Are Discs Dead?

As I looked into purchasing a new blu-ray player recently, during my research I discovered that several manufacturers (most prominently, Samsung) are ceasing to produce blu-ray players. This discouraged me from making a purchase at all, as it is a clear indication that the format will be for all intents and purposes obsolete.

What does the forum think?

 

I still buy about 50 BluRays a year (at full retail price.) I'm doing my part. Just pre-ordered the director's cut of 'Midsommar' at $40 (+$20 shipping)!

If by "all intents and purposes", you mean that video sales will return back to where it was at the start, where a small number of videophiles paid premium prices for deluxe editions of films they considered significant, then; yes. If you mean that BluRays, DVDs and 4Ks will go the way of 8-track tapes, then; no.

The people who didn't bother to buy full-priced videocassettes or laserdiscs back in the 80s and 90s and only rented? They're not supporting physical media now either. The people who only bought used DVDs in bargain bins or used in the 2000's? They're just watching whatever's currently available on streaming services. There might have been an artificial bump in numbers for a few years there that's never gonna come back, but physical media is unlikely to entirely disappear. People didn't entirely stop buying books just because libraries popped up everywhere. People didn't entirely stop buying records just because you could hear free music on the radio. Slumping sales are a problem (don't get me started on Fox no longer issuing TV seasons on anything other than burn-on-demand DVD-R's) but the market is only getting tighter and no one's going to be willing to turn away potential customers forever. The prices will probably go up and the selection will diminish, but I'm betting heavily on it not vanishing.

 

I wouldn't base anything on Samsung's decision to stop producing bricks. Their latest snafu is going to cost them. Still plenty of discs being made and plenty of companies still making players. I have seen no indication of them going away soon.

 

The inevitible demise of the compact disc has been coming soon for nearly twenty years now. That'll tell you what is happening to BluRays.

 

Heh.

I wouldn't be surprised if your post gets completely misinterpreted.

We are all doomed. You are going to die. So am I. The question is: when?

 

I don't think so, I still think that for quality a disc is the way to go. Netflix may be convenient but even on my 43inch 1080p set some of these films start to fall apart and there is macro blocking all over the place so when it's a film I care about unless I can't find a physical copy I'll opt for the Blu-ray every time. Sometimes I'll buy a movie on Apple TV and then pick it up on Blu-ray later. Though I have started going for UHD discs now because they tend to come with Blu-rays as well, it's what I did for Rise of Skywalker and Apocalypse Now Final Cut.

 

And then there's this...

Is Physical Media Experiencing A Rebirth? - Hypebot

Why Millennials Refuse to Let Go of Physical Media

A fresh way forward for physical media? – Film Stories

In Defense of the Disc: DVD, Blu-ray Disc Collectors Speak Out – Media Play News

Blu-Rays Aren’t Dead—Just Ask These Dedicated Collectors

I have a vested interest in this since I remaster films for a couple of reissue labels. But what they tell me is that their sales have gone up over the last six months. One thing I've encountered is there have been cases where I wanted to see a film via streaming, and I discovered it was no longer available on the service I was paying for. I was able to either rent or borrow the disc (or in some cases just buy it).

You can also make the argument that the highest bitrate you can get from any HD streaming service is maybe 10Mb/s, while Blu-ray goes up to 40MB/s -- four times the bandwidth. Blu-ray also has extra features, documentaries, interviews, and outtakes that you generally don't get via streaming (except in rare cases like Marvel/Disney). I'd like to see physical media hang on, and I think it will for the immediate future. Five years from now, I dunno. I have no problem buying HD and 4K Blu-ray discs for movies I really enjoy and want to see more than once.

 

Yes, seems like the world is heading for a licence to live economy, pay each year (in advance).

I too am needing to consider what to do now that the remote for my DVD player is no longer working. No pause feature, no ability to navigate on menus...

 

What is there beyond a disc?

 

I do notice that titles on disk I might want are Out-of-print, and in the case of newer programs, aren't even coming to disk.

 

Even if all discs stopped being manufactured, if you already have a collection you need something to play them on (unless you are content to rip everything to a computer and then play back digital files in your home). For that reason alone you should still buy a player.

 

I can't resist picking up those killer discs in the $1 or 2$ bins when it is something really good that I have not seen yet. Or I pick up things at the thrift store that I have seen but there is something special about the particular release issue.

I grabbed the 2-Disc deluxe version of The Wickerman recently for $1.00. I want to see it with the extras and all. I notice it does go for for around $12 on the used market. So it's bound to slowly creep up in value imo.

I picture myself and a friend watching a movie from streaming and seeing breakup in the picture as the wifi dropped connection or speed. Then I picture us watching that same movie from a disc, way out in the middle of nowhere with no good reception or connection, and not concerned about connectivity.

Discs will be in use (by me) for many many more years.

 

Grab a good one on ebay before your model gets too old and obscure.

 

I won't ever settle for a blocky picture or any breakup in quality when it's something I really want to get into. And I am having a tough time passing on really good "deluxe" and sometimes obscure types of movies in the used bins for very low prices. These deals can't last forever. Pretty soon DVDs of the rarer stuff will dry up completely.

 

I think the mainstream will still be served by Blu-ray. What might get problematic is anything beyond that, especially catalog and TV.

 

FOX released "Family Guy" on standard DVD last year, so hopefully that'll continue.

 

If anything, I'm tempted to purchase a few more Blu-ray players and sock them away while I use my current crop. My Sony Blu-ray players of course not only play Blu-rays, but they play my older DVDs - and really well too. Just last evening we were watching a DVD of NORTHERN EXPOSURE and I was quite taken with how good it looked. It might have rivaled a Blu-ray, the detail and colors were stunning.

So no. my discs in my collection are not dead. They offer a world of my favorite entertainment, available to me at a moment's notice, and generally looking really good. I've gotten many of my favorite movies on Blu-ray, but also have a vast collection of DVDs of other movies that have interested me over the years.

Someone once asked me about collecting the things I do, and I snidely replied something about when television ends, I'll have something to watch. Have you looked at what's on television of late?...

 

Being inanimate objects discs were never actually alive!

 

TV series continuing on BluRay is a major concern of mine (hopefully, Mill Creek and Shout! Factory's recent trend of putting out Complete Series on BD after the original studio let the balls drop (Community, Masters Of Sex, 30 Rock, Kimmy Schmidt, Happy Endings, The Good Place, etc.) will be the wave of the near future, at least) but I'm not seeing any evidence out there of any new successful feature films not being released on discs, and there's still a healthy amount of obscure rarities (horror movies, foreign films and weird art stuff) still being released through boutique labels. I'm seeing the marketplace shift around a little, but I don't see any real signs of impending doom.

 

Other than couple of concerts discs on Blu-Ray for me they were never really alive.

 

Not to me. Just a few weeks ago, I scored some great and rare stuff for 10 bucks in total: lots of Pasolini, the 1936 Olympia film, some Cassavetes and Todd Browning's "Freaks". Stuff I'd been looking for for years. At the moment, it seems to me that many think discs are dead, throwing them out for peanuts as a result. Me, I gladly take them. Also, I buy new discs at retail prize if they're of interest - recently, more and more obscure early german sound films get out on blu ray which never ceases to amaze me. Stuff unavailable for streaming. So I need to buy it, and I gladly do.

 

I'm a disc spinner...have been for 30+ yrs...will be hopefully for 30+ more

CDs DVDs SACDs Blurays etc
Long live the disc!

Start stocking stacking players...

 

The studios are looking for the day that catalog for film and tv as content ownership reverts back to them. It's hard to build pay streaming when the content was issued (physical media) times on home video and DVDs (and sometimes BluRays are all out there and most very cheap. They want to be able to exploit the goods again, but they about milked it dry already. The task at hand is to hope those DVDs and BR discs all vanish from people's collections and the thrifts and other used markets. That's going to take a few decades for those discs of the best stuff to get lost. So the re-runs on streaming are still profitable but never will be as profitable. Just like the music industry (even with streaming) will never recover to what the 80s and 90s record markets were.

It's a consumer's market thankfully.

 

and to this day, other than a few niche releases, every single new album that is released is released on compact disc.

 

For a while, I rented DVDs from Netflix and ripped them to VIDEO_TS folder files. So I can watch them on my PC on the go, or I can burn DVD discs off of those files. The idea is to watch the movies and then delete them off my drives which I usually do. But some of them I hoped to watch again and have not yet deleted but I will. The point is I like the aspect of the delayed or time-shifted watching. It's much more legal than people realize. And I have a killer collection of DVD rips waiting for me to get bored with music, etc. A good 75 films I have not gotten to yet.