Alan Smithee

And then sold it, so if physical media goes away completely Walmart won't be getting any piece of it. Target also started Target Ticket then shut it down, and Best Buy bought CinemaNow and shut that down.

Some studios like Disney really wanted DIVX to work out so they could charge for every viewing and lock out any title they saw fit, but that was early on and the general reaction from enthusiasts was to kill it. The music industry was basically forced to transition as people quit buying CDs and started pirating. I used to buy TONS of CDs but stopped by the mid-90s because the greedy labels were raising CD prices at a time when they were getting cheaper to manufacture, and I'd been continually losing interest in most current music with radio becoming a huge bore and not playing any new music I might like. I didn't have the equipment to pirate like all the cool kids were doing though, and I reluctantly started subscribing to Apple Music only because of the many Dolby Atmos mixes of music that isn't available elsewhere. Sadly the music biz is basically fucked at this point- the only way they could get my money now would be to issue a lot of these Atmos albums on disc which they haven't been doing. I spend less per month on Apple Music than I used to on CDs. I'm still more enthusiastic about buying more movies or any visual material than I am music, but the sad reality is I am out of shelf space and stores cutting back on inventory will kill impulse-buying for me.

I'd like to see that pie chart with digital sales included- meaning "purchases" of digital movies, not rentals or subscriptions. I'll admit the quality of digital movies has gotten much better lately, but I'm still not going to switch to collecting movies that way. Anything that isn't on disc I'll just watch multiple times as they're on subscription services. I'm not going to pay more than $5 for something that has zero tangible value, with no packaging and nothing that I can put on a shelf, same of course also goes for music. The net dollars either industry gets from me will be significantly less.

Alan Smithee

Have to post this because this shows how bad the retail environment has gotten here, as we have NO dedicated media stores anymore:

I've been obsessively buying South Park discs ever since the first Rhino DVDs came out. I bought all the seasons as they were put out on DVD, switching to Blu-Ray at season 12 as that was the first released on that format, and then rebought the previous remastered seasons on Blu-Ray. I've bought a few of the redundant releases that had episodes included elsewhere, just for completeness' sake, and sought out the rare promo-only releases like the Good Times With Weapons HD-DVD. The only ones I don't have are the cover/package variations (switching from Warner to Paramount, then from boxes to keepcases, and the standard DVDs of season 12 onwards.)

I JUST NOW found out that the "Post COVID" specials were released on Blu-Ray December 6th, over TWO MONTHS AGO. Not a single retailer I had gone to has had it in stock. This would normally have been a Day 1 purchase (yes, I did already see the specials on HBOMax, but still want permanent copies of them as I have every other South Park episode) but I didn't even know this disc EXISTED until now. I placed an order for it and will look forward to it coming, but had I known it was out and that any retailer would be selling it, I likely would have made a special trip for it on December 6th or at least picked it up anytime between then had any stores carried it. Aside from the real fans, I doubt many others have bought this disc unless they're lucky enough to still have a dedicated media retailer that stocked it. Season 25 is coming out in April also, I expect I won't find that in stores either. True that it's easier to see this show now without cable than it was when the first discs were released; it was a yearly event for me binging the entire seasons as they came out, but I'm still buying the discs as long as they keep putting them out and it just blows my mind that they're so much more difficult just to get now.

Gizmo

I didn't know the movies came out on BD either. I have a really great 1080p digital collection and sold off most of my discs years ago. No real need when I can shuffle them on Plex and not have to worry about switching discs. I'd love to see a picture of everything you have. I think some of the digital ones are also uncensored, does that carry over to the BDs?

It's also not difficult to buy them....you just go on Amazon and click Buy. Retailers are choosing not to support physical media due to low margins and low consumer interest. The floorspace is being used for other things now. It's the new normal and only going to get worse.

Alan Smithee

The newer HD episodes have been uncensored, haven’t watched the HD versions of the older ones yet so don’t know if they went back and uncensored those, the beeps were often part of the humor early on.

I clicked Buy last night for the newest disc, but over 12 hours later I still don’t have it yet. I miss Fry’s…

morriscroy

This explanation is "TOO OBVIOUS" to be "true".

Every conspiracy explanation has to have a "prince of darkness" pulling the strings behind the scenes.


He is a true believer in the "the tail wagging the dog" style of conspiracies !!!

Josh-da-man

There is little doubt that the studios like the digital purchase/streaming model, and probably prefer it to physical media because it means they don't have to manufacture a physical product, distribute the product, and fight for shelf space in stores with other similar physical products. Not to mention the amount of control the DRM gives them.

I also think the movie industry saw what happened around 2000, when mp3s and Napster completely disrupted the music industry, and wanted to get ahead of the curve on that one. They were more eager to adopt the iTunes and Netflix models instead of fighting them.

But, at the same time, you are discounting the shift in consumer attitudes over ownership. I think that a lot of people overbought DVDs during their heyday and regret buying up a bunch of $20 discs that they watched once or twice, then just sit around their houses on shelves gathering dust. Buying complete seasons (or even runs) of tv shows was popular for a while, when just about everything on tv was released to DVD (even reality shows like Survivor and The Apprentice). I suspect that a lot of these either went unsold or were bought by people who n ever even watched them, and the sudden dearth of tv releases was sort of the canary in the coal mine for the format.

The upcoming generation, the millennials or whatever we want to call them, are very different from previous generations. Faced with extraordinary housing costs (both buying homes and renting apartments), their living spaces are getting smaller and smaller, they move around more, and are, generally, much more mobile than we were. When you're bouncing around from one shoebox apartment to another, you don't want a bunch of heavy boxes of stuff to drag around from place to place, and also don't want to have what little living space they taken up by CDs, DVDs, and books. They have been trained to spend their disposable income on consumable things like craft beers, escape rooms, and vacations instead of collecting physical objects.

What you're looking at is a paradigm shift in buying habits and cultural attitudes. The world has moved beyond DVDs and blu-rays the same way it did 8-tracks and VHS. Those formats were replaced by formats that were both smaller and higher quality (cassettes/CDs, and DVD/Blu-ray), and the consumers followed with them. Those formats, in turn, were replaced by things that offered similar quality, but more convenience and that don't take up any space at all.

And, yeah, I remember DIVX. It's just like a DVD, but you have to pay each time you watch it! And it is ironic that so many of the people who rejected DIVX have also embraced streaming and digital purchases, but much of the consternation around DIVX seems to have come from the idea that you own a physical object, store it in your home, but still have to pay each time you use it, or if you did buy it (DIVX Gold, wasn't it called?), need to keep it tied down to your account.

morriscroy

The primary reason some highly technical folks found DIVX really distasteful in those days, was when it was discovered that it used the DES encryption algorithm. (Technically it was triple-DES). Anybody who was familiar with cryptography in those days, knew that there were no easy ways known to crack DES other than brute force of going through the entire keyspace of 56-bit keys.

Nowadays it is even worse when vod video streaming services are using public key encryption type algorithms, which is tied to your login (and/or password).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography

Much harder to crack than "static" physical optical disc based systems.

PhantomStranger

VR is believed to be the next big thing. So baby holodecks.

Gizmo

Literally every movie and TV show on streaming services is dumped within 24 hours in 1080p or higher. Not sure what encryption crap is happening behind the scenes, but I can grab whatever I want really fast. Even The Nevers, which is going to premiere its second season "live" only on the 13th will be available on the high seas within 20 minutes of it airing.

Adam Tyner

Let’s not talk about piracy.

PhantomStranger

That would be a great movie title.

Alan Smithee

Or how bout "We Need to Talk About Piracy"?

I hate to say it, but that may become a bigger problem for the studios if physical media goes away. Some say the low subscription prices of services was a good way to fight that (I asked on another forum if Disney could really make enough money off subscriptions at $6.99 per month and someone said they were just happy to have people paying anything rather than stealing their content- prices have since gone up twice since then though), but as prices go up I've heard some say they'll be going back to that.

orangerunner

It's hard to make heads-or-tails logic with consumer buying habits. What you wrote is completely true but oddly enough this is same age group who have been buying a considerable amount of large, expensive, cumbersome and fragile vinyl records to play on bulky, heavy and expensive turntables.

Does the nostalgia factor supersede the minimalist lifestyle trends?

davidlynchfan

For me anyways...movies nowadays aren't really worth owning, they're just disposable entertainment. Been there, done that back in the 70s and 80s with real special effects and not computer junk.

milo bloom

I still consider myself a collector and I still regret buying a lot of the discs I did back in the day. The used stores would do a "buy three, get three free" thing and if I really only wanted to 2 discs, I'd force myself to find 4 more to get the whole six and I really wish I hadn't for a lot of them.

And every thrift store has so many titles just sitting, I go in regularly and see the same stuff sitting for weeks. Or, some of have stopped bothering with them altogether since they just take up shelf space and don't move well.

I'm a lot more picky these days, and I hope the boutique labels stick around a while.

DJariya

While some people in the states are rooting for physical media to die, it’s still big in Australia. I could spend hours in a store like this.

TheBang

Here are the numbers from 2022:
https://www.degonline.org/wp-content...rid-2.6.23.pdf

I’m a bit shocked, but digital sell-through outgrosses physical media, $2.5B vs $1.6B. Apparently, it surpassed physical media sales in 2020. Even digital rentals now surpass physical media revenues, at $1.7B.

Streaming subscriptions dwarf everything at $30.3B out of the $36.6B total pie, or 83% of all home entertainment revenues.

Josh-da-man

I don't think people are rooting for physical media to die, at least most here aren't.

Personally, I like the idea of having a library of books, movies, and music that I can enjoy any time I want to. Pull a book off of the shelf, open it up, and read it. Pop a CD into my player and put it on while I lift weights. Put an LP on the turntable and savor it all of its analog glory. Stick a movie in the blu-ray player and enjoy it for a couple of hours in beautiful high definition.

But the handwriting is on the wall, and all we can do is make peace with it. The world is moving beyond people like us. Just look at DVD and blu-ray discs. Quality control is slipping. The packaging is getting cheaper and flimsier. Disc art and booklets are a thing of the past. Packed special editions are no more. The big studios have been cutting costs, and we're now at a point where these things are released almost as an afterthought with little care for quality or craft. Hell, even the quality of books has been slipping. Binding and paper quality have gotten shoddier and shoddier as the books have become more and more expensive. And I don't think I've bought a CD in over ten years, so I can't say what they are like anymore.

And there just aren't enough people interested in owning DVD/blu-ray/UHD movies to make the studios care or to get stores to stock them. I don't want "digital" to replace physical media, but it's going to happen whether I, or anyone else here, likes it or not. I'll just try to make my peace with it.

ViewAskewbian

I'm just happy we had a window of time when studios restored their films, produced making of documentaries, directors did commentary tracks, deleted scenes, etc. When DVD came around it was a no brainer to jump on that train as a film lover because, for the most part, films I loved came with so much more to dig into.

BobO'Link

CD's are pretty much the same as they've been all along. Most still come in jewel cases and you have a few pretending to be environmentally conscious by using paperboard type cases. I've not seen a CD in a digipak/digibook in a very long time so maybe that horrible packaging is gone for good. I'd be OK with purchasing my music digitally *if* they'd just sell me lossless files. As long as all you can purchase digitally are mp3's I'll continue to purchase my music on CD and rip them to flac for car/portable use.

TheBang

Well, the good news for you is that almost everything is available for digital purchase in lossless. Both Qobuz and 7Digital have almost everything that is available for streaming (almost 100 million tracks) also available for purchase in lossless quality. For newer releases they're also often available in high-res lossless (better than CD quality).

https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/shop
https://us.7digital.com/

Adam Tyner

orangerunner

It's shocking how the industry has cheapened-out on the packaging over the last 10-12 years with flimsy eco-pak cases, thin paper insert covers that usually get punctured - all with environmental seal-of-approval.

Why did the industry feel the need to cheapen-down these products? The environmental angle was just an excuse to cut costs and appear socially-conscious and noble. Where did they get the notion that consumers would buy a Blu-ray, pop-out the discs and toss the package into the garbage? These are products which consumers pay $25 for! I've seen more care, attention, quality, creativity and craftsmanship in the cardboard box of a 99 cent tube of toothpaste.

PhantomStranger

Studios saw a market with no growth and decided to increase profits by reducing costs. It's why they wanted the digital revolution - increased profit margins.

BobO'Link

Exactly. That's painfully obvious when the price of a digital product is the same or higher than the identical product in physical form. You really want me to buy into digital then the savings of no case, no storage, no transportation, need to be passed along in the purchase price but when a BR is ~$25 and you're charging ~$25 for a digital copy that I typically can't dl to archive... I'll go physical every time.