It's sensible for businesses to shift from physical media sales. Per CNBC's calculations, DVD sales fell over 86 percent between 2008 and 2019. Research from the Motion Picture Association in 2021 found that physical media represented 8 percent of the home/mobile entertainment market in the US, falling behind digital (80 percent) and theatrical (12 percent).
But as physical media gets less lucrative and the shuttering of businesses makes optical discs harder to find, the streaming services that largely replaced them are getting aggravating and unreliable. And with the streaming industry becoming more competitive and profit-hungry than ever, you never know if the movie/show that most attracted you to a streaming service will still be available when you finally get a chance to sit down and watch. Even paid-for online libraries that were marketed as available "forever" have been ripped away from customers.
When someone buys or rents a DVD, they know exactly what content they're paying for and for how long they'll have it (assuming they take care of the physical media). They can also watch the content if the Internet goes out and be certain that they're getting uncompressed 4K resolution. DVD viewers are also less likely to be bombarded with ads whenever they pause and can get around an ad-riddled smart TV home screen (nothing's perfect; some DVDs have unskippable commercials).
I tried to watch a DVD lately (as in past few years). Holy. Yeah. Not as I remembered. It's not even 720p. Looks like manure on my 65" 4K OLED. 💩 And the audio. I had to stop.
I think it was Band Of Brothers? Had to download a 1080p boxset at least. Then it was consumable.
It's one of those things were people have gotten used to 1080p or better and they remember DVD being pretty good, but when they go back, yeeesh. I remember thinking that about VHS vs DVD. Got used to DVD, remembered VHS being just fine, put a VHS on, oh boy.
Yep. I've recently been collecting Criterion Collection blu-rays (and 4k BR in the case of Citizen Kane. Which was incredible btw. First time seeing it too) for some of my favorite films plus classics I haven't seen yet. If you keep an eye out for sales you can get some really great stuff for under $20. Sometimes under $15.
The picture quality is second to none, the bonus features are always amazing and actually worth checking out, and I own them outright forever.
Edit: oh, you meant like actual old school regular DVDs... Fuck that
Yeah. I didn't even know people sometimes used DVD to mean just all sort of optical discs. Nothing against Blu-Ray, their quality is excellent. DVDs on the other hand, off.