Alan Smithee

And sadly we have also come pretty far in terms of people here loosening up, because during DVDs heyday more people were worried about content owners being able to take away access to movies at any time for any reason, and saw DIVX as something that had to be stopped. Here we are with studios pushing digital, including releasing titles several weeks early in order to push people towards it, and we hardly ever hear about this topic anymore. I still say early digital releases are the new DIVX, remembering a few popular titles that showed up on that before they were on DVD.

Best Buy of course never carried DIVX and pushed DVD. I went to their first store in the area the first day it opened in 1999, with what it's become nowadays I hardly even bother going in anymore.

Hazel Motes

Best Buy was never the gold standard for Physical Media anyhow. They definitely had their place. But they very rarely ever colored outside the lines. They've always been mostly big studio stuff. They were good for a sale on an expensive box set, or a cool steelbook. But 95% of the titles I look for, Best Buy doesn't carry. So I can't really say I'll miss it. As long as they keep doing steelbooks, even if its online only, I'll be fine.

morriscroy

There is one local BB outlet which exactly fits this description. I don't bother going to this particular outlet anymore. (This particular outlet was renovated around 5 or 6 months ago or so).

No point in wasting any time there. They didn't even have a $5 dump bin!

PhantomStranger

You hit the nail on the head. The studios wanted to nip piracy in the bud before switching to fully digital distribution. They ultimately want to kill physical media beyond very expensive box sets with fat profit margins.

There is no shrinkage or middlemen involved when you can sell digital video directly to consumers.

DthRdrX

Well, once again I hit up BB after work on a Tuesday and nothing is available that I wanted. Bladerunner is sold out within 250 miles of my address, and it looks like they got next to nothing in. Target and WM didn't even stock it.

E Unit

I'm more shocked Gizmo is still alive.

Alan Smithee

Tower Records probably would've stocked it if they were still in business. So nice of Best Buy to kill them on pricing and help put them out of business, and THEN decide they don't want to sell this stuff anymore.

Inhumans99

This thread is making me chuckle...everyone knows that a teensy tiny selection of only the latest titles at stores like BB and Target was the inevitable result of the race to the bottom price for blus (and even then DthRdrX's experience trying to pick up Blade Runner in 4K shows that you are lucky to be able to even grab the latest and greatest at Target, Best Buy, etc.).

No one is willing to pay Shout/Kino/Twilight Time prices for catalog prices at Best Buy, which is the only way they could afford to take up valuable floor space selling physical media.


To those who say sure, I would pay higher prices for the convenience of walking into a store and not having to deal with pre-orders, waiting days/weeks for delivery, not worrying about receiving damaged product, there are not enough of you out there no matter how loud y'all are on the internet. Heck, even the boutique labels are racing to the bottom and struggling...Twilight Time has had more sales in the past 2 years than you can shake a stick at.

I should put up the gif of Homer Simpson raising his arm up and raging against the sky, those days in the past when you could spend a ton of time perusing the physical media sections at BB and Fry's were freaking awesome and a great way to kill a couple of weekend hours, but this soon to be 46 year old has come to accept that those days are never coming back.

Best Buy wants nothing to do with $5 blus, and I get it, they are better served putting up a wall of rocketfish/insignia/belkin/etc., phone/tablet accessories which they can sell for at least $10-20 a pop and for the most part do not have to deal with a subset of the population who will spend a ton of energy getting BB to price match to save a quarter on a blu ray.

The amount of people that would post on DVD Talk complaining that they would never shop at BB again because they could not hector the store manager into price matching so they could save another buck off a $12.99 blu ray, the only item in their cart, of course...yeah, there is a reason why BB's infamous "devil" customer memo exists and if less physical media keeps this customer from shopping at BB than I suspect the shareholders are not crying in their beer.

davidh777

Aside from Amazon yanking 1984, how many other digital purchases have been yanked out of customers' collections?

GreenMonkey

I didn't even realize this was coming out on 4k. I looked, same deal here (Michigan). Temporarily OOS on Amazon also. Geez.

Trevor

I guess we could count every non-UV thing that anyone bought at Flixter, Target Ticket, CinemaWare, etc

davidh777

Valid point, but not really the same as "studios yanking it for any reason at any time."

Don't get me wrong--I'm as concerned as anyone about services going out of business and taking my collection with them. That's why I resisted Comixology until they were bought by Amazon. But the idea that studios are going to start yanking stuff just because they can is way overblown, as is the idea that customers who buy into digital are stupid because they refuse to acknowledge this threat.

Trevor

Very true. I wasn't really reading the thread but your comment jumped out at me and the Flixter stuff is fresh in my mind.

I agree with you and very little fear of ever losing my digital rights.

Gizmo

None of that was "yanked" though. Those are simply sites to redeem codes on and as far as I know, if you have a proper UV account setup, they all just migrated over to your UV locker. I had some random CinemaNow/Target Ticket stuff that shows up on my VUDU (though, it was probably already there).

As a bonus for me and many, Flixster went out and a lot of "exclusive" shows and movies just populated into my Vudu (Adventure Time seasons!!! finally!).

hdnmickey

What can happen, and did happen to me recently, is that they screw up something on their end and your whole digital collection becomes unavailable due to a glitch totally on their end. And even though mine got fixed relatively quickly, I was reading that others had it go on for much, much longer before every getting any resolution. Some are still waiting.

Gizmo

Who is they?

DthRdrX

What I am hearing is they had a "shortage" of them nationwide. Walmart same deal. Target lists it as online only.

Sounds awfully like a lot of 3D discs lately.

hdnmickey

Never actually got a straight answer. Really freaked me out when my daughter came up to me and said almost all of our online movies were no longer working. Me and many others (based on the forum searching to confirm the issue) apparently had to deal with UV blaming VUDU and VUDU blaming UV. But after finally getting a straight answer on how to fix it, I was able to get the 3/4 of my UV collection back that had suddenly vanished.

kd5

Our Best Buy still has several aisles of videos although they have been dwindling somewhat (used to be more). I still shop Best Buy's video selections from time to time, sometimes I'll buy something, sometimes I don't. My collection is reaching the point where I have practically everything I've ever wanted although there will probably be exceptions to that rule. If Best Buy ever gets rid of their physical media altogether, I'll have no reason to shop in their store anymore. I realize I'm a minority, but that possibility still sucks.

hdnmickey

My biggest beef with Best Buy is (at least the stores around here) went overboard with the whole random shelf stocking method rather than having the bulk of their titles simply ordered alphabetically by genre. Pretty ridiculous to have to search through mutable random shelves/end caps to find the one title I want that they actually have in stock, and even the guys on the floor can't walk right to it. when I ask.

Alan Smithee

Vudu used to have porn, but when Wal-Mart bought them out they removed it because it's naughty. I don't want anyone deciding that I shouldn't be watching something I bought, even if they refund me for it. I think CinemaNow had porn also and got rid of it when Best Buy bought them, but I didn't have anything that could access that til afterwards, now it's all gone anyways. I do "own" one $5 movie on CinemaNow that I bought with Target Ticket credit and isn't UltraViolet (Hillbillies in a Haunted House), guess that's gone forever now.

I'll simply stop collecting movies if digital becomes the only way they're available. The best the industry will get from me will be digital rentals or cheap subscriptions, and I likely won't be spending tons of money on the best equipment to watch them on. Electronics companies are already in danger of losing me as a customer if they don't include 3D on any future TVs- even if they stopped making 3D movies altogether, I've still got more than 300 3D Blu-Rays that I'll always want to be able to watch.

Josh-da-man

Yeah, it is a fucking mess. The organization started going downhill once they combined the DVDs and blu-rays.

Really the home video section is so small that they should just organize the whole thing alphabetically, and drop the various genres.

Alan Smithee

And for the hundredth time I have to wonder why they even still CARRY regular DVDs? You can't buy a non-HDTV at Best Buy anymore, seems they would want to focus on the BEST things to play on the TVs they do sell! They could carry a lot more Blu-Ray titles if they dumped the regular DVDs altogether- it's time to stick a fork in DVD, and I say that as someone who still uses every past analog video format at home!

Adam Tyner

Because people still want them and buy them. More than BDs, even.

You could argue that DVDs are the "Best Buy" because you get to watch the same content in respectable quality at a lower price than other formats. Heck, you get a wider selection to boot! Best Buy also sells cheap LCD TVs instead of just OLEDs, you can buy used games from previous generations of consoles, you can buy refrigerators that have fewer features than the most top of the line fridges, etc.

Gizmo

It's been a long time but when Wal-Mart bough VUDU they removed the "After Dark" section shortly after. Anyone that owned a movie got a full refund. Since that point, I don't believe any movie has been "removed" from a VUDU library unless it was a glitch or the studio was changing over rights/poster artwork.

When Target Ticket went away all content was made available on CinemaNow. If they didn't have it, a refund was given (unsure if in gift card format or cash refund). When CinemaNow went away I think everything went over to VUDU (like when Barnes and Nobles Nook went away - there was some vaulted Disney titles they were still selling and they issued out redemption codes for VUDU - I remember Lion King 1 1/2 and Bambi being one of them. No longer for sale anywhere but still redeemable).

I'm sorry you lost your $5 movie but's its really no different from when one of your Laserdiscs, CEDs, DVDs stop working. The studio will not just send you another one for free, you would need to re-puchase. How often would that happen?

The sky is not falling and getting a movie removed from someones library is incredibly rare and usually just a simple glitch. I don't see any widespread problems and sometimes it's as simple as not linking up one studios account to your UV locker (which in itself is really confusing).

If VUDU goes (which Wal-mart owns, so very doubtful), I'm sure another solution will pop up. It's just like when Circuit City closed - DVDs and Blu-rays were still sold elsewhere. They were not the only retailer.