How long until DVDs go the way of VHS tapes?

Sony's in a 'bag of hurt' because of Blu-ray
http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/1/5670786/sony-earnings-adjustment-impairment-charges

Sony says "demand for physical media contracting faster than anticipated," especially in Europe.

Instead of the market moving from DVD to Blu-ray, consumers began to embrace downloads from Apple's iTunes service and streaming from sites like Netflix and Hulu. Although Blu-ray is integrated with some Windows laptops, it was never offered by Apple — Steve Jobs famously called the format a "bag of hurt." With the rise of movie streaming and downloads, Sony is now accepting that its disc business is not worth as much as it hoped.

 

That was actually the least of VHS's problems...

 

I think most people are pretty much over buying movies on disc to keep. During the 2000s, I'd come home with bag after bag of classic (and not so classic) films, many loaded with bonus features, and some even collected together in box sets, and in many cases never got to watch them. Several used DVD stores in the area have a wall several hundred feet long filled with used discs.

Other than collectors, how many people watch a movie more than once and need to keep a copy on-hand "just in case"?

 

Just wait for 5 to 10 years when people start realizing that all of the movies and music they purchased as digital downloads are lost or don't work anymore. Or they just flat out lose everything to a drive crash. I have had my share of hard drives go with no warning.

 

It will be interesting to see what happens with rights to a "cloud" movie or music expire. Will those that already purchased it be able to access it, or will it vanish? I've already seen this happen with a movie and several TV shows I legally purchased on iTunes.

 

The movies I've bought, I've watched more than once, for the most part. However, even if I only watched it once, the cost of the DVD is considerably less than the price of going to a movie theater.

 

True, but then you've got to either hang on to them, sell them, or give them away. You could say the studios created this mess themselves; 20 years ago, we went to rental stores and were happy watching something once then returning it, then the studios found out how much money they could make by selling VHS and then DVD directly to the customers. Then the rental stores all dried up and people also stopped buying in large numbers, leaving the studios with a streaming service that nobody is really happy with due to bandwidth issues, incompatibility, and giving a distributor total control over your "collection."

 

I've lost a few songs from iTunes myself to "license issues". And that was only after a year or so.

I tend to by mostly physical media anyways. It takes me a long time to use up an iTunes gift card. lol

Is it possible to save a copy of a TV show downloaded to iTunes to a disc to view it on other hardware?

 

Sure the movies and music will play, as long as you can back them up. And, smart people back their stuff up.

 

Exactly! I'd rather own it, or rent the disc, or a file. The "cloud" gives content providers way too much control over what, when, and how I watch and hear things.

 

That's all true. However, I used to rent a movie I hadn't seen before, and if I thought I'd watch again, then I'd buy it. IMO, one of the things that killed the rental business was the nonsense, arbitrary definition of a "day" that Blockbuster came up with: if you rented "Overnight" your rental was due back by noon the following day, their next tier was the infamous "2-day" rental that they said was due back 24 hours after you checked it out...I'm not joking about this. My wife went round and round with the local Blockbuster manager about it, and finally paid the "late" fee in frustration, but she never went back to Blockbuster again; Movie Gallery got all of our business after that. She felt that two days meant 48 hours (that is really what 2 days is, right?)

 

Blu-ray is likely to go before DVD does. If studios think they are hurting now get rid of DVD and see what happens, it is still 75% of the market.

 

You can download it and play it on a computer that is logged into the same iTunes account. I'm not sure what would happen if the license with the studio expired and iTunes tried to verify it with the server. Music is DRM free, but every TV show and movie you play using iTunes has to first be verified with the main iTunes server.

I'm sure that at some point there will be lawsuits if people are finding that their purchased content won't play, but then I'm sure there already a line in your "user agreement" that covers that removes all liability from either Apple of the studio that "sold" you the film.

 

With the TV shows I would like to watch them on the TV. It would be nice to be able to burn them to disc and do that.

 

I have had music that was backed up not play unless I repurchased the license.

I would bet that most average consumers are not backing anything up really.

 

I guess if they are files encoded with DRM, that would be true. By backing up, I mean to burn a CD-R of them. That strips the DRM.

Too bad for them, huh?

 

I thought the DRM was embedded directly in the files. Unless you find some way to strip it out, all you would have would be DRM copies on the CD-R?

 

No. The DRM is stripped once you burn the music as a music CD-R that you can play on any CD player. If you want to re-encode the music, though, the sound quality will take a hit, but the DRM will have been removed.

There used to be software out there that can strip files of DRM, but they are illegal.

 

Oh, you're referring to music. I know that can be done.

I was talking about the video files. So far as I know, that can't be done.

I've bought about a hundred seasons of TV shows and/or movies from iTunes. I'm reasonably certain that 80% of them will never go away, but I worry about that last 20%. Frankly, I'd rather have movies like the Indiana Jones, Lethal Weapon, Jurassic Park, X-Men, Harry Potter, or Star Trek series in the "cloud" and not taking up space on my shelf. I don't think those are going to go away anytime soon.

I would never buy a Criterion download; they lose their licenses all the time, and the DVDs go out of print and go for $$$. Who's to say the downloads won't also go away?

 

They should warn the customer about this. Of course, if they did, they wouldn't sell so much.

 

Oh, I remember it. It frustrated customers to the point where they never came back. Hastings does somewhat similar crap, too. No wonder people like Redbox, despite their very limited offerings.

 

In my experience, if you download the content, you've got the content, regardless of how licensing problems affect the content's availability in the store...

Shalom, y'all!

L. Bangs

 

Just wait until your optical media starts rotting and you cannot play it anymore. Happens frequently and sometimes within a handful of years.

I don't have issues with DRM as I transcode all my media and back them up on two offline drives, so if one goes (hasn't happened yet), I have another for recovery. Furthermore, I can stream/play all my content on any household screen or mobile served through my PC.

If you take sensible precautions with your most valuable content (ie, stuff you want to keep to rewatch many times into the future), you shouldn't have any problems.

 

Sony can always keep releasing DVDs...

 

out my thousands of DVDs none have rotted...I did have a problem with the Scanvo clear slim cases...but it wasn't the DVDs fault~!