The Slippery Soapbox

[alienmem]

We all know that dvd and blu ray sales are like at the bottom of the well and video on demand be it via your phone, your tablet, your laptop, your televison is what's hot right now. No one goes to the movies anymore...it's like a dying cause and dvd and blu rays are becoming a niche market. Probably material formats will never go away but right now they're struggling so my question is this:


Do you think there will become less and less movies available on phycical media and therefore less case art evolving towards merely a poster art?

Wil the special features, typical of physical media become obsolete? Who watches all the stuff that comes with blu rays anyways...Some come with gazillion hours of stuff. 4 commentaries....I'd guess very few see all that.

[Fogdude]

Yes, it looks like commercial DVDs & BRs are declining, but there are still plenty of folks who create their own for various reasons & they still want cover art.

I started redoing my DVDs years ago because I wanted subtitles on them & most didn't have them. I was lucky to get closed captions. I hate closed captions, so when I had one with them & no subtitles, I would extract the closed captions, convert them to subtitles & then reauthor the DVD with the subtitles in place of the captions. Naturally, I needed a new box that could hold both the original DVD & the newly created one. This created an desire for new cover art. Not because the old art couldn't be used, but because it was crap, anyway & with new cover art, I could tell it was a 'converted' one.

I also detest menus on DVDs. Another reason for ripping the main movie from them & reauthoring a new DVD without them. I also never, ever bother with the extras, so stripping all that, along with the additional non-English language tracks & subtitles, made life simple for me, when playing them back. Again, this lead me to want new covers & labels.

So, while the general public may be streaming only & watching films on their phones, I like having the physical media & being able to play them on my full size TVs. As my collection has grown beyond manageable bounds, I admit I've started abandoning the boxes in preference for sleeves & drawers full, but I still occasionally like to box my favorites.

The demand will diminish, but I doubt it will ever disappear. Heck, there are people going back to vinyl LPs!

[ctaulbee]

This is old lol, people have been saying this same thing for over five years now and nothing has changed, in fact new disc formats continue to come out like 4K.

I know this is a fun topic for forum buzz but the fact is it will be a long time before the technology infrastructure needed to support streaming on the massive scale needed to reach enough of the worlds population will physically exist in the world where it can then have any noticeable impact on Disc sales.

In small countries where the total population equals one large US city maybe they can get speeds up to high levels due to a smaller physical area needed to be covered but not here in the states it will be years before they can deliver high quality content to the masses in the US.

For example my brother lives 20 minutes outside of Nashville, TN and he gets spotty phone service and no cable at all, high speed content delivery is not that widely available to the masses in the US (and I'm sure much of the rest of the world) as everyone thinks, the ones making those statements are "on the web" the ones who would disagree guess what "are not on the web", so they have no voice funny how that works huh... lmao.

Only thing Streaming has killed is the Disc Rental Market which has almost vanished and that is where all the recent growth in the streaming market has come from for the last several years, it's not from lost Disc sales but rather in the shift from renting physical discs to just clicking the remotes On-Demand button or starting a app...

Long term it will have a impact on disc sales but that is years off doubt it will happen in my lifetime though.

On a side note those who visit sites like this, the true collectors will continue to want discs for the same reason people buy special editions and high end packaging, as a species we collect it's what we do, streaming will not satisfy that need, so there will always be a large market for physical media and someone will supply that need as long as it is there.

[alienmem]

Yes, I agree. Most of my lamment is that cinema as we know it is dying. There aremore movies made but basically those go directly to netflix(the so called indie movies). These films aren't shown in Theaters anymore. Basically what I'm lammenting the most is that the cinematic experience with all this stuff available to us is basically gonna shut more vintage theaters nd are we're gonna be left are multiplexes, which if you go to one say on a wednesday afternoon, are pretty much empty.

[ctaulbee]

I think it just feels like it's been in decline, because box office ticket sales are still strong, it used to be a feat for a film to hit 1B in sales now it's not uncommon for a top draw to top that by as much as 50% more so it's not dying yet.

Streaming is just becoming the new way to watch TV, this is because on-demand TV is on "our schedule" rather than us being at the mercy of the program providers schedule.

It's still TV, they said TV would kill cinema when it came out too, look how that has worked out, just saying.

[alienmem]

Hey but " Video killed the radio star"...and they were right...hehe  

[chouette]

Personally, I will ALWAYS want the movies I love on disc (mostly blu-ray) and yes, I watch the trailers and the special features, which bugs the hell out of my husband as he hates it, but I always win, lol.

I don't go to the movie theater, ever. I hate driving more than 5 minutes for any movies. When I buy movies or TV Series, it's always online.

I still rent movies or TV series sometimes because it's a 2 minute drive from my house, but much less than 5 years ago. With that said, the place where I rent still rents movies and TV Series a lot! It's a big thing around here, and not very expensive either. Less than buying them for sure.

So I agree with CT, it's not even close to disappear anytime soon, therefore the need of custom covers is very much still in demand.

[ctaulbee]

Hey but " Video killed the radio star"...and they were right...hehe  

Yup, color broadcast killed black and white too, yet B&W still has a pretty solid following.

The radio format just adapted, from weekly shows to mainly music, it's still here and in most every area in the country.

[Mongo]

Thing is, there are old school collectors, and there are those content with streaming.  I belong to the collector camp, where I like to have a physical library available to me, independent of external providers.  And I like to be able to display those films as I remember them, or with custom artwork that shows real skill, patience, and talent went into their creation (as opposed to the photoshop garbage the studios churn out).  Certainly, there are those who only care about the film itself and the packaging be damned, but for me it is all part of the hobby.  Just pulling out a favorite film, like "Alien," and seeing the original poster art gives the film a special "flavor," if you will.  Kind of a "nostalgic bouquet"...

[chouette]

Thing is, there are old school collectors, and there are those content with streaming.  I belong to the collector camp, where I like to have a physical library available to me, independent of external providers.  And I like to be able to display those films as I remember them, or with custom artwork that shows real skill, patience, and talent went into their creation (as opposed to the photoshop garbage the studios churn out).  Certainly, there are those who only care about the film itself and the packaging be damned, but for me it is all part of the hobby.  Just pulling out a favorite film, like "Alien," and seeing the original poster art gives the film a special "flavor," if you will.  Kind of a "nostalgic bouquet"...

Very well said Mongo!