dvdshonna

I use dial-up by choice. It's not in my nature to subject myself to extortion from the cable companies. I've read rumors that the cable companies are capping downloads on their internet plans to discourage subscribers switching to netflix, etc.

If current trends continue, you'll be picking up discs for next to nothing. How is craigslist in your area? People list in my area for a couple months with no buyers, and then sell their collections off at 50 cents per disc. Not a lot of buyers and that's all the pawn shops will pay. I pay a little more for better titles.

dvdshonna

Netflix currently has about 27.9 million streaming subscribers (U.S.). Hulu has about 1.5 million subscribers. Amazon prime 3.11 million (estimated).
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Blu-Ray: Death By Streaming

" But Hollywood and Sony brought this on themselves. They overestimated the importance of video quality and the price people were willing to pay. And underestimated how popular streaming video would become. "

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/storage/bl...streaming/1386
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SHOCKER ....The average consumer would rather pay 10¢ to stream "Dances With Wolves" than buy the bluray for $7.99 ($7.99 not bad. One of my favorite movies).

big e

Netflix has been a godsend for me because I don’t have to blind buy a movie or wait for it to show up on some TV station if I want to watch it. Like Milo Bloom said on the previous page, I blind bought too much shit that I ended up dumping a few years later because that was the only way I could see some of these old obscure movies I wanted to watch.

Now, despite my approval of streaming in other similarly-themed threads, I only use Netflix and Hulu and occasionally at that. But, I’ve never run into any of the quality* or buffering problems that other posters have mentioned. Based on the comments that have appeared in this thread and ones similar to it, I think it’s safe to assume that most of the posters here are not in the streaming target audience.

Another poster on one of the previous pages mentioned home video sales began going down around ’06. Maybe this is a return to normalcy? Since home video first arrived in the late ‘70s, the general population has primarily been renters with collectors being a small niche portion. Even when VHS prices began going down in the ‘90s, I don’t recall anyone really having much of a collection except for a handful of personal favorites and big blockbusters. Maybe things are going back to the way they were before: DVD/Blu-Ray for the buffs and collectors and streaming for the general audience that just wants to watch something.

I think some of you are being a little too paranoid and jumping the gun about physical media going away. Just because the big studios aren’t releasing that many catalog titles doesn’t mean smaller distributors aren’t picking up the slack. Just because you can’t find that many movies in Wal-Mart or Best Buy doesn’t mean you can’t find them on Amazon or a specialty website. Just because streaming, Netflix, and Redbox are popular doesn’t mean your movie collections are now null and void. Physical media isn’t going anywhere. If anything, it is becoming movie buff and collector-oriented again. I think the success and popularity of Shout! Factory, Criterion, and Olive Films proves that.




*The exception being when the source file itself was of bad quality, but that’s something the viewer has no control over.

Moviefan02

Craigslist is littered with DVD sales, and the only reason they're stuck listing it more once is because most of the sellers around here expect to get back what they paid for it (or even more). Some people don't understand used merchandise isn't worth the same as new, or Craigslist is full of rip-off artists trying to lure in clueless consumers.

Perhaps I'm a borderline hoarder but I will always prefer physical media. I've made good judgment choices in the past regarding blind buys (many from Big Lots), which I haven't been disappointed with, I review each title carefully before buying even if it's priced at $3[or less]. Sure I still have 100 or so still sealed but I know I will get to them eventually and in today's market I wouldn't think of unloading them for pennies.

Gizmo

10 cents? Where is that price coming from? A consumer watches 79 movies a month - or 3 a day?

dvdshonna

You can assume 27¢ (30 movies a month). Some families stream for hours every day. It's likely some people stream far less.

My point being ....If the cost of renting/streaming is 10¢ to 50¢ per movie it virtually guarantees that disc sales will remain sluggish at best.

Before Redbox rentals, the typical rental was $2.50 to $3.00 per night.
New Releases were selling for $15 to $20. Older titles at $10.00 & up.

Redbox and Netflix (thru the mail) brought the rental price down to $1.00 per disc. Holding to the same price structure (rental vs purchase), New Releases would be priced at $6 to $8. Older titles at $4 & up.

At 50¢ per movie (streaming) ...Older titles $2.00 (purchase)

At 25¢ per movie (streaming) ...Older titles $1.00 (purchase)

Looking at the current price structure (rental vs purchase), I would assume the studios are looking to get out of the business of selling movies on disc. Unless they plan on dropping prices even lower for DVDs/Blurays. Fine with me.

dvdshonna

From news moviefone: 4/06/2012

Will You Miss DVDs When They're Gone?
The DVD is dead. And you helped kill it.

According to the study, streaming viewing of movies will overtake disc viewing this year.

Still, most of those streamed movies are rented, not bought. As a result, the movie industry is making a lot less from streaming than from disc purchases. According to the study, movie fans will spend $11.1 billion on DVD sales and rentals this year, compared to just $1.7 billion from streaming views and downloads.

Nonetheless, the industry is fully behind the conversion away from physical discs.

...Hollywood save billions on pressing, packaging, and shipping discs

http://news.moviefone.com/2012/04/03...n_1401389.html

dvdshonna

So once all the kinks are worked out, no more discs, no more redbox disc rentals, and no more manufacturing and distribution costs.

I suspect, special order discs will still be available, even if all of this comes to past. Just guessing. I don't believe it's a done deal, due to the issues with ISP throttlling and caps.

I also don't believe digital purchases will ever take off. Not at $14.99 Not at $9.99. Maybe individual digital rentals if they lower prices from $2.99 & $3.99 down to $1.00 & $1.99 .

Typical example: Dances With Wolves DVD or Bluray $7.99 ...Amazon Instant Video: Buy$14.99
Huh??? $7.00 more to store it in the "cloud". Even stranger than fiction ...Prime members can stream it for free.

You make monthly subscriptions for movies dirt cheap and overprice discs and the outcome is obvious. Price new releases at $6 to $8, older disc titles at $3 to $4, and raise subscription rates to $19.99 month, and the outcome is totally different.

GoldenWheels

I think you raise an excellent point. Yes, the big studios and some medium size distributors are deciding it is not worth their trouble, or desirable, to be in the physical media business anymore. But OTOH they are willing to license those libraries out to smaller companies who do see it as worth the trouble. Shout and TGG gets tons of MGM now, Olive gets Paramount, Mill Creek (!) gets Touchstone titles, Echo Bridge gets Miramax, etc etc etc.

And as much as I love Netlfix, and I do, it allowing me to test run movies I would never even drop 5$ for....the value of their total # of titles really depends on how much of it is interesting to you. I find many evenings I am sifting through page after page of junk just to fine a decent flick. Many of these streaming services are loaded with utter DTV level drek simply to inflate the overall #.

Alan Smithee

Problem with the smaller companies is that they concentrate less on quality and are more likely to screw up movies- ironic since their business will depend more and more on those of us who care about quality while the peons move to streaming. Case in point- Mill Creek has released some Blu-Ray titles like Camp Nowhere with MONO sound due to nobody doing any quality-checking, and Echo Bridge and Mill Creek have put out multi-film sets on DVDs with excessive compression in order to fit more movies on fewer discs (the DVD equivalent of duplicating VHS tapes in the EP speed.)

By the way, about 1700 movies are expiring from Netflix tonight- let's see how many of them get renewed.

Regulus

This is why I prefer Physical Media (Thats DVDs, Blu-Ray Disks and VHS for those of you in Rio Linda) over streaming. People are going to log in to Netflix only to discover a Movie or TV Show they wanted to watch is no longer there. With Physical Media I can watch whatever I want to watch whenever I want to, and after I finish watching something, I GET TO KEEP IT!

nick1091

This.

The rise of streaming speaks to a growing mindset where quantity and convenience are more important than quality and permanence. Between streaming and the studios themselves (cramming more and more catalog titles into "film favorite" sets on the bargain bin) the inherent value of a non-new release, non-blockbuster has never been lower, and I don't know how you get it back up. It's hard to get people to get a Porterhouse from Ruth's Chris when they think Golden Corral is good enough.

I see a future where the Avengers of the world do a brisk business, and the boutique labels like Shout keeping their niche, but devalued physical product plus fewer and fewer outlets (especially B&M) to purchase from doesn't paint a rosy picture for the deep catalog/fringe new release stuff, and likely relegates them to the streaming bin.

Lastdaysofrain

It's been proven in many studies that people don't want "better" they want "easier".

DVD hit a market saturation so quickly not becuase it was better than VHS (which was a nice bonus) but because it was a lot easier, cheaper, no rewinding, small, etc.

Streaming is more convenient for people. That's part of the reason you see Blu Ray being more of a niche than the new standard.

Moviefan02

It doesn't look like the license for most of them will be renewed for Netflix as these titles will go exclusive to the Warner Archive Instant. If you want to stream, and still keep a wide selection, you will have no choice but to subscribe to multiple services (Netflix, Hulu Plus, Warner Archive Instant, among others I'm sure). If you just buy the movie on VHS, DVD or Blu-ray you can have it in one location opposed to having to search all over the place for a specific title. Another reason to re-consider joining the streaming team.

Source: http://gothamist.com/2013/04/30/1794...r_from_net.php

dvdshonna

Just looked at the Warner Archive site. Something I hadn't thought about. How long will the big studios keep licensing their titles to netflix? Looks like Warner Bros. may not need netflix to stream their titles.

davidh777

And it makes sense, as the primary complaint about Warner's service was too much money ($9.99) for too little content. They have a huge catalog so this would be a big step in addressing that.

Texan26

The movies that expired are not going to Warner Archive Instant. None of them were even Warner movies. The article they were quoting has posted a correction:

Alan Smithee

I STILL have problems with my internet service slowing down- most likely the problem is with the router I'm using, but the point is it certainly isn't "easier" than just playing a disc, which will work for me with no issues more than 99% of the time!

dvdshonna

I'm fed up with all these "services" (cable, broadband, dish network). Overpriced crap serving up the same content over and over.

My girlfriend was paying $70.00/month for Charter cable TV. And she couldn't explain what she was watching that was worth $70.00. The only movie channels she was getting for $70.00 was AMC (full of commercials) and TCM.

I hooked her TV up with $10 rabbit ears and showed her how she could get crystal clear pictures with FREE over the air digital transmissions. She canceled her cable the same day. She's been hooked up to cable for 20+ years ($12,000.00+ down the toilet).

Tarantino

I love streaming. I still buy the movies I really love, but streaming allows me to see those movies I'd never risk a blind buy on.

And dvdshonna - you were "stunned" that Netflix has a lot of movies available to stream here in 2013? Have you been living under a rock?

dvdshonna

No....I live without cable and hi-speed internet. As I already stated, I buy and sell hundreds of used DVDs every month. I don't have time to watch all the DVDs I want to watch. So even if I had hi-speed internet, I would have little interest in streaming movies.

Tarantino

I don't have cable either. If you're in the business of buying and selling things, don't you think having high speed internet might help you out in that regard?

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

You can do fine without it. It's not like you're doing daily trading on the stock market.

mickey65

+1

And I don't stream anything. I prefer listening to CDs, and watching my DVDs and videos. They are there when I want to watch them, whenever.

kd5

I've never had any interest in streaming movies, I collect the movies I like and won't mind watching multiple times, I realize my collection isn't huge like some of yours, but with the exception of a very few OOP DVDs, and maybe the occasional impulse buy, I have pretty much everything I've ever wanted. I don't foresee the DVD/BD market disappearing any time soon, so I'm just not going to worry too much about it.