Should the DVD Format Be Abolished?

[nikita70]

Originally Posted by ZoetMB

Don't be ridiculous. Formats get abolished when they stop selling. DVD, for better or worse, has not stopped selling, at least as compared to Blu-ray.

People who think that DVD should be abolished simply because Blu-ray is a technically better format and one that they love have absolutely no understanding of business.

It's like saying that McDonald's should shut down because Shake Shack serves far better food (and even though I personally would never eat in a McDonald's).

While DVD sales are falling substantially each year, they're still far better than BD sales.

This year, through 6/14 in the U.S., BD has only a 21% unit share (giving DVD a 79% share) and BD has a 31.5% dollar share (giving DVD a 68.5% share). As compared with last year, BD is up 1.93% in units, but down 1.19% in dollars.

For a medium that should still be growing quickly, that's lousy performance. Last year at this time, BD revenue was 18.37% ahead of 2012.

What's happened with BD vs. DVD is very different than what happened in the early 80s when cassettes dominated vinyl and in the 90s when CDs dominated cassettes. Cassettes became the dominant long-form media for audio in 1983, the same year CDs were introduced, when it achieved a 53% unit share for long-form audio media. CDs became the dominant long-form media for audio in 1993, when it achieved over 59% of long-form units (and 65% of all audio revenue) - that's 8 years after widespread introduction. It's now 8 years after BD introduction and it only has 21% of the units? Records stores began to phase out vinyl in early 1989. In 1988, vinyl had a 17% share of long-form media units. That's only 4% less than what BD has today. We're lucky they're not considering dropping BD.

Do you really think any executive is going to stop DVD production when it has a 79% unit share of physical media? Not happening. That would be professional suicide. About the most you could hope for is that everyone does what Criterion did and have one package that has both formats. But if they did that, it would probably kill the cheap ($8-$10) catalog titles as they'd have to raise the price. And killing DVD wouldn't necessarily move consumers to BD - it would probably move the majority to streaming where the studios generally make less per viewing than selling a DVD, with the possible exception of catalog titles where they might net slightly less with a DVD.

So you have to think about it from a business standpoint, not from the standpoint of "I can't stand the fact that this inferior format still exists."

Wow, whoever thought of actually using facts to bolster their opinion! Well said.