Tired of searching for a film on VOD platforms, complicated offers, price increases and mixed offers, customers have apparently had enough and are increasingly reaching for DVD films. There are more and more such people.
In February of this year, I saw an article on The Verge about VOD platform fatigue – the author wrote directly that she went back to buying DVDs because sometimes it’s simply cheaper. Big baskets in stores full of discounted films and series are a good chance to complete your collection and equip yourself with hits and classics… forever (well, until the discs work, but they won’t stop anytime soon). The main argument against such expenses is of course how many times you can watch a given film, and indeed, out of probably a few hundred titles I have collected, there are many that I have seen once or twice, but at the same time I am sure that I can watch this film at any time. Without a network connection, without additional fees, without wondering whether it is still available somewhere.
VOD service offers are becoming increasingly complicated. The prices of the highest packages, which guarantee not only access for family members, but also the best image and sound quality, are rising, but it is not only financial issues that play a major role in discouraging viewers from using streaming services. Another huge factor deciding about abandoning VOD is the chaos in offers, which have long been impossible to take for granted. Will all Warner Bros. films be available on Max? No. Is every film or series produced, commissioned or financed by Netflix immediately available worldwide and will never disappear from the catalog? This should no longer be assumed.
And despite the growing popularity of streaming platforms, more and more people are choosing to buy movies and series on Blu-Ray and DVD. Phil Halliday, Managing Director of HMV, he noticedthat sales of physical visual media such as 4K and Blu-Ray increased by 5% in the first half of 2024. HMV avoided bankruptcy in 2019, and now all of the company’s major product areas are growing. While overall DVD and Blu-Ray sales are still declining, we’re learning that there are still customers willing to pay for a physical copy of their favorite movies and shows that they’ll watch over and over again.
Halliday compared this trend to the growing popularity of CDs and vinyl. Of course, this is just one particular store, but it is worth noting that HMV has a variety of, and often unique, editions of films, series, music albums and other multimedia in its offer. This means that those who usually do not buy a large number of new titles, but only selected ones – their favorites or because of a special edition – are also interested in discs. The 4K version of “Oppenheimer” disappeared from the shelves shortly after its premiere and stores had to wait for restocking to meet the demand.
In the aforementioned HMV chain, the situation may be better and gives a bit of hope for improvement, but the overall picture of the physical media market does not look good. A 4.7% drop and Blu-ray and DVD releases disappearing from the shelves of the largest stores in the US may be the real beginning of the real end. If brands such as Target or Best Buy do not see the point in selling discs in local stores, and Disney withdraws from distributing physical copies in many regions (including Australia), then the situation is really not very optimistic. In Poland, we had some turbulence related to the lack of people willing to release Sony films, and Disney ignored 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray releases in Poland for a long time and only now announced its first film in this format in Poland, “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes”.
This may be a good chance to complete your collections and equip yourself with your favorite films in the best quality, without relying on the mercy of VOD services, where even the studio’s own productions are removed. What’s more, it is the large number of platforms that is already overwhelming for viewers, and therefore the numerous subscriptions and differences between services. Content rotation means that films and series are often watched out of fear of being removed from the offer, especially when precise dates are given for catalog purges, when more than 30, 50 or 80 films disappear at once.
A subscription provides relatively cheap access to a huge content base, but then we have to play by the rules of the service’s rulers. Or we buy a movie or series on disc and decide everything ourselves.
Source: antyweb.pl
