The End of Physical Media?

Sigh

CES 2019: The Beginning of the End for Physical Media

 

*Moderators:

Please correct the spelling of media. Thank you.

 

I was recently at Disney World. I didn't see one movie for sale in any of the gift shops. I did see a couple cds but no movies.

 

For years, I’ve maintained a Word document listing upcoming DVDs and Blu-rays I want to pick up. Every time I read about something I know I’ll want - on The Digital Bits or Blu-Ray.com or TVShowsOnDVD (RIP) - I add the title to the end of the list. When I eventually make the purchase, I remove it. As a result, the number of items in the list doesn’t change much. It’s usually around 10 or 12. Right now, it’s down to four. That’s the shortest it’s ever been, by a wide margin.

 

Things seem pretty bad as far as TV shows go, I'll admit. But can anyone think of a single major studio film release that wasn't given a BluRay release recently? When that happens, then I'll start to worry. Criterion and Arrow seem to be pretty healthy as far as the deluxe reissues of classic films market goes.

 

'The Americans' got a lot of things right as far as showing the early '80s, but one of the things that struck me as terribly wrong was showing people's houses with retail videocassettes on the shelves. Sure, they got the movies right, as far as being era-appropriate but back in '83 or so, no one actually bought pre-recorded movies. Even if they had a videocassette recorder, they taped them off the TV and hand-labelled them. I had to talk rental stores into letting me buy movies before "sell-though" pricing became a thing. Plenty of people behind the counter thought I was nuts for even wanting to own a copy of 'Raging Bull' (for example) instead of just renting it. It's pretty amazing to me that, by the 90's, the idea of people wanting to own movies just like books or albums was so mainstream that laserdiscs were a huge profit item for stores.

I guess it's kind of a miracle that the market for anything like ever became as big as it did for as long as it did, but I can't believe it'll ever go away completely. Sure, the bulk of the great unwashed masses will be happy to stick with streaming whatever's available but there's always going to be a market (small though it may be) who need to have a complete library of every Luis Bunuel film (for example) on their shelves. I can't see it ever going back to nothing, but it might go back to where it was in the mid-80's.

 

Nope. Not everyone can get streaming (or wants it).

 

Unfortunately, TV shows make up the majority of my purchases...

 

Seems like yesterday that I was being mocked for not upgrading my DVDs to Blu-Rays.

We live in a click-to-buy era. Few who have left physical media behind will be returning to it. Few who never lived with physical media will begin embracing it. Besides, without the proper storage, it just creates clutter.

Now would be the time to pressure media companies to target physical media towards its selective audience. After all, if you no longer need to crank out thousands of copies of the latest Will Ferrell movie, that means the manufacturing plants can spend more time on your restored this, special edition that, commemorative the other. Cater to the niches. They will be the ones buying your discs for the foreseeable future.

 

I remember they were very expensive to buy initially. I distinctly remember a friend buying Fassbinder’s Querelle on VHS for £50, sometime in the mid 80s.

 

was thinking go from itunes to blue rays. now maybe not. darn

 

My only issue with streaming is I never know if the movie I want will be available. One year it's on Netflix, the next it's gone. It's always a crapshoot. And it applies to all streaming services.

I will always continue to buy dvds/blu-rays of my favourite movies and tv shows, because I know I'll always be able to watch them.

 

Never really purchased physical video like I did with music. Theaters, TV (over the air/cable), renting VHS tapes is what shaped my habits. Then Roku hit.
Certain nights I spend more time going through the libraries of Netflix/Hulu/Amazon/HBO/PBS/Filmstruck (RIP) going over what I could watch instead of choosing one specific thing.

 

As it happens, at the moment I'm currently working with a key creative crew member of The Americans and mentioned your comments about the VHS tapes. I was told that if it was the tapes in Stan Beeman's house tat you were referring to that it was much discussed, and that they were FBI contraband, not tapes Stan had purchased at retail. Clearly this is an unusual and very specific reasoning for those VHS tapes being in Stan's house, but exactly the kind of thing the folks behind series and movies obsess about.

 

It wasn't Stan Beeman having access ('French Lieutenant's Woman' I think, while it was still in theatres?) so much as the Korean family Elizabeth is pretending to be friendly with. There's a scene in season 4 (so; mid-1983) where Elizabeth is babysitting for them and searching through their house (they were hiding porn tapes behind the studio retail stuff, but nothing that could be used as blackmail) that really stuck in my mind as being odd.

 

Thanks for the follow up, I'll pass that along to my ex-Americans colleague and see what they remember about that.

 

External BluRay drives, the kind you'd use to rip your movies to your hard drive, are also not being made much anymore.

A few years ago you could pick up a cheap external BluRay drive for $40. Now, even the most generic are closer to $80.

It's like the end of any other media format - the equipment needed to get the data off the media is starting to go away.

 

I paid a little over $80 for my Samsung external Blu-ray writer about 6 1/2 years ago, but your point is well taken. Just checking Newegg now, I see that Samsung apparently isn't even making Blu-ray drives anymore, and almost all the writable drives Newegg currently offers are made by Pioneer with the cheapest one starting at around $115. Guess I need to think about getting a backup drive while they're still available.

 

Yes but without a context, viewers won’t know that.

 

Another thread lamenting the end of a format. I’m more selective and to be quite honest I think that many older films just won’t receive much streaming play.

 

I was ready to buy a 4K Blu-ray player - literally had one in my cart until I thought... why?

Lack of content and the $30 pricing for many titles... meh.

 

I do think it’s funny that people think strong internet everywhere is a thing. Meanwhile, in many areas, streaming is equal to:

 

I like DVD's because I don't have to worry about where is it, when is it.

 

I recently purchased a 4K player and a Panasonic OLED tv...absolutely love it.

There are many titles available already.

I also started purchasing on Amazon Italy. They have great deals like five 4k discs for 50 €.

 

Because....there IS content being released newer films and some catalog titles are being rolled out. Plus it does a nice job of upscaling Blu. Even if there aren’t U.S. titles, as I recall, 4K is region free so if you do find s9meth8ng you like overseas in 4K there’s n9 region restrictions.