The fine folks at The Digital Bits put out an editorial about physical media and streaming a few days ago. It is definitely worth a read (although it is a bit long).
News Disney exiting physical media market
- Thread starter wayoung
- Start date
I usually stream, but it really sucks not to have physical as an option. Because without a physical option, the moment a company decides to take their content down, it's completely unavailable. I hope people find a fix to this. Without physical media it'd be impossible to get the original theatrical cut of the original Star Wars.
I like reading Blu Ray review for stuff. What I'm finding is that sometimes the superior physical release isn't from the US. Then, I have to figure out if the release is region free. And if it's not, then I have to use a throw away player that will get region locked on me. This is the only legit way to buy good media content. Super frustrating.
Babylon 5 DVD quality is awful. The Dungeons and Dragon Cartoon DVD weren't done well. I had to rip them to watch them.
We're bad sliding.
Babylon 5 (the series, not the movies) is finally getting a remastered Blu Ray release in December. I assume this is the version that was on Max for streaming.
Most of what I ever wanted on DVD, I already have. And the only Blu Ray device in the house takes at least 5-10 minutes to mount a volume.
Last edited:
Well, a new one won't take but a moment to load. *shrug*
It occurs to me that before home video was "a thing," back when a VCR was a 3/4" toploader that cost well over $1000 in 1980s dollars, and tapes cost about $50 per hour, Disney made a substantial amount of revenue by re-releasing its back-catalog to theatres every few years, and occasionally airing its theatrical films on its weekly network broadcast, interspersed among the many made-for-TV offerings.
DVDs, Blu-Ray, and home HDTV kind of killed the market for theatrical re-releases (which might explain all the live-action remakes of animated features). I wonder if withdrawing from the physical media market might be an attempt to return to the glory years of theatrical re-releases.
DVDs, Blu-Ray, and home HDTV kind of killed the market for theatrical re-releases (which might explain all the live-action remakes of animated features). I wonder if withdrawing from the physical media market might be an attempt to return to the glory years of theatrical re-releases.
I doubt it. Disney films are starting to show their age. All that’s going to happen is folks will find alternative ways to see their content. I don’t see how this is a win when they could easily switch to a VOD model for physical discs.
When it becomes more difficult to legally obtain their content, consumers will find other ways. Streaming and physical releases are an easy approach. They shouldn’t create obstacles.
How do you legally watch the Willow series now?
Hey, you might not be able to purchase physical media anymore, and all copies of all tv and movies can be edited or pulled without any notice, but now you can bet with Mickey!
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/08/business/penn-entertainment-barstool-sports-espn/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/08/business/penn-entertainment-barstool-sports-espn/index.html
The mouse needs to get their house in order. People behaved better before they made alcohol widely available in their theme parks.
I'm split on this. On the one hand, the cinephile/collector in me wants everything released on Blu-ray, TV seasons included. (I'm agnostic on 4K discs, as I've never seen one, let alone seen one side-by-side on same model TVs for comparison, but I highly doubt the increased resolution is worth the $5-10 upcharge.) On the other hand, it seems the world is drowning in useless plastics, so does anyone really need the umpteenth seasons of NCIS and The Big Bang Theory on disc?
I'm also split on Blu-rays as collectibles themselves. I do enjoy holding a disc case (especially if it's a nice one) in my hands, but I also use a binder for lots of my discs, as too many cases just become clutter. While I'd love to have a full-fledged home theater someday decorated like an old-timey cinema, I have no interest in having a man cave with shelves upon shelves of cases full of discs that get used every few years at best. I definitely enjoy getting a new or used Blu in the mail, or getting a cheap used disc at a store, but it's a form of consumerism I only rarely indulge in.
That said, those arguing for discs as a means of preservation and accessibility make good points, too. I'm sure disc sales are crucial to financing restorations of older/more obscure movies that would otherwise be completely forgotten.
In short, it's a pickle.
I'm also split on Blu-rays as collectibles themselves. I do enjoy holding a disc case (especially if it's a nice one) in my hands, but I also use a binder for lots of my discs, as too many cases just become clutter. While I'd love to have a full-fledged home theater someday decorated like an old-timey cinema, I have no interest in having a man cave with shelves upon shelves of cases full of discs that get used every few years at best. I definitely enjoy getting a new or used Blu in the mail, or getting a cheap used disc at a store, but it's a form of consumerism I only rarely indulge in.
That said, those arguing for discs as a means of preservation and accessibility make good points, too. I'm sure disc sales are crucial to financing restorations of older/more obscure movies that would otherwise be completely forgotten.
In short, it's a pickle.
What happened with Prodigy and what I saw happened with "French Connection" made physical media important to me again. Streaming is convenient, and I have a few shows that I bought from Itunes (Orphan Black, Crusade, Buffy, Angel, and the Stargate Franchise. However, I'm struggling with the idea of purchasing the digital content and then having it removed or changed vs getting the blu ray disks and always having it. I could get the other Star Treks as a purchase, but I'm not sure if that is wise or not, considering I'm stopping my annual payments to Paramount +. I don't want physical media going away, mainly because I think original work is just as important as if the director wanted to change it.
Streaming changed a lot for me and my buying habits because it enables easy access to things that I enjoy every once in a while but really don't need to own. As well as, obviously, a very easy way to sample new things. I don't want an entire wall of discs of everything under the sun that I might watch once or twice over the course of my whole life. But for the stuff I truly love? I've never trusted streaming with that.
Even if they were fully trustworthy, I can't guarantee I'll always be able to access/afford the appropriate service at the specific time when I want to see something again. And there's always been something just a bit absurd about telling me I 'own' a digital download when there's absolutely no possible way to assure that I can maintain access to it if the company goes bankrupt (as companies tend to do relatively often). At least if I buy a disc and break it somehow, that's on me and not because some ceo made a bunch of obviously terrible decisions.
So I very definitely don't want to see physical media go away, and I am really annoyed at the growing number of things I love and would absolutely buy (and actually watch) which just aren't allowed to be physically released at all.
Even if they were fully trustworthy, I can't guarantee I'll always be able to access/afford the appropriate service at the specific time when I want to see something again. And there's always been something just a bit absurd about telling me I 'own' a digital download when there's absolutely no possible way to assure that I can maintain access to it if the company goes bankrupt (as companies tend to do relatively often). At least if I buy a disc and break it somehow, that's on me and not because some ceo made a bunch of obviously terrible decisions.
So I very definitely don't want to see physical media go away, and I am really annoyed at the growing number of things I love and would absolutely buy (and actually watch) which just aren't allowed to be physically released at all.
Physical media is not permanent either. I've experienced CDs I bought 30+ years ago degrading over time. DVDs and Blu-rays are more resilient, but, eventually, they too will become unreadable. The problems with old film stock are well known. Video tape also degrades. Perhaps we should just accept impermanence as Tibetan Buddhism does with its sand mandalas.
Obviously nothing is permanent. But I've only very rarely experienced any serious degradation on dvd or blu-ray. And if physical media continues to be produced, I can generally expect to be able to replace anything I still wish to replace, which makes it no different to any other physical product that eventually needs to be replaced.
Last edited:
You’re assuming it doesn’t go out of print. That’s the other problem. Discover you have a bad disc and the set is out of print, there isn’t much you can do.
Wonder if we will see the return of the guy selling pirate dvds from the back of his car.
With physical media, there's a secondhand market. It may be expensive (as we've just seen reported in Trek Literature about "A Stitch in Time") but at least it exists. I've only been reading/collecting ST books for the last 10 years or so and the bulk of those came secondhand.
I have never been particularly taken by the concept of not needing to own books or films because you can get them digitally. That rather assumes that all books are interchangeable and all films are interchangeable. If you want to be sure of having access to something then you need to own it in physical form; otherwise you are at the mercy of businesses who care about their bottom line not you. Libraries and streaming services are good for ones-off and for sampling but poor for guaranteed repeat reading and watching.
If Disney are exiting physical media then it's because they think they can make more money that way. If you want to watch "A New Hope" once a year then you'll have to pay over and over again for it (and popular stuff will be attracting extra fees) rather than a one-off payment for a DVD and having as many repetitions as you want.
But again, as long as the market actually exists this is still a very rare problem. I said I've almost never had any serious degradation issues - but cases where I wanted to replace something and genuinely couldn't are even rarer than that. And most of them are easy to anticipate, so if I have something extremely rare or very small-time and highly unlikely to be reprinted I can at least do my best to make sure it lasts as long as humanly possible.
Go back to my original post, we are.
