A friend recently bought a 4K TV and we were talking about the future of entertainment media, particularly movies. Basically the talk boiled down to me saying the market for physical media like Blu-rays will decline and become a niche product (much like vinyl albums) as the masses opt to stream over the internet because it’s convenient and “good enough”. Friend took the opposite stance and said while it may never be big as the DVD market was in its heyday, physical media will remain “popular”, (as opposed to being a niche product). His reasoning was:
[ol]
[li]There will always be people who want to own the physical goods[/li][li]Most household internet bandwidth is unreliable to stably stream full HD content, let alone UHD[/li][li]Although streaming media may technically be able to match optical media quality someday, it will never trump it, (especially with regards to audio)[/li][/ol]
I don’t disagree with any of these points, but again, I think most people are happy with the convenience of choosing a movie through Netflix or whatever streaming service they use and don’t want to bother with buying a disc and more significantly, don’t care about inferior video quality as long as long as they get to watch the movies they want. This is a big reason why people are still buying DVDs.
Personally, I don’t care too much whether my movie is on physical media or streamed over the internet. My main priority is to get the best audiovisual quality I can and right now that means either buying or renting Blu-rays. I must admit there’s some comfort in having a media library that can be physically touched and viewed at a moment’s notice. My wife on the other hand doesn’t care about quality and is happy using a streaming service. The less space used the better is her thinking. My parents either record free movies over the airwaves or rent DVDs. I think they might still have a VCR somewhere, as well.
For people who watch movies at home, how do you get your content?
I stream almost everything. Netflix is what, 720p and Amazon I’m pretty sure is 1080p. I also use the free Hulu and PBS and a couple other networks which are not HD (also not movies but TV shows), but my monitor upscales well enough for my view from the couch.
I have a DVD player, but I don’t think we have watched a DVD for at least three years. Everything we watch is streamed from Amazon or Netflix, or DVR’d.
I don’t even kmow if we still have a working DVD player outside the laptops. Movies and TV shows are streamed from HULU+ and Netflix. Our home WIFI has been handling our usage without issue.
I have a fairly large DVD collection culled from the discount bins of Blockbuster and Hollywood Video during the waning years of the rental industry, when pretty much every DVD got bargain-binned as soon as their popularity waned. So I know and appreciate the appeal of owning physical copies of media. Used to be I’d buy any DVD that was mildly entertaining and was priced right, because I was weighing a single movie against the cost of rentals (or the aggregate cost of my “all-you-can-rent” plans). Nowadays, the only discs I purchase are for movies I really loved in the theater. Maybe 2-3 a year, max.
Your friend’s 2nd argument also forgets an important point: a lot of people couldn’t care less about streaming in HD or UHD and will happily pick lower definitions so long as they’re getting decent visual quality and no stuttering on the stream.
I have a huge collection of DVDs, and I watch them frequently. I’d rather have the DVDs because:
1.) I know that I have them and can watch them anytime. Streaming/Netflix/cable access to any particular film is untrustworthy and ephemeral
2.) version matters. When I have it on DVD, I know I have the widescreen version of Charade, or the Harryhausen-supervised colorized version of She, or the full-length version of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, or the fully-restored version of the 1925 The Lost World.
3.) DVd extras. I get Jack Jack Attack on my disc of The Incredibles, along with the Mr. Incredible-Frozone commented hack 1960s cartoon. Or the director/star commentaries, or the extra featurettes.
I was unsure exactly what to vote for - I watch most movies on satellite TV, which is a paid service, so I voted for the one that says “streamed or downloaded” even though the dish is more analoagous to cable (which, is it free like the last option says? Or is the OP drawing a distinction between basic subscription and PPV? In which case, change my answer to the last option, because while we do get PPV movies on satellite, I mostly watch the no-extra-charge ones)
Satellite TV I would lump together with cable and broadcast TV. I know it’s not free but I wanted to have distinct categories for physical media, “new” media (paid-for content over the internet), and “traditional” media which would be all the rest. I kept borrowed movies and pirated stuff separate from paid-for content to gauge how many people are willing to invest in streaming/download service.
I knew Blu-ray wouldn’t be as popular as the others, but I’m surprised at just how unpopular it is. I like my Blu-rays and I really hope there are enough of us to keep the market viable, but going by this poll, I’m afraid my original prediction may not be too off the mark.
I on a huge collection of DVDs but I also watch a lot on Netflix. I don’t watch anything on TV, are you crazy? And have to deal with advertisements? Hell no!
I don’t care about exceptional quality of the picture and as such think Blu Ray is just a big ol’ rip. I like the idea of streaming everything but I fear and anticipate that it will go the way of all the rest of the digital media: you will never actually “own” anything again, just the license to it, and the license can be revoked at any time.
Eventually there will be no more choice, but this is a sad and depressing trend.
We have physical copies of what we consider basic, classic movies (Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones) as well as our favorite PBS and foreign type stuff (Kurosawa, Jane Austen adaptations).
I never had much of a DVD collection (a lot of it was TV shows!) and now I am slowly replacing it with Blu Ray. Just like **Sattua **- Star Wars, Indiana Jones, all the Muppet movies, etc - stuff that I want the extra content for and like to see in high-def and surround sound.
I don’t watch that many movies in a year, including my discs. I’ll catch maybe a dozen, usually from Amazon’s streaming service.