I’ll give you a topic: Is Digital before Physical a Good Thing? Discuss! (3 Viewers)

[Jake Lipson]

I suspect a majority of the folks who only stream don't care that the "license" is never permanent.

I would go further and say that the majority of folks who only stream probably don't realize that the "license" is never permanent. It seems like it is permanent until you actually log in and find that something is no longer available to watch. This absolutely can happen, but it usually doesn't. So most people probably don't see digital "ownership" as being any different from physical ownership except that they don't have to store discs. Those of us here who are really passionate about collecting movies know the difference between a digital license and owning a disc, but I really don't think most average consumers who just want to have access to their favorite movie are really thinking about it in the same terms that we are. And for them, digital access which is likely indefinite is good enough until it isn't.

 

[Robert Crawford]

I would go further and say that the majority of folks who only stream probably don't realize that the "license" is never permanent. It seems like it is permanent until you actually log in and find that something is no longer available to watch. This absolutely can happen, but it usually doesn't. So most people probably don't see digital "ownership" as being any different from physical ownership except that they don't have to store discs. Those of us here who are really passionate about collecting movies know the difference between a digital license and owning a disc, but I really don't think most average consumers who just want to have access to their favorite movie are really thinking about it in the same terms that we are. And for them, digital access which is likely indefinite is good enough until it isn't.

TBH, I think most consumers don't purchase the digitals, but instead just rent them except for hardcore film buffs/collectors like me and those consumers that redeem their digital codes. I have over 12,000 physical media releases in my DVD/BD/4K/UHD collection. However, I also have over 3000 iTunes digitals of which over 1900 of them are Movies Anywhere titles. My Vudu digital library is over 2200 digitals. IMO, most people use digitals as a replacement for Blockbuster or whatever home video store they used.

 

[Carl David]

Listen, I admit as I write this post I am not sure whether I am going to get a lot of crap for starting this topic but I have wanted, for so long to start an actual conversation thread. Been a long time since I have done that and I miss posting stupid sh*t.

Consider that a safety measure in case this thread goes bad

I am just slowly waking up to things.

I know that when Disney announced Avatar 2 last year it was the first time I had ever heard of "FOR PREMIUM DIGITAL OWNERSHIP"

Not sure if that was their words as I just ripped that off of the current BARBIE announcement...

...which brings me to the point of this thread...

Today I am racing (as I always try to do here) to be the first to post an exciting breaking press release. Oh, cool, "BARBIE," I think.

So, I started a new post and threw together the BARBIE announcement inserting the usual "(4k UHD)" and "(BlU-RAY)" into the subject field. I was about to post that announcement when my eyes suddenly, for no reason, glanced over at the words, "FOR PREMIUM DIGITAL OWNERSHIP"

I had to make huge corrections on the press release I was almost cocky enough to post.

So, now Warner is doing exactly what Disney has been doing?!

I mean, I know all the labels do some sort of AVAILABLE ON DIGITAL 30 days before

However, unless I am wrong, these new studio releases seem to be on digital months before physical media

I have two thoughts on this:

I have nothing against anyone who has the opportunity to purchase something like AVATAR or BARBIE digitally at a lower ownership cost, months ahead of the disc release.

However, I also see it as part of the continued wave that has been slowly killing the disc market. This new advanced digital ownership idea seems more like a big FU to Physical Media. I certainly hope the two can continue to get along nicely.

...and yeah, I sadly admit as someone who helped start this very forum of disc enthusiasts...

I buy more movies on digital over disc these days. There's the affordability and the convenience of having it in your hands to watch it that much quicker. There's also the fact I just don't have room for discs anymore no matter how much I love them. Don't get me wrong -- 4k and Blu-ray run in my blood. They reside within my soul. No matter what, the best presentation will always be on a disc. However, I have been slowly (slower than most) waking my eyes up to the fact that discs are becoming less and less relevant in today's world.

I know, late to the party again

The problem for Hollywood is they are not just killing physical media.

They are killing cinema in the process in their suicidal objective of trying to herd everyone into streaming/digital which they are losing money on.

Companies like AMC literally went bankrupt and most cinema chains are on the verge of bankruptcy. Cineworld filed for bankruptcy.

Since Covid-19 the numbers have been awful.

With the exception of a few movies such as Top Gun:Maverick and Barbie more currently the box office numbers are very poor when you compare them historically.

You have probably seen the video where Spielberg hugged Tom Cruise and told him that he has saved Hollywood.

It literally was on its last legs due to their stupid business decisions over the last decade and Spielberg knew the importance of the box office results of that movie.

But Hollywood is far from saved and they need to go through some major overhaul in order to come out of this slump alive.

It's going to take some major leadership to do so.

They have obviously gone through this many times in their history.

The 70s was another period where the 60s got very stagnant and they started giving the floor to new blood with new ideas.

Heaven's Gate slammed the door shut on that period and they evolved once more and came into the 80s swinging and hitting many major home runs with hit after hit.

In my opinion the golden period with not only major box office success but creative too with a lot of brilliant pictures released over the 80s.

Regardless of what people think about physical media it is still a profitable industry.

Ralph Tribbey over at his blog https://dvdandblurayreleasereport.com/ does some good commentary on physical media and Hollywood.

He has been showing how many pirates are releasing Blu Ray discs and making handsome profits as the studios have almost completely abandoned the market and appears to have no interest in what is happening there.

He has shown that this year (2023) is likely to be a record year in relation to physical media sales since the last peak back in 2007 (I think).

He has had some valuable experience as an exhibitor in cinemas and also in retail and marketing in the movie industry.

He also has knowledge of economics due to his university education so he is in a very good position to give his views on what is happening.

I highly recommend reading his postings.

Physical Media is far from dead.

Streaming is in far more a precarious position than physical media. It is a highly costly service and prices have to rise significantly for the model to become financially profitable.

It's irrelevant how many people stream if the service is not making the providers profits. It's looking likely that the streaming industry has only enough demand for 1 major company providing the service at best.

They have only got to the stage they are at due to cheap low interest capital that is slowly eroding with interest rates getting back to where they have been historically.

Many tech companies are going to go bankrupt during this new cycle.

Physical media's biggest problems are people suffering from lower discretionary income and the studios stupidity and stubbornness.

Disney could make a lot of money from their catalogue on physical media both if they released content themselves or licensed it out.

However, because they are focusing on streaming this does not look likely to ever happen, unfortunately.

Hollywood's stupidity could end up costing them not only their theater income but physical media and streaming leaving them with no profitable industry to go down should they not manage to get themselves out of the mess they have found themselves in which is down to their own stupidity and lack of business acumen.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

TBH, I think most consumers don't purchase the digitals, but instead just rent them except for hardcore film buffs/collectors like me and those consumers that redeem their digital codes.

Yup. Last year, subscription streaming revenue was $30 billion. Digital purchases about $2 billion. Physical media was about $1.5 billion.

For the non-enthusiasts outside of our little bubble, this has been a done deal for a long time.

The general public never wanted to own movies. Movie enthusiasts did. For a brief period at the dawn of DVD, buying a DVD was more convenient and sometimes easier than renting a tape at the video store, so people bought for a few years until subscription streaming came out. The general public’s preference is crystal clear as evidenced by revenue. I think complaints by some physical media enthusiasts that the studios are trying to force people against their will to stream are unfounded; subscription streaming doesn’t become a $30 billion business if the public isn’t interested. Discs don’t go from being a $20 billion business to a $2 billion business in less than ten years if the general public preferred them. I don’t think you can force the public to adopt products they’re not interested in to that degree; it just doesn’t work that way. And from the studio perspective, they don’t care how they make the revenue, just that they do. If the public wanted to buy more discs they’d be happy to make them. The public doesn’t want to, so they don’t. Outside of enthusiasts sites like this one, this has been a settled issue for the general public for a decade.

 

[Carl David]

Okay, see that is where I was very uncertain.

It SEEMS these recent PREMIUM DIGITAL RELEASES are being offered sooner than normal digital releases and are pushing back disc release. That's just perhaps my warped perception of something that is not happening.

If nothing has changed, then I owe everyone an apology.

It's what they did with streaming against releases in theaters.

By releasing the digital/streaming service of a movie almost at the same time as it released theatrically it killed their cinema business model.

Just stupid.

Prior to streaming Hollywood box office numbers were healthy and there was no need (or much demand) to transition to streaming.

However, they got greedy and thought eventually they could have more control and concentrate profits via bypassing the middle men (cinema chains etc) and so put all their eggs in one basket to focus on streaming.

Now they have created a new market that is not only not profitable but has almost killed their previous profitable avenue.

This is just another stupid decision that will probably backfire.

 

[Sam Favate]

I find that I’m buying more (newly released) discs now than at any time since the glory days of DVD in 2002-2003. There is so much product coming out that it’s hard to keep up. I know the numbers are down overall for physical media, but the number of titles coming every week or every month is strong.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

I find that I’m buying more (newly released) discs now than at any time since the glory days of DVD in 2002-2003. There is so much product coming out that it’s hard to keep up. I know the numbers are down overall for physical media, but the number of titles coming every week or every month is strong.

I would be very hard-pressed to say that physical media is in trouble based on a sharp increase in press releases and preorders over the past two months. I do realize Q4 tends to be busier than usual, but there has been a significant upswing in release announcements as of late.

 

[Keith Cobby]

I don't know anyone now who buys any films on disc, so it's definitely over as a mainstream consumer product. Although the number of new releases seems to be high, presumably the number of pressings continues to shrink. Many of the releases seem to be niche titles for the collector market. I'm disappointed by the lacklustre titles for Warner's centenary, but then I asked my wife and teenage son if they knew it was Warner's 100th, they didn't (nor did they know that it is MGM's next year, nor did they care!). I'm also convinced that the gap between digital and disc releases is intended to further undermine the disc market. We've had a good run, nothing lasts forever.

 

[Tino]

It seems like it is permanent until you actually log in and find that something is no longer available to watch.

That has never happened to me and I “own” over 3500 films digitally. Nor has it happened to anyone here I believe. If it has happened someone please post the details.

 

[Worth]

Digital is simpler and cheaper than discs for distributors and they keep around 80% of the revenue, so it’s not surprising they’re prioritizing that.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I'm also convinced that the gap between digital and disc releases is intended to further undermine the disc market.

I agree with everything you wrote except this.

I genuinely don’t believe they’re trying to undermine the disc market. They’re simply not prioritizing it or letting it drive their release strategies. That’s gonna be true of any business that goes from $20 billion in revenue to less than $2 billion in under a decade. I think the reason we’re getting the digitals so quickly is that they can be prepared for release at the touch of a button, while physical media takes additional time to author, manufacture and distribute. As I mentioned in an earlier post in this thread, “premium VOD” has become found money for studios. They’re able to get what is essentially the same profit as they’d get on a movie ticket, from a crowd of viewers that doesn’t go to the movies and doesn’t buy discs. The majority of PVOD purchases, according to studio market research, are made by people who already have subscription streaming services but who are willing to pay a premium price to view a theatrical movie at home faster than the traditional release cycle allowed. If the studio canceled PVOD releases, these buyers would not order a disc instead - they would simply wait for the movies to appear on the subscription services they already are paying for. And as to whether or not this hurts theaters, studios share PVOD revenue with theaters as compensation for shrinking the theatrical window.

In this day and age, most everyone benefits from the shortened window. Theatrical films have a very short shelf life in theaters - most films make most of their money in their first ten days of release. Keeping them in theaters past the point when the public has stopped buying tickets doesn’t help anyone. However, putting them on PVOD the moment their theatrical life is exhausted benefits theaters from the payments they get from them, benefits studios for the additional revenue without needing a separate ad campaign (no more spending millions to promote a movie in theaters and then more millions to promote the home release because it’s been so long the public had forgotten the film), and benefits the public because they can have easy access to titles that interest them. With more content being produced every year than any one person could ever possibly watch, enforcing an extended arbitrary delay between when a film is in theaters and when it is at home only causes the public to move on to something else.

It’s just not possible to produce discs first in this timeframe unless they’re already made before the film has even been released. And it would be impractical to do that for a multitude of reasons, not least of which is without revenue numbers to determine the relative popularity of a film, the studio can’t determine how many copies to order.

In conclusion I don’t think the studios are trying to undermine discs. They just can’t afford to leave the millions of dollars on the table they’d be forgoing if they allowed the disc creation process to determine the home release calendar.

 

[jcroy]

I agree with everything you wrote except this.

I genuinely don’t believe they’re trying to undermine the disc market. They’re simply not prioritizing it or letting it drive their release strategies. That’s gonna be true of any business that goes from $20 billion in revenue to less than $2 billion in under a decade. I think the reason we’re getting the digitals so quickly is that they can be prepared for release at the touch of a button, while physical media takes additional time to author, manufacture and distribute. As I mentioned in an earlier post in this thread, “premium VOD” has become found money for studios. They’re able to get what is essentially the same profit as they’d get on a movie ticket, from a crowd of viewers that doesn’t go to the movies and doesn’t buy discs. The majority of PVOD purchases, according to studio market research, are made by people who already have subscription streaming services but who are willing to pay a premium price to view a theatrical movie at home faster than the traditional release cycle allowed. If the studio canceled PVOD releases, these buyers would not order a disc instead - they would simply wait for the movies to appear on the subscription services they already are paying for. And as to whether or not this hurts theaters, studios share PVOD revenue with theaters as compensation for shrinking the theatrical window.

In this day and age, most everyone benefits from the shortened window. Theatrical films have a very short shelf life in theaters - most films make most of their money in their first ten days of release. Keeping them in theaters past the point when the public has stopped buying tickets doesn’t help anyone. However, putting them on PVOD the moment their theatrical life is exhausted benefits theaters from the payments they get from them, benefits studios for the additional revenue without needing a separate ad campaign (no more spending millions to promote a movie in theaters and then more millions to promote the home release because it’s been so long the public had forgotten the film), and benefits the public because they can have easy access to titles that interest them. With more content being produced every year than any one person could ever possibly watch, enforcing an extended arbitrary delay between when a film is in theaters and when it is at home only causes the public to move on to something else.

It’s just not possible to produce discs first in this timeframe unless they’re already made before the film has even been released. And it would be impractical to do that for a multitude of reasons, not least of which is without revenue numbers to determine the relative popularity of a film, the studio can’t determine how many copies to order.

In conclusion I don’t think the studios are trying to undermine discs. They just can’t afford to leave the millions of dollars on the table they’d be forgoing if they allowed the disc creation process to determine the home release calendar.

This is a very well reasoned explanation, very likely close to how it is in practice.

Though with that being said, the extreme hardcore nerdy/geeky/tech types will never believe this explanation. Such hardcore folks truly believe there is a conspiracy with a "prince of darkness" pulling the strings behind the curtains, to deliberately destroy the optical disc market .



All according to "the plan".

 

[RMajidi]

with that being said, the extreme hardcore nerdy/geeky/tech types will never believe this explanation. Such hardcore folks truly believe there is a conspiracy with a "prince of darkness" pulling the strings behind the curtains, to deliberately destroy the optical disc market .

That’s quite the generalisation.

I think I’d qualify as an ‘extreme hardcore nerdy/geeky/tech type’. I would not be surprised if I spend more on physical media than most, not only due to volume of purchases, but also due to the international shipping charges and unfavourable currency exchange rates.

That said, I fully understand and accept Josh’s points. I think his assessment of the situation is correct - it’s just that I wish it were otherwise.

 

[Edwin-S]

I wouldn't say a digital release before physical is good or bad. It is just another option. I know that I have zero interest in paying grossly more for an early access digital copy.

If I was still buying a lot of movies I would wait until the physical release was done. The availability of a lower quality, higher priced digital would not influence the purchase of a film in my case

 

[Tino]

The availability of a lower quality,

Digital releases currently are very impressive, often Indistinguishable from their physical counterparts, especially if you have a good high speed connection.

I’ll always prefer a physical copy but digital is more convenient and nearly as good. Sometimes that’s enough for my lazy ass not to get off the couch.

 

[Jake Lipson]

That has never happened to me and I “own” over 3500 films digitally. Nor has it happened to anyone here I believe. If it has happened someone please post the details.

I know of this happening exactly one time. A friend bought a very small indie documentary on Amazon and some time later the distributor's rights to the film expired. So it disappeared from his library. The distributor no longer had the rights to license it to Amazon. But that is the only time I remember something being taken down.

Incidentally, my friend had intended to rent it and clicked "purchase" by mistake, so he didn't mind when it disappeared. I don't recall any incidences of a major studio removing anything.

However, it is also possible for a studio to make adjustments to digital copies after they have been redeemed. Toy Story 2 was edited for a 2019 reissue to remove an outtake that was deemed inappropriate in the Me Too era. All digital copies of that movie have removed that scene even if you redeemed your code from an earlier edition of the disc that has the outtake intact. There is no mechanism to prevent the studio from doing this with a streaming version. But I bought my Blu-ray copy before the change, so the scene is intact on that disc.

 

[Carl David]

I wouldn't say a digital release before physical is good or bad. It is just another option. I know that I have zero interest in paying grossly more for an early access digital copy.

If I was still buying a lot of movies I would wait until the physical release was done. The availability of a lower quality, higher priced digital would not influence the purchase of a film in my case

It will probably reduce box office sales.

It used to be if you wanted to watch a new movie released in cinemas then you watched it in theaters or you waited a few months before it was released on VHS or DVD etc.

Regardless of whether you think one method is better than the other the old model worked for Hollywood.

Now they have almost killed it with streaming.

It's bad for Hollywood.

But let's wait and see.

 

[Sam Favate]

However, it is also possible for a studio to make adjustments to digital copies after they have been redeemed. Toy Story 2 was edited for a 2019 reissue to remove an outtake that was deemed inappropriate in the Me Too era. All digital copies of that movie have removed that scene even if you redeemed your code from an earlier edition of the disc that has the outtake intact. There is no mechanism to prevent the studio from doing this with a streaming version. But I bought my Blu-ray copy before the change, so the scene is intact on that disc.

Imagine the outcry if you were able to buy a digital copy of Star Wars in 1977, only to go watch it in 1997 and find all the changes George Lucas had made to the film! People would be yelling “That’s not the movie I bought!”

(Of course, I realize in this hypo that Lucasfilm would have preferred to sell you a different, “special edition” copy in 1997.)

 

[Worth]

However, it is also possible for a studio to make adjustments to digital copies after they have been redeemed. Toy Story 2 was edited for a 2019 reissue to remove an outtake that was deemed inappropriate in the Me Too era. All digital copies of that movie have removed that scene even if you redeemed your code from an earlier edition of the disc that has the outtake intact. There is no mechanism to prevent the studio from doing this with a streaming version.

There is a way to prevent this with iTunes. You can download copies and store them on your hard drive, though admittedly only at 1080p.

 

[ahollis]

Yeah, I reckon that's just a place holder for Barbie, Warner surly won't want to miss the lucrative Christmas market. It looks like the days are over of having a standard Blu-ray included with your 4K & a digital code included with your Blu-ray.

I like the UK Amazon placeholder date for Mission Impossible, 31st December 2028! The site that lists forthcoming German releases has it as an early November release, which sounds about right to me.

It was originally scheduled for release mid October. This is not a place holder.