Posted by Doug Jacobs on 01/21/08 21:58

lorincantrell@yahoo.com wrote:

> The consumer acceptance rate and durability of the media are just too
> high. Eventually, some sort of streaming HD on demand will likely
> kill the optical discs, but I think it will be a decade or two before
> it happens.

I know that a lot of people think downloads are going to be the end of DVD
or physical media, but think about it - we've had the capability to buy
electronic versions of entire books for over a decade, yet bookstores
aren't in any danger of closing now, are they?

Part of the reason for this is that many people are going to want a
physical copy of things they buy. Even with the explosion in digital music
with things like iTunes, most people are still just ripping music from CDs
that they own.

Digital distribution may be fine for certain things. Rentals come to mind
immediatly. Why wait for the mailman to bring your Netflix to you when
you can download your movie over night?

> Everybody is fond of citing all sorts of reasons for the slowdown in
> DVD sales, but I think it has mostly to do with the format being
> around for 10 years. Just about every catalog title that would sell
> has been released already, and there is a tremendous secondary market
> due to the durability of the media. Back at the height of VHS I was
> always leery of buying 2nd hand VHS, because you never knew when it
> had been owned by some clown who used butter-covered hands to shove it
> in his never-cleaned VCR. I have no such qualms about DVD because
> there are few sins Windex cannot fix. I still think people like to
> buy movies on disc, the studios just have to give them something
> worthwhile to buy.

Oh, I can think of tons of things that haven't been yet released onto DVD
- and probably never will be due to copyright issues...

WKRP hasn't been fully released - and what little has been, has had to
have the music removed from it (boo!) Music is also the reason why
there'll never be a "proper" release of Beavis & Butthead either. Going
along with TV shows, where's Max Headroom, and The Real Ghostbusters?
Meanwhile, garbage like "Flava Of Love - season 2" graces the shelves of
my local library...

Anyways, as for why DVD sales are dropping? I can think of many reasons:

1: Economy. It sucks right now (and has sucked for years), so folks have
less cash to spend.

2: Quality (of content). Do you REALLY need to *buy* every two-bit bomb?
I know when DVD was new and shiny, folks would buy just about anything so
they could show off their shiny new DVD player. After all, look at the
HD-DVD and Blu-Ray fanboys arguing about how GREAT the picture looks when
describing such hits like 'Tallegeda Nights', or 'Knocked Up'...

3: Suckers. People are finally realizing that they've been suckered by
companies who release the same title over and over again, each time adding
new features and commentaries. This is practically spitting on the fans
of that title, since they're the ones who bought the first version which
basically looked like it was mastered from a bad VHS tape for $30, only to
later be told about the big super-anniversary edition with properly
remastered footage, plus extras. TV releases are particularly bad in this
area... Sure you COULD buy Farscape season one, 1 disc at a time for $22
each when they were first released (like I did)...and then later find Season
One in a boxset that not only takes up less space, but only costs a fraction
of what the individual discs did! After being bitten a few times, I stopped
buying and instead just wait for the sales on the boxsets to occur. If it's
something I really want to see now, there's always Netflix, which brings me
to...

4: Rentals. With Netflix, Blockbuster and other smaller companies, it's
possible to get just about any DVD delivered to your door for a fraction
of buying it. I'm sure that many of us here have titles in our libraries
that we'd only consider watching as a rental had that option been
available at the time.... However you feel sort of bad about trying to
sell those movies since you know you'll only get, at most, like $5-7 for
them. I know at the begining of the DVD era, there was an explosion in
purchasing of DVDs in almost a rush to build a personal library. I think
that "craze" has worn off for most people now - especially when you
consider that most of the stuff out there just isn't good enough to be
taking up space in your house. If you do get an urge to watch something,
just readjust your Netflix queue, and it'll show up in a day or two.
that's good enough for most people, I think.


Enthusiasts will continue to pour money into their personal libraries, but
to think that the vast majority of people will do the same with
HD-DVD/Blu-Ray as they did with DVD is just silly. Even if people have a
HDTV and a HD video player, it's hard to justify buying much given the points
I mentioned above.

--
It's not broken. It's...advanced.

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