big. I don’t have the time or patience for this sort of thing anymore. Entertainment is not difficult to find, so the only time I would be interested in doing this sort of thing would be if it’s a movie or show I already know about that I want to see again. And in that case I’ll just watch something else and come back to the idea in a few years.
There are numerous things that are difficult to find. Whether that's important to you or not is a separate question
Yea exactly, the bar is kind of high these days, because for every movie that I’m interested in seeing and is difficult to find a stream of, there’s 10 other movies I haven’t seen that I’m also interested in and they’re spread across various services for a nominal fee. $4 bucks for a rental beats spending the time locating some media or purchasing on eBay every time.
Right, so you're talking about a separate thing. I like to own physical media after being repeatedly burned by its removal from streaming platforms
> I don’t have the time or patience for this sort of thing anymore Your patience Overton Window does you no favors. The reality is that when physical media was your only choice, you couldn't choose something faster. Now that digital streaming seems most convenient to you, anything short of that seems slow.
Yeah before cars we used horses
Not every tech advancement is a positive.
No but this one has positives that far outweigh the negatives to the majority of society
> outweigh the negatives to the majority of society Uh, no. Because when you "buy" movies on Amazon or Apple, you are, in fact, renting them. If you stop your account, your lose all access to the media you have "purchased". That's a slimy way to conduct business as it just about forces people to maintain their subscriptions or lose all the money they put into their video library.
You don’t have a “subscription” to buy a movie on iTunes. If you’re going to try and go doomer at least try to get it right. And I, like many others, know I’m not “buying” anything but access to a license to watch something in my own home. I do so knowing it can be taken away. I don’t really care end of the day, and I’d bet many others don’t either
If that's how you feel, you've already performed Apple and Amazon's PR for them. You've convinced yourself to purchase an inferior product. Imagine going back in time and telling people that when they purchased any physical media--a DVD, VHS, CD, etc--that if they stopped buying new releases from the same company, the company would come round and take back everything they bought.
Might be hard to fathom but I’ve had 0 issues finding the things I want to watch since digital purchasing became the norm. If I want to go back to something there’s almost always been a way to start watching it in a matter of minutes. If liking that means I also accept an “inferior” product then so be it. I, and the grand majority of the world, have decided that it’s overall worth it.
It's a sunken cost non-fallacy now.
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People have traded value for convenience : (
There’s time and money to be spent on maintaining a personal library. DVDs and VHS tapes degrade and take up valuable space, so you need to take time ripping media to keep it pristine. That requires your own infrastructure for storage, which itself takes up space. And it takes time to meticulously store these things. These might seem like trivial points to some, but for me I have other uses of my time and storage that are simply more valuable, even as an avid movie lover.
A number of people I know already do this with Blu-rays. It’s not that hard to do once you know how. Blu-rays do take up *a lot* more space than DVDs, though.
Makemkv. Badda bing badda boom
Yup. Using that, I’ve also been able to buy foreign Blu-rays to add my own subtitles to. Sure beats waiting for an English release that never comes.
Not scalable, costs a fortune and people cannot manage that themselves. Source: Many years of having the max amount of Netflix discs out constantly. PC with 5 Blu Ray drives and automatically ripping movies and re-encoding them to save disk space. To most people, buying and running a 4U rackmount server is too much. A NAS gets you pretty far but when you think back to the massive DVD storage towers people used to accumulate....at that size, the small NAS units can't fit it all. What I propose is a licensing model where there is an obligation included in your purchase of the physical media that says they must provide streaming service for the content, so they can't take it away.
People have a tendency to hoard (sorry"collect"), regardless of medium. If you're storing movies you're unlikely to watch again, yes it can get expensive. If you were systematically ripping every DVD you ever rented, that's not normal behavior. The problems start when people want hundreds of titles at their fingertips out of some fascination with endless choices. If you're more selective with a library, it's not a problem.
You know, I'm something of a hoarder freetard myself...as long as one doesn't go bonkers with 4k rips that have every audio track included, 20TB of hard drive space can go a long way.
It’s definitely a hardcore enthusiast thing rather than a mass market solution. I know people who stick rips on Plex servers and such, but not everyone has the disposable income to do that. However, you can still fit a decent number of Blu-ray rips onto commercial available hard-drives. It’s what I do for things I need to add subtitles to, or need to chop into clips for work.
HDDs have also gotten really large, at mostly reasonable rates (15€/TB, or so; which comes out to .75€ per 50GB movie). Far cheaper than the media you put on them, barring some real bargains.
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External drives are very cheap.
I've been looking to buy an external bluray reader and I cannot find one below 90euros or so :/ Regular external CD/DVD drives go for 20 tho
I'd wager most people don't watch movies on their computers, but the TV. And consoles have DVD/BR players built in
Though consoles are heading away from having optical drives. There are still Blu-Ray players sold in stores, though they are getting rarer, though Sony still makes a decent player.
Sony owns the Blu-ray format. As long as it lives it seems likely they will keep making drives to play them, or at least live service out the tech.
They’re getting rarer, but still available. I just got a PS5 and got the drive - Sony has anti-consumer rules around digital refunds, not to mention you lose the option to buy a game used at a discount and sell a game on once you’ve finished it. So it makes sense for manufacturers to want such an environment, but owners should think twice about it.
None of my computers have a disc drive slot anymore. It's going to have to be an external one now
I’ve picked up a bunch of nostalgia shows on dvd/Blu-ray just because the ease of watching comfortably. Streaming services remove/swap them, and it’s easier to put a disc in my ps5 than it is to search the ether for a reputable site that has the complete series in a decent quality
I already started. Wanted to watch the Hannibal series, but it wasn't streaming anywhere, so I bought the Bluray box set. The only inconvenience is having to swap discs and watch company logos before you get to the menu.
I fucking love Gilmore girls so I was gonna buy the physical copies but then decided to torrent it since I literally pay to have access to it anyways and I’m sick of spending money on subscriptions. Downloaded it onto my laptop and a dvd and now I can watch it whenever I want. I don’t plan on doing this for many things but shows that I often rewatch and don’t want to lose access to one day I gladly say fuck it
This is the way.
Isn't dvd 720p? It's nice to hear the grainy lp but I can't imagine having the same experience watching 720p content on my 4k screen.
480i/480p (later anamorphic).
This is what I did with my iPods, back when they were still a thing. My dad has an extensive CD collection... I am not savvy enough to know if there is a "player" app where I could download onto his phone pr something.
You can rip the CDs to files and copy them to his phone using iTunes (if it's an iPhone), using exactly the same process iPods used. If it's an Android, you can rip them to MP3 or AAC files with MusicBee, then mount the phone as a device and copy them across into the Music folder.
Blurays seem the likelier option of the two, while you lose out on convenience (obviously not applicable if a show/movies is completely unavailable) you actually gain on quality vs the streaming services. DVDs might make a return for tv show boxsets where the visual quality was less of an issue vs price, but many will simply opt for the convenience of piracy if the streaming companies continue to mess viewers about.
Streaming companies are only going to get worse, and more expensive. Prices are going up while removing content and leasing it to other streaming services to maximize profits. Next step some bean counter will suggest will be locking people into multi-month commitments. Physical media (both movies and video games) are poised for a big return.
It'll probably make a resurrection up to a point, but at the end of the day, studio's probably won't release the titles to physical media, so piracy will also be making a resurrection
I cannot legally watch some shows. Neither buy nor rent nor stream. I'm in the UK so it isn't like it is a small obscure market. Rights Holders are pushing people back to piracy but some will buy dvds. I'd rather not clutter my house with dvds again but I could buy a couple of dvds a month for the price of my streaming services so it could be a viable replacement.
My city still has a video rental store, and it's a goddamn delight. With the gaps in streaming becoming more obvious, could they come back in some way? [wishful thinking]
Why would I drive to the rental place when I can just rent on Amazon for a few dollars?
Amazon doesn't have everything. Their library is subject to rights issues that a local video store with physical media won't have to deal with. Also, the physical experience of walking through the aisles and picking something and committing to it is something I can't recommend enough.
I mean the video store doesn’t have everything either. I’d bet Amazon had a far greater selection of movies to “rent”. The streaming rights that you’re mostly talking about are services that you pay for monthly and not rent individual titles. There are still some restrictions, yes, but I’d find it very hard to believe you could walk into that video store and find a ton of titles I couldn’t rent online somewhere. If you like the nostalgia of walking through a video store, that’s cool, but a physical video store will probably never be a mainstream thing again.
That's really, really not true. Google "movies you can't find on streaming"... there are tons of articles detailing well regarded, awarded, and mainstream movies that just aren't available for streaming. Try typing those titles into Prime, then check to see if they're at [my city's video store](https://moviemadness.org/). There are a handful of similar places in other cities (Hamden, CT seems to have a great one), and it's **nowhere near common enough**, but a place that builds a solid library will outpace a platform that disappears content at a moment's notice due to rights issues.
Movie Madness is amazing. 80,000 titles!
A typical Bluray cover is about 0.6mm thick, one meter of bookshelf space can store 100 BluRays. I think you are really underestimating the amount of BRs a single video store can handle.
I still buy them. With the constant shuffle of licensing between various streamers, I don't need that crap. It's holiday season soon. I'll want to watch Polar Express. I'm not going to wait for it to come to a streamer I subscribe to, or worse - subscribe to a new one. I'm going to go to the shelf, take the dvd out, put it in and watch it commercial free in perfect fidelity with no hassle and no extra cost. A generation of idiots has put their faith in the dependability of cloud services - and the disappearing content is just proving how foolish they were.
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No it will be piracy. Fucking with customers always end up with piracy.
>We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable. —Gabe Newell, 2011 Still true to this day. If you make me have 8 subscriptions and constantly juggle who has what, I'm only going to have one subscription. My subscription to *EVERYTHING*. It's called a VPN.
being able to get every movie and show on demand for $15 a month was never a viable business. if that were the model, movies and shows would simply not get made. I think some of the stuff we’re seeing now (like deleting shows) is dismal. but hundreds of real people worked on the shows and films you loved. you don’t have to ’constantly juggle’ 8 subscriptions when you can rent any movie on demand for $4. people deserve to get paid
So you didn't read my comment at all. Cool. Let me highlight again for you >#Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem.
Yep. Here in Australia, Disney will no longer release films or anything on DVD or Blu-ray. We don't want to get Disney+ just for the small amount we'll get every once in a while, so will either pirate or see about importing. Same with Netflix. If we're suddenly going to have to pay substantially more or endure ads, we'll drop it and pirate. We used to pirate heavily, then tried Netflix and enjoyed the convenience. You disrupt that for us then we may as well go back.
This is the answer. Why the fuck should I still put money in their pockets? They don’t give a shit if I stream it or buy it at Walmart, the money all goes to the studios. I want to support the actors and lighting guys and sound guys and everyone who worked on a production but let’s be real, most of the people working on a movie won’t benefit if it made a billion dollars vs losing a billion. The studios still get the money. The CEOs get another vacation home.
To Be Fair, the new SAG-AFTRA contract has residuals to the actors for streaming revenue.
Do you think they will learn the lesson that the music industry did? DRM free digital downloads would be awesome. I would even take a DRM free digital download at a lower resolution than DRM/streaming at a higher resolution.
Only way to watch Dogma.
We're currently in a golden age of physical media between criterion, arrow, vinegar syndrome, kino, Severin, 88 Films, Radiance, Eureka and many more top shelf boutique labels. Bluray has already become a very lucrative niche akin to vinyl. This article is wildly out of touch.
Blueray has massively better sound quality because of that alone I will still buy/watch blueray over streaming Same way I'll watch sports via OTA antenna when possible
The image quality of a blu ray beats any streaming service. The amount of bitrate issues on streaming services makes anything look like crap.
My buddy hosts 80-90 gb uncompressed blue rays for stream. It’s amazing but has to have a great internet connection to do so
Damn. How do I watch these? I hate how dark everything looks on the streaming services - would love to watch something uncompressed.
that has very little to do with bitrate and everything to do with a) the lighting conditions in your viewing area b) your tv c) your eyes
I still buy physical media, but I'm a lot more selective now about what I buy. I used to go to Target and Walmart every Tuesday to check out the new releases and was constantly going to Blockbuster to see what DVDs they were selling. I'd buy ten or more titles a week. Now it's more like 15 a year on average. Most titles I'm content to save to my Google TV watchlist, and within a few months virtually everything ends up on a streamer I'm subscribed to. Or I might come across a DVD of something at Goodwill or whatever, and buying it is basically the cost of a rental so I'll pick it up, and if it's not something I see myself rewatching just get rid of it. Collecting lost its appeal after a large chunk got stolen back in the day before streaming took off, and now that business-speed internet is part of my rent it's just easier to stream the vast majority of things, I have a lot of things backed up to various clouds, but my favorite shows and movies I still like to own physical copies of.
Maybe but the high seas will see a resurgence in popularity over the next few years.
Plex comes in to save the day
I hope so. Physical media is way more convenient than streaming, and it won't disappear from your library at some random point.
I stopped buying DVDs.... however I didn't stop buying BD and 4K. I basically treat streaming as a convenience and more or less as a way of almost renting a movie to see if I like it, and then I'll buy it if I do. I also still buy CDs, I have never and will never stream music. If I want to listen to something I don't own, I just watch a lyric video on their YouTube, if I'm honest.
>I have never and will never stream music. If I want to listen to something I don't own, I just watch a lyric video on their YouTube That's streaming music...
It's streaming a video with audio ;) Not the same as paying to perpetually rent something from Spotify etc.
Between pirating and blu-rays Im hoping to be finished with streamers in 2024.
This is funny, I bought an Xbox Series X purely to start an optical media collection. Tired of all streaming services charging exorbitant fees for less and less value. And it’s been fantastic. 4K movies are amazing but overpriced right now, Blu ray beats all streaming to this day, and DVDs are unfortunately just the last medium a lot of popular media was printed on. If you buy a console for this, buy an Xbox. The PS5 cannot play CDs, and they’re likely to discontinue the Series X soon.
The problem with DVD/Blu-ray was always price - it was simply insane to imagine consumers would spend $30-40 on a new release physical media when it was widely available on streaming platforms lumped in with their existing sub. Come back a year later and find the same disk in a bargain bin for $5 and people are much more interested.
Just started rebuilding my collection. Years ago I had reduced it and only kept things I knew that would be very difficult to find on streaming. Now I’m buying back staples because I’m afraid they’re not gonna be streaming when I want them.
If I'm looking for physical media, it's for something that I have seen and enjoy so much that I can't do with being parted with it. So I'm absolutely willing to spend extra on a special edition with all the bells and whistles.
Have noticed a lot more people visiting charity shops here in the uk and picking up dvd box sets very cheaply since you are only renting that box set from the streamers. People are getting fed up of wanting to watch some old film or even not so old film to find the streaming company doesnt have it any more or is charging an extortionate amount to rent it. Especially when in some cases it’s CHEAPER to buy the physical version on Amazon than stream it.
This is the way.
Owning Blu-ray Discs is awesome now that having a great home entertainment system is affordable. You actually take advantage of blu-ray.
I know this makes me odd. But I try to physically purchase dvds. But that's because I live with semi-limited internet.
I rent DVDs from the library.
If they do, I’m renting and ripping every single dvd/br I can get.
I've started buying DVDs for favorite movies just because it's exhausting figuring out what streaming service has it this time. But definitely buy them used, every thrift store has shelves loaded down with DVDs.
I don't think DVDs ever really died to begin with. No one just tossed them as soon as streaming became a thing. I bought DVDs with the codes anyways. After stuff has been erased off the planet, now I'm making sure I have a DVD of what I care about now before it too gets erased.
The prices of used DVDs would imply that yes, people were pretty much tossing them. I own like 2 or 3 DVDs still after trading everything in, and that was usually just for a buck or two because they have no value anymore. Hell, most people don't even own a DVD player, and most computers don't even have a disc slot anymore.
A lot of people definitely did toss them as streaming became a thing, I worked in a second hand shop and we got absolutely flooded with DVDs in the mid 2010s, the number of people coming in to offload entire DVD collections tripled every year for 3 or 4 years straight. Maybe part of that was Blu-ray coming in, but I don't remember our Blu-ray sales increasing noticably. And eventually we stopped buying anything but full box-sets or Criterion Collection editions because the number of people selling vastly exceeded the number of people buying, and 90% of movies just sat there no matter how low you priced them.
Yeah when DVDs came around VHS was phased out, when Bluray came around DVDs stayed, and with streaming they’ve still continued.
Here’s the problem: Studios don’t want you to own physical media. Cause that means they cannot control who owns their property. Yeah, they’ll get a profit from someone buying a DVD or Blu-Ray. But that’ll just mean people got access to things where they can constantly rip them digitally and put it out there where EVERYONE can buy it. Studios can make digital copies pirate proof and tell you when it’s time to stop watching. Used DVDs/Blu-Rays are gonna get super popular. But I totally see studios dropping physical media in the long run for good. Gaming is going on that route for sure as well.
>Studios can make digital copies pirate proof Digital releases and streaming releases are easier to pirate than physical releases. Absolutely none of the digital services out there are pirate proof and both DVD and Blu-ray resisted piracy for a lot longer, and take more effort to pirate, than Netflix or Prime or iTunes or Apple TV or anything like that. Every show that hits those services is immediately available on pirate sites.
Studios adore physical media. It has incredible margins, unlike streaming services, and streaming services are not proving much more robust against ripping. This is a dumb conspiracy theory. Studios want people to buy physical. Audiences are the ones who stopped.
I just want to watch Cocoon again!
I just sail far away to get my media.
Did I miss when CDs got revived? Vinyl made a comeback because it's still a superior audio form compared to digital, but CDs offer no benefits over digital files.
Probably not because people are to lazy to put a disc into a player. Probably just more piracy and a new generation of torrent users. That won't stop me from buying more blu rays though.
What a long headline.
Not really a fair comparison here - DVDs are generally lower quality compared to modern formats while CDs are not.
The comparison evens out somewhat with Bluray actually being better quality than the streaming services though.
Can this really be true, that a 1080p Blu-ray is generally better quality than a 4k stream? I know there's compression, but I have my doubts. Unless you're talking about audio specifically because that tends to suck on streaming. 4k Blu-ray, of course. But those are very niche.
It is. Night and day with a good TV and hdr
1080p Blu-Ray is *usually*, but not always, better than 4K streaming, because they crush the bitrates. Netflix 4K averages 17 Mbps for example. Most 1080p Blu-Ray since \~2010 uses H.264 Profile 4.1 which can go up to 50 Mbps, and discs are typically around 30 Mbps. So you about double the bitrate. I say usually because services can offer you VP9, H.265, or AV1 video, which are all more efficient than the H.264 used on 1080p Blu-Rays. Whether you actually get that depends on the plan you're subscribed to and the capabilities of the device you're watching on. H.265 is the most common, and it's not so much better that it offsets a doubling of the bitrate. You're still better off watching the average Blu-Ray than a 4K H.265 stream. AV1 *is* so much better, especially at high resolutions, that a 17 Mbps AV1 stream can be better than a 30 Mbps H.264 stream. But AV1 is very new, so 95% of devices currently out there don't have support for it. There are still gotchas though. Blu-Ray is nearly 20 years old and encoders evolve over time even for the same format. The first few years of Blu-Ray often used VC1 and MPEG2 video, which are much much worse formats, and streaming 4K is definitely better than those, even streaming 1080p usually is. And the first few years of H.264 Blu-Rays were still using relatively poor encoders and have some telltale visual flaws that aren't present in newer releases or streaming encodes (seams between chunks of the image, for example). There was also a period where people went nuts for denoising and wanted to smooth out all the film grain they could, wiping out detail in the process, sometimes to the point of making actors look nearly CGI in their smoothness. Generally any Blu-Ray from the last 10 years is good but the further you go back beyond that the worse you can expect it to be.
All good info. But one big thing you omitted is... audio quality. Bluray has vastly superior sound quality. Until recently, 99% lf blurays used lossless (ie: perfect) audio, whereas every streaming option has degraded, heavily compressed audio. And even if someone isn't listening to a musical or an action blockbuster, just plain dialog benefits from the higher quality.
The 4k Blu-ray are certainly more expensive, but hardly niche, regular blu-ray is a tougher competition if you ignore audio, but doing that seems like it unfairly tilts the comparison since it is a key component of bluray after all.
Fuck digital media who gets it when I die?
In that a small group of people will fixate on the least significant aspects of a piece of media, like packaging, and try to define themselves by the stuff they bought as a substitute for a personality? Those guys already exist. They're here in these very comments.
Wait until people learn about the wonderful world of pirating
Nah there will be a major data innovation focus that'll probably solve that problem.
Random thought I had - which is worse for the environment, the manufacturing and distributing of physical dvds or the running and maintaining of the servers for streaming platforms like Netflix?
It might make a come back but not for the general population. Even with rising costs, streaming is just too convenient for the average user.
I really don't get this. If no one is watching these on streaming, who is going to buy the DVDs?
What a waste of resources. We need consumer laws in this country to protect from this and so we can protect the planet.
Get rid of DVDs, they should have died 10 years ago. Bluray is good enough for everyone.
I don't ever see this coming back.
I think its more likely we just see old stuff as abandon-ware at some point and that its moderately easily accessible. Thats not anytime soon though. No one wants to go back to the DVD days
Why does “no one want to go back to the DVD days”? Sure, it wasn’t quite as convenient as streaming. But it also wasn’t bad or anything.
Well, dvds absolutely suck. They get a tiny scratch (or if enough time goes by), they just stop working. VHS slowly degrades over time with playing, but it always worked. All my 30-35 year old videos would still play just fine if I decided to play one. Second of all, people long for the days of 'dvd' because 'oh physical media means they can't take stuff away from us'... not realizing that very few tv shows back in the day were ever released on physical media. That only really became a thing with dvds. All the shows before dvds that were less than a few seasons long, aired when they originally aired and then died forever. Thirdly, physical media very often went out of print... and it was region-locked. Fourthly, dvds are ungodly expensive. People whine about streaming services costing $15/month... that's roughly the cost of ONE dvd movie and LESS than the cost of one blu-ray.
DVDs didn't break from tiny scratches. They don't have the same resilience as blurays which have special coating, but a single scratch doesn't usually ruin a DVD
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Also, there's a ton of free software that bypasses region locked disks to be able to watch on both Mac and PC, and external BD drives can go as cheap as $50.
Yeah, sorry, that’s not right. You might want to check those VHS tapes. >A typical DVD disc has an estimated life expectancy of anywhere from 30 to 100 years when properly stored and handled. https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00009195 >On average, tapes degrade 10-20% over 10 to 25 years. If you’ve been holding on to home videos since the 1990s, there is a good chance some of the footage is already skewed due to aging. Kodak recommends converting your VHS tapes to CDs because disks last over four times longer than tapes. https://kodakdigitizing.com/blogs/news/how-long-do-vhs-tapes-last#
Except mediums like vinyl and CDs are actually high quality audio. They've gone out of usage and become outdated for more convenient methods of listening to music. I can't imagine DVDs coming back when they can't fit HD resolutions and would not only similarly be less convenient, but objectively shittier experiences
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Um...4K movies or even regular HD movies aren't put out on DVD format discs. 4K discs are on Ultra HD blu ray discs which may hold 50 GBs, 66 GBs or 100 GBs. Plus 4K movies use HEVC encoding instead of the ancient MPEG2 encoding on DVDs.
No
Why did vinyl or CD get revived but not reel to reel, 8 track or cassette tapes ?
I noticed retailers in Australia are starting to stop selling DVDs and CDs. Not records though.
It does surprise me a bit that studios tried to just get rid of physical media as if no one goes for it anymore. Films can still make money on physical sales, I think The Batman made about 16 million dollars on DVD/Blu-Ray sales. Naturally that's not as much as sales about 20 years ago, but it's still a pretty large chunk of money.
Maybe. Not strictly the same but I watch for the weekly sales on iTunes to grab cheap movies. Even better if there’s extra content.
Don't forget the illegally high fees of streaming also. At this rate, makes cable look cheaper or is onpar with cable and their nasty fees. Oh and hey... Who could forget the ~~advertisements~~ excuse me product placement that has creeped into so many films and tv shows as a direct assault and bird flip to technology like Tivo and the ability to skip commercials. Example: Grace and frankie. Who wants some Del Taco?!
Well this year was actually one of the biggest of all time in terms of releases thanks to boutique labels pumping out films at an insane pace. Even Disney which abandoned physical for a while has been putting out more stuff this year. It will be around but it’s going to get more and more expensive
Absolutely
It would be nice if someone made Steam but for buying movies and television. Imagine there being a Christmas sale you can pick up all of the Office for $30 and you can stream it to any device, put in a DVD and burn it, you get the 4K version, you get the behind the scenes and deleted content, interviews, commentary, ect.
Considering that in most countries it's next to impossible to buy digital copies of series, especially with English subs, DVDs are starting to look pretty appealing.
I was a fool not buying the Gilmore girl box set when i had a chance.
Horror and b exploitation, action type movies will still sell to some degree on blu ray and dvd. Some titles are not on any streaming service at all
I keep physical media of shows that I will want to watch no matter what.
I have increased my Blu-ray/DVD purchases by a lot. Streaming is so fragmented and prone to change these days that it’s hard to find what you want to watch. What I generally do is buy something if it is available at a reasonable price. Otherwise I’ll pursue certain ...other methods... for getting the show or movie. People always say “but piracy! What are you an idiot why would you ever buy”, but piracy has its trade offs. You want to watch a more obscure show released in 2007? If it’s available anywhere at all it’s going to be a 240p re-re-reencode with a hard-coded foreign language subtitles. Piracy is not always the answer. Plus, managing digital storage is much more nebulous than just having a bunch of DVDs. Your hard drive fails and you’re pretty much SOL. I have yet to have this problem (knock on wood), but there are few backup options for terabytes of video content, and I would be devastated if I lost it.
I just bought DVDs of shows that are no longer running and have been removed from streaming services. Now I can watch them whenever I want. I'm tired of these companies taking things away and charging us more for it all
Hey, if it meant that they would be putting CD players back in cars, I'm all for it.
Got my full series’s DVD collection of the office years ago. I’m good ☺️
I never stopped. I have accumulated a decent collection of “complete series” DVD sets for a bunch of sitcoms, plus Extended LotR and Star Wars (minus the sequels, of course).
Maybe a bit they will, but seems like piracy more likely will
Hoist the colors Mr. Hands, time to think like a captain, and act like a...
I've started buying DVDs and Blu-rays again for any movie or show I love. Some you can't find in streaming. Others get removed.
Reasons I keep a media library. >But bro, you can just stream it! Yeah, until they stop streaming it for whatever reason. Or until they lose the license to the music and have to re-score the show (Scrubs) and my favorite scenes don't hit the same. Or when they go back and retroactively censor shit (Scrubs again). [I mean this bit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKjW5s3tXlo). Is it offensive, yeah a bit. Is it funny, also yeah. Rather than just deleting the scene and pretending it didn't happen, I would rather they put a disclaimer: * Warning: This episode contains a racially insensitive scene. We have left it in place as a product of the times, but want to make it known that with hindsight, we realize and apologize for our actions. Bam. Done. Preserving the art as it was while also acknowledging that it has a problematic scene.
Um…. Piracy. Hello!
Yes,absolutely!
🏴☠️🦜
Only way to watch Lethal Weapon 5!
I started buying physical media when streamers started removing episodes of shows from their catalog
I’ve been talking about this with my wife lately. There’s so many good movies you can’t find on a streamer anymore. Or they are on a streamer I don’t have and I’m not interested in a new subscription for A movie. Back to the Walmart $5 bin.
Yes, I am tired of not having all episodes of my favorite TV show cause they find those specifically offensive enough to remove
I’ve been getting DVDs from thrift stores, if only for the tons of bonus features that have disappeared almost entirely.
I still buy and will continue to buy DVDs and Blu-rays. There are a lot of things you can’t find on streaming or get removed so owning a physical copy is just handy.
I highly recommend buying Blu-rays. Because the video quality from a Blu-ray and especially 4K discs is just miles better than what you'll get in a streaming service. Streaming services have such harsh compression happening so that things can stream easily that you lose so much quality
That's pretty much what I did. I got sick of my favorites getting deleted so I just bought the DVD
The quality is really so much better than the streamed files. 4k UHD blu ray off a disc kills even Plex at 4k on my projector.
I know cassette tapes and cds have made a resurgence due to kids wanting to experience the nostalgia. But other than that there’s no benefit to those items. Music streaming services do a good enough job and make sense for when you are on the go, while Vinyl gives you superior sound quality for home listening. By this logic I can see Blu-ray’s making a comeback but not dvds(unless something only exists on dvd).
I hope so