Best Buy To Exit Physical Media Business In 2024 (1 Viewer)

[ScottRE]

I like digital media under a couple of circumstances.

1) when I don't need to really own a physical copy. Some movies are one and done for me. Or once in a VERY great while. Those I'm totally fine watching via digital on a subscription platform basis.

2) Digital codes with physical media. More than once I would buy a 4K set and one of the discs would have a defect. So I would finish watching the film on Movies Anywhere or Apple TV. That backup has been great. Also it saves the wear and tear of my taking a disc out of the collector sleeve that can sometimes be problematic (like those Universal Book presentations).

Music. If there's a lossless digital download option that's much cheaper than a CD, I will go that route.

For films and TV, I prefer physical media because I won't be at the whim of internet speeds or rightsholders. But I have no prejudice towards digital. And often, I convert my physical to digital for watching on a server to save space and preserve the life of the media.

Having said that, I do miss walking into a store, seeing row after row of DVDs and Blu Rays at Best Buy or one of the wholesale clubs and finding treasures. However, I am lucky enough to have a few mom and pop stores which sell everyone else's cast offs for bargain prices.

This was Best Buy in 2011. I was stunned to see the entire run of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea along with so many other shows. Ah well. Get those kids off my lawn!

 

[TravisR]

^It's hilarious that I'm nostalgic for the old Best Buy price tags.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

^It's hilarious that I'm nostalgic for the old Best Buy price tags.

I’m definitely nostalgic for that one find where you expect to see something at “19.99” or “29.99” and then looked closer and would see it was just “9.99”!

 

[Tino]

Is The French Connection on that list? That one definitely did get censored within people's digital collections after they purchased it.

I do own it. What was censored?

 

[Robert Crawford]

I do own it. What was censored?

Yes, Popeye using the “N” word.

 

[John*Wells]

I freely admit that I prefer physical media. That said, I would probably download digital versions of the Star Trek tv series’ the Andy Griffith Show and a few others since discs wear out

 

[Jonathan Perregaux]

Yes, yes... but only with physical media would you ever have the pleasure of strapping the Xanadu DVD to a Dremel, cranking that sucker up to full speed, and having the disc fly apart into angry plastic shards that penetrate all the walls of your room.

 

[JoshZ]

I do own it. What was censored?

Before his death, William Friedkin made changes to cut some dialogue from the film in which the Popeye Doyle character spews racial slurs. These changes were propagated across all digital copies of the movie on every platform, even those purchased years earlier. If you own a digital copy of The French Connection, you have the censored version. The original has been removed from digital circulation.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/the-french-connection-disney-criterion-b2353180.html

Ironically, this change actually makes the movie more problematic. The Popeye character was always an abusive bigot, and blurting out the n- word was meant as confirmation for audiences of how racist he (and by extension other New York cops) was. Removing the lines softens the character and makes his behavior seem less objectionable.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

A lot of people on Facebook are posting photos of empty shelves at their local BestBuy store as if something happened overnight across the board...

 

[Capt D McMars]

A lot of people on Facebook are posting photos of empty shelves at their local BestBuy store as if something happened overnight across the board...

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[Ronald Epstein]

 

[Mike Frezon]

They'll be able to display more exercise equipment now where those racks of films used to be.

 

[dpippel]

They'll be able to display more exercise equipment now where those racks of films used to be.

I know where I'm buying my next electric lawnmower now too.

 

[cineMANIAC]

I was able to order Vol. 3 of the Columbia Classics set on their website so they're not completely out of the game yet. I'm guessing they're getting rid of all leftover stock but they're not discounting anything so good luck reducing that inventory any time soon.

 

[Clinton McClure]

A lot of people on Facebook are posting photos of empty shelves at their local BestBuy store as if something happened overnight across the board...

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My Best Buy hasn’t had that many media shelves in 15 years.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

My Best Buy hasn’t had that many media shelves in 15 years.

I was in my local Best Buy a month ago and all they had was a small island at the front of the store with new releases.

I can't say for sure what has happened, but over the last 24 hours, there have been a lot of people posting photos of empty shelves as if there was a direct order to dismantle everything across all stores.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I’m sure this was part of the previously announced decision to eliminate the sales of physical media. I’m sure you’re right that it was part of a corporate directive. It doesn’t really make sense from a big business perspective to allow individual stores to decide when to remove the product as that only causes confusion among customers for what product lines the stores carry, and takes up space that the company will surely use to market other products. They also probably have arrangements made with either the studios or a liquidator for dealing with the remaining inventory and part of that process is likely to be getting the product consolidated and delivered to wherever it’s going. When I used to work retail, store layout changes like this were always driven by corporate.

 

[Jake Lipson]

I'm a bit surprised that there wasn't a larger fire sale to get rid of remaining stock before just pulling it off the shelf. I might have been willing to make a few more purchases at a discount if they were in clearance mode.

But we can't be too surprised. We all knew this day was coming in the first part of this year. It just came a little earlier than we might have expected.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

It doesn’t pay for Best Buy to do the fire sale themselves. Keeping the product on the shelves costs them more in real estate and staffing than the product returns in revenue. There are companies that specialize in liquidation who will buy the bulk of the holdings in one transaction, and Best Buy will offload it all in one fell swoop.

 

[dpippel]

It doesn’t pay for Best Buy to do the fire sale themselves. Keeping the product on the shelves costs them more in real estate and staffing than the product returns in revenue. There are companies that specialize in liquidation who will buy the bulk of the holdings in one transaction, and Best Buy will offload it all in one fell swoop.

Frankly, I'm surprised this didn't happen in January. Better to just get it over with rather than drag it out and in the process confuse some of their customer base. Pack up the stock and the fixtures and move on.