The wheel of time rolls forward, leaving us with many tears of the times. Once upon a time, DVDs were a necessity for everyone on this planet, but with the emergence of online streaming media, there are probably many people in the Alpha Generation who don't know about them.
The movie "Kim's Video Store" that is now being shown makes people sigh for the fate of the DVDs that once touched the hearts of countless fans. Not long ago, the British "Guardian" published an article written by Oliver Cornwall, "People who refuse to bow to streaming media", which made the author, who has thousands of DVDs in his collection but has not opened the DVD player for the last time, feel a sense of déjà vu. The subtitle of the article is quite sensational: "One day in the future, you will exchange bread for the DVDs in our hands." This is the true voice of an interviewee.
The protagonist interviewed in the article is Christina, an ordinary movie fan from the United States. Back in 2018, when Hurricane Katrina swept across Florida, Christina's community was hit hard, and the telephone, Internet, and electricity were all paralyzed. Fortunately, unlike most people who have long given up DVDs and only watch movies and TV shows online, Christina, who is nostalgic, still has a large number of DVDs and Blu-ray discs at home, plus a portable DVD player that can be charged by an emergency generator. During the four-month Internet outage, her home became the only cultural center in this isolated community. In fact, the discs and DVD players in her hands became a kind of hard currency at the time. Neighbors came to borrow them one after another, and left boxes of bottled drinking water, peanut butter, and emergency food in exchange for goods.
"This is actually a question that everyone needs to think about: If we wake up one day and all the digital media in the world disappears, what should we do next? I believe that 99% of Americans will never have this idea. But the fact is that we experienced this six years ago. And you will know it once you have experienced it, so we will never give up these DVD collections. We will never throw them away, because maybe one day in the future, this will happen again, and at that time, you may not hesitate to exchange bread for a DVD in our hands." Christina told reporters.
Netflix, which made its first fortune by mailing DVDs, has discontinued the business.
However, judging from the general trend, the demise of physical audio-visual media such as DVDs and Blu-ray discs has long become an irreversible fact. Last fall, Netflix, which started out by mailing DVDs, completely terminated this service. At about the same time, American retail giants such as Walmart also withdrew all the DVD shelves that they had insisted on keeping in their stores. I am afraid that there will no longer be young people like David Redmond, the director of "King's Video Store", who choose to work at the Walmart video counter because of their love of movies. Prior to this, the revenue of the global DVD market had already dropped from US$4.7 billion in 2017 to US$1.5 billion in 2022. In many parts of the world, even if consumers want to buy DVD products of certain films again, they can't find sales points or purchase channels.
The DVD sales area once occupied a large area in Walmart supermarkets.
However, there are people like Christina. Some are old users who have experienced the glorious era of DVDs and are unwilling to give up the physical medium and say goodbye to DVDs. Another part is the new generation who grew up with streaming media, but the limitations of streaming media, which is dominated by algorithms, make them feel frustrated when they hope to be exposed to more niche movies. On the contrary, the obsolete DVDs allow them to see the diversity of choices.
The first round of the 4K Blu-ray disc of Oppenheimer released last year was sold out
Last fall, Universal Pictures launched the Oppenheimer 4K Blu-ray disc, which was sold out in the first round of sales. Director Christopher Nolan himself also encouraged everyone: "Buying a Blu-ray disc means it is yours, it is actually placed in your home and you own it, which is impossible to achieve with any form of digital distribution."
As for the author of the article, Oliver Conver, he claimed that he also returned to the path of re-watching DVDs last year because he could not find the movies he wanted to watch on the streaming platform, and the platform recommended the movies that he did not want to watch. He began to borrow DVDs from the library, and from this he had the idea of investigating and posting on the online forum of movie enthusiasts to find out whether everyone still insisted on buying DVDs.
As a result, he received responses from nearly 200 people. The reasons why they refused to give up DVDs included: nostalgia, worry that the movies on streaming media are not complete, the audio and video effects of streaming media are not as good as Blu-ray DVDs, they like the behind-the-scenes footage included in DVD discs, and poor network conditions at home that lead to easy interruptions in watching streaming media.
Of course, for these people, the main reason for embracing DVDs is that some of the movies they want to watch cannot be found on streaming platforms, or are not available on the streaming platforms they usually use, so they have to register for another platform if they want to watch them. Instead of searching like this, it is better to go back to the past and buy the DVDs in one go. As director Nolan said, owning it yourself is the most reliable.
"It seems that everyone generally believes that there are all kinds of movies on streaming platforms," said a DVD collector. "In fact, it is not true. It is very likely that due to various reasons, such as copyright disputes, something that can be watched on streaming platforms today may be removed from the shelves tomorrow."