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Forums - Movies & TV - Do you still buy movies physically?

 

Do you?

Yes, I still buy physical 46 63.89%
 
No, I've gone all digital 26 36.11%
 
Total:72
Nettles said:
curl-6 said:

I find it remarkable that DVDs are not only still around but still mainstream 15 years after the arrival of Blu Ray; I guess streaming stopped the latter from ever attaining dominant market share, and DVD quality is still better and more consistent than what you usually get from streaming services.

The quality of DVD is good enough for most people and they're cheaper than Blu-Ray.

Well, that's definitely true for me, I buy most of my movies on DVD due it them being cheaper and the quality still being acceptable.



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It depends on the movies, but yes I still buy I love when blu rays are on sale and u can the classics in a cheap bundle.



Interesting but in nz blu Ray is either cheaper than dvds or same price. More sales for blu rays as well. I haven't bought dvds since release of blu rays

Nettles said:

curl-6 said:

I find it remarkable that DVDs are not only still around but still mainstream 15 years after the arrival of Blu Ray; I guess streaming stopped the latter from ever attaining dominant market share, and DVD quality is still better and more consistent than what you usually get from streaming services.

The quality of DVD is good enough for most people and they're cheaper than Blu-Ray.



curl-6 said:
Nettles said:

The quality of DVD is good enough for most people and they're cheaper than Blu-Ray.

Well, that's definitely true for me, I buy most of my movies on DVD due it them being cheaper and the quality still being acceptable.

Blu-Ray never took of like DVD due to streaming taking over.  If you like buying used movies there are way more used DVD's then Blu-Ray's.



Chris Hu said:
curl-6 said:

Well, that's definitely true for me, I buy most of my movies on DVD due it them being cheaper and the quality still being acceptable.

Blu-Ray never took of like DVD due to streaming taking over.  If you like buying used movies there are way more used DVD's then Blu-Ray's.

I generally shy away from buying used as some people treat their discs very badly and nothing's worse than getting halfway through a movie then it seizes up cos the disc is scratched. 

Whether I buy on DVD or Blu Ray mostly depends on the film. I will buy Godzilla vs Kong on BR for example cos its a film with a big focus on special effects, but I recently picked up John Wick 3 on DVD as its less about the visuals.



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d21lewis said:

All digital. I think the last physical movie I purchased new was Tintin. I've purchased a few physical movies from thrift stores but I never get around to watching them.

And, me being who I am, I HAVE to take it there...
A few months ago, I found my stash of DVD porn. I bought a blu-ray player just to watch that porn and I was pretty excited. I didn't finish a single DVD. It was just too cumbersome. I disconnected the Blu-ray player and I'm not even 100% sure where it is right now. The remote is in my man cave, though. Digital is just too easy and convenient. I only wish some of the extra features from DVD/Blu-ray would make the leap to digital.

Lol.



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My first DVD player was for the PC when Tex Murphy: Overseer came out, end Februari 1998. I bought one of the first DVD drives for that (players weren't available yet in the Netherlands) which cost about $400 at the time for the drive. I had my PC hooked up to my surround system and CRT projector, so also used it to watch movies until I could import a standalone region free DVD player. Laserdisc was still better quality though in the early days so I mainly stuck with that until DVD matured a bit. Early DVD releases in PAL were often literally the VHS version (with baked in subtitles) copied to DVD. VHS noise plus mpeg compression artifacts.

DVD is much more friendly to use than Blu-ray but it's hard to go back to 480p and mpeg-2. Some of the superbit collection are not too bad but still very low resolution. Hence I only buy DVD now when there is no Blu-ray version.



curl-6 said:

I find it remarkable that DVDs are not only still around but still mainstream 15 years after the arrival of Blu Ray; I guess streaming stopped the latter from ever attaining dominant market share, and DVD quality is still better and more consistent than what you usually get from streaming services.

Some analyst predicted the complete death of DVD 5 and 10 years ago, such as this article from 2011: https://www.digitaltrends.com/apple/the-death-of-dvd/, the article hilariously says:

"At any rate, DVDs spelled the destruction of VHS, which has taken its place alongside Betamax, typewriters, and Discmans as items made obsolete by their successors.

But VHS experienced general market domination from the mid 70s until the time DVD players came on the scene and before they become incredibly affordable. Now it looks like DVD players are the ones knocking lightly on death’s door: With the saturation of the movie streaming market, not to mention built-in Blu-ray players in laptops and consoles like the PlayStation 3, yesterday’s DVD technology is undoubtedly on its way out."

so they were telling that VHS experienced 25-30 years of media video domination, while DVD wouldn't even reach 10 years comfortably, because of Blu-ray and streaming services that would spell instantaneous doom for DVDs.

They forgot that a lot of people all over the world obtained and created DVD collections of several hundreds or thousands of movies, and when Blu-ray came out they didn't want to buy those movies again, also several low profile, independent or obscure movies came out on DVD but not on Blu-ray, several collections of TV series came out on DVD but still weren't out on Blu-ray.

They mentioned the PlayStation 3 but they forget that the also highly succesfull consoles the Wii and the X360 were using DVD, one was SD resolution and the other that was cappable of HD resolution but both used DVD to great effect, i myself made that experiment if you watched a DVD movie in a DVD player connected with composite cables to a HDTV the image quality was terrible, blocky, blurry and with washed out colors, if you watched the same DVD in a console connected through component cables the image and the colors would be a little better and less blurry, but if you watched the DVD movie in a PlayStation 3 or X360 connected via a HDMI cable the movie would look really good, sharp and with great colors specially animated movies and series with simple draw styles would look identical or better than being watched in a standard def TV, so no reason to go and buy again in blu-ray in the short term.

Blu-ray never took the crown as big as some expected in home media video since as a new medium it was very expensive getting a new player, the cheapest option was getting a PS3 and that still was very expensive compared to getting a DVD player in a lot of places, this article:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/08/the-death-of-the-dvd-why-sales-dropped-more-than-86percent-in-13-years.html

Tells about the gigantic drop in DVD sales in USA over the years, but they also forget that even to this day people still has functional SDTVs with functional DVD players and even VCR players in regions like Latin America and the caribbean or on South East Asia that never got to buy blu-rays, and are just now getting used to buy netflix and other streaming services suscriptions. Unlike some people in "first world" countries that get accustomed to change their things like TVs and such every 2-3 years, some people here have things working or get them repaired to make them work to 10-20 years or more. 



foxmccloud64 said:
curl-6 said:

I find it remarkable that DVDs are not only still around but still mainstream 15 years after the arrival of Blu Ray; I guess streaming stopped the latter from ever attaining dominant market share, and DVD quality is still better and more consistent than what you usually get from streaming services.

Some analyst predicted the complete death of DVD 5 and 10 years ago, such as this article from 2011: https://www.digitaltrends.com/apple/the-death-of-dvd/, the article hilariously says:

"At any rate, DVDs spelled the destruction of VHS, which has taken its place alongside Betamax, typewriters, and Discmans as items made obsolete by their successors.

But VHS experienced general market domination from the mid 70s until the time DVD players came on the scene and before they become incredibly affordable. Now it looks like DVD players are the ones knocking lightly on death’s door: With the saturation of the movie streaming market, not to mention built-in Blu-ray players in laptops and consoles like the PlayStation 3, yesterday’s DVD technology is undoubtedly on its way out."

so they were telling that VHS experienced 25-30 years of media video domination, while DVD wouldn't even reach 10 years comfortably, because of Blu-ray and streaming services that would spell instantaneous doom for DVDs.

They forgot that a lot of people all over the world obtained and created DVD collections of several hundreds or thousands of movies, and when Blu-ray came out they didn't want to buy those movies again, also several low profile, independent or obscure movies came out on DVD but not on Blu-ray, several collections of TV series came out on DVD but still weren't out on Blu-ray.

They mentioned the PlayStation 3 but they forget that the also highly succesfull consoles the Wii and the X360 were using DVD, one was SD resolution and the other that was cappable of HD resolution but both used DVD to great effect, i myself made that experiment if you watched a DVD movie in a DVD player connected with composite cables to a HDTV the image quality was terrible, blocky, blurry and with washed out colors, if you watched the same DVD in a console connected through component cables the image and the colors would be a little better and less blurry, but if you watched the DVD movie in a PlayStation 3 or X360 connected via a HDMI cable the movie would look really good, sharp and with great colors specially animated movies and series with simple draw styles would look identical or better than being watched in a standard def TV, so no reason to go and buy again in blu-ray in the short term.

Blu-ray never took the crown as big as some expected in home media video since as a new medium it was very expensive getting a new player, the cheapest option was getting a PS3 and that still was very expensive compared to getting a DVD player in a lot of places, this article:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/08/the-death-of-the-dvd-why-sales-dropped-more-than-86percent-in-13-years.html

Tells about the gigantic drop in DVD sales in USA over the years, but they also forget that even to this day people still has functional SDTVs with functional DVD players and even VCR players in regions like Latin America and the caribbean or on South East Asia that never got to buy blu-rays, and are just now getting used to buy netflix and other streaming services suscriptions. Unlike some people in "first world" countries that get accustomed to change their things like TVs and such every 2-3 years, some people here have things working or get them repaired to make them work to 10-20 years or more. 

Excellent breakdown, thanks. Especially amusing to see the death of DVD predicted a decade ago when they're still mainstream today.

I use a dedicated player with HDMI to a 47 inch HDTV, and DVDs still look fine on it. They're also usually significantly cheaper here in Australia compared to the same movie/show on Blu Ray. 

The last movie to release on VHS, A History of Violence, came out the same year Blu ray launched, 2006. I wonder when the last movie on DVD will release; right now it's looking like that won't happen for quite some time.



Sometimes. Most often stream them from Netflix of Disney +.

Last edited by bdbdbd - on 27 April 2021

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