How soon before the DVD (incl. BluRay) becomes obsolete?

Cafe Society
1

In another thread someone commented on waiting for the release of a tv series on DVD at their local library. I responded as follows:

Now I don’t believe that the DVD is completely obsolete yet, it is pretty damn close in my opinion. The last new release move to be distributed on VHS was in 2006, A History of Violence starring Viggo Mortensen. Just 9 years prior to that, in 1997, the first movie to be released on DVD in the US, was Twister. Today, 78% of all households in the US subscribe to at least one streaming service, with Netflix being the most popular.

What’s your guess as to the year when the last movie will be released on DVD?

  • 2024
  • 2025
  • 2026
  • 2027
  • 2028
  • 2029
  • 2030
  • Never, they will go on forever!!
0 voters

We have a cabinet full of DVD’s from the last 2 decades, that I haven’t watched in the last 5 years. I don’t think we have a working DVD player in the house.

What are your thoughts?

2

If modern day consoles still come with blu-ray player drives and people’s Internet in some parts of the country are still shitty I think blu-rays will still be popular. Maybe not every movie but big releases will still get the UHD 4k/8k treatment.

Honestly, I think Avengers Vs Justice League will still get a blu-ray release in 2030.

3

I think most of the gaming consoles, laptops, desktop PC’s are not coming with DVD drives included. The last 3 laptops I have had did not include a drive.

4

Consoles do, though. PS5 was going to only launch as a download device, but they caved and made a disc-drive version. People want to:

  • play PS4 games on it
  • sell their games when they are done with them or don’t like them
  • lend games to friends

The Xbox and Nintendo console have discs or cartridges, too.

5

The latest Xbox has no drive. It is exclusively digital. The Nintendo Switch has no disc capability. Can’t speak to cartridges, but that would be native to that platform.

And the PS5 also comes in a Digital version that has no disc capability…clearly the direction Sony is moving.

6

You can get a DVD as an option for laptops and desktops - the last one I assembled I insisted on it. For that matter, I have a gizmo that lets you read old formats like 3.5 “floppy” disks from a modern machine.

It’s a bit like turntables for LP’s - I’ve managed to have a working one for the last four decades, and yes, sometimes it was a bit tricky to get parts but I still have and play my vinyl. For that matter, I still have a working “discman” and I think I might still have my original walkman around somewhere.

I think DVD’s will become much less common. I do not think they will go away entirely any time soon. 2030 is far too soon for them to disappear.

7

The Switch is definitely either DD or cartridges exclusively. With the way the set up is for the switch, there really isn’t room for a disc - it’s meant to be far more portable than the other consoles on the market. I, of course, am curious what Nintendo will decide to do after the switch - will they continue with the lure of portability or get back into a console base?

As for the OP, I think it will be a long time before things stop being released on DVD/BluRay. I would even go longer than 7 years in the future. As @Asuka pointed out, there are still parts of the country/world where internet is far from reliable. My Dad lives out in a fairly rural area and they only have the ability to get dish or cellphone internet. And the way they work, they put a bandwidth cap after which things get throttled down to nothing or they have to pay for the extra bandwidth. Dad doesn’t stream much of anything because of it.

8

I’m guessing in the year 2525. (If man is still alive.)

9

“Becomes”, don’t you mean “Became”?

E.g., The Simpsons. In 2015 they announced no more DVD season releases after season 17 DVD the year before. They eventually did two more seasons. They are currently airing season 34.

10

Hard drives (both spinning and solid state) are guaranteed fails. yes, DVD’s can be scratched but that usually only takes out a small part of the movie.

I have a stack of DVD’s that I have watched repeatedly. Each one of them is less than the original movie it replaces and the money I save on snacks is that much more money in my pocket. I also buy them used so the savings continues. And DVD’s often have additional media associated with the movie.

If modern movies walk away from DVD’s I think they will be replaced with movies that have lost their copyright.

11

I’m going to weasel on this, forgive me.

I am positive that many companies would love to get rid of DVDs because they HATE sharing. IE if I have a DVD, and like it, I can lend it to a friend, who watches it, rather than paying $4 or so to digitally rent a copy, or selling a digital copy for at or near “full price” of a DVD.

I do think that as we move forward, fewer and fewer DVDs will be produced. The renaissance where you could find ever more obscure old shows and movies on DVD is largely spent IMHO, and even previously released movies are becoming harder to find, especially if it only got a limited release on B-ray for example.

What is going to be gone first is cheap DVDs. For a long while, popular or pop movies would be full price with a small markdown, then a long period on steep markdown, then as things moved on, around $10 forever.

But, while that is still the case for some, it seems that there just aren’t any more printings of the more niche stuff. So once it’s gone, it’s just GONE. You’ll see it on Amazon at $30+ for a New In Box version of an old printing, because that’s all there is.

So yeah, we’ll still have it for a while (I picked 2030) but it’ll become increasingly only the most popular and most recent stuff.

A not insignificant part of the problem is that I (and probably many here) still put an emphasis on watching stuff on TVs (web enabled or not) or at least big monitors, which is fine, and easier on my eyes, but plenty of younger folks are perfectly happy watching whatever they want on their phones / tablets / other lightweight portable media on their terms.

I appreciate the ability to do so, but I can barely stand to watch a movie on a plane on my 10 inch tablet - a 6 inch (or so) phone would be hard no for me, but I realize I’m not the target.

12

My Mac Book came with only one USB-C port. But I did immediately buy a hub and an optical DVD/Blu-Ray drive.

I just love OWNING movies on Criterion discs, and I hope those persist.

Now, I don’t really care if it’s a disc, but I do want to own a beautiful version of “my” media. Sell me a disk or a thumb drive or a huge download, but I don’t want to discover that NetPrimeHuluMaxPlus doesn’t carry that movie (or show) any more.

I just spent a bunch on Orphan Black Blu-Rays because the show had gone from Netflix to Hulu to Not Streaming Anywhere before I’d finished it…

13

Exactly. Streaming is very convenient in a lot of ways, but its biggest problem (aside from not having special features like commentary tracks and such) is that you can’t own your favorite movies or shows anymore. You are at the whim of a particular streaming service as to whether you are able to watch what you want to watch.

14

The latest Xbox has no drive. It is exclusively digital.

XBOX Series S (the budget version) has no drive. Xbox Series X has one.

As for the main topic. Movies will likely go for a while, serving a small but dedicated market of physical media movie buffs. Big hits in the best possible quality, cults classics, artsy indie darlings.

TV series are going sooner, possibly before 2030. They’re already a niche within a niche, last year they were 4 TV series in the top 100 dvd/bluray releases (all of them Yellowstone or it’s spinoff for some reasons). They’re more expensive to produce and remaster just due to the amount of data/material. Star Trek Next Generation had an excellent digital remaster on bluray that apparently failed to turn a profit. A lot of classic TV never got a bluray treatment and it’s unlikely it will in the future.

15

The thing is it’s not enough to say that there are people who want to buy a product. There have to be enough customers for a company to justify maintaining the infrastructure necessary to produce and distribute the product. Especially when that company is asking if it can switch the resources it’s using to make that product over to making a different product which will make more money.

16

I’m fortunate in that I almost never am interested in watching something more than once. I stream it and I’m done. On the rare occasion that I want to watch something that can’t be found to be streamed, I can find it on a pirate site. (I just checked and Orphan Black is there).

I bought my last laptop in 2017 and it didn’t come with a DVD player which I didn’t even realize until I got home. I had to buy a cheapie external DVD drive for $20 to load one program. I have used it maybe three other times and not in the last three years. I have a blu ray player that’s been sitting in the closet for years that was only used in its last few years as a Firestick type thing until I finally got a smart tv.

Is there any reason that they can’t be replaced with a thumb drive for storing media?

17

Not true. You can definitely own streaming content and keep it in the cloud.

18

They said this about LPs, too.

19

and Betamax, VHS, 8 tracks, cassettes, reel to reel, laser discs, floppy disks, etc.

20

Many studios include the bonus features with the digital copies, especially those that link to Movies Anywhere. There are some commentary tracks that are only available on iTunes, such as the director commentary for Joker.