Quote:
Originally Posted by CraigW
pagemaster's agenda on BD is just to spread FUD.
Sure sales of packaged media are down, but much of that has to do with the fact that most of the economy has been in the dumps for the past 4.5 years. Some of it is due to the novelty of collecting wearing off for some, BUT if it was truly a money losing business the studios would be walking away from it. FACT is most businesses are not making the profit that they were when the economy was booming in the late 90s and early 00s.
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I agree.
I also think one of the reasons why packaged media sales are down compared to what they were once at is simply saturation. When the DVD format went mainstream, it "boomed" in a really major way. Unlike VHS tapes which are known to degrade over time, DVD was toted as being a format that would last a long time (even if Blu-Ray is now more durable with the scratch resistant coating). As long as people take care of their discs, they will last a long, long time. That combined with things like bonus features, documtaries, and even theatrical trailers, making many DVDs sort of like a nice catch all of not only the movie itself but a way of preserving the making of and marketing of the movie, made it a more collectible medium.
And then we saw the advent of entire TV series being released in season sets, which didn't happen much in the VHS days outside of a few select shows like the different Star Trek series because it really wasn't viable or efficient to do so.
This made DVD collectors out of many people who mainly rented during the VHS days, and made "uber" collectors out of those who already collected movies to some degree on VHS and other previous formats. And as a result
the selling (as opposed to renting) took off in an unprecedentedly huge way.
Also back during the VHS days, it was common for many movies to come out at rental stores first for a few months before being sold at regular retailers (and rental stores paid big money for those VHS copies from what I understand). There were a few exceptions to this, often major blockbuster films, but not many. During the days of laserdisc and early days of DVD, it was very common for the laserdisc and/or DVD versions of many movies to be released for general sale to the public at the same time that the VHS was only available for rental since at the time the formats had a niche audience and were typically paying premium for them anyway.
But as DVD gradually came more into the mainstream and VHS gradually faded away, the pattern of holding back a movie for general sale and having a rental exclusive window faded away as well.
This is a big part of why stores like Blockbuster were already not doing so great for a few years even before things like Netflix came onto the scene. People were no longer forced to rent a movie if they want to watch it at home as soon as possible... they now had the choice to buy it. And since many of the mom & pop rentals stores had died off thanks to the likes of Blockbuster, and with Blockbuster's rental prices often being rather high, many people just opted to buy the movie.
As a result of all of this, DVD saturated the market. People bought all of their favorite movies and in some cases TV shows, and now have them at home to watch anytime they want. The vast majority of major and even mediocre catalog titles has been released at some time or another and people already have them for the most part.
Now that this has happened, of course media sales are going to drop. People are still buying brand new titles and even the occasional catalog title that is just coming out for the first time or that they never got around to getting.
Blu-Ray has helped in preventing media sales from dropping further than they have. And sales wise, the format overall is doing just fine. While it may not quite be (and may never become) what DVD was at it's height, it's not laserdisc either. It's a very solid, successful format that will be around for many years to come. I'm not at all worried about the format as a whole going away anytime soon.
But the reason that it's not doing quite as well as DVD was at it's height is because of the sales saturation of DVDs. People who bought their favorite movies on DVD that they used to rent on VHS now have those movies sitting on their shelves at home. And for many average people (in other words people who aren't enthusiasts like most of us on this site are to some degree or another) aren't going to be as likely to rebuy all of their movies again. They may get a Blu-Ray player and buy newer movies that they don't already own on Blu-Ray, and even upgrade a few select catalog titles of major blockbuster movies (i.e. Star Wars, Indiana Jones, etc.). But they may not go out of their way to rebuy Happy Gilmore or Romy and Michele's High School Reunion to have them in HD.
This is why we are seeing a lot of catalog titles from major studios licensed out to these smaller distributors like Mill Creek and Echo Bridge. The studios have come to know that people aren't going to rush out and rebuy them all at $20 a pop like they did in many cases on DVD. They don't find it worth while to directly release these movies themselves, so they license them out in bulk to these budget distributors for some kind of bulk licensed rate, giving the original studio a reasonable chunk of cash all at once, and letting those smaller distributors sell the movies for $5-$10 each, which apparently is enough for them to make a profit or they wouldn't keep doing it. The low prices also give people who are on the fence more of an incentive to upgrade.
But make no mistake, Blu-Ray overall is doing fine, and the sales of new movies and bigger catalog titles is doing just fine.
Those who tend to argue in favor of digital distribution methods often try to argue that things like the poorer sales of some catalog titles (and those titles being licensed out) is a sign that people don't want physical media and instead want it digitally. But this is a logical fallacy in that many people just don't want to buy the same movie over and over again. If they are satisfied with the quality of the release that they already have at home, they have no reason to buy it again at all. And since Blu-Ray players play DVDs, even those who have upgraded to one don't have to rebuy ALL of their movies if they don't want to.
Different people have different priorities. Not everyone is as enthusiastic about rebuying the same movies in higher quality as many of us are here. By and large, people tend not to rebuy things that they already have unless what they currently have breaks or they see value and have a personal interest in upgrading. While I am interested in upgrading most of my movies and have done so in many cases, I don't have the same interest in doing that with everything that I own.
There may be fancier toasters out there that have more options and are superior to the one that I currently have at home, but since my toaster still works just fine and toasts my bread to my satisfaction, I'm not going to rush out and buy one. The fact that I'm not upgrading to one kind of fancier toaster right now does not mean that I'm specifically waiting for another... it means that I'm fine with the one I have and don't plan to replace it until I have to. The same goes for people not upgrading their movies to either Blu-Ray or some kind of digitally distributed version.
And in a down economy, people are going to be less likely to upgrade things that they already have a working version of. If a family has a limited entertainment budget, they are likely going to spend what money they can afford on buying a movie that they don't already have instead of upgrading one that they have on DVD.