It’s sensible for businesses to shift from physical media sales. Per CNBC’s calculations, DVD sales fell over 86 percent between 2008 and 2019. Research from the Motion Picture Association in 2021 found that physical media represented 8 percent of the home/mobile entertainment market in the US, falling behind digital (80 percent) and theatrical (12 percent).
But as physical media gets less lucrative and the shuttering of businesses makes optical discs harder to find, the streaming services that largely replaced them are getting aggravating and unreliable. And with the streaming industry becoming more competitive and profit-hungry than ever, you never know if the movie/show that most attracted you to a streaming service will still be available when you finally get a chance to sit down and watch. Even paid-for online libraries that were marketed as available “forever” have been ripped away from customers.
When someone buys or rents a DVD, they know exactly what content they’re paying for and for how long they’ll have it (assuming they take care of the physical media). They can also watch the content if the Internet goes out and be certain that they’re getting uncompressed 4K resolution. DVD viewers are also less likely to be bombarded with ads whenever they pause and can get around an ad-riddled smart TV home screen (nothing’s perfect; some DVDs have unskippable commercials).
Why would I want dvds when I can own digital media?
Rip your own DVDs and you can have both, with redundancy
Or store them on a portable hdd and have redundancy without hoarding shiny plastic discs.
I store the discs because while ripping is of questional legallity by having the discs I have the morals right.
extras, commentaries, it’s nice seeing your favorite films on a shelf
I really don’t understand why they don’t include this stuff on streaming services.
I’ve started buying DVDs and Blu-ray again after years of not doing so because there have been multiple instances of me purchasing a movie on some streaming platform and then it no longer being available. Also, there have been even more instances where it’s less expensive to buy the physical product and then rip it than it is to buy the digital copy.
We’ll since they are killing Blu Ray you better hope your hardware lasts forever.
They’re not killing Blu-Ray. They’re killing consumer writeable Blu-Rays. Tell me you only read headlines without telling me you only read headlines.
And even only SONY is stopping production, other manufactures aren’t.
No they’re not.
Physical media cannot be altered afterwards. That’s a thing Disney likes to do, for example.
Plus maximum video and audio quality. Some people don’t watch movies on phones or laptops, you know.
All of that can be achieved with digital media.
Nobody is altering the movie file on my computer except me.
Digital rips likewise can be lossless, so there’s no quality differences.
Because the current trend is to ensure the consumer owns less and less and just pays monthly for access rights.
No, the current trend is piracy.
The current user trend may be piracy, the current corporate trend is You don’t own anything, pay a subscription.
Because the discs will safely store that data for decades longer than any of your hard drives will likely work.