I don't think physical media will ever disappear entirely. If every studio decides they want to have their own streaming service, who the hell is going to subscribe to every single one? A far more likely scenario is that people will simply subscribe to the ones with the most content they actually want to watch and buy physical copies of everything else they want that's otherwise stuck behind another paywall.

This is surely going to be a gradual and slow decline. 4K UHD Blu-ray will be the first one to disappear. DVDs still outsell Blu-rays and 4K UHD Blu-rays combined. DVDs will be the last one to fall for sure and probably not any time soon. I am not going back to buying DVDs just to have the physical copy. So it’s not really the matter of entire physical media disappearing but the ones I care for disappearing.

This is wild to me. I was recently talking to my friends about DVDs in 2020. I don't see the purpose of buying dedicated DVD players anymore, but I see them for sale all the time at the same price or even higher than Blu-ray players.

In regards to DVDs themselves, it seems that the used Blu-ray sells for significantly cheaper than the new DVD.

I think the market share is close to %65 for DVDs. 4K UHD is %6 on a good week with a big release like Avengers or something. DVDs are studios cash cows. It costs them pennies to print and the r&d cost have been already paid off many times over. It’s %90 profit. If it was up to the studios we wouldn’t even have Blu-rays.

Yeah, its amazing to me when I see blurays at thrift stores they just sit there but the DVDs are always picked over, even if priced at 2.99 and you
can get them new at wallyworld or biglots for 3-5 bucks new and sealed.

I understand from the studio perspective, but not from the consumer perspective.

DVDs aren’t much cheaper for new releases actually. Blu-rays on the release week are around $20 and DVDs are $2 cheaper. This market share is based on new releases. Overall market share for DVD is no less than %90. Most people prefer to save %10-15 on cost over 6 times higher resolution on the Blu-rays to be watched on 24 times the resolution on their 4K TVs.

Well rein-o, let me know if you get rid of anything interesting.

Relevant news: Sony is looking to buy Crunchy Roll, which they would presumably merge with Funi streaming.

Just going to get rid of common stuff or stupid high priced stuff on ebay, will list here too.

About to post my last haul, unfortunately this is my last LD purchase I think of all time unless someone posts stuff on ebay or here that
I need.

Saw this and thought of this thread:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/it/ ... e.amp.html

Perhaps in the future, when optical media is a thing of the past, some sort of storage media like a high end SD card (something next gen with a longer life span and hyperfast read speeds) would be the answer?

Maybe 1tb+ media to cover for 8K content and to hold a series or something. Going 100% streaming is not the answer. You're then purely renting your content. Personally I still want to own my purchases so I don't think that a streaming service that offers 1:1 content (I forget the name of that one out there right now) is not the answer imho. It's finite. When the company eventually winds up, or the next big thing comes along and your provider can't/won't keep up, you'll own nothing.

I mean sure, that makes no sense from the consumer end, but it makes perfect sense from the corporate end. Having nobody own your content but you and holding the ongoing-income-source key to that content is a rights holder's dream.

Why should the consumer have to double, triple, quad, quintuple etc dip for the same content? Be it a better version (DVD, 1080, 4K, 8K and so on) or be it because an online service has folded or the business has pulled the T's and C's from underneath you? Which has and will continue to happen.

It's a fine line, I realise that, but the angle I'm looking at it from here isn't about the whole fair use and "I own it I should do what I like with it" one, it's about being fair to the consumer and in some ways not forcing built-in obsolescence on their product(s) (could apply that to a lot more than just media products). If the road we're (very likely) going down is all streaming-based, then what's the point of having buy and keep services? Just pay a subscription fee to 'rent' as much content as you want and when you stop subscribing be done with it. Offering consumers the ability to purchase and 'keep' content when there is absolutely nothing tangible there is sheer greed and lunacy (mainly when the door closes or they fence you in to that garden hard and deep enough and then pull the ladder up Jack and sod the rest of you unless you buy in to new fangled, fancy product/service , or move your content to a provider you don't want to be with, be it due to Privacy or T&C issues etc; e.g. Nest, Ring, Blink, Vudu, Ultraviolet, Seeso, Sony Entertainment Network and so on).

Same goes for those stupid Match Attax and Topps digital cards, EA loot boxes and all the rest of it. Yet we happily lap that garbage up. It's like the emperors new clothes except we're going in blissfully aware of the stupidity we're about to commit. Fools and their money...

In the case of Substance I think it’s mostly about quality. According to what he’s saying, it’s sort of like SACD. They make new DSDs but not actual SACDs of most stuff now so to the content VIEWER (not collector) this millionaires-only streaming service sounds like the only choice. Download-only is also the only choice for hi res audio so I can relate. I have almost no interest in 4K though so on that level I don’t really relate.

If they dare to stop making physical media then it's 100% torrents for me. Not a chance in hell that I will pay real money for digital files. I don't do that for games, music and I will for sure not do it for movies.

Are you suggesting theft?

This is an excellent way to put it. Access to more content in their highest quality form is important to me. Combination of four benefits of this digital delivery system made it a value for me to consider it. More high quality content is one of them.

Once you purchase a title in digital through the Kaleidescape store, you automatically qualify for any later upgrades. For instance, if the title gets remastered or gets an updated Dolby Atmos or DTS:X soundtrack, your digital license gives you access to these. This will save me from buying the same movie several times. (They also offer disc to digital and SD/HD to UHD upgrades if you already own the disc version)

Currently space is my main concern. I need a dedicated room for the number movies I have. It would cost me much less money to invest into Kaleidescape to reduce my movie library footprint than expand my new home budget for that one extra room.

How my family (not) likes to navigate through my content library and choose something to watch is the last but not the least important benefit for me. I am the only person who would go and pick something up from the shelf. Everyone else will go and try to find something to watch from Netflix because it simply is more convenient to browse for something watch on the TV screen. Kaleidescape system offers a cataloging function where you can catalog your DVDs and Blu-rays. Your disc content and digital content is then displayed uniformly in a very nice GUI on your TV screen. The ones you own on digital plays from the HDD immediately. When you select a title on disc only, the system tells you to insert the disc. This way I can go browse through my shelves and my family can browse on the TV screen to find something to watch.

@substance

In my book canceling physical media is depriving people of a legal fair way of owning a copy.

This is one more reason I keep my old VHS Tapes. And VHS players.
And yes I still buy Laser Disc when I find one I want. And have more than I need.
But I will keep getting VHS Tapes, LaserDisc. Old Stuff still is king.

Technically you never own a movie, you just own the right to play it unlimited amount of times during the lifetime of your physical disc. The lifetime of a digital purchase on i.e. Amazon would probably be "untill they don't have it anymore" in ther library.

I rather pay for a digital rental than buying digital, as the life time expectancy feels very uncertain with a digital purchase.

Please lord, let us have physical media, and may our discs not rot