orangerunner

The "must-have" catalogue titles have already been released on BD with relatively little fan-fare. The format is 8 years old and sales have flatlined leaving the format with only new release titles to keep the volume up.

I sometimes wonder if Laserdisc was actually profitable? It held on for a long time and appealed to mostly cinephiles.

I'm guessing Laserdisc was a product of a different financial era. The current corporate mentality is if you're not selling more and more after each fiscal quarter, you're losing money.

DVD sales set such an incredibly high bar that any following format would look like a failure in comparison.

It's true, there is a huge population that enjoy watching movies but have no interest in cinema or how movies are made and generally don't give a crap about cinematic artistry.

I have many friends that, when I look at their DVD collection, all I see is every major new release from 2002-2008. That's it.

It's kind of like comparing the fact that I drive a car two hours a day, every day but I don't visit "gear-head" websites or subscribe to Car & Driver magazine. The car is important to my daily life but I'm not an enthusiast who can rattle-off all the technical specs and care that deeply about the history of the automobile.

PhantomStranger

Movies and shows aimed at children are showing few signs of decline. It appears that families are still willing to buy the Blu-ray or DVD for their children over streaming, since I don't think many parents want their 4-year-old messing with the streaming menus on their TVs or Rokus.

Gizmo

Netflix and such have special 'kid' menu's that make it easy to let them do what they want.

E Unit

Too bad their selections are lousy.

davidh777

I'm on this forum and I have a huge collection. I bought Braveheart and Gladiator on BD. Shift forward a few years and I still haven't bought Star Wars and Raiders. I love the movies, and I'd much rather watch them on BD, but the sets aren't supercheap and I figure they will be a better deal someday. I just don't have the same passion for building my physical collection. I've bought a few digital releases, especially TV, but big stuff like Captain America I still get on BD. That's the only new theatrical I recall buying this year, though.

Including watching the latest new release?

BuckNaked2k

I didn't mean that at all. I'd say people are about done upgrading. Whatever the next format turns out to be, it will get a mere fraction of the Blu-ray's share....which was itself a fraction of the DVD's share.

Sub-Zero

October 11:

big e

Geez, not even new releases seem to be helping these numbers.

bruceames

Blu-ray is pretty much doomed to go negative this year. The remaining new releases do not compare favorably with last year and the format is already down 3 percent. The only thing that can save it from negative growth is Black Friday week and the two weeks leading up to Christmas. If those weeks can get one more year of growth then it could be enough, since those weeks are huge and can really influence the overall YoY figures. I'm not too optimistic though, but then again I wasn't optimistic about those weeks last year and they did much better than I expected.

milo bloom

My 7 y.o. has been using streaming for a few years now. It's easier for him to use than discs and it's more intuitive for him to use on the iPad also.

Streaming is the future folks. Physical media is on the decline and if it sticks around, it will become what laserdisc became - a niche format for boutique labels like Criterion, Shout/Scream, etc: basically for scifi/horror and other cult/genre titles.

Gizmo

It already has. People are already spending $30 for a crappy 80s films from Shout Factory just because there is nothing else to buy.

slop101

Sure, but as I said earlier, I haven't seen online infrastructure improve at all in the last 5 years. If anything, it's gotten more expensive for the same speeds/services; it's totally plateaued, with no real improvements on the horizon. If we're truly going all streaming; movies, shows, games, etc., our online services have to improve dramatically. But they're not. They're totally dragging their heels.

Spiderbite

I am honestly fine with this as those are the only kinds of movies I watch more than once anyway. The only problem is when "your" favorite niche title never makes it's way to BD. Then it sucks.

Paul_SD

consumers are absolutely streaming stuff quite a bit.
It's less a question if they are streaming the hottest biggest new release rather than buying it because there is only so much time in the day. There is plenty of subscription content they can stream to fill the empty hours...rather than buying the latest and greatest- whether its a hard copy or a download.
But when you add the shift to streaming in general, with a slight amount of streaming NEW, paid content- that doesn't leave that much left for hard copy sales. And that is exactly what we are seeing.

joltman

They only time they seem to 'rotate' catalog titles is to tie in with a new movie coming out, like how they just recently got The Conjuring back because of Annabelle

joltman

Do you really think catalog titles are going to bring that much money in for them? How many people do you really think would rent The Crying Game from Redbox?

DVD Polizei

Totally agree. Machines should be stocked locally by real marketing data acquired instead of a nationwide canvass assumption on what everyone wants to see. For example, The Crying Game would get more rents in Portland, OR than some other title. Each city--even broken down to each city's neighborhoods, rent differently.

Increasing prices will drive Redbox to the same fate as others who try to squeeze more profits instead of doing the work necessary to have a truly accommodating rental service.

I stopped renting from Redbox because the titles just were not there. Certain neighborhoods have certain tastes. Maybe Redbox already does this but I haven't particularly observed this when shopping in stores all over the city as I walk out observing Redbox titles.

Alan Smithee

There's a TV version of The Crying Game? How did they handle the big reveal?

joltman

Don't forget there's the whole thing where you can return to any Redbox, so the by region and especially by neighborhood thing may not work out very well.

rocket1312

Exactly. I can't even begin to imagine that the handful of extra rentals generated by catalog titles would even come close to paying for regional marketing or whatever.

Josh-da-man

Hm. I did not know that all Redboxes carried the same titles. Every time I've looked at one, the selection was absolute shit. I've never rented from one since it doesn't look like it's worth the risk of having my credit card number jacked.

Alan Smithee

I've never seen the point of renting a "crap title" (meaning low-budget, straight-to-video movies) from Redbox since I've BOUGHT many titles of the same caliber for roughly the same price as their rentals are. In fact, I've never actually paid for a Redbox rental, always got 'em when they had free codes. They used to put out one a week that you could use multiple times if you had more than one credit card, but they aren't so generous now. I think the worst movie I rented from them was National Lampoon's Cattle Call.

davidh777

Yeah, I haven't used a kiosk in a while but it seems they need some kind of artwork etc. for the titles--not really something a guy with a scanner and photoshop can do. Though that brings to mind the old-time jukeboxes that sometimes had a handwritten title card for certain selections.

big e

I'm guessing the people using Redbox aren't using it to watch deep catalog titles. They're probably just interested in new releases. That does suck the titles aren't rotated often, although I don't think loading them up with random catalog titles would help much, if any.

BuckNaked2k

True...unless you like never-ending Marvel Comics reboots and movies about giant robots.