Well, this sucks! Best Buy to stop selling physical DVDs/BRs next year!

[thewayne]

And this is total - stores AND online! It looks like this will happen around the end of Q1 2024.

The article goes on to say that Paramount is now shipping their high-end titles exclusively to Amazon, which sucks as I've been doing my best to avoid doing business with them. It looks like those of us still buying physical media will have the choice of Target, Amazon, and Walmart - I don't like the latter two and the last is apparently the biggest of the three when it comes to movie sales.

I'm increasingly unhappy with streaming. I'm more of a movie guy than a TV guy for the most part, and the cost of subscribing to multiple services is ridiculous. But here's what really gripes me, from a Slashdot comment: "Yes, you can still watch Stargate, but SG-1 seasons 1-3, and 7 are on Amazon, and 4-6 are on Netflix, season 5, 8-10 are currently not available". THIS is why I prefer to own discs of anything that I'm remotely interested in watching again. Last night we watched Everything, Everywhere, All At Once - amazing movie. And I have it on disc to watch anytime we want. I also recently purchased The French Dispatch and Asteroid City - FROM BEST BUY - and they would be rentals to watch streaming!

Bastards. At least Disney has seen some sense and released Loki Season 1 on disc.

https://thedigitalbits.com/columns/my-two-cents/101223-1100

https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/23/10/13/0314215/best-buy-will-reportedly-stop-selling-dvds-and-blu-ray-starting-next-year

Comments

[kaishin108]

You are right, that is horribly disappointing, argh.

[dewline]

This is not good.

This is corporate failure.

[thewayne]

It's corporate greed over serving customers.

[bibliofile]

FTR, Half Price Books and B&N still carry new DVDs online and maybe in-store too (I haven't set foot in either, lately). HPB's orders are fulfilled via Ingram, the distributor, so that may remain an option. (Stay tuned for further details.)

[thewayne]

Thank you.  Yes, HPB.  B&N's prices are pretty outrageous, so they did not spring to mind.  If you can catch material in the first couple of weeks and are a member, you can get good pricing, or catch a major sale, otherwise you can really get stung.  HPB: they closed the one that I most frequented in Phoenix which makes them very inconvenient for me to get to.  I don't know that I've ever bought from them online, I'll have to try and remember them for future purchases.

[silveradept]

This is exactly the kind of world the streaming people were hoping for - endless rents and subscription fees and the ability to arbitrarily decide what's available at any given time. And also, still having to watch ads. Physical media will probably continue to dwindle, except as a release for prestige projects that are intended to have some permanence. For the rest of us, apparently, there's the need to keep sharing the tapes once someone has obtained a copy and stripped it of the Rights Management bullshit attached to it.

[thewayne]

Gee, I wonder if video piracy may increase?

[silveradept]

You'd think they'd want to curb piracy rather than do basically everything they can to make it flourish.

[thewayne]

There's a great B-movie called Amazon Women on the Moon, and one of the 'films within the film' is Video Pirates.  Sea pirates capture a ship loaded with new releases, they pop a VHS tape in and it shows the FBI warning.  The pirate captain says 'Oooh, I'm so scared!' and the entire crew laughs.  As I recall, it's a John Landis movie and another B that I highly recommend.  Andrew Dice Clay has a fantastic bit in it along with, IIRC, Dabney Coleman!

[lovelyangel]

I also want to own the Blu-rays. I don’t know how to avoid Amazon with regards to that. Selection seems so irregular at physical stores that it’s rare that I find what I want there; timing has to be perfect. There’s no real competition to Amazon. I guess it’s Amazon – or go without. Maybe I’ll just watch fewer shows/movies.

[thewayne]

It really bites for people like you and I who like owning the media.  I/we don't go out to the movies anywhere nearly as often as we used to, and I can't see that ever ramping up again, and now they pull this.  It's like they want movie theaters to fail.  I can see me cancelling Disney+ and HBO (I refuse to call it what that idiot renamed it to) soon, maybe occasionally renewing them on a month to month basis.

Physical recordings are your only friend in this.

[kathmandu]

Me three, on wanting to own. I tried buying a movie 'download' from Amazon, ONCE. Turned out what I'd paid for wasn't an owned copy, it was a license to re-stream it as many times as I want. Meaning I have to be hooked up to the internet. I have to use bandwidth every time. It had to be in a browser window.

And I wanted that movie so I could examine some scenes minutely, pausing frequently and sometimes going frame-by-frame to examine facial expressions and interactions. But net-lag made it difficult to pause on a particular moment, and Amazon was so concerned about illicit screen-shotting that every time it paused, giant semi-transparent 'pause' and 'play' controls were superimposed on the middle of the movie frame.

I have not 'bought' any movie from Amazon since.

Re: Physical recordings are your only friend in this.

[dewline]

One more reason to avoid buying from them, then...

Re: Physical recordings are your only friend in this.

[thewayne]

There are many reasons why I do not like Amazon and I do my best to avoid giving them money, even if it costs me a bit more.  Walmart is a trickier proposition as we only have three grocery stores in town and there's one item we need that is made specifically for WM, but at least I can order it online and avoid going into their stores.  To the best of my knowledge, they no longer require books and movies to be edited to their particular moral code, something that was done in the past.

Re: Physical recordings are your only friend in this.

[thewayne]

Yep, that is not what I want - a virtual rental.  I want the physical copy, owning a digital copy when that is the only option is just not acceptable.

[acelightning73]

I tend to to stay away from things I have to pay for. If I want to see a specific movie, I go to the library and see if they have it (or can get it). Ditto for a book that I don't want to own a copy of, but I want to read. (I don't subscribe to any streaming services. We have the bare minimum cable package, that lets me watch the Weather Channel and local broadcast stations, and is the minimum you need to buy to get cable internet. I just recently discovered a few channels that are part of my package, and they do four hours of Star Trek every night - one episode of TOS, one of NextGen, one of Deep Space 9, one of VOyager, and one of Enterprise. And there's another channel that shows several hours of short cartoons (Bugs Bunny, Felix the cat, Tom&Jerry, Betty Boop, the stuff they'd throw in between the feature films at the Saturday Matinee. And there are several channels that show reruns of old action dramas like the A Team, McGyver, and Hawaii Five-Oh. The only one I'd waste electrons to watch is McGyver - he was one of my heroes, and I tend to think the way he did, myself.

I own a few DVD - a set of the entire series of Neil DeGrasse Tyson's remake of the "Cosmos" series, and a crappy western movie starring Willie Nelson. I had a video tape of "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert", but I have to see if I can find it on DVD. (Our old VCR, and all the tapes, got drowned in Superstorm Sandy.) The "Cosmos" box was because I put it on my Xmas wish list one year, and my in-laws-in-law bought it for me.

[disneydream06]

Well, I try not to shop at BB and I don't shop at Target.
So that leaves me Amazon, ebay, Disney Movie Club,

Have you tried Critic's Choice Video?
https://www.ccvideo.com/?gad=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw1aOpBhCOARIsACXYv-cvrDkpqiMEhxl8v70Q0j7Px-zUE8gRHgNUOSKNxjwbjCZXS9htyikaAmBTEALw_wcB

Hugs, Jon

[thewayne]

Okay!  So they're mostly classic material.  Interesting stuff, I'll check them out further.

[disneydream06]

For me it's the classic stuff I prefer. :)