Would Killing DVD Improve Blu-ray and 4K UHD’s Fortunes? (1 Viewer)

[Stephen_J_H]

An interesting viewpoint. I don’t see the studios being willing to do so, but worth discussing: https://www.trustedreviews.com/opin...t-dying-but-dvd-should-exit-the-scene-4355569

 

[Robin9]

It's already been discussed with its own thread in this forum.

 

[Stephen_J_H]

It's already been discussed with its own thread in this forum.

I tried searching in the topic bar and nothing came up.

 

[Clinton McClure]

That’s an interesting take and I only have this to add:

The last DVD I bought was Switching Channels in 2011. Everything I’ve purchased since then has been either Blu-ray or 4K UHD.

I was in Baton Rouge for work last month and went to Walmart for a few things. While I was there, I discovered that store had ZERO 4K UHD releases, five Blu-ray releases, and over a hundred titles where the case clearly stated “DVD only”.

 

[Bryan^H]

I think killing DVD would just further diminish the physical market, and wouldn't improve the sales of BD at all.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

An interesting viewpoint. I don’t see the studios being willing to do so, but worth discussing: https://www.trustedreviews.com/opin...t-dying-but-dvd-should-exit-the-scene-4355569

I think that had a chance of working right when Blu-ray and HD-DVD were about to make their debut. If there had been a line in the sand and transition period where all physical media publishers maybe did a year where every new SKU was a combo pack and then the DVD copy was phased out at announced time, maybe.

But instead the studios got into a competitive format war that confused and turned off consumers, and then we had a recession which severely impacted disposable income, and then streaming came along and was quickly and widely adopted.

For the vast majority of mass market customers, their upgrade path was something like VHS rentals to DVD purchases to high definition streaming. Most mass market consumers found they didn’t rewatch their discs and didn’t like collecting stuff - discs were simply a means to an end to watch a movie without the hassle of renting and returning a tape, and when the mass market customers were able to stream a movie without the physical object, that was the end of their desire to have a physical object.

At this point, DVD usually outsells the other formats because the average DVD customer is either someone uninterested/unable to stream, someone who never upgraded to HD/4K, and institutional buyers like libraries and schools. I think if DVD were to disappear overnight, those customers aren’t going to suddenly switch to BD and UHD. They’ll either adopt streaming or they’ll take their money out of the home video ecosystem altogether.

I’m not sure that “physical media is not dying” is a reasonable conclusion when you consider that physical media sales are less than one-tenth of what they were a decade ago and continuing to fall year after year, and when you consider that the studios themselves are forecasting an end of life for the format in their public filings, and when you consider that boutique labels are both laying off staff and seeing year after year declines in sales volume.

I think we as enthusiasts have two realistic and not necessarily mutually exclusive options:

-Enjoy the remaining time that discs are available, and continue to support releases that interest us to the maximum extent possible for each of us, inclusive of pre-ordering titles and/or buying them immediately after release (the only periods that matters to publishers), and whenever possible, eschewing sales in favor of providing immediate support. As the market continues to shrink, prices by necessity will have to go up to compensate for lost sales volume, and if we as customers reject that, we will simply hasten its demise.

-Prepare to join the world that mass market consumers have been living in for at least the past decade by joining them in patronizing streaming when it offers content that’s of interest to us.

 

[Interdimensional]

Unpersuasive.

I frequent a small boutique shop in a local arthouse cinema, and I regularly hear the questions. Someone asks about a title, and if they only have the blu- ray, many simply won't buy it because they can't play it. A lot of people simply never bought blu-ray players, were satisfied with dvd quality and are not looking to replace their hardware unless it fails.

You cut out the dvd market, many of those people will not necessarily shift to blu-ray, you'll just lose them. In a lot of cases they are a more casual customer, who may not buy as regularly, but there's enough people like that to add up.

 

[jcroy]

The only way this could have happened (in principle), is if dvd was immediately discontinued and recalled in November 1999 shortly after the css encryption drm was cracked.

 

[JoshZ]

I'm in a movie collector group on Facebook, the purpose of which is nominally to support physical media. It seems that most of the posts there on a given day are people showing off how many DVDs they picked up at thrift stores or yard sales, a few bucks for a pile of them.

I generally try to be supportive of any physical media collecting, but the other day a small group of members were insistent that there was absolutely no point to Blu-ray, because you can upconvert a DVD and it's the exact same thing, no difference at all. I tried to explain that, no, that's not how it works, and they got really indignant about it and dug in their heels, refusing to believe that Blu-ray offered anything better than DVD in any way.

Sadly, that's where a lot of the public is at right now. They neither understand nor care about the differences between formats. DVD is still "good enough" for them, and it's cheap. If DVD were to go away, no, I don't believe they'd migrate to Blu-ray or 4K. They'd just drop out of collecting altogether.

 

[JoshZ]

As an addendum to that^, one of my sons wanted to watch Spider-Man: Far From Home this weekend. I don't happen to own a copy of that one, as I got burned out on Marvel a while ago. I assumed we'd be able to stream it on Disney+, but guess what, they dropped it and the movie's now only on Starz, which I don't subscribe to.

My well-meaning wife reserved a copy of the movie from the local library... on DVD, of course, because that's all they had. She rolled her eyes when I told her I'd rather spend $4 to rent it in 4K from VUDU.

Out of curiosity, I put in the DVD for a few minutes just to see how bad it would look on my screen. Yeah, it was freakin' horrible. Totally blurry and artifact-ridden. No thank you.

 

[Lord Dalek]

Not really. It might help Blu-ray but UHD is pretty much a lost cause thanks to studios treating it as a glorified special feature and price gouge.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I doubt it’s a lost cause because of studio marketing choices. It’s a lost cause because the studios want it to be a mass market product, but physical media in 2023 is an enthusiast product. Any business plan that expects the general public to fall in love with discs again is going to fall short of expectations. And frankly, in a niche market, enthusiasts should be expected to pay more. It probably doesn’t make much sense for discs that will sell several hundred to several thousand units to be priced the same today as they were when discs routinely sold tens to hundreds of thousands of units, even millions in some cases.

If we as disc enthusiasts want physical media to continue despite the mass market having moved on, it is going to cost more. And if we’re not willing to pay that, that’ll be the end of the story there.

 

[YANG]

I'm still buying DVD.
however, i made a list of wants to be in FHD, and another in UHD.
there will be upgrades to acquired DVD titles, however that would be genre dependent. i need no comedies, drama and romance in FHD or UHD presentation, specific aspect ratio flicks needs not to be in UHD. such self practice, would help an aging low income collector like me to maintain a healthy library of videos.

 

[Thomas T]

No!

 

[OliverK]

DVDs are needed to increase the volume of physical disc sales.
As has been established in this thread there are people who will not buy Blu-ray but they will buy DVDs.
At least here the physical media section would shrink considerably if they would not offer any DVDs anymore so better to keep selling them instead of losing physical media sales altogether.

 

[Robert Harris]

No one really needs Blu-ray (let’s not even mention 4k) if all one wishes to do is watch a movie on a TV.

 

[bmasters9]

-Prepare to join the world that mass market consumers have been living in for at least the past decade by joining them in patronizing streaming when it offers content that’s of interest to us.

I'd like to do that, quite honestly, but streaming is uber-difficult for me to patronize/participate in, generally because of the content contained within the shows/films on streaming (such as foul language, violence and other objectionable content [don't get me wrong; there have been several films I have actually enjoyed in the modern day that have had such content, but those are a drop in the bucket compared to the majority of streaming films]).

 

[OliverK]

No one really needs Blu-ray (let’s not even mention 4k) if all one wishes to do is watch a movie on a TV.

Watching Lawrence of Arabia in the widescreen VHS version on a 28" tube TV it is probably not that much of a difference to the Blu-ray at 40 ft from the TV. It is all a matter of visual acuity and seating distance and of course as the proponents of DVDs like to say it is still the same movie....

 

[JoshZ]

I'd like to do that, quite honestly, but streaming is uber-difficult for me to patronize/participate in, generally because of the content contained within the shows/films on streaming (such as foul language, violence and other objectionable content [don't get me wrong; there have been several films I have actually enjoyed in the modern day that have had such content, but those are a drop in the bucket compared to the majority of streaming films]).

Not sure what this has to do with streaming specifically.

 

[jcroy]

I generally try to be supportive of any physical media collecting, but the other day a small group of members were insistent that there was absolutely no point to Blu-ray, because you can upconvert a DVD and it's the exact same thing, no difference at all. I tried to explain that, no, that's not how it works, and they got really indignant about it and dug in their heels, refusing to believe that Blu-ray offered anything better than DVD in any way.

The only possible scenario where this might have any basis in fact (however fleeting), is if such folks are watching a lot of B-movies from bottom feeder companies which are too lazy to do proper hd resolution transfers.

More likely, I'm guessing such folks don't see any point in bluray for dvd movies found at garage sales or thrift shops, which they only ended up watching once or twice (or never watched at all). Basically the thrill of the chase of finding tons of 50 cent dvds, and very little to do with watching any actual movies.