So we've had some discussions about physical movie media in the past and maybe this will just rehash that discussion. Most recently, folks discussed "The DVD biz has circled the drain for years....
This article is quite a long read, but I want to highlight some excerpts that might be food for discussion on various topics related to streaming, sticking with physical media, and just interacting with like-minded people:
When a hurricane struck Florida in 2018, Christina’s neighborhood lost electricity, cell service and internet. For four weeks her family was cut off from the world, their days dictated by the rising and setting sun. But Christina did have a vast collection of movies on DVD and Blu-ray, and a portable player that could be charged from an emergency generator.
Word got around. The family’s library of physical films and books became a kind of currency. Neighbors offered bottled water or jars of peanut butter for access. The 1989 Tom Hanks comedy The ’Burbs was an inexplicably valuable commodity, as were movies that could captivate restless and anxious children.
Data hoarders can relate. ;D But have you set up block parties to watch a film together? Or been loaning neighbors films they can't find on their plurality of streaming services?
Some film fans never gave up physical media: they’ve spent years quietly buying thrift-store discs, discarded by the many US households that no longer have DVD or Blu-ray players, and waiting for their chance to rise again. Other fans, frustrated by streaming’s limitations, have recently rediscovered physical media and trickled to join its rear-guard army.
Physical media will never regain its heights, but it may live to fight a little longer – supported by loyalists and by a cottage industry of independent and boutique film distributors that license classic and cult films and sell high-quality physical editions to eager, sometimes frantic, fans.
I know there are some Criterion fans on here. What physical media labels/imprints do you like and what do you look for in an idea (re-)printing? The article goes on to mention "Arrow, Criterion, Kino Lorber and BFI are probably the best known distributors, but in recent years a number of others have thrived, including Shout! Factory, Vinegar Syndrome and Severin in the US; Eureka, Indicator, Radiance and Second Sight in the UK; and Umbrella and Imprint in Australia."
And when Universal released Oppenheimer on 4K Blu-ray this fall, the initial run sold out, with feverish Christopher Nolan fans pillaging the same megastores that are moving to drop physical media. 4K Blu-rays are currently the smallest slice of the film disc market, and require ultra-high-definition players and TVs, meaning that the Oppenheimer run was driven by a niche within a niche. But the episode seemed to indicate that a market exists – especially when it has champions.
Nolan himself had encouraged fans to rally to physical media: "If you buy a 4K UHD, you buy a Blu-ray, it’s on your shelf, it’s yours," he told IGN last year. "[Y]ou own it. That’s never really the case with any form of digital distribution."
"I own it," is how I related to "acquiring" media of all types. Physical is very nice to me though because I'm both supporting the idea that the film was worth putting on disc/reprinting and that I get access to whatever extras/bonus stuff they've added (assuming it's worthwhile). It's also nice to pick up bargin-bin/yard sale DVDs for a couple bucks and even resell ones I no longer care to have on a shelf.
Some enthusiasts are intense, even maniacal, collectors. On the Tonight Show, the actor Carrie Coon recently said that she and her husband, the playwright and actor Tracy Letts, have 10,000 Blu-rays: "My husband’s a very sick man," she joked, who meticulously researches films on a website called DVDBeaver. "I thought he was looking at porn." Other people are more casual and recent converts, like the recovering "minimalist" vlogger who recently issued a sheepish mea culpa on YouTube: "I regret decluttering my DVDs."
Do you collect? Have you down-sized or gotten rid of large batches of VHS, DVD, blu-rays? How do you live with yourself?!? How do you feel about it now that so many films are out of print or have limited and occasional re-printings and do you wish you had anything back? Or do you appreciate the "de-clutter?"
Yet physical media’s decline has had side-effects – including, according to Matt Damon, worse films.
"The DVD was a huge part of our business," the actor explained in 2021. You could "afford to not make all of your money when [a film] played in the theater, because you knew you’d have the DVD coming behind the release, and six months later you get, you know, a whole 'nother chunk." When "that went away, that changed the type of movies that we could make". Financing more adventurous or offbeat films became "a massive gamble in a way that it wasn’t in the 1990s when they were making … the kind of movies that I loved".
Do you think this is true? Did people approach films worthy of theatrical releases and a DVD release as being less disposable in the long-run?
As a consumer and movie/tv-phile, I love my media server. I keep it stocked. When needed, I run out and buy more space. The next time I do that, I'm pretty much going to have to either learn NAS...
Exemplary
As a consumer and movie/tv-phile, I love my media server. I keep it stocked. When needed, I run out and buy more space. The next time I do that, I'm pretty much going to have to either learn NAS stuff, install a SATA card, or get another server since I'm maxed out on drive slots currently.
I used to have a DVD collection. Well, I still have the DVDs, just because I haven't figured out how to dispose of them without simply resorting to a trash can. Sure I know they're not worth the $20-30 (average) I bought each of them for, but it'd be nice if I could turn some 1500-odd titles into maybe $2 or $3 each? Somehow? Without needing to spend several weeks or months doing it? But it's been well over a decade since one got put in. Closer to two honestly.
I don't like the streaming thing, mostly because I like having the titles I enjoy. I just do. This whole subscription deal that everything in life has turned into, pass. Hard pass. Especially things that used to be things, but are now only services. Software was a thing, now it's apparently not. So I stick with my old copies of programs, and if needed I know how to find copies of others that bypass the subscription.
DVD was this little blip in the economics of Hollywood. When VHS first launched, one of the prevailing sentiments from "the industry" was no one would ever want to own a movie. Why would they, when they can just go to the theater? We all know how that worked out. But then DVD came along, and that old sentiment resurfaced in a new way.
Now, the industry thought no one would ever want to own TV shows. Why would they? Fox had one executive, who had seniority in their TV content division, who disagreed, and led the charge for a few years proving that consumers will pay for "old tv shows." Fans are fans, the industry found out. Movies were already a no-brainer easy sell since they'd learned that one from VHS.
So suddenly you had this new revenue stream. Release, Overseas Release, TV and Airline sales, Rentals (which started disappearing about the time DVD got strong), and then along came DVD. Which they pushed with consumer friendly $20 and $25 dollar price points for the most part. Three months after the theater, more or less, buy the DVD.
Certain titles were guaranteed blockbusters that flew off the shelf. I still remember walking into Best Buy (back when that store was actually still a decent store; another conversation that) and seeing what had to be close to a thousand copies of The Matrix lined up on a wall of shelves, the Tuesday of release. And they sold.
That's just one example. Even "little" movies, like Damon mentions in that quote, benefited. Since more or less everyone was a potential buyer for the media that fit their content tastes, the 90s and 00s were flush with more niche kinds of movies. Dramas are an example of a big category that's fallen off hard in the wake of DVD sales disappearing. Comedy is another.
Studios learned pretty quick, as Damon referenced, they could get count on some sort of range of revenue from the theatrical, and then another range from the DVD. Plus the usual TV and airline and all that, for years down the road. They didn't have to believe, with graphs and charts and spreadsheets, that a property could go gangbusters at the theater to greenlight it, since they could count on some disc sales.
That's gone now. Somehow, they all let the revenue go away without replacing it, when they switched to licensing titles to streaming. So that income is just gone, and they're left with the lower amount streaming brings in. In the midst of declining theater revenue, which is also whole other conversation.
I'm not really happy with where Hollywood is right now. The MBAs have invaded. Not are invading, have invaded. All the major studios are basically under control by buttoned up finance types now. People who look at charts and graphs and spreadsheets when they decide what to spend money on.
It's easy to say meme stuff like "Hollywood creatives are bankrupt" when bemoaning the state of content these days. But really it's a function of basic corporate politics. Creatives aren't in charge. Executives are.
For every project, when they're tens of or hundreds of millions of dollars, there are a bunch of meetings about it. People with jobs sit in those meetings, and sooner or later have to defend why they do or don't want something to go ahead.
It's a ton easier to defend not just a project, but your job when the project doesn't go swimmingly, when the project has a financial track record you can point to. Both then and now. Franchises and existing IP has a track record.
If you greenlight some random idea from some "up and coming" creative, and it goes south, it's harder to survive that on the corporate level than it is if you greenlight Fast and Furious Twenty: Interdimensional Relay Race. If FF20 becomes the disaster that sinks the franchise, if nothing else, if you're the executive on the hotseat because of it, you can always pull up the other 19 with the seventy-kajillion bucks they made and claim "how was I supposed to know; the indicators were solid!"
MBAs don't appear to have the ability to recognize that creative companies don't work like widget and service companies do. If you roll into GE and want to squeeze the production lines and find efficiencies and all that bullshit, that's mostly just math. People's lives too, but also math. The widgets cost X amount to produce, and can be sold for Y; make sure Y is as high as possible while driving X down. Basic MBA logic.
That falls apart with creative. MBAs don't seem to be able to just "make bets". Which is what the studios did. The moguls would bet every year. They'd bet on trends, they'd bet on friends, they'd bet on hot new takes and young talents they thought the public might like. It's how all the classic films came about. A studio (who had money) decided to finance some idea, turning that idea into a movie/show.
You can't find creativity on a spreadsheet. No matter how hard you crunch the numbers. But MBAs don't understand this. They can't grapple with a business reality where they have to weigh intangible factors like how popular a finished project will be. Taste is a mystery. Popularity is fickle.
Which you see constantly. Not just now, the history of Hollywood is littered with that shit. All the time. For example, Star Wars was a fluke. It's a fluke Lucas got the money for it, because Fox had no faith it would do anything. They weren't even sure they'd get their money back for it. The film they were mostly betting on in May 1977 was The Other Side of Midnight.
Heard of it? Probably not. But that's the film Fox figured would be a steady earner for them, and the film they put into a package deal with Star Wars to get theaters to show both. They had such little faith in Star Wars they weren't even certain they could get theaters to show it, so they forced/bribed them with a film "the industry" figured was a much surer bet.
Obviously almost no one's ever heard of The Other Side of Midnight, but everyone sure as hell heard about Star Wars.
That happens all the time. Just less in the past ten or fifteen years because the non-creatives staffing desks at studios won't make bets, so those surprise projects, these days, don't even have the chance to get made and become a surprise.
The MBA idiots don't know how to listen to some up and coming director or writer and decide "you know what, we'll fund that crap for ten or twenty million. Go show us what you can do kid." They're scared, they're confused, they're gunning for the big returns, whatever; they just don't make any bets.
They refuse to part with money for anything unless it has a lineage. They go with things that have some form of surety as far as financial returns goes. Known properties. Sure it's fashionable to bash the big franchises like Fast and Jurassic, and with good reason, but as shit as those films are, they sell around the world. And produce tie-in revenue streams.
How do you sell t-shirts and action figures from an adult talking head drama? Something else the industry learned, but didn't, from Star Wars. Fox didn't see any money in merchandise, and famously signed it over to Lucas when he asked for it.
They don't make those mistakes anymore. But they also cling to the decision; if they can't envision posters and figurines and whatever flying off shelves due to a certain idea, that's a black mark against it.
It all comes down to money. The Wall Street entities that've snapped up Hollywood live in a world of money and numbers, period. They have no vision, no tolerance for inspiration or creativity, and refuse to deviate from the collective wisdom of Wall Street. What does Wall Street know about Hollywood?
Nothing. That's the point. They're driving their big expensive purchases into the ground, all across Tinseltown. But none of them are willing to look at history, at the legacy that built the shit they decided to buy, and tap some of that institutional wisdom.
Creative people are who make the hits. Which are what bring the Big Returns Wall Street craves. The way you get hits is you give creatives money to roll the dice. Some of those bets won't pay off. That's why Hollywood Studios always had a slate of projects year to year. It was rare for a studio to just have the one thing they were investing in over any given twelve or twenty-four month period.
Fox had a bunch of things they were working on in '75 and '76. That started releasing in '77.
One of them was Star Wars. A little film no one except one creative wacko had faith in. Who managed to talk a studio president into writing a check.
Really, the whole thing with Wall Street not understanding how Hollywood is a big creative betting table makes no sense if you stop and think it over. Most of the material I've examined about Wall Street talks about how all the traders and bankers and so on love to make bets. They bet on companies all the time there. They rig the bets too, in all sorts of ways. They hedge their bets by spreading risk, they bring in investors to fund bets the firm wants but doesn't want to pay for, on and on.
Yet they go west to the left coast and suddenly get all conservative. Live a little Wall Street. You didn't buy widget factories, you bought movie studios.
Make some damn movies. See what happens when the dice are rolled. Afraid of the risk? Then don't bet it all on black; spread the chips around the slate.
I think I like the idea of physical media more than filling up my house with it. I used to have a decent amount of books, CDs and movies but have drastically reduced everything. I usually spend my...
I think I like the idea of physical media more than filling up my house with it. I used to have a decent amount of books, CDs and movies but have drastically reduced everything. I usually spend my time reading or watching something new, so having something on the shelf for literally decades without being re-read/watched doesn't provide me much value or joy anymore. I am conflicted though because I don't want the physical media to dissappear and I often use the library for a DVD or Blu-ray as a backup when something isn't on a streaming service. However most of the time I would just find something different to watch. Plenty of good stuff available and I rarely feel like I am missing something in practice.
I attempted to start something of a blu-ray/criterion collection a few years ago. I ran into the main two issues, the amount of dough needed for even a small collection of discs and also a severe...
I attempted to start something of a blu-ray/criterion collection a few years ago. I ran into the main two issues, the amount of dough needed for even a small collection of discs and also a severe lack of space.
I also don’t tend to rewatch movies and prefer to watch movies I’ve never seen before. So whenever I bought a criterion release I’d feel guilt in never actually watching it. I have so many blu rays still in their shrink wrapping.
Using streaming services and torrenting the films not available on those streaming services is just so much easier. I realize I’m part of the problem but I don’t think collecting physical media is my thing. Vinyls are the only thing I see myself collecting since they have more of a distinct cool image to them rather than just dvd cases.
Sales are your friend. I've started upgrading my collection (and adding new ones) and my price points are max 10€ for a 4k Blu-ray and 7-ish € for a Bluray depending on the extras. A plain movie...
I attempted to start something of a blu-ray/criterion collection a few years ago. I ran into the main two issues, the amount of dough needed for even a small collection of discs and also a severe lack of space.
Sales are your friend.
I've started upgrading my collection (and adding new ones) and my price points are max 10€ for a 4k Blu-ray and 7-ish € for a Bluray depending on the extras. A plain movie won't get me to pay over 5€.
Yea, you won't get the ones you want immediately - not even a whole series at once (parts 2 & 3 of Pirates of the Caribbean are a tenner each, the first part never goes below 25...), but slowly you can get your collection up to your level.
I have a pretty decent collection of CDs and DVDs and a few years ago I got tired of the space they took up so I put all the discs into CD/DVD booklets. I know this wouldn't be ideal for some...
I have a pretty decent collection of CDs and DVDs and a few years ago I got tired of the space they took up so I put all the discs into CD/DVD booklets. I know this wouldn't be ideal for some people because there's people that prefer the actual cases, but for me I valued space over cases so it doesn't bother me having them all in CD/DVD booklets (or carrying cases, whatever you want to call them). For my CDs, I didn't want to get rid of the CD books so I just put them in the slot with the corresponding CD. There were some things I kept in their original cases though, like my Disney DVDs or TV shows with multiple discs.
I still have my 100 DVDs in such a booklet and it is a good compromise. Still, almost all of them have stayed in their case for more than 10 years now. I do have a small stack of obscure spaghetti...
I still have my 100 DVDs in such a booklet and it is a good compromise. Still, almost all of them have stayed in their case for more than 10 years now. I do have a small stack of obscure spaghetti westerns, but even those are often uploaded on YouTube.
There is one DVD I regret not having anymore and that is Kevin Smith's Dogma which somehow is out of print and held in legal limbo. So I acknowledge the importance of keeping physical copies, but not enough to keep hundreds of physical copies myself of films I like on the off chance that one of them will be hard to find in 25 years.
I swear we used to have Dogma on DVD but I have no idea what happened to it because it's not with the other DVDs. But I agree, I think it's worth keeping the physical copies of movies you really...
I swear we used to have Dogma on DVD but I have no idea what happened to it because it's not with the other DVDs. But I agree, I think it's worth keeping the physical copies of movies you really like, but nowadays that's more curated than back in the day when we used to just buy everything on DVD. I haven't bought a movie DVD in a long time though, I think I just feel like nothing is really worth owning anymore. I have been thinking about expanding our collection of TV show DVDs though. I've also been thinking of getting an actual DVD player again, we've just been using consoles for years but it's been so long since I turned the Xbox one on that it'd probably take like 5 hours to update lol.
This is a tangent but BFI are so frustrating to actually use. Here's a short documentary: http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/558995/index.html How do I watch it? There's a video clips section,...
Exemplary
BFI are probably the best known distributors
This is a tangent but BFI are so frustrating to actually use.
How do I watch it? There's a video clips section, with "full film" available. I click that, it tells me I'm not registered, and that I can't register, I need to be a member of an organisation that has registered. Clicking the "registration help" link takes me to a 404 page. When I do find the right page about registration it tells me to ask my local library if they're registered. Is there a list of registered libraries? Maybe, who knows, it's not discoverable on the website. (My local library is not registered.)
There's a link at the bottom of the page saying "This film is included in the BFI DVD compilation 'Land of Promise: The British Documentary Movement 1930-1950'. " -- I click the link, hoping to be taken to an online shop where I can buy the box set. The link doesn't take me directly to the box set, it just takes me to the store front. I type "land of promise" into the search box and it does two things: first it says:
Did you mean
land of promis
land of promised
The suggestions are links, and if I click a link it takes me to a different set of search results. But ignore this, because if I don't click the suggestions the search results do include a link to the product. It's £24 for a 4 disc box set, containing a large number of interesting documentaries. I think this is good value, I'm happy to pay that price.
So, this is a sub-optimal experience, but I can watch the film. I can even watch it for free if I can find the link, so why is it a problem?
A lot of the stuff they have is not yet digitised. But they don't have an quick and simple way to tell you this, so you end up jumping through a bunch of hoops to find out that the content simply isn't available unless you visit their building.
I genuinely have no idea whether I can't watch this, or whether I can watch it but I just need to magically know the correct URL to either buy the product or watch it for free. BFO ScreenOnline tells me to try BFI player, BFI player tells me it has no results for this film. They say that there's a possibility of a research viewing. Here's what that means: https://www.bfi.org.uk/bfi-national-archive/search-bfi-archive/research-viewing-services -- I have to visit an actual BFI location and watch the film on their equipment (I do get to press play / pause though). They also say it might be available here: https://www.bfi.org.uk/bfi-national-archive/watch-archive-collections but this page appears not to have any search function. It does link to BFI Player, and BFI player says it's not available in any form, but why isn't that information available on the BFI ScreenOnline page?
In the end, I just don’t think owning media is the right model for most people on most content. I don’t love most movies or tv shows I watch. I’m likely never going to watch it again. The...
In the end, I just don’t think owning media is the right model for most people on most content. I don’t love most movies or tv shows I watch. I’m likely never going to watch it again. The additional money, not to mention space and hassle, is not worth it.
What’s going to happen is that physical media will continue, not as a general means for content consumption, but as a collectors or memorabilia thing. There will be blu rays, they’ll come with a fancy box to keep and display the thing in, and it’ll cost $120, and that’s fine. For some things, I’ll fork over the cash, because it’s important to me like that. For the rest, it’ll just be another entry in my Netflix watch history.
I think you are right, but as one of those weird people who actually buys that stuff, I can report that most of my 'normal' friends like that I do that. Because slowly I am building up a very...
I think you are right, but as one of those weird people who actually buys that stuff, I can report that most of my 'normal' friends like that I do that. Because slowly I am building up a very personal collection of movies that I like, or find interesting for some reason, and my friends are eager to accept whenever I invite them for a movie night, because: 'You always show really good movies'.
No sane person has the time and energy to deeply dive into the whole catalogues of Netflix and friends if they just want something to watch that night. So everyone sticks to the mediocre stuff the algorithm recommends. In that world, a collector that can dig up something from even just a little under the surface can play a valuable role.
Netflix is absolute dirge when it comes to recommendations or keeping a movie on the service that I may come back to. Prime is now adverts, but at least has a bigger selection, however, movies...
Netflix is absolute dirge when it comes to recommendations or keeping a movie on the service that I may come back to.
Prime is now adverts, but at least has a bigger selection, however, movies move between free and rent/paid for.
So I have a mix of physical media (all ripped in good-enough-for-me quality) and Jellyfin "sailed the seas" content. What is amusing for most is that the sailed content is movies and shows I originally bought on VHS or went to the cinema to see. I refuse to pay twice. It's a hill I'm happy to die on. Most of it is 90s and 00s.
I vividly remember the travails of trying to convert an audiobook on cassette tapes (a BBC adaptation of the whole Lord of the Rings, 13 tapes). This must be about a decade ago now, if not more,...
I vividly remember the travails of trying to convert an audiobook on cassette tapes (a BBC adaptation of the whole Lord of the Rings, 13 tapes). This must be about a decade ago now, if not more, and I dived deep into the rabbit hole of, essentially, analogue to digital audio conversion. And then I realised, I could just pirate it. I fully agree with you on not paying twice. I paid a decent amount for the box set (well worth it, it's an excellent adaptation), but I'm not paying full price again for the privilege of a digital version.
The good thing about owning physical media is that you aren't depending on service provider's good will in delivering the content. You can watch it at any time without a risk that some...
The good thing about owning physical media is that you aren't depending on service provider's good will in delivering the content. You can watch it at any time without a risk that some ceo-whatever will decide to pull series/movies out of the platform due to low ratings or license disagreements.
Not mention that streaming catalogues may differ from country to country exactly because of these licensing issues. I did experienced this by myself - instead of having access to same content as my friends from other European country, I was gratified with totally unrelated soap operas and films from countries I never even been into.
Don't get me wrong, streaming is working as a way of providing media to the masses nowadays - it even did stopped piracy for a while. But some people want to have a freedom of choice and access once again. The freedom of not being maneuvered into subscribing to n-services to track stuff they want to see or "own". And yet, it seems that having a physical media become a collecting hobby nowadays rather than default way of accessing the content... I wonder what happens in years to come - will we revert to physical media or we dwindle into a reality where "you don't own anything".
Guess I'm in the middle space. I want everything digital and don't like stacking boxes and covers at home which just take up space. I cherish the ease of access that digital media brings. For...
Guess I'm in the middle space.
I want everything digital and don't like stacking boxes and covers at home which just take up space. I cherish the ease of access that digital media brings. For instance you can search through thousands of files in less than a second to see whether you own a particular movie or whether there's subtitles for it. Doing this with physical media is much, much more cumbersome.
On the other hand I don't like older media no longer being available as is the case on subscription services. The consumer not having access to the underlying files is the real culprit here imo.
The best of both worlds is to have everything online but being able to download copies of it. That's why I prefer to purchase from sites like bandcamp which give you the actual music files and they are yours. And avoid any service that tries to lock you into a proprietary app // eco system.
This is why you have digital media, at home, in a system like Plex or Jellyfin. Ripping old DVDs to a digital format is pretty trivial and even with a fully lossless rip with all audio tracks...
I want everything digital and don't like stacking boxes and covers at home which just take up space. I cherish the ease of access that digital media brings. For instance you can search through thousands of files in less than a second to see whether you own a particular movie or whether there's subtitles for it. Doing this with physical media is much, much more cumbersome.
This is why you have digital media, at home, in a system like Plex or Jellyfin.
Ripping old DVDs to a digital format is pretty trivial and even with a fully lossless rip with all audio tracks they're around 4-8GB max, which is a drop in the bucket with the current disk sizes. You can fit over 600 movies in a single 5TB external drive.
This way you get the best of both worlds, no boxes and no arbitrary rules on what service your favourite movie/show is this month because of licensing deals.
Only a Tarantino or a Scorsese could afford to have the space or projection equipment to afford having a collection of 16mm and 35mm prints. Actual film does have a feel to it that even the most...
Only a Tarantino or a Scorsese could afford to have the space or projection equipment to afford having a collection of 16mm and 35mm prints.
Actual film does have a feel to it that even the most enhanced 4K digital restorations cannot replicate. It is more visually tactile than digital formats can ever produce.
I've watched heavily worn reels of films that are both popular and rare throughout my life, and actual silver nitrate touching your eye will always feel like a more intimate experience. Movies in the last decade feel like little more than video being played on a large screen. If you can watch an actual print on a large screen on a decent projector, I encourage you to do so. The difference is subtle, but it does exist.
I'm one of those who doesn't pay for any streaming service (apart from LTT on Floatplane which I view as direct support of the creator). I keep buying new DVDs and Blu ray, they are still...
I'm one of those who doesn't pay for any streaming service (apart from LTT on Floatplane which I view as direct support of the creator).
I keep buying new DVDs and Blu ray, they are still available (and new movies still launched on them) here in Czech Republic. I will keep doing that until it is still affordable. New Blu ray costs 7€, DVD often just 4€. Yes, this cost is say two years after release but VERY affordable.
I have collection (ripped on Jellyfin server) of over 300 movies, many of them really favorite ones which I can watch over and over. Even if film industry stopped doing physical media or switched to only collector's stuff (100€ and more) tomorrow, I have stuff to watch for a long long time. I'm not even movie/series consumer in he first place, I pay only for hings I really want.
I'm not thinking of DVDs or Blu rays as currency or collector's items, I just see it as actually physically owning what I paid for for as long as I want (even for future family members).
That flexibility is huge, isn't it? That you can rip them to a server, transcode them if you need to, download them without worrying about download expiration limits for a longer time away from...
That flexibility is huge, isn't it? That you can rip them to a server, transcode them if you need to, download them without worrying about download expiration limits for a longer time away from home, the list goes on. I run my own Jellyfin server for music, which is always on, and it's such a game-changer. I still think that Spotify smashes it by a country mile, accessing others' playlists is very cool, but being able to access my music anywhere is great. I only got into Jellyfin because I had uploaded all my music to Google Music, but it shut down in 2020.
I have a server in house running 24/7, I run TVheadend on it (I do DVB-T2 to IPTV on my own) and I have my home user dirrctories on it too. It was only matter of time before I set up some kind of...
I have a server in house running 24/7, I run TVheadend on it (I do DVB-T2 to IPTV on my own) and I have my home user dirrctories on it too. It was only matter of time before I set up some kind of media server. And I did. I tried Plex and Jellyfin both at the same time, but Plex didn't make it to be my server of choice because of the need to set up account on their servers thus not being independent even if you run on your own hardware (and it faild to automaticaly start after reboot and I was lazy to investigate). Plex has better scrubber and better KODI plugin and user management/switching. But I still picked Jellyfin. Being open source and really independent were the main reasons (with others as well).
I run this server at home. AndI managed to set up one more at friends house with 1Gbit internet connection and with public IP. I run OpenVPN there and I can access it from anywhere. I also have HDD with my media library on it so I can stream whatever I want. It isgreat being independent (or dependent only on accessibility of physical media). I mayn not have huge library or access to everything or new series or whatever, but everything that I have access to is truly mine. And that is worth it for me!
Same re. Plex - for me, it was non-negotiable that the services have to work without an external (I don't know what the word is) internet connection, only using the local network, and when I...
Same re. Plex - for me, it was non-negotiable that the services have to work without an external (I don't know what the word is) internet connection, only using the local network, and when I realised you had to pay Plex to set that up, it was dead to me. I had been running it for music for a few months by then, so the change was a bit brutal, reconstructing playlists etc., but the ownership you mentioned really makes the difference, even if it's not as extensive a catalogue. Knowing that nobody will delete a song or change it is great.
I always think of one of the GTA games as an example, I think the licensing ran out on some of the music, so my game in Steam got changed - those songs got removed from the game. If I'd had my own copy of GTA, it wouldn't be affected by stuff like that. Same with TV series, movies, albums, etc., I don't want to be at the mercy of the, say, Amazon content censor to know if I can watch/listen to the same episode/movie/song that I'm used to.
At the end of the day, I do not think there is one way to do this. People have a weird obsession with what's next or what's the best when all of these services are capable of existing at the same...
At the end of the day, I do not think there is one way to do this. People have a weird obsession with what's next or what's the best when all of these services are capable of existing at the same time, just in different capacity.
Physical media is doing great right now, it's just not in the mainstream.
I'm on the opposite side of this. I'm a bit of a minimalist physically and digitally. I don't want space being taken up by stuff that I probably won't ever use. I also do not rewatch things over...
I'm on the opposite side of this. I'm a bit of a minimalist physically and digitally. I don't want space being taken up by stuff that I probably won't ever use. I also do not rewatch things over and over again. I like experiencing new stories. And for those that I love I want to experience those fresh, not repetitively. I'm also not nostalgic, so there's plenty of stories I don't need to watch again.
I like streaming. I'm also an experienced digital pirate, so I know how to find the places to stream things outside of the traditional sites. At the same time, I love the experience of watching something in a theater. An actual movie theater and not someone home setup. Endgame, Spider-Man NWH, Dune Parts 1&2... a few incredible experiences that I won't forget.
Idk, I just wanted to add my two cents since these conversations online are usually an echo chamber.
I'm perfectly comfortable watching media at home - we have a huge screen (subjective, it's 55", I think, and I still can't get over how big images are, we upgraded from a 27" monitor) and ok...
I'm perfectly comfortable watching media at home - we have a huge screen (subjective, it's 55", I think, and I still can't get over how big images are, we upgraded from a 27" monitor) and ok speakers (small flat, nothing bigger needed). I love the flexibility of not enduring adverts and being able to pause whenever we fancy, but there are some films for which the cinema experience just blows it out of the water. I watched Dune 2 and it was such good value for money and an enjoyable experience, even if I did need the loo from about halfway through!
It's comforting to know that there are films that "justify" cinemas, still.
Re. the article, I don't think I'll ever be swapping bread for DVDs - if society has collapsed to that point, I doubt I can keep a big telly, speakers and a safe space to enjoy it in!
There are very few movies I want to rewatch, BUT I do want to give the experience to my children and friends. Having a physical copy I control a 100% is a way to make it happen even 25 years from...
I'm on the opposite side of this. I'm a bit of a minimalist physically and digitally. I don't want space being taken up by stuff that I probably won't ever use. I also do not rewatch things over and over again. I like experiencing new stories. And for those that I love I want to experience those fresh, not repetitively. I'm also not nostalgic, so there's plenty of stories I don't need to watch again.
There are very few movies I want to rewatch, BUT I do want to give the experience to my children and friends. Having a physical copy I control a 100% is a way to make it happen even 25 years from now. Despite the David Zaslavs of the world taking stuff offline because of money.
I've always wondered who watches commentary tracks. Do you watch whole films with the commentary on? You must have watched the film prior to know what's going on, right? Or do you have subtitles...
I've always wondered who watches commentary tracks. Do you watch whole films with the commentary on? You must have watched the film prior to know what's going on, right? Or do you have subtitles for the dialogue and the commentary from the speakers? I'm fascinated, lol. What movie has had your favourite commentary track (or if not favourite, which movie's commentary track would you recommend)?
i have the commentary audio with the normal subs. i watch the movie normally first, too. Some tracks are better than others. All of Ebert’s are great. I didn’t appreciate Citizen Kane as much as i...
i have the commentary audio with the normal subs. i watch the movie normally first, too.
Some tracks are better than others. All of Ebert’s are great. I didn’t appreciate Citizen Kane as much as i should have prior to his commentary track. His track is the benchmark in a lot of ways.
I really like the commentaries for The Deer Hunter, The Godfather, all of Kurosawa, Fight Club has good ones. The Third Man is also decent.
If you’re into piracy, part of the fun is tracking down the tracks without pulling a full bluray.
I doubt many people watch the commentary track for a film they haven't watched before. It's typically for films where the viewer wants to get deeper into the thought processes of the filmmakers....
I doubt many people watch the commentary track for a film they haven't watched before. It's typically for films where the viewer wants to get deeper into the thought processes of the filmmakers.
That said, there's many DVDs that have commentary tracks that are plainly promotional. It's one thing to listen to Coppola or Scorsese talk about their experiences directing Godfather or Goodfellas movies. It's another when the director of Not Another Teen Movie 2 is vapidly nattering on like their film is Citizen Kane and is only there so they print "Four Hours of Special Features" on the DVD box because that's technically true if you watch the film, watch it again with the director's commentary, and then again with the producer's commentary (though there can be some comedy to be had even in that).
Directors that I consider to have awesome commentaries: Paul Verhoeven, Kevin Smith, Martin Scorsese. The commentaries on the James Bond DVDs (as well as their documentaries) are all superb as well.
Arnold Schwarzenegger also has some pretty funny commentary tracks. The gold standard is on the Lord of the Rings, where all extended editions have incredibly informative tracks from directors,...
Arnold Schwarzenegger also has some pretty funny commentary tracks. The gold standard is on the Lord of the Rings, where all extended editions have incredibly informative tracks from directors, actors, design and production team. Though I will likely never have so much spare time again to listen to them all again.
I own and collect physical discs and Steelbooks for my favorites and I’m still not as certain of the advantages of having physical media since the Blu-Ray spec includes DRM that can refuse to play...
I own and collect physical discs and Steelbooks for my favorites and I’m still not as certain of the advantages of having physical media since the Blu-Ray spec includes DRM that can refuse to play the disc without an internet connection. I know that I can rip the disks and add them to my digital collection but someone in another comment mentioned watching the movies in a power outage or when there’s a disaster and I’m not sure that would be possible with Blu-Rays. I think that kind of physical ability died with DVD.
I think what really killed this is that companies stopped pushing integration of disc drives in laptops and other mobile devices (remember when we had DVD TVs as a standalone device?). The quirky...
...watching the movies in a power outage...
I think what really killed this is that companies stopped pushing integration of disc drives in laptops and other mobile devices (remember when we had DVD TVs as a standalone device?). The quirky electronics companies that would've made blu-ray players to hang off the back of your car's seat and plug into a cigarette adapter for power don't exist in the mainstream (or at all). Fortunately, a couple companies like Panasonic and LG still make external blu-ray players to connect to a laptop (or potentially a tablet?). For more formal movie watching situations, I hope people have invested in lead-acid battery backups for general power outages and surge protection.
I think it's a worthwhile thing to have a disc drive handy even for what are increasingly legacy purposes. Getting one that plays (and writes and re-writes) to blu-rays has been nice. That doesn't get around some requirements for an internet connection for blu-ray films requiring BD-Live internet connection stuff, but largely that's for the extra content that some companies made (like Pirates of the Caribbean had a web-based game that would stream to your player). According to Wiki the only discs requiring internet to watch the content were blu-ray 3D. The rest of the online content on non-3D discs may or may not require internet connection as described previously.
That said, some discs might check that you have a certain version of DRM or something installed, which does require that your player remain updated. I can't imagine a realistic scenario where that really prevents collectors from being able to access their films, because if you use your player enough, you probably keep it up to date. And if you prefer to stay offline, you'd know as your collection increases whether or not your player has "aged out." Even a zombie apocalypse wouldn't prevent players from ageing out by very much, because the flow of professionally stamped discs would stop, too. ;D Maybe that's how we put an end to DRM once and for all! ;)
So we've had some discussions about physical movie media in the past and maybe this will just rehash that discussion. Most recently, folks discussed "The DVD biz has circled the drain for years. In 2024, it goes down the tubes."
This article is quite a long read, but I want to highlight some excerpts that might be food for discussion on various topics related to streaming, sticking with physical media, and just interacting with like-minded people:
Data hoarders can relate. ;D But have you set up block parties to watch a film together? Or been loaning neighbors films they can't find on their plurality of streaming services?
I know there are some Criterion fans on here. What physical media labels/imprints do you like and what do you look for in an idea (re-)printing? The article goes on to mention "Arrow, Criterion, Kino Lorber and BFI are probably the best known distributors, but in recent years a number of others have thrived, including Shout! Factory, Vinegar Syndrome and Severin in the US; Eureka, Indicator, Radiance and Second Sight in the UK; and Umbrella and Imprint in Australia."
"I own it," is how I related to "acquiring" media of all types. Physical is very nice to me though because I'm both supporting the idea that the film was worth putting on disc/reprinting and that I get access to whatever extras/bonus stuff they've added (assuming it's worthwhile). It's also nice to pick up bargin-bin/yard sale DVDs for a couple bucks and even resell ones I no longer care to have on a shelf.
Do you collect? Have you down-sized or gotten rid of large batches of VHS, DVD, blu-rays?
How do you live with yourself?!?How do you feel about it now that so many films are out of print or have limited and occasional re-printings and do you wish you had anything back? Or do you appreciate the "de-clutter?"Do you think this is true? Did people approach films worthy of theatrical releases and a DVD release as being less disposable in the long-run?
As a consumer and movie/tv-phile, I love my media server. I keep it stocked. When needed, I run out and buy more space. The next time I do that, I'm pretty much going to have to either learn NAS stuff, install a SATA card, or get another server since I'm maxed out on drive slots currently.
I used to have a DVD collection. Well, I still have the DVDs, just because I haven't figured out how to dispose of them without simply resorting to a trash can. Sure I know they're not worth the $20-30 (average) I bought each of them for, but it'd be nice if I could turn some 1500-odd titles into maybe $2 or $3 each? Somehow? Without needing to spend several weeks or months doing it? But it's been well over a decade since one got put in. Closer to two honestly.
I don't like the streaming thing, mostly because I like having the titles I enjoy. I just do. This whole subscription deal that everything in life has turned into, pass. Hard pass. Especially things that used to be things, but are now only services. Software was a thing, now it's apparently not. So I stick with my old copies of programs, and if needed I know how to find copies of others that bypass the subscription.
DVD was this little blip in the economics of Hollywood. When VHS first launched, one of the prevailing sentiments from "the industry" was no one would ever want to own a movie. Why would they, when they can just go to the theater? We all know how that worked out. But then DVD came along, and that old sentiment resurfaced in a new way.
Now, the industry thought no one would ever want to own TV shows. Why would they? Fox had one executive, who had seniority in their TV content division, who disagreed, and led the charge for a few years proving that consumers will pay for "old tv shows." Fans are fans, the industry found out. Movies were already a no-brainer easy sell since they'd learned that one from VHS.
So suddenly you had this new revenue stream. Release, Overseas Release, TV and Airline sales, Rentals (which started disappearing about the time DVD got strong), and then along came DVD. Which they pushed with consumer friendly $20 and $25 dollar price points for the most part. Three months after the theater, more or less, buy the DVD.
Certain titles were guaranteed blockbusters that flew off the shelf. I still remember walking into Best Buy (back when that store was actually still a decent store; another conversation that) and seeing what had to be close to a thousand copies of The Matrix lined up on a wall of shelves, the Tuesday of release. And they sold.
That's just one example. Even "little" movies, like Damon mentions in that quote, benefited. Since more or less everyone was a potential buyer for the media that fit their content tastes, the 90s and 00s were flush with more niche kinds of movies. Dramas are an example of a big category that's fallen off hard in the wake of DVD sales disappearing. Comedy is another.
Studios learned pretty quick, as Damon referenced, they could get count on some sort of range of revenue from the theatrical, and then another range from the DVD. Plus the usual TV and airline and all that, for years down the road. They didn't have to believe, with graphs and charts and spreadsheets, that a property could go gangbusters at the theater to greenlight it, since they could count on some disc sales.
That's gone now. Somehow, they all let the revenue go away without replacing it, when they switched to licensing titles to streaming. So that income is just gone, and they're left with the lower amount streaming brings in. In the midst of declining theater revenue, which is also whole other conversation.
I'm not really happy with where Hollywood is right now. The MBAs have invaded. Not are invading, have invaded. All the major studios are basically under control by buttoned up finance types now. People who look at charts and graphs and spreadsheets when they decide what to spend money on.
It's easy to say meme stuff like "Hollywood creatives are bankrupt" when bemoaning the state of content these days. But really it's a function of basic corporate politics. Creatives aren't in charge. Executives are.
For every project, when they're tens of or hundreds of millions of dollars, there are a bunch of meetings about it. People with jobs sit in those meetings, and sooner or later have to defend why they do or don't want something to go ahead.
It's a ton easier to defend not just a project, but your job when the project doesn't go swimmingly, when the project has a financial track record you can point to. Both then and now. Franchises and existing IP has a track record.
If you greenlight some random idea from some "up and coming" creative, and it goes south, it's harder to survive that on the corporate level than it is if you greenlight Fast and Furious Twenty: Interdimensional Relay Race. If FF20 becomes the disaster that sinks the franchise, if nothing else, if you're the executive on the hotseat because of it, you can always pull up the other 19 with the seventy-kajillion bucks they made and claim "how was I supposed to know; the indicators were solid!"
MBAs don't appear to have the ability to recognize that creative companies don't work like widget and service companies do. If you roll into GE and want to squeeze the production lines and find efficiencies and all that bullshit, that's mostly just math. People's lives too, but also math. The widgets cost X amount to produce, and can be sold for Y; make sure Y is as high as possible while driving X down. Basic MBA logic.
That falls apart with creative. MBAs don't seem to be able to just "make bets". Which is what the studios did. The moguls would bet every year. They'd bet on trends, they'd bet on friends, they'd bet on hot new takes and young talents they thought the public might like. It's how all the classic films came about. A studio (who had money) decided to finance some idea, turning that idea into a movie/show.
You can't find creativity on a spreadsheet. No matter how hard you crunch the numbers. But MBAs don't understand this. They can't grapple with a business reality where they have to weigh intangible factors like how popular a finished project will be. Taste is a mystery. Popularity is fickle.
Which you see constantly. Not just now, the history of Hollywood is littered with that shit. All the time. For example, Star Wars was a fluke. It's a fluke Lucas got the money for it, because Fox had no faith it would do anything. They weren't even sure they'd get their money back for it. The film they were mostly betting on in May 1977 was The Other Side of Midnight.
Heard of it? Probably not. But that's the film Fox figured would be a steady earner for them, and the film they put into a package deal with Star Wars to get theaters to show both. They had such little faith in Star Wars they weren't even certain they could get theaters to show it, so they forced/bribed them with a film "the industry" figured was a much surer bet.
Obviously almost no one's ever heard of The Other Side of Midnight, but everyone sure as hell heard about Star Wars.
That happens all the time. Just less in the past ten or fifteen years because the non-creatives staffing desks at studios won't make bets, so those surprise projects, these days, don't even have the chance to get made and become a surprise.
The MBA idiots don't know how to listen to some up and coming director or writer and decide "you know what, we'll fund that crap for ten or twenty million. Go show us what you can do kid." They're scared, they're confused, they're gunning for the big returns, whatever; they just don't make any bets.
They refuse to part with money for anything unless it has a lineage. They go with things that have some form of surety as far as financial returns goes. Known properties. Sure it's fashionable to bash the big franchises like Fast and Jurassic, and with good reason, but as shit as those films are, they sell around the world. And produce tie-in revenue streams.
How do you sell t-shirts and action figures from an adult talking head drama? Something else the industry learned, but didn't, from Star Wars. Fox didn't see any money in merchandise, and famously signed it over to Lucas when he asked for it.
They don't make those mistakes anymore. But they also cling to the decision; if they can't envision posters and figurines and whatever flying off shelves due to a certain idea, that's a black mark against it.
It all comes down to money. The Wall Street entities that've snapped up Hollywood live in a world of money and numbers, period. They have no vision, no tolerance for inspiration or creativity, and refuse to deviate from the collective wisdom of Wall Street. What does Wall Street know about Hollywood?
Nothing. That's the point. They're driving their big expensive purchases into the ground, all across Tinseltown. But none of them are willing to look at history, at the legacy that built the shit they decided to buy, and tap some of that institutional wisdom.
Creative people are who make the hits. Which are what bring the Big Returns Wall Street craves. The way you get hits is you give creatives money to roll the dice. Some of those bets won't pay off. That's why Hollywood Studios always had a slate of projects year to year. It was rare for a studio to just have the one thing they were investing in over any given twelve or twenty-four month period.
Fox had a bunch of things they were working on in '75 and '76. That started releasing in '77.
One of them was Star Wars. A little film no one except one creative wacko had faith in. Who managed to talk a studio president into writing a check.
Really, the whole thing with Wall Street not understanding how Hollywood is a big creative betting table makes no sense if you stop and think it over. Most of the material I've examined about Wall Street talks about how all the traders and bankers and so on love to make bets. They bet on companies all the time there. They rig the bets too, in all sorts of ways. They hedge their bets by spreading risk, they bring in investors to fund bets the firm wants but doesn't want to pay for, on and on.
Yet they go west to the left coast and suddenly get all conservative. Live a little Wall Street. You didn't buy widget factories, you bought movie studios.
Make some damn movies. See what happens when the dice are rolled. Afraid of the risk? Then don't bet it all on black; spread the chips around the slate.
I think I like the idea of physical media more than filling up my house with it. I used to have a decent amount of books, CDs and movies but have drastically reduced everything. I usually spend my time reading or watching something new, so having something on the shelf for literally decades without being re-read/watched doesn't provide me much value or joy anymore. I am conflicted though because I don't want the physical media to dissappear and I often use the library for a DVD or Blu-ray as a backup when something isn't on a streaming service. However most of the time I would just find something different to watch. Plenty of good stuff available and I rarely feel like I am missing something in practice.
I attempted to start something of a blu-ray/criterion collection a few years ago. I ran into the main two issues, the amount of dough needed for even a small collection of discs and also a severe lack of space.
I also don’t tend to rewatch movies and prefer to watch movies I’ve never seen before. So whenever I bought a criterion release I’d feel guilt in never actually watching it. I have so many blu rays still in their shrink wrapping.
Using streaming services and torrenting the films not available on those streaming services is just so much easier. I realize I’m part of the problem but I don’t think collecting physical media is my thing. Vinyls are the only thing I see myself collecting since they have more of a distinct cool image to them rather than just dvd cases.
Sales are your friend.
I've started upgrading my collection (and adding new ones) and my price points are max 10€ for a 4k Blu-ray and 7-ish € for a Bluray depending on the extras. A plain movie won't get me to pay over 5€.
Yea, you won't get the ones you want immediately - not even a whole series at once (parts 2 & 3 of Pirates of the Caribbean are a tenner each, the first part never goes below 25...), but slowly you can get your collection up to your level.
I have a pretty decent collection of CDs and DVDs and a few years ago I got tired of the space they took up so I put all the discs into CD/DVD booklets. I know this wouldn't be ideal for some people because there's people that prefer the actual cases, but for me I valued space over cases so it doesn't bother me having them all in CD/DVD booklets (or carrying cases, whatever you want to call them). For my CDs, I didn't want to get rid of the CD books so I just put them in the slot with the corresponding CD. There were some things I kept in their original cases though, like my Disney DVDs or TV shows with multiple discs.
I still have my 100 DVDs in such a booklet and it is a good compromise. Still, almost all of them have stayed in their case for more than 10 years now. I do have a small stack of obscure spaghetti westerns, but even those are often uploaded on YouTube.
There is one DVD I regret not having anymore and that is Kevin Smith's Dogma which somehow is out of print and held in legal limbo. So I acknowledge the importance of keeping physical copies, but not enough to keep hundreds of physical copies myself of films I like on the off chance that one of them will be hard to find in 25 years.
I swear we used to have Dogma on DVD but I have no idea what happened to it because it's not with the other DVDs. But I agree, I think it's worth keeping the physical copies of movies you really like, but nowadays that's more curated than back in the day when we used to just buy everything on DVD. I haven't bought a movie DVD in a long time though, I think I just feel like nothing is really worth owning anymore. I have been thinking about expanding our collection of TV show DVDs though. I've also been thinking of getting an actual DVD player again, we've just been using consoles for years but it's been so long since I turned the Xbox one on that it'd probably take like 5 hours to update lol.
This is a tangent but BFI are so frustrating to actually use.
Here's a short documentary: http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/558995/index.html
How do I watch it? There's a video clips section, with "full film" available. I click that, it tells me I'm not registered, and that I can't register, I need to be a member of an organisation that has registered. Clicking the "registration help" link takes me to a 404 page. When I do find the right page about registration it tells me to ask my local library if they're registered. Is there a list of registered libraries? Maybe, who knows, it's not discoverable on the website. (My local library is not registered.)
There's a link at the bottom of the page saying "This film is included in the BFI DVD compilation 'Land of Promise: The British Documentary Movement 1930-1950'. " -- I click the link, hoping to be taken to an online shop where I can buy the box set. The link doesn't take me directly to the box set, it just takes me to the store front. I type "land of promise" into the search box and it does two things: first it says:
The suggestions are links, and if I click a link it takes me to a different set of search results. But ignore this, because if I don't click the suggestions the search results do include a link to the product. It's £24 for a 4 disc box set, containing a large number of interesting documentaries. I think this is good value, I'm happy to pay that price.
At no point during this process am I told that there's also this page where I can watch the film for free (doesn't work in my Firefox but does work in Edge): https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-today-we-live-1937-online?play-film
So, this is a sub-optimal experience, but I can watch the film. I can even watch it for free if I can find the link, so why is it a problem?
A lot of the stuff they have is not yet digitised. But they don't have an quick and simple way to tell you this, so you end up jumping through a bunch of hoops to find out that the content simply isn't available unless you visit their building.
Here's another film that I'd like to watch. http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/1387578/index.html
I genuinely have no idea whether I can't watch this, or whether I can watch it but I just need to magically know the correct URL to either buy the product or watch it for free. BFO ScreenOnline tells me to try BFI player, BFI player tells me it has no results for this film. They say that there's a possibility of a research viewing. Here's what that means: https://www.bfi.org.uk/bfi-national-archive/search-bfi-archive/research-viewing-services -- I have to visit an actual BFI location and watch the film on their equipment (I do get to press play / pause though). They also say it might be available here: https://www.bfi.org.uk/bfi-national-archive/watch-archive-collections but this page appears not to have any search function. It does link to BFI Player, and BFI player says it's not available in any form, but why isn't that information available on the BFI ScreenOnline page?
In the end, I just don’t think owning media is the right model for most people on most content. I don’t love most movies or tv shows I watch. I’m likely never going to watch it again. The additional money, not to mention space and hassle, is not worth it.
What’s going to happen is that physical media will continue, not as a general means for content consumption, but as a collectors or memorabilia thing. There will be blu rays, they’ll come with a fancy box to keep and display the thing in, and it’ll cost $120, and that’s fine. For some things, I’ll fork over the cash, because it’s important to me like that. For the rest, it’ll just be another entry in my Netflix watch history.
I think you are right, but as one of those weird people who actually buys that stuff, I can report that most of my 'normal' friends like that I do that. Because slowly I am building up a very personal collection of movies that I like, or find interesting for some reason, and my friends are eager to accept whenever I invite them for a movie night, because: 'You always show really good movies'.
No sane person has the time and energy to deeply dive into the whole catalogues of Netflix and friends if they just want something to watch that night. So everyone sticks to the mediocre stuff the algorithm recommends. In that world, a collector that can dig up something from even just a little under the surface can play a valuable role.
Netflix is absolute dirge when it comes to recommendations or keeping a movie on the service that I may come back to.
Prime is now adverts, but at least has a bigger selection, however, movies move between free and rent/paid for.
So I have a mix of physical media (all ripped in good-enough-for-me quality) and Jellyfin "sailed the seas" content. What is amusing for most is that the sailed content is movies and shows I originally bought on VHS or went to the cinema to see. I refuse to pay twice. It's a hill I'm happy to die on. Most of it is 90s and 00s.
I vividly remember the travails of trying to convert an audiobook on cassette tapes (a BBC adaptation of the whole Lord of the Rings, 13 tapes). This must be about a decade ago now, if not more, and I dived deep into the rabbit hole of, essentially, analogue to digital audio conversion. And then I realised, I could just pirate it. I fully agree with you on not paying twice. I paid a decent amount for the box set (well worth it, it's an excellent adaptation), but I'm not paying full price again for the privilege of a digital version.
The good thing about owning physical media is that you aren't depending on service provider's good will in delivering the content. You can watch it at any time without a risk that some ceo-whatever will decide to pull series/movies out of the platform due to low ratings or license disagreements.
Not mention that streaming catalogues may differ from country to country exactly because of these licensing issues. I did experienced this by myself - instead of having access to same content as my friends from other European country, I was gratified with totally unrelated soap operas and films from countries I never even been into.
Don't get me wrong, streaming is working as a way of providing media to the masses nowadays - it even did stopped piracy for a while. But some people want to have a freedom of choice and access once again. The freedom of not being maneuvered into subscribing to n-services to track stuff they want to see or "own". And yet, it seems that having a physical media become a collecting hobby nowadays rather than default way of accessing the content... I wonder what happens in years to come - will we revert to physical media or we dwindle into a reality where "you don't own anything".
Guess I'm in the middle space.
I want everything digital and don't like stacking boxes and covers at home which just take up space. I cherish the ease of access that digital media brings. For instance you can search through thousands of files in less than a second to see whether you own a particular movie or whether there's subtitles for it. Doing this with physical media is much, much more cumbersome.
On the other hand I don't like older media no longer being available as is the case on subscription services. The consumer not having access to the underlying files is the real culprit here imo.
The best of both worlds is to have everything online but being able to download copies of it. That's why I prefer to purchase from sites like bandcamp which give you the actual music files and they are yours. And avoid any service that tries to lock you into a proprietary app // eco system.
This is why you have digital media, at home, in a system like Plex or Jellyfin.
Ripping old DVDs to a digital format is pretty trivial and even with a fully lossless rip with all audio tracks they're around 4-8GB max, which is a drop in the bucket with the current disk sizes. You can fit over 600 movies in a single 5TB external drive.
This way you get the best of both worlds, no boxes and no arbitrary rules on what service your favourite movie/show is this month because of licensing deals.
Only a Tarantino or a Scorsese could afford to have the space or projection equipment to afford having a collection of 16mm and 35mm prints.
Actual film does have a feel to it that even the most enhanced 4K digital restorations cannot replicate. It is more visually tactile than digital formats can ever produce.
I've watched heavily worn reels of films that are both popular and rare throughout my life, and actual silver nitrate touching your eye will always feel like a more intimate experience. Movies in the last decade feel like little more than video being played on a large screen. If you can watch an actual print on a large screen on a decent projector, I encourage you to do so. The difference is subtle, but it does exist.
I'm one of those who doesn't pay for any streaming service (apart from LTT on Floatplane which I view as direct support of the creator).
I keep buying new DVDs and Blu ray, they are still available (and new movies still launched on them) here in Czech Republic. I will keep doing that until it is still affordable. New Blu ray costs 7€, DVD often just 4€. Yes, this cost is say two years after release but VERY affordable.
I have collection (ripped on Jellyfin server) of over 300 movies, many of them really favorite ones which I can watch over and over. Even if film industry stopped doing physical media or switched to only collector's stuff (100€ and more) tomorrow, I have stuff to watch for a long long time. I'm not even movie/series consumer in he first place, I pay only for hings I really want.
I'm not thinking of DVDs or Blu rays as currency or collector's items, I just see it as actually physically owning what I paid for for as long as I want (even for future family members).
That flexibility is huge, isn't it? That you can rip them to a server, transcode them if you need to, download them without worrying about download expiration limits for a longer time away from home, the list goes on. I run my own Jellyfin server for music, which is always on, and it's such a game-changer. I still think that Spotify smashes it by a country mile, accessing others' playlists is very cool, but being able to access my music anywhere is great. I only got into Jellyfin because I had uploaded all my music to Google Music, but it shut down in 2020.
I have a server in house running 24/7, I run TVheadend on it (I do DVB-T2 to IPTV on my own) and I have my home user dirrctories on it too. It was only matter of time before I set up some kind of media server. And I did. I tried Plex and Jellyfin both at the same time, but Plex didn't make it to be my server of choice because of the need to set up account on their servers thus not being independent even if you run on your own hardware (and it faild to automaticaly start after reboot and I was lazy to investigate). Plex has better scrubber and better KODI plugin and user management/switching. But I still picked Jellyfin. Being open source and really independent were the main reasons (with others as well).
I run this server at home. AndI managed to set up one more at friends house with 1Gbit internet connection and with public IP. I run OpenVPN there and I can access it from anywhere. I also have HDD with my media library on it so I can stream whatever I want. It isgreat being independent (or dependent only on accessibility of physical media). I mayn not have huge library or access to everything or new series or whatever, but everything that I have access to is truly mine. And that is worth it for me!
Same re. Plex - for me, it was non-negotiable that the services have to work without an external (I don't know what the word is) internet connection, only using the local network, and when I realised you had to pay Plex to set that up, it was dead to me. I had been running it for music for a few months by then, so the change was a bit brutal, reconstructing playlists etc., but the ownership you mentioned really makes the difference, even if it's not as extensive a catalogue. Knowing that nobody will delete a song or change it is great.
I always think of one of the GTA games as an example, I think the licensing ran out on some of the music, so my game in Steam got changed - those songs got removed from the game. If I'd had my own copy of GTA, it wouldn't be affected by stuff like that. Same with TV series, movies, albums, etc., I don't want to be at the mercy of the, say, Amazon content censor to know if I can watch/listen to the same episode/movie/song that I'm used to.
At the end of the day, I do not think there is one way to do this. People have a weird obsession with what's next or what's the best when all of these services are capable of existing at the same time, just in different capacity.
Physical media is doing great right now, it's just not in the mainstream.
I'm on the opposite side of this. I'm a bit of a minimalist physically and digitally. I don't want space being taken up by stuff that I probably won't ever use. I also do not rewatch things over and over again. I like experiencing new stories. And for those that I love I want to experience those fresh, not repetitively. I'm also not nostalgic, so there's plenty of stories I don't need to watch again.
I like streaming. I'm also an experienced digital pirate, so I know how to find the places to stream things outside of the traditional sites. At the same time, I love the experience of watching something in a theater. An actual movie theater and not someone home setup. Endgame, Spider-Man NWH, Dune Parts 1&2... a few incredible experiences that I won't forget.
Idk, I just wanted to add my two cents since these conversations online are usually an echo chamber.
I'm perfectly comfortable watching media at home - we have a huge screen (subjective, it's 55", I think, and I still can't get over how big images are, we upgraded from a 27" monitor) and ok speakers (small flat, nothing bigger needed). I love the flexibility of not enduring adverts and being able to pause whenever we fancy, but there are some films for which the cinema experience just blows it out of the water. I watched Dune 2 and it was such good value for money and an enjoyable experience, even if I did need the loo from about halfway through!
It's comforting to know that there are films that "justify" cinemas, still.
Re. the article, I don't think I'll ever be swapping bread for DVDs - if society has collapsed to that point, I doubt I can keep a big telly, speakers and a safe space to enjoy it in!
There are very few movies I want to rewatch, BUT I do want to give the experience to my children and friends. Having a physical copy I control a 100% is a way to make it happen even 25 years from now. Despite the David Zaslavs of the world taking stuff offline because of money.
for me, I hate streaming anyway --- but the lack of commentary tracks is the absolute deal breaker.
I've always wondered who watches commentary tracks. Do you watch whole films with the commentary on? You must have watched the film prior to know what's going on, right? Or do you have subtitles for the dialogue and the commentary from the speakers? I'm fascinated, lol. What movie has had your favourite commentary track (or if not favourite, which movie's commentary track would you recommend)?
Edit: punctuation.
i have the commentary audio with the normal subs. i watch the movie normally first, too.
Some tracks are better than others. All of Ebert’s are great. I didn’t appreciate Citizen Kane as much as i should have prior to his commentary track. His track is the benchmark in a lot of ways.
I really like the commentaries for The Deer Hunter, The Godfather, all of Kurosawa, Fight Club has good ones. The Third Man is also decent.
If you’re into piracy, part of the fun is tracking down the tracks without pulling a full bluray.
Fascinating, thanks for the pointers, I'll try one to see what I'm missing out on!
I doubt many people watch the commentary track for a film they haven't watched before. It's typically for films where the viewer wants to get deeper into the thought processes of the filmmakers.
That said, there's many DVDs that have commentary tracks that are plainly promotional. It's one thing to listen to Coppola or Scorsese talk about their experiences directing Godfather or Goodfellas movies. It's another when the director of Not Another Teen Movie 2 is vapidly nattering on like their film is Citizen Kane and is only there so they print "Four Hours of Special Features" on the DVD box because that's technically true if you watch the film, watch it again with the director's commentary, and then again with the producer's commentary (though there can be some comedy to be had even in that).
Directors that I consider to have awesome commentaries: Paul Verhoeven, Kevin Smith, Martin Scorsese. The commentaries on the James Bond DVDs (as well as their documentaries) are all superb as well.
Arnold Schwarzenegger also has some pretty funny commentary tracks. The gold standard is on the Lord of the Rings, where all extended editions have incredibly informative tracks from directors, actors, design and production team. Though I will likely never have so much spare time again to listen to them all again.
I own and collect physical discs and Steelbooks for my favorites and I’m still not as certain of the advantages of having physical media since the Blu-Ray spec includes DRM that can refuse to play the disc without an internet connection. I know that I can rip the disks and add them to my digital collection but someone in another comment mentioned watching the movies in a power outage or when there’s a disaster and I’m not sure that would be possible with Blu-Rays. I think that kind of physical ability died with DVD.
I think what really killed this is that companies stopped pushing integration of disc drives in laptops and other mobile devices (remember when we had DVD TVs as a standalone device?). The quirky electronics companies that would've made blu-ray players to hang off the back of your car's seat and plug into a cigarette adapter for power don't exist in the mainstream (or at all). Fortunately, a couple companies like Panasonic and LG still make external blu-ray players to connect to a laptop (or potentially a tablet?). For more formal movie watching situations, I hope people have invested in lead-acid battery backups for general power outages and surge protection.
I think it's a worthwhile thing to have a disc drive handy even for what are increasingly legacy purposes. Getting one that plays (and writes and re-writes) to blu-rays has been nice. That doesn't get around some requirements for an internet connection for blu-ray films requiring BD-Live internet connection stuff, but largely that's for the extra content that some companies made (like Pirates of the Caribbean had a web-based game that would stream to your player). According to Wiki the only discs requiring internet to watch the content were blu-ray 3D. The rest of the online content on non-3D discs may or may not require internet connection as described previously.
That said, some discs might check that you have a certain version of DRM or something installed, which does require that your player remain updated. I can't imagine a realistic scenario where that really prevents collectors from being able to access their films, because if you use your player enough, you probably keep it up to date. And if you prefer to stay offline, you'd know as your collection increases whether or not your player has "aged out." Even a zombie apocalypse wouldn't prevent players from ageing out by very much, because the flow of professionally stamped discs would stop, too. ;D Maybe that's how we put an end to DRM once and for all! ;)