Physical Media might not be dead, but Physical Media in Retail Stores are accelerating the death (1 Viewer)

[David Norman]

And as far as the prices at Barnes & Noble. Things that are not on sale are MSRP, but they run sales all the time. I've discovered things that I didn't know Ineeded by browsing just the sale items. And of course their bi-annual 50% off Criterion sale makes it all worthwhile.

Honestly I think I buy more at their 40% all All BD sales over the last couple years and the British TV sale last Dec was spectacular ranging from 50-60% off plus extra discounts.

 

[Dave Moritz]

I will stay in this hobby as long as there is physical media and if physical media goes away so will my purchasing of movie's! I almost said music as well but there is always the used vinyl market if new pressings go away. But no purchasing digital downloads here!

 

[Regulus]

I will stay in this hobby as long as there is physical media and if physical media goes away so will my purchasing of movie's! I almost said music as well but there is always the used vinyl market if new pressings go away. But no purchasing digital downloads here!

As long as there are shows that are not yet on DVD or Blu-Ray (and physical media remains available) I will keep to this hobby. There are about a dozen shows on my "Grail" list as well as four shows on my "Bucket List". A few of them will probably get released this year, so all I can do is just hang loose until they come out.

 

[Dave>h]

Interesting to see all the comments on this topic!

I posted about this a few years back and my experience with Local Best Buy, Wal mart Etc (and since then their selections have decreased by half at least) and the local HMV's have closed for good.

Here in Canada, we had a service called Cinemanow and I had quite a few downloaded films with them. They declared bankruptcy and all my downloads disappeared. I was able to recover some of them on Flixster on my phone (not all of them for some reason Ant man and Cinderella disappeared completely and probably a few more that I can't remember). My point is, digital media, cloud media is not exactly reliable for ownership purposes. Additionally, I now have accounts with Google, flixster, cineplex odeon and apple to keep my digital media. Hardly a great example of "play anywhere on any device". Four accounts with 4 different companies, it seems ridiculous.

But what is the solution?? We can only buy physical media from Amazon? We continue with this terribly disjointed digital media circus and hope our purchases are safe and available to us into the future? As consumers we settle for shoddily produced digital media? MP3's and lackluster sounding DD tracks on netflix is the future, really??

How did I become a dinosaur so quickly? Holy crap!

I love my stereo, I love my home theater, I love dinosaurs thundering through my theater and the sounds of bullets ricocheting around the room. DTS MA, Dolby Atmos, bring it on. I love all that stuff.

WHY WON"T ANYONE SELL IT TO ME? It seems so surreal.

I just had to order Thor Ragnarok in 3d from Amazon UK. I ordered Ghost in the shell ($12), Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and CoCo in 3d while I was at it. But it seems nuts that I have to order from England. Doesn't that seem nuts?

Anyway, I am concerned about the future of our hobby. I can't just go to the theater or watch it on my phone, I can't.

Has anyone seen ANYTHING on the horizon that is going to save this business though? I haven't.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Has anyone seen ANYTHING on the horizon that is going to save this business though? I haven't.

I have my concerns.

Ultimately, and I'd love to be proven wrong on this, I think the general audience is less willing to pay for entertainment than they used to be. The golden years for us were probably those few years where purchasing a DVD was both cheaper and more convenient than other options for the average consumer. When other options came along that were cheaper and more convenient, that charged everything.

By the types of movies now being released in theaters and the increasing pressure to have as big an opening weekend as possible, we as an audience are being trained to see a movie right away in theaters or not at all. And high prices and declining presentation quality is starting to make "not at all" the preferred option for many former theatergoers.

By shrinking home video windows from a year to six months to three months (or less!), we're being trained to wait to see most things at home.

By releasing digital versions weeks in advance of the disc versions, we're being trained to pursue digital.

By putting movies on inexpensive services like Netflix, we're being trained to wait an extra few weeks to watch it for "free".

So, in this environment, I don't know how to convince the consumer to start paying again for something they're out of the habit of paying for.

To give a small example: my wife and I tried to see all 9 Best Picture nominees in theaters this year, and we saw most. We missed Call Me By Your Name. It had been playing last weekend, we couldn't make the timing work. If we had seen it in theaters, in NYC, two tickets would be $34 in total. The nationwide average is $10 a ticket, so for the sake of conversation, let's say it would have cost two people $20 to see it in theaters.

I checked iTunes. Though the disc isn't out yet, it was available on digital to purchase for $15. So, for less than the price of two average tickets or one NYC-priced ticket, I could own the digital copy and watch it as many times as I want.

If I could be even more patient, iTunes says it will be available to rent digitally in about a week, and that'll be only $5. (On the same date, it'll come out on disc for $20 or $25.) And, about a month after that, it'll be on Netflix where I can see it for free.

Look how dramatically that pricing drops. $34 to see it in a theater now or $25 to buy a disc in a week. $15 to buy a digital copy now. $5 to rent it digitally in a week. Unlimited free viewing on Netflix in a month.

The takeaway for the average customer is that anything in theaters today can be watched for home for free in maybe three months. And I genuinely think that most people aren't interested in owning most movies or even that picky about what to watch. Most people just want to watch a movie they haven't seen that they'll be able to enjoy, and there are plenty of good options for doing that now besides buying a movie ticket or buying a disc.

And I haven't the foggiest idea of how to swing that pendulum back, other than making internet access so expensive that the disc goes back to being the cheaper option.

 

[Ron1973]

I have my concerns.

Ultimately, and I'd love to be proven wrong on this, I think the general audience is less willing to pay for entertainment than they used to be. The golden years for us were probably those few years where purchasing a DVD was both cheaper and more convenient than other options for the average consumer. When other options came along that were cheaper and more convenient, that charged everything.

By the types of movies now being released in theaters and the increasing pressure to have as big an opening weekend as possible, we as an audience are being trained to see a movie right away in theaters or not at all. And high prices and declining presentation quality is starting to make "not at all" the preferred option for many former theatergoers.

By shrinking home video windows from a year to six months to three months (or less!), we're being trained to wait to see most things at home.

By releasing digital versions weeks in advance of the disc versions, we're being trained to pursue digital.

By putting movies on inexpensive services like Netflix, we're being trained to wait an extra few weeks to watch it for "free".

So, in this environment, I don't know how to convince the consumer to start paying again for something they're out of the habit of paying for.

To give a small example: my wife and I tried to see all 9 Best Picture nominees in theaters this year, and we saw most. We missed Call Me By Your Name. It had been playing last weekend, we couldn't make the timing work. If we had seen it in theaters, in NYC, two tickets would be $34 in total. The nationwide average is $10 a ticket, so for the sake of conversation, let's say it would have cost two people $20 to see it in theaters.

I checked iTunes. Though the disc isn't out yet, it was available on digital to purchase for $15. So, for less than the price of two average tickets or one NYC-priced ticket, I could own the digital copy and watch it as many times as I want.

If I could be even more patient, iTunes says it will be available to rent digitally in about a week, and that'll be only $5. (On the same date, it'll come out on disc for $20 or $25.) And, about a month after that, it'll be on Netflix where I can see it for free.

Look how dramatically that pricing drops. $34 to see it in a theater now or $25 to buy a disc in a week. $15 to buy a digital copy now. $5 to rent it digitally in a week. Unlimited free viewing on Netflix in a month.

The takeaway for the average customer is that anything in theaters today can be watched for home for free in maybe three months. And I genuinely think that most people aren't interested in owning most movies or even that picky about what to watch. Most people just want to watch a movie they haven't seen that they'll be able to enjoy, and there are plenty of good options for doing that now besides buying a movie ticket or buying a disc.

And I haven't the foggiest idea of how to swing that pendulum back, other than making internet access so expensive that the disc goes back to being the cheaper option.

As far as movies go, yes, I have to admit I'm in the boat of "can I see it for free?" I'm not much of a movie guy to begin with anyway, and I'm sure there are people who feel the same way about TV shows and music. Why buy it when they can find it online for free?

 

[TJPC]

I wonder if we are going back to the “Blockbuster” days of VHS when most people only rented their movies, and looked at you blankly when you mentioned owning a movie? I remember being asked “why would anyone want to see a movie more than once?”

We are collectors for the most part. I think the majority of people are far more casual. They watch movies and discard everything like Kleenex. I know there are huge amounts of media that I would never want to keep, (despite what my wife thinks!).

 

[Blimpoy06]

Owning TV shows and movies in physical media is in a sense a library. Just as it is fashionable for people to display their books. I enjoy displaying my collection for myself and others. It's a timely and costly endeavor that I take pride in. What I collect expresses my interest and tastes the same as if I had art on the wall. Some people appreciate it on that level. Others will never understand. There will still be a desire to collect. And companies will be around to fill that need and desire. The choices will never be as vast as 20 years ago. It will cost more to be a collector of physical media in the years to come. And some will enjoy the quest to find that elusive and rare special edition of a personnel favorite.

 

[Carabimero]

Owning TV shows and movies in physical media is in a sense a library. Just as it is fashionable for people to display their books. I enjoy displaying my collection for myself and others. It's a timely and costly endeavor that I take pride in. What I collect expresses my interest and tastes the same as if I had art on the wall. Some people appreciate it on that level. Others will never understand. There will still be a desire to collect. And companies will be around to fill that need and desire. The choices will never be as vast as 20 years ago. It will cost more to be a collector of physical media in the years to come. And some will enjoy the quest to find that elusive and rare special edition of a personnel favorite.

I can appreciate your sentiment here. I am still collecting some physical media, mostly BDs of time-tested movies I know I'll rewatch because history has proven I do. Very rarely do I buy TV shows anymore simply because I have all but 5 series I want completed. Mostly I am trying to make the switch from collector to watcher. But I do spend a lot of time curating my collection. For example, I will buy a bunch of mulit-disc BD cases, swap the BD sleeve from ET, for example, and move my DVDs of ET into the 5-disc BD case with my BD of ET. Why do I need to keep all the discs? In some instances I don't, but in too many instances, like ET, the DVDs have cool special features the BD does not. So my collection appears to be shrinking, but it is actually becoming not only more compact but more convenient.

 

[TJPC]

I do the same thing. I purchased 4 disc blu ray cases so I could store the 4 Omen movies in something other than the ridiculous paper folder they came in. I also transferred my Valerian 3D/Blu ray/ and DVD to such a case, since the Blu ray set had no extras and the DVD does.

 

[MatthewA]

I still miss Tower Records. I went to the ones in New York, LA, and Nashville, and I still don't remember seeing any other national store with a better laserdisc selection in the pre-DVD days.

 

[Ron1973]

I retell the story often, but I'll retell it again. Everyone knows what my favorite show is obviously, and it's a perfect example of keeping your physical media. When I got my own VCR as a teen, I taped UNEDITED episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies on a daily basis from local TV; WREG had approximately 6 1/2 seasons of the show (first 6, about half of 7, and none of 8 or 9). I had probably every episode on tape of their run. It was a staple of that particular station along with other 60's and 70's sitcoms. I figured it would always be around to tape, so when I got in a crunch and needed an extra tape, guess what I did?!?! I could kick myself for recording over them. Outta the blue they got brand new tape masters instead of the 16mm film they'd used for years, those were edited for syndication versions, and the unedited versions never returned again. Don't ever assume something will "always be there!"

 

[Regulus]

Owning TV shows and movies in physical media is in a sense a library. Just as it is fashionable for people to display their books. I enjoy displaying my collection for myself and others. It's a timely and costly endeavor that I take pride in. What I collect expresses my interest and tastes the same as if I had art on the wall. Some people appreciate it on that level. Others will never understand. There will still be a desire to collect. And companies will be around to fill that need and desire. The choices will never be as vast as 20 years ago. It will cost more to be a collector of physical media in the years to come. And some will enjoy the quest to find that elusive and rare special edition of a personnel favorite.

I second this. I am a collector (My relatives say I'm a hoarder) and my reply is "How many times do you look at your TV listings and moan "There's nothing good on TV tonight". Not in my house, there's ALWAYS something good to watch on TV.

 

[Jeremy Lancaster]

(On the other coast).

I fondly remember the Tower on Sunset, from my youth.

In those days, it was like entering vinyl heaven.

Towers Records on The Sunset Strip in Hollywood, California:

 

[Jeremy Lancaster]

I don't even go to the nearby indoor malls anymore for anything.

I end up either going to the costco or a wallyworld, which are typically big box standalone shops.

Costco removed all of their DVDs and Blu-rays.

Walmart has a healthy supply, but that may be because the local Walmarts are tied into online Walmart sales of movies - giving the customer a choice of saving money (or time) by picking up the order at the store instead of home delivery.

Office Max and Staples has kept many of their stores in place as a "warehouse" to prepare and deliver online purchases to local customers who order online. (Sort of like having an Amazon Warehouse, except the customers can drop buy and buy off the rack)

 

[AndrewCrossett]

I notice that Best Buy usually matches Amazon's prices on CD's and DVD's, which is probably how they've been able to keep them in stock this long, but also probably why they're no longer generating a profit for them.

They are expanding their 4K UHD video section, so people buying those fancy expensive TV's can buy stuff to watch on them. That may be what's giving the media section a reprieve for now.

Back in the 80's when I was in high school, a new-release vinyl album would cost $5.99 and catalogue titles would be $7.99 or $8.99. I feel so old. It doesn't seem like that long ago, I swear.

I was as excited as everyone else about the Internet in the 90's, but... it's really ruined a lot of things. How can the economy be adding 300,000 jobs a month when the manufacturing and retail sectors are both collapsing? What kinds of jobs are these people finding?

 

[bmasters9]

Walmart has a healthy supply, but that may be because the local Walmarts are tied into online Walmart sales of movies - giving the customer a choice of saving money (or time) by picking up the order at the store instead of home delivery.

And sometimes when they rotate their stock, you find great deals on stuff you never saw before (like when I got those Vega$ and Wild Wild West condensed all-in-ones from that "Binge-Worthy TV" display).

 

[Dave Moritz]

By releasing digital versions weeks in advance of the disc versions, we're being trained to pursue digital.

By putting movies on inexpensive services like Netflix, we're being trained to wait an extra few weeks to watch it for "free".

Well they might be trying to train people to pursue digital but for me not doing it! I am not saying I will not watch it on a pay service like Netflix or HBO or maybe even rent a movie from time to time from on demand. But I am not downloading digital movies and I will not be buying digital movies.

Ok as cheap as Netflix is and even if you wait a few weeks or more it actually is not free because your paying for the service. I look at it the same way if you are paying for cable or satellite it still cost you so it is not free.

 

[BobO'Link]

I remember being asked “why would anyone want to see a movie more than once?”

Me too... My wife asked me a variant of that question just last week! "Do you ever watch any of all those movies you have more than once?" As it so happened, the one I was watching was a repeat!

She's a "I've seen it, why would I want to watch it again?" type for movies. TV shows she'll rewatch if they happen to come on and she runs across it channel hopping, but she will not put a disc in a player at all. Even for her favorite programs.

Back in the 80's when I was in high school, a new-release vinyl album would cost $5.99 and catalogue titles would be $7.99 or $8.99. I feel so old. It doesn't seem like that long ago, I swear.

Back in the early 70s, when I was in HS, vinyl new-release and catalogue titles cost... wait for it... $5.99! Double albums were $10.99-$15.99. 45rpm singles were $.99. If you wanted that album on tape add another dollar or two. For an extra dollar or two over the tape price (~$10) I could purchase the album and a blank tape and make my own tape copy that sounded better than what the manufacturers were selling. And since I was cassette, I'd purchase 90 minute tapes and put an album per side.

 

[bmasters9]

She's a "I've seen it, why would I want to watch it again?" type for movies. TV shows she'll rewatch if they happen to come on and she runs across it channel hopping, but she will not put a disc in a player at all. Even for her favorite programs.

She's certainly welcome to make and be of that choice, although as I've said before, why insist on seeing something with commercials (and some of the most awful nowadays, I might add), when you can in many cases enjoy the same things uncut and without the commercials?!