Everything is digital now ..... almost

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Best Buy Will Stop Selling DVDs and Blu-Rays

Streaming services have increasingly cut into DVD and Blu-ray purchases over the past decade, and other physical media is having its moment in the spotlight. Now, your options for buying physical movies are slimming, as Best Buy is set to end selling discs.

Best Buy, a prominent consumer-electronics retailer, is set to exit the DVD business in early 2024, ceasing sales of DVDs and Blu-ray discs both in-store and online. The decision, which was apparently made about nine months ago but has just surfaced now, reflecitng the changing landscape of how we most people watch movies and TV. Best Buy acknowledged the evolving viewing habits, stating that people now engage with movies and TV shows differently. In other words, people are getting their movies and shows from the internet, not buying discs, so it’s not really worth it to keep physical media in stock if no one is buying it.

The retailer will continue selling movies and TV shows on physical discs throughout the 2023 holiday season, ultimately discontinuing sales in the new year. This decision doesn’t affect video games, which will continue to be available in physical discs — although the video game industry is also making the move to digital, so who knows if games will be next.

In a statement, a Best Buy representative said that “to state the obvious, the way we watch movies and TV shows is much different today than it was decades ago,” going on to add that "making this change gives us more space and opportunity to bring customers new and innovative tech for them to explore, discover and enjoy.” Walmart, Amazon, and Target continue to stock physical movies, and likewise, Redbox kiosks are still available for rentals if you’d rather go that route instead. However, this move by Best Buy might signal a trend across US retail stores over the coming months or years.

Funny enough, Best Buy is still selling vinyl records, and 2022 was the 17th straight year of increasing demand for vinyl records. It’s a bit weird to live in a world where 4K Blu-ray movies and TV collections are vanishing from store shelves while a (roughly) 50 year old audio format is still going relatively strong.

https://www.howtogeek.com/best-buy-will-stop-selling-dvds-and-blu-rays/

Torben

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Yet, still, no streaming service can match the quality of a 50-100Gb UHD disk (aka 4K BD), a quality difference that can be heard/seen in any mid to high end Home Theater.

PS: Before anyone jumps in, Kaleidescape is not a streaming service

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It’s not a great development, but what I’m worried about is video access via libraries.

The situation with video is much worse than with music. Very little of the great cinema of the past is available on streaming. I have a huge collection of DVDs in my basement, and my local public library does a pretty good job of curating their collection.

But if we stop making DVDs, as Disney seems to have done, libraries will have no access. Be interesting to see how that develops.

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I absolutely agree, I have yet to experience a movie streaming service that can come close to my 4K UHD Dolby TrueHD and Dolby Atmos 7.2.4 home theater system. I was very disappointed when Samsung discontinued disc players. Movie streaming convenience is going to put the quality out of business.

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Maybe for now, but is this not what we said about streaming low quality MP3’s? Yet today we have 192/24 streaming and downloads.

This is actually not about digital vs non-digital. DVD and UHD are digital. It’s about physical media vs virtual/cloud media. It’s not unthinkable that with time, bandwidth and storage are likely to increase to allow streaming “lossless” video.

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Also, no streaming service has DTS:X or Auro3D.
Disney+ mentioned future support for IMAX DTX which is not implemented yet …

There are still other alternatives eg Panasonic, Sony, Reavon etc

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I do hope you are correct, and I hope it happens sooner than later because I am old now!

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I’ve bought a brand new Sony 4k UHD BluRay player this summer to replace my 15+ year old Panasonic. My guess is the Sony will probably the last one though.

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Owning media has a lot of value to many of us still. The question isn’t whether Best Buy sells them, the question is will the studios keep releasing them. I have no problem ordering them online and having the media shipped to my home.

The difference between streaming and bluray is stark. This may help sales as there are enough people world wide, hopefully, to support direct to consumer sales.

I suspect as bandwidth continues to increase the difference in PQ and SQ will merge over time.

I still think my DVD Audios and SACD’s sound better than streaming versions, but I must admit I stream most everything now.

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That’s less and less the problem. It’s the selection that’s an issue. Netflix used to have this astonishing DVD library, any movie you wanted to see. They stopped shipping DVDs at the end of September, and now you can only get what’s up on Netflix at the moment. They always have a half-dozen classics available at any given time, but that half dozen is always drawn from the same 100 titles.

The Criterion Channel is great, and the TCM “hub” on Max is pretty good too. But even both of those are extremely limited. The TCM cable VOD selection seems to have suffered since the Max tie-in; I count only 16 classics available VOD there.

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Vudu has a very big selection (US only). You can also check Kino Lorber (if you have access) - they bring back quite a lot of old films to disk as well

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Thanks! I didn’t know that Kino Lorber has a streaming service! Kino Now. I see they have “Dawson City: Frozen Time”, which is a very strange and nifty documentary.

But it’s not the number of selections I worry about. After all, Netflix has an overwhelming catalog online. But almost all of it is crap. The question is more about how many of the movies on the AFI, BFI, etc. top 1000 movies of all time are currently available to stream.

BFI has the Sight and Sound poll films up on their site, but only for Brits. The Criterion Channel has “more than 50” of them (out of 100). Of course, the New York Times has speculated that the list is “too tasteful”, so maybe…

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Well, there are too many studios, too many ‘rights’, ‘regional restrictions’ and ‘licensing’ involved, not all film has been restored to digital etc etc. You can not expect one streaming service with all the films of all time available globally :wink:

And the big issue with streaming services or digital stores is that now they are here - will they be here tomorrow? Best example for that is/was "Ultraviolet’ …

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I’ve never, ever bought physical media from Best Buy. When Amazon announces they are discontinuing DVD/BRD sales it may be time to panic.

Yes, I think it’s hilarious that Best buy is selling LP’s but not DVD’s.

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The advantage of streaming is that it saves raw materials…?

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Best Buy is two miles from my home, so when they show the DVD I want is in stock, I drive there, purchase it and watch it.