WeeBey

Looks like the people who are still buying discs are choosing cheaper DVDs over BDs judging by those revenue decline percentages. Leads me to believe that UHD BDs are specifically getting slaughtered.

Adam Tyner

I’m sure the format’s not doing gangbusters, but with only a couple of titles a week and catalog titles becoming increasingly ignored, it doesn’t really stand a chance when you look at total marketshare. But on a title by title basis, UHD BD often performs respectably, especially for blockbuster spectacles in the early weeks of release. (As ever, the long tail favors DVD.) 21% of first-week sales for 1917 went to UHD BD, to name a recent example.

WeeBey

Looks like the new Star Wars also had a big UHD week.

WeeBey

Out of curiosity, are the Star Wars releases last week pretty much it for the year? Any other big releases expected for BD/DVD?

I guess if Black Widow comes out in the Summer, that could be another one.

joltman

Black Widow's theatrical release has been moved to November.

There's Pixar's Onward, but the fact that it already debuted on Disney+ is probably going to hurt it's sales.
Besides that, Birds of Prey, Bad Boys for Life and Sonic the Hedgehog are probably the biggest movies released theatrically yet to come out on home video.

Josh-da-man

2020 was going to be kind of a "soft" year for movies anyway, wasn't it?

No Star Wars, MCU is sort of regrouping after Endgame with only Black Widow and Eternals scheduled (solo film w/ a minor character and a new franchise).

What were the big guns going to be... Wonder Woman, the next F&F installment, and the next Bond?

rocket1312

Tenet, Ghostbusters and Top Gun to name a few more.

morriscroy

Heh.

https://variety.com/2020/film/box-of...ut-1234578471/

"Universal Says ‘Trolls World Tour’ Lands Biggest Digital Debut Ever"

Wonder if this will have repercussions for future dvd/bluray releases.

orangerunner

They're rather tight-lipped about the financial details but I guess for a film that cost $100 million to make they would have to sell over 5 million individual streams at $19.95 each to just break even.

It's hard to quantify how many people would have chosen to see this in a theatre under normal circumstances but it's probably a good time to test the model as they've never had a greater number of people sitting at home looking for entertainment.

Josh Z

The traditional, pre-pandemic rule of thumb was that a movie had to gross 2.5x its production budget to break even, in order to recoup marketing and distribution expenses, not to mention all the graft inherent in Hollywood accounting. That would mean 12.5 million streaming rentals at $20 each for a movie of this budget.

The distribution model is completely different now, and no doubt most of those expenses are reduced. However, the studio still has to pay for TV ads and other forms of promotion. And the corruption in the system will never go away. The actual break-even number for a movie like this may not be exactly known, but I'm sure it's still at least 2x the budget.

orangerunner

The other thing they should be concerned with is how easily the file will be to bootleg. Their $19.95-per-stream revenue may get re-distributed for free on multiple illegal platforms.

Adam Tyner

Alan Smithee

Not bad for the time, even if only 100 units were sold to get those numbers.

WeeBey

Star Wars almost put Blu-ray into green territory two weeks ago but didn't quite manage it.

I think it's quite possible we will be in negative territory for Blu-ray and DVD for the rest of the year.

Alan Smithee

Those versions of Star Wars do not exist as far as I'm concerned.

orangerunner

It's funny I have the Stars Wars Blu-rays as well as the Limited Edition DVDs which have the original theatrical versions in 2.35:1 non-anamorphic widescreen. When given the choice of watching one or the other, I always gravitate to the theatrical versions on DVD regardless of the lesser quality.

Alan Smithee

And those are the only reason why I even have those updated versions in my collection. I have the '97 special editions on laserdisc, but at least they were shown that way in theaters. I don't accept those as the 'official' versions either.

Coral

After selling all my Criterion DVDs 4 years ago, and my Criterion BDs (I broke even!) over the last year - I sold my remaining 104 DVDs today (except for a few concert DVDs - it's worth keeping for the sound quality). The vast majority of the titles weren't mainstream crap you could get for a nickle - so they had *some* value... but I only got $60 for them. I'm lucky to even get that much.

So right now I have only a few concert DVDs and maybe 10 BDs that were purchased for an average price of around $5. I'll still purchase BDs or UHD-BDs of my favorite films that are re-watchable and priced at around $5. That's the most I'm willing to commit to physical media.

It feels good to free up the space and be realistic about my viewing habits.

Welcome to the decline and eventual demise of physical media.

WeeBey

I did the same a while ago. I had a few out of print criterions with which I made a few hundred dollars but it was hard to get much of anything for the rest of the collection. I took a bath in the end especially considering I watched, say, 95% of those discs once or twice. Some never.

I have since approached all media purchases, not just physical, with extreme trepidation. I look at a book, whether physical or digital, and I think do I need to own this? How many times will I read this? Does the library have it? I know one day I’ll have to get rid of the thing and I imagine the inevitable waste-of-money feeling when I do.

Yes, I have issues. Still, I’m interested in physical media not to own it but to learn what’s coming out, to read reviews on video/audio quality, to discuss future releases etc. I also get excited about new video game box art/collectors editions or physical book designs even though I haven’t purchased a physical game in many years and I’m extremely unlikely to buy the book.

morriscroy

(As an aside).

In practice, this was easy to do for stuff like novels and many popular press type books. I rarely ever read novels more than once or twice, even if I really liked the story. Nowadays I might just read the digital ebook version, and not the paper one.

This is much harder to determine for reference and/or technical type books, which are not usually read sequentially. In the past I would go to a local university/college library on weekends, and look through such books to determine whether I wanted to buy them. Nowadays I go through amazon and google books and look through partial scans of the book if available. Sometimes the publisher's website might have partial scans of the book (such as the preface/toc + first chapter).

DJariya

https://www.mediaplaynews.com/npd-dv...p-in-pandemic/

morriscroy

Lets hope all those newly purchased $40 bluray players are actually being used to play newly purchased bluray discs, and not just used solely to play really old dvd discs which have been collecting dust for many years nor only as a Roku-lite streaming device.

milo bloom

If it gets the people to buy even a couple more DVDs at least it's keeping the idea of physical media going. I can see them using it for their current DVDs and then wondering what else may be out there and the next time they're at Walmart or Target, they'll notice all the DVDs and Blus on the endcaps and maybe grab something new.

Gizmo

They are being used for Netflix, YouTube and Hulu. You can't really buy physical media at stores (in California) unless you do in-store pickup, so its bizarre to see people buying those players unless they have those old discs hanging around. It's not like kids under the age of 10 even know what a DVD/BD is.

E Unit

You can buy a streaming device for the same price or less. I doubt people are buying physical media players solely for using their limited app functionality.