Quote:
Originally Posted by PenguinMaster
Digital subscriptions are gaining momentum, digital purchases are not. Most people love digital primarily because it's cheap. If physical media went away completely most customers that are currently buying physical media probably would be willing to buy digital, but they wouldn't be willing to pay the same prices. So it would be less profitable overall.
If you can't see that discs are still selling great then you're not looking hard enough. Are they selling worse than they used to? Absolutely. Are they "on the way out"? Absolutely not.
But if physical media was failing there would be even more reason to support it. Unlike digital if physical media stops being supported all the discs will still continue to work. Every title released on disc is another title that no one can possibly take away.
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I've said this before (possibly even in this thread) and I'll say it again... while digital distribution (be it streaming or sales) is having an impact on physical sales, the reality is that the overall decline in physical media sales was inevitable, even if digital never came along as an option.
At it's height, DVD was the biggest sell-through medium ever for home media of any sort (physical or digital). It was toted as being longer lasting than VHS, had bonus features, etc. People who may not have been big collectors in the VHS days (maybe owned some movies, but did a lot of renting) were collecting more.
But the reality is that once they add titles to their collection, collectively they are less likely to go out and buy them again in a future re-release (be it on DVD with more features, or on another format entirely).
Star Wars Rogue One sold extremely well on release, with 83% of it's sales being on Blu-Ray. But now that many, many people own it, only a
fraction of them are going to be willing to rebuy it on a future re-release in a better format/quality (i.e. in 4K, for example).
We are simply at a point where most major and somewhat less-than-major catalog titles have been released, in some cases a few times over. People who want to hang onto their movies already have their older favorites for the most part. Back then people were buying up those titles in addition to the then-newly released movies coming out after their theatrical runs.
So it's mostly new releases and the occasional catalog title that didn't have a prior release that are generating the most physical sales now. And those sales are doing just fine. But of course collectively they aren't going to add up to as much as during the big DVD "boom."
While I fully understand the studios wanting to make as much money as possible, this is really something that they should have anticipated. They are only going to be able to sell essentially the same thing to the same people so many times before those sales drop off. So for those titles, they now basically have to rely on the occasional DVD or Blu-Ray purchase, the handful of people buying them digitally, and/or the money they get from subscription agreements from Netflix and the like, and of course TV/cable airings.
It doesn't mean that physical media is on it's death-bed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by alchav21
I'm not worried, do you see me worried, but you guys should be. I say it doesn't look good, and Discs are on the way out. No matter what you guys say, owning and looking through a bunch of Discs is archaic. Doesn't it make more sense to have everything organized in Digital Files. We are in a Connected World, and Discs have out lived their usefulness.
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I don't see why we should be worried.
As huge as digital music sales are, for example, they still haven't fully killed off the CD (and even vinyl had a niche resurgence in recent years). We aren't that far off from it being 20 years since Napster first started as a file sharing site and the controversy that followed (hard to believe it's almost been that long), and it wasn't long after that before music started being officially sold digitally. And digital has had a much bigger effect on the music industry thus far than it has on the movie/TV industry in respect to sales.
And even if hypothetically the manufacturing of DVDs and Blu-Rays were to 100% stop cold-turkey, it doesn't mean our existing collections suddenly stop working.
I'm not
entirely anti some aspects of digital distribution. I do have Netflix and Hulu subscriptions, and I have redeemed some digital copies that have come with my physical purchases. But I will not be giving up my physical collection in favor of going 100% digital, as at some point I would most certainly lose access to at least some content that I care about that I now have on physical media.
As far as the organizational argument goes, digital is very limited IMO. On Vudu, for example (which is what I use for most of my redeemed digital copies), the only useful organizational options seems to be alphabetical. Other options are in order of code redemption, which IMO is really only useful for access a recently redeemed movie if I want to watch it right away.... after a while the order in which they were redeemed doesn't matter.
And even the alphabetical order option is somewhat flawed in some circumstances. For instance, I have my Disney Movies Anywhere account (from my Disney digital redemptions) linked to my Vudu account. And I have both of the Avengers movies redeemed. The problem is that one is listed as "Marvel's The Avengers" while the other is simply under "Avengers," so one movie gets alphabetized within the titles that start with "M," while the other gets put with titles that start with "A."
And on the topic of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a specific example, I have all of the movies released on Blu-Ray to date, and I specifically and purposely in order of release, and not alphabetically (i.e. in order of: Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America, Avengers, Iron Man 3, Thor 2, Cap 2, etc...). Since it's all one big connected film universe with there being a continuity that is built with these films in order that they were released, I find this easier to keep track of that order. It keeps it more fresh in my mind seeing my collection in that order, rather than mixing them in alphabetically with other unrelated movies, and then trying to piece it back together later if I decide to watch the movies in order sometime down the road.
And with Star Wars now doing these "side" movies, some people may opt to organize those in their collection in continuity order (i.e. placing Rogue One between Episodes III and IV on the shelf), or they may opt to organize the "side" movies separately from the main "saga."
And then there are cases of direct sequels that have titles that don't sync up alphabetically (Batman Begins followed by The Dark Knight, Jurassic Park followed by The Lost World, Romancing the Stone followed by Jewel of the Nile, etc.).
And the whole "connected world," while valid in some respects, is extremely ridiculous in other respects.
I get the convenience of having digital copies when away from home. I even somewhat get the convenience of them in terms of not having to get up to swap out a movie if you want to watch a few in a row (though I would likely still opt for the disc if I'm at home... usually better quality unless it's a movie that I only have on DVD and the digital is in HD).
But at the same time, being almost completely dependent upon an internet connection for streaming a purchased movie - something that has otherwise not been needed in most other respects to watch a movie at home - is kind of silly IMO. If the connection goes down, so does your access to the content, at least for a time. Even if you have a great connection that almost never goes down (which in my experience, while it works most of the time, I have far more problems with my internet connection than say the electricity running to my place), it is still an additional variable that can potentially cause a problem with being able to watch the content that you want.
I'll admit this is a purpose absurd comparison to illustrate the point, but to me it's kind of like arguing that we should all have toilets that require an internet connection in order to be able to flush some simply on the basis that we live in a "connected world." Why add something that can otherwise go wrong?
We NEED electricity in order to watch movies at home, regardless of the medium (disc, streamed, or whatever). We NEED running water/working plumbing for our toilets, sinks, and showers to work. But we don't necessarily need internet, and I don't see the point in adding a variable where one doesn't need to be.
In the case of media, I get having internet
as an option for streaming services like Netflix for content that you may not necessarily want to buy, and I guess to an extent I can see option to watch a digital copy for the sake of convenience to not always have to get up and get the disc, but for content that I am flat out
buying to keep and have ongoing access to, even if it comes with a digital copy as a bonus, I want the physical version that is
not dependent on neither my internet connection working, nor the service at the other end being perpetually maintained and never changing with regard to my content being available (no matter how obscure any given piece of content may be).
As long as those physical versions continue to be an options, those are the ones that I will go with.
Quote:
Originally Posted by zodwriter
You are certainly different from most true collectors then. Getting rid of the cases and packaging for more efficient storage while practical kind of defeats the purpose. Might as well go digital and save the shelf space. That's really what this is about for myself and many of the people I know who have gone digital. Living space is limited and the realities of life highlight far greater priorities than moving about with large collections of Blu Rays and DVDs.
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Not really...
While some collectors care about the packaging that the movie comes in and want to keep it in as best of shape as possible, others may not care about packaging, but still prefer physical media for all of the various reasons that Penguin Master, me, and many others have pointed out here (i.e. not losing access, not being dependent on internet and the servers at the other end, etc.).
And there are those who care to an extent about packaging, but not necessarily the official packaging. There is a whole ongoing thread in the North Amercian Blu-Ray section on this site for custom cover art that people print up and use. And there are several websites out there for that sort of thing as well. These days the studios often use crappy photoshopped images for the covers, so for older movies, people may make custom ones based on original theatrical posters, or just simply make something that looks better to many people than the official release.
And some people use these options also as a way to save shelf space (i.e. putting a related series of movies/sequels that were purchased separately in one multi-disc case and having cover art that corresponds with that series).
Some people care about, collect, and covet the cardboard slip covers that come on many movies, especially when they first come out. Others don't care about them, and sell theirs to others on here to get a few bucks back, or sometimes just throw them away.
This isn't some kind of black-or-white issue here where people who don't care about the official packaging should just give up on physical media altogether. That's just absurd.
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