Technology

No ads when you pause, but holy hell, we've been getting DVDs from the library, and sometimes it's a good ten minutes of crap before the movie actually starts.

It's sensible for businesses to shift from physical media sales.

Sensible to who?

dvds aren't dying; the media companies who own the rights to dvds and blurays are killing them

No DRM digital files downloads is the simple answer. There is no reason to go back to physical media to avoid subscriptions.

Keep in mind that DVDs did have DRM and the corps did try and get at the people who broke it. A new and improved physical media would have DRM and it's possible the corporations will prevent it being defeated this time.

Which means that yoy would only be able to play it on approved hardware. You can have your shiny disc but they will decide if you can play it. Perhaps they can detect how many people are present via a camera or require you do drink that verification can.

When someone buys or rents a DVD, they [...] can also watch the content if the Internet goes out and be certain that they're getting uncompressed 4K resolution.

I'm sorry, is this a special version of DVD that can store 4K video? Uncompressed?

Yarr harr harr

At first I was cool with buying digital copies of movies from streaming services, when they first offered them. Until my neighbor apparently got his account suspended and had absolutely no access to all the digital copies of movies he had bought. I then realized... it's true, we're entering an age of, "you will own NOTHING and be happy".

So I rather support pirates.

yall paying for movies?

One business dying is not the death of a media type, FFS.

I mean......I just bought Batman the animated series on DVD. Whole series too. I never got to watch it as a kid, but I hear it holds up even for adults.

I also bought Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles DVD which has the first 3 movies from the 90s. The stupid Micheal Bay reboot from the 2010s, and also a movie called "Batman vs TMNT". Which sounded bizzare enough for me to buy.

Now I just need time to watch these things.

Are the numbers about DVD sales strictly about DVD sales or do they include all optical formats (Blu-ray/UltraHD Blu-ray)? Because unless I’m getting an old TV show that was only ever SD, my preference is to get a Blu-ray, not a DVD. I suppose if I still saw the super cheap ($3-5) DVDs in the grocery store for something I like but not enough to buy normally (this is how I bought Brewster’s Millions) then I might buy a DVD, but otherwise I at least want HD quality.

Several tech YouTubers have talked about moving entirely to Jellyfin or similar, self-hosting their own movies and TV series from legally owned, ripped copies from their own DVD or Bluray collection.

It takes some work and time to rip, encode, and organize the files. But if you want to go this route, there has probably never been a better time. You can routinely purchase used DVDs and Bluray from thrift stores for a few bucks per disc... sometimes less. If I had a server and hard disk space I'd probably be going this route for media consumption.

Eventually the DVDs will go away entirely and then it will be impossible to create your own legal archival copies.

My favorite part about DVDs is how sometimes they look just fine but the video doesn't actually play. I got a DVD from the library recently that the video stopped 10 minutes in the first episode and you couldn't even play or rip past that point either.

Physical media still really sucks in a lot of ways.

DVD is for casuals, Laserdisc is where it's at.

Gotta cut off any avenue of escape for streamers sick of not owning what they pay for.