Iron_Giant

Been buying 4K disks since I bought my $K HDTV last Nov, have about 26 now.

Have not bought a DVD for about 10 years...never will again.

Still buying Movie, just in 4K now.

Why So Blu?

That's entirely possible. My system purchases 1 license from the vendor and folks can access it via their Libby, Overdrive, or Cloud Library app - depending on how the library has it set up. Whereas, the library can purchase more print books assuming the digital license is expensive. Now, I don't know how much our library pays for digital licenses or what agreements they have with publishers, though.

loyal ninja

Lack of quality releases in my region. I don't know if it may be distributors trying to cut corners, or if it's exclusive to specific retailers. But even major releases and so-called "collector's editions" are often printed in flimsy eco cases with paper-thin, artless discs and absent any inserts. And retailers still have the nerve to charge me an upward of USD$17.99 for such releases.

I hear some countries have excellent release quality. Anything I've ever imported from Japan (although limited to CDs and video games) was way sturdier and contained a great deal more content than what you'd find here in the U.S. Unfortunately, I can't think of any way to circumvent regional lockouts on DVD and Blu-ray players, so video imports seem to be out of the question.

Jason

Movies Anywhere did it for me. Being able to shop around, get the occasional sale or deal, and have all my movies available from multiple devices (Apple, Amazon Fire TV, etc) was enough for me to finally ditch most physical purchases. I'm tired of amassing large collections of stuff. My DVDs I no longer want are worthless, so it's not like there will ever be a used or collector market for newer stuff.

JoeyOhhhh

I've been slowly building up a digital library, and mostly have kept must have favorites as far as discs.

Having said that, its real difficult to want to buy any 4K catalog titles lately when the digital price undercuts them heavily.

Last week, iTunes had Batman Returns on sale for $7.99 - and all 4 of the Burton/Schumacher films for $20 - a far cry from the $25.99 price they are carrying for the 4K discs a piece.

Alan Smithee

OTOH you might be able to sell your unwanted discs for a few pennies, while you can't even GIVE away your unwanted digital movies- although I've heard the providers will be happy to delete them for you, giving you nothing back in return.

Japan is the same region for Blu-Ray as the US, so no need to worry about region lockouts on those. (Good luck buying any 'digital' movies from Japan and watching them here.) Yes, the flimsy hole-filled cases, lack of inserts and plain disc labels are making media less attractive, when done right the packaging can make it MORE attractive.

DJariya

It's pretty simple for me. I can't afford to spend $25-30 on single movies. I'll make a rare exception every now and then. I have other more important things to do than buy movies all the time.

and with the glut of quality and affordable streaming services on the market, there is so much video content to watch, that it often delays me watching any backlog on physical movies that I want to watch.

and then there's the movie theatre subscription services like AMC and now Regal. I've seen practically all the major new movies that I want to see in a month with the low monthly fee of $20/month. Now there's no urgency for me to watch it again right away let alone own it.

I liked Alita Battle Angel when I saw it in IMAX 3D months ago, but I don't want it that bad that I need to spend $30+tax for it.

ytrez

After the first 2000 or so discs collecting lost a little bit of its luster.

When I first started collecting DVDs way back when it wasn't uncommon to get 20 in a week. Places like 800.com were literally giving them away. Other places were regularly doing buy 1 get 1 free. Shops fueled by venture capitalists during the dot com boom were great. It spoiled me into getting bargains on the movies I bought. Now when I buy I'm buying 4k discs now and like to wait until I can get that good deal. I almost never pay full price.

LorenzoL

I have cut spending substantially on discs the last few years as I’m not interested in spending the obscene amount of money that I did anymore. I also purchased a house so I have mortgage and home improvement expenses that I need to make.

Having subscriptions to streaming services along with MA, iTunes and Vudu that makes it easier for me to use the streaming option. I don’t purchase everything on digital either. I’m very selective to what movies I buy and the days of buying movies blindly is long gone.

As other board members have indicated, the moving experience was a real eye opener to the fact that I had thousands of DVDs and Blu-rays, some of them unwatched, that I needed to bring to my new place and find a spot to store them.

Josh-da-man

And how many of those have you rewatched? There's probably only ten percent or so of your massive collection that you actually rewatch.

I figured this out a while back; we amass these huge collections of DVDs and blu-rays, and we keep adding to them because new movies come out every week. And, on top of that, there's a steady stream of stuff coming out on Netflix, Prime, Hulu, and (soon) Disney+.

And, if you're on the other side of forty (which you probably are if you're still buying discs and have a 2000-deep collection), then you're past the halfway point in your life expectancy. If you haven't watched that copy of "Run Lola Run" again in the past twenty years, do you really think you're going to watch it again in the next twenty?

It really depresses me when I think about how I probably have about four or five decades left if I'm lucky, and there are thousands of movies left for me to watch (and rewatch), thousands of books I'll never get around to reading, and thousands of albums I'll probably never get around to listening to again, or even for the first time. There are only so many hours in a day, and we have jobs and families and lives outside of consuming art.

Mike86

Coral

I think that's the biggest problem that turned off people from buying as much now - the inability to re-watch something... whether its by choice or not.

There are so many options for entertainment these days and it's all easily accessible. Why re-watch a movie when there are just so many other movies you haven't seen yet available at your fingertips via streaming? So if you're not going to re-watch, then why buy it in the first place? Then TV shows are playing a huge factor as well. There are just so many TV series to watch on cable and streaming - which is more time taken away from re-watching a movie.
Music and books are readily available as well. Then there's a crap-ton of video games.

There's just too many other things to watch, listen to, read and play that makes re-watching something you already saw seem pointless.

This is another reason why I don't care about the extras for the VERY few movies I do buy. Why would I watch the extras when I could just be watching another mvoie/show, etc instead?

robin2099

I was listening to the Retronauts podcast awhile back and they talked about what killed the rental stores. One of the things they mentioned was that DVD helped to kill the rental stores. because the stores had to rebuy a large portion of their inventory when VHS became obsolete. They also talked about the lie of DVD, which is that people figured they would keep rewatching these movies over and over again, until people realized that was not really true and that helped kill sales of the next generation of movie platforms. Both of those reasons sum up why I stopped collecting.

Josh-da-man

TV on disc was a real growth market for a while, but I think people figured out that they're never going to rewatch, or even watch, most of this stuff.

I bought the first three seasons on The Walking Dead on blu-ray (Black Friday sales, so cheap) and watched part of the first season. Seasons two and three are still unopened. So I haven't picked up anything past three. I'd sort of like to sit down and rewatch the whole thing. And ditto for Lost and Buffy-Angel and X-Files and all of the Star Treks and Babylon 5 and Game of Thrones... and, Christ, I just don't have the time with all of the new stuff constantly coming out. Shit, I still haven't watched all of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and Handmaid's Tale.

Alan Smithee

They killed rental stores for me because for the first time just about everything was priced low enough for me to buy outright, as opposed to $40 laserdiscs or $100 tapes. When the studios were threatening to start pricing DVDs the same as VHS tapes which would make them $100 or so upon release, I vowed never to rent DVDs and only buy them. I worked at a theater at the time so I'd already seen just about every new movie anyways, so I knew which ones I wanted to buy. I never saw stores replace EVERY VHS title they had on DVD, most stores that rented them just had the new releases and a few certified classics like Top Gun.

davidlynchfan

PhantomStranger

That's more or less what I decided as well when DVD came around. DVDs became cheap enough and were frequently available enough at discount, that I would buy movies that I used to rent during the VHS era.

JeffTheAlpaca

Maybe physical media might make a comeback if people can't get all of the movies they like with one streaming service and you don't want to pay for a Disney streaming service too just to see Star Wars movies when you have Netflix.

Hazel Motes

Maybe not the most conventional reason, but I cut back this year because I spent most of my money travelling to wrestling shows across Canada and the USA.

Alan Smithee

Well, my official reason now is lack of space. I have no more shelf space, all overflow must now be stored in neatly-stacked boxes. I still want to keep the industry in business, but have no choice but to cut back at least until I finally move to a bigger place. Digital purchases will NOT be increasing for me however.

TomOpus

The industry will be fine. You need to think more about YOU.

milo bloom

I've slipped lately, I've found a couple used titles here and there and I've even bought two new releases at retail.

I still don't have room for them, but my wife and I hope to go through the collection this winter and cull out stuff that isn't worth keeping. She would love to stream everything, if it's not on Netflix or Hulu, she'll find it...by other means...

But I still love the collecting aspect and still grab titles here and there.

DeanoBKN

Once I stopped the majority of my blind buys, so did my weekly purchases. Typically a rental from Redbox or stream will do the trick, and unless I really enjoyed the movie, I never felt the need to add to my collection.
However, a few years ago I started collecting limited editions from the likes of Filmarena, KimchiDVD, Nova, etc. So instead of buying new movies i'm just replacing the current versions I have now for some beefed up ones.

mattysemo247

I've mentioned it in other threads, but library rentals have also filled in a lot of gaps for us. I currently have Aladdin, MIB International, and John Wick 3 on a 2 week check out from our local library, all on Blu Ray.

slop101

I've even slowed down on Criterion titles - mostly because I think I already have everything I'd want from them - that Bergman set was certainly a big way to go out!
I still buy the occasional steelbook (only if it's a new release and/or I don't already have the movie in 4K or blu), and Marvel movies - but that seems to be it. I'm sure I'm missing some great new movies - movies better than many I already own, but I can't care about something I don't know.