DVDs are dying right as streaming has made them appealing again

You don't know what you've got till it's gone.

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[sjl]

I was doing some simple math and the model seems really unsustainable.

The article said they have 1,000 employees and 24,000 kiosks. So let's say each kiosk has to support 24 salaries. Let's make the math easy and say each one of these people makes $60,000 annually. That's $1,440,000 that each kiosk has to bring in in gross profit. Add a benefits package at 30% of gross salary and you're up to $1,872,000.

I'm not sure what it costs to rent a DVD at a kiosk but it's easy to see how unsustainable this is. For example, at $10 per rental, you would need 187,200 rentals annually (that's about 512 per day per kiosk) without even factoring in ANY business costs! Many retail locations they are set up outside of don't even have that many customers in a day.

Uh... no, each salary is supported by 24 kiosks. Granted that there are other overheads than just salaries, but that on its own puts your math out by a factor of 576, leading to a figure of 325 rents per kiosk per annum (less than one per day per kiosk).

Yes, you have rent for the location, upkeep of the kiosks, and so forth - but it's a much more manageable figure than you came out with once the initial mistake is corrected.

 

[Madestjohn]

‘I guess …. the only way to get physical media will be to pirate the files and burn it yourself...’

where have you been the last couple decades?

 

[Unremarkable]

Last I checked, our local library has thousands of DVDs available for rental, at a cost of "free".

Yeah, about that.

Sometime in late September, I’ll let all y’all know if Oppenheimer’s any good.

Public libraries are an unalloyed force for good, but they are not a replacement for streaming services if you care about movies made in the past two decades.

 

[The Sheep Look Up]

Unfortunate. I live in a rural area that is on the edge of dead-ass-middle-of-nowhere territory. The Redbox kiosks in my area are still quite popular as there are a good number of vacation properties where you can't get cell service, let alone any sort of streaming. It took a hot minute for our video stores to die, but once they did this was the other option.

 

[Unremarkable]

Worrying about what you won't watch isn't a useful way to think about streaming services, or cable bundles, or libraries, or whatever.

“Filler crap” is just a fancy way of saying “stuff other people like, because they don’t care about the absolute shit-awful garbage I somehow convinced myself is good”.

(This definition is true no matter who says it.)

 

[l1011]

Sorry to be the "um actually" guy, but even 4K BRDs are still very compressed compared to the master file sizes. 4K BRD is capped at 128mbit/sec. I don't remember the exact figure offhand but uncompressed 4k 24bit at 24fps is something more like 40x that, ~5Gbit/sec

edit: guess I could do the math. 24*3840*2160*24 = 4.78Gbit/sec

Do Americans not learn that the prefix 'm' means milli (thousandths and 'M' means mega (millions)? I know the American educational system is poor but I thought Ars readers at least knew the basics.

 

[ERIFNOMI]

Do Americans not learn that the prefix 'm' means milli (thousandths and 'M' means mega (millions)? I know the American educational system is poor but I thought Ars readers at least knew the basics.

Clearly you knew they meant mega, so get over yourself.

How the fuck do you even know what country they're in? Maybe their typo is due to your educational system. Or maybe it was just an honest mistake. Or maybe they don't give a fuck. Thanks for your top notch contribution to the discussion.

 

[panton41]

Do Americans not learn that the prefix 'm' means milli (thousandths and 'M' means mega (millions)? I know the American educational system is poor but I thought Ars readers at least knew the basics.

Is there a such thing as a milibit? No? Then the lowercase m is fine.

And, honestly, there is no real standard for that in the United States because it's relatively unused outside technical situations, where it becomes jargon with its own linguistic rules. Stylebooks usually have a preferred form, but it's often "spell out instead of abbreviate."

Besides that, in casual use, like here, proper capitalization for things like that are often ignored. Kind of like how Germans don't always capitalize nouns.

 

[Fred Duck]

480 still looks like shit compared to 1080, let alone 2160. Unless you're watching on a tiny screen from a mile away, it's immediately obvious when something is that low resolution.

It depends what you're watching. 3-4 years ago, I borrowed a DVD/Blu-Ray combo anime set from a library but accidentally put the DVD in my player one night. I watched an entire episode before noticing and I'm faily observant.

edit: Approximately 51" screen from roughly 3.89 metres away. (Both lengths measured by app.)

 

[benwaggoner]

Physical disks also seem to have vastly better surround sound.

They shouldn't: streaming and discs generally use the same codecs at similar bitrates. You can get full-bore high bitrate EAC3 Atmos on most premium services now. And often literally the same audio bitstream reused.

 

[rmohns]

I do wonder what's going to happen if physical format stop being produced. Most of the pirated content of media come from rips of physical media. So if they stopped making Blu-ray discs, will they only have Web-DL rips?

yep, it’ll kill BDRIP dead. Without a high bit rate digital source, Web-DL is the best that would be available. And that quality itself will depend on the streamer. For example, Netflix reliably does a good job encoding with high visual and audio quality and high nitrates. Amazon Video is mildly shirty. Paramount’s is appallingly bad.

For those for whom that was all gobbledygook: “Web-DL” are the streaming versions with the DRM removed. “WebRip” is just a screen recording of a stream, so you lose a ton of visual quality to generation loss. (It’s like re-encoding a low bitrate mp3 at just as low a bit rate. Or dubbing a VHS tape from a VHS tape…)

this is all of course purely theoretical and I would in no way endorse format-shifting the content you lawfully purchased for your own personal use, as Fair Use copyright law used to allow. MPAA and RIAA be praised for their stalwart work protecting us from ourselves.

 

[RedSox]

They can also watch the content if the Internet goes out and be certain that they're getting uncompressed 4K resolution.

There is no widely available uncompressed 4k content for consumers. Even UHD Blu-Rays are compressed - just to a lesser degree than Netflix and company.

 

[sjl]

They shouldn't: streaming and discs generally use the same codecs at similar bitrates. You can get full-bore high bitrate EAC3 Atmos on most premium services now. And often literally the same audio bitstream reused.

I'm willing to bet that the problem here isn't the sound stream; rather, it's much more likely to be the playback hardware. It doesn't matter how good the sound stream is if it's being played back through cheap PC speakers, for example (to give an extreme example that I hope wouldn't be representative of somebody's setup in the real world.)

 

[JohnDeLight]

Physical media allow those who purchase it...to, for all intents and purposes, 'own it' for their own personal use.

The big companies running Hollywood, when given the chance (as streaming does)...will always vote in favor of delivery content systems that enable them to retain control of their product (and the revenue it generates).

People just go for convenience - so they don't bux physical media.

 

[moongoddess]

The DVD isn't just better because you actually own something tangible after you pay your money. They are better because they also (usually) contain a lot of other material which is never included with the streaming versions. Interviews with the actors, directors, and others, a blooper reel, alternate scenes, the trailers, sometimes alternate versions or the same version with director's comments throughout. As far as I can tell this material will not be made and essentially lost forever on a streaming only distribution.

This is the other huge reason why I prefer discs to streaming. I love all the special features (especially the ones that are present on the discs made by the better distribution companies like Criterion and Kino Lorber).

 

[Madestjohn]

Blockbuster, say hello to Redbox!

I'll just toss this 28-year-old video in here:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKsxE1cbQ-U

Well If we doing old ass low budget rock videos

View: https://youtu.be/bPEJ5JkHnao?si=m9O7TEhjEiufG3gE


…. The 80s was a really long time ago

 

[Cuy]

It was hard to justify the purchase and using a DVD player these days is a disappointing and primitive UX, but if you have a good AV system 4K UHD Blu-ray releases really are amazing. I wouldn't have believed it until I saw it for myself but you get many times the bitrate of even the highest quality streaming platforms on a big connection. For some of the new content that's shot in 4K or old film releases that get well done 4K remasters, it's not a bad piece of gear to have for a handful of favorites or the occasional obscure film or cult classic that isn't available on a streaming platform.

 

[macosandlinux]

They close RedBox, sitting by the parking lot.

They took all the DVDs and put them in a video museum. Then charged all the people $15 just to see them.

If that's a Counting Crows nod

 

[macosandlinux]

Watch torrent popularity rise.

Plus you get BR rips that are higher quality video and sound than what streaming offers. It's a mad world.

 

[sd70mac]

This is meant to say Blu-Rays for uncompressed 4K resolution right? I don't think DVDs had 4K. But I guess the gist was that if you used physical media, your quality would be the maximum that the physical format allowed and not compressed for streaming.

If I remember right, DVDs normally were 480p (although a data DVD can hold higher resolution video files as long as they fit within the maximum size, which is normally 4.7 GB [for single layer on one side] and sometimes 8.5 GB [on double layer discs]).

 

[Navvie]

I never stopped buying and renting DVDs/Blu-Ray - HD and UHD. Sure, I've changed who I buy from and rent from over that time and my current 'unlimited' disc plan costs me £14.99 a month, realistically I rent 2 discs a week and buy one disc a month. That's down from DVDs' heyday when I was buying a disc a week.

I got burned by streaming very early on, LoveFilm pulled Lost before I'd finished watching it and Spotify didn't have some of my favourite bands/songs. I remember going to a friends who said "This is great, it's got everything! Ask for anything you like." First three songs it didn't have. And, laterly, there's a requirement to have more than one streaming service to watch everything... and there's the doom-scrolling. I avoid all of that by renting discs by post, I've set up a long list of things I want to watch - higher priority stuff at the top of the list- and I just watch what I'm sent.

 

[Dark Jaguar]

Physical media allow those who purchase it...to, for all intents and purposes, 'own it' for their own personal use.

The big companies running Hollywood, when given the chance (as streaming does)...will always vote in favor of delivery content systems that enable them to retain control of their product (and the revenue it generates).

For all intents and purposes? It literally lets us own a copy. No weird license agreements or anything. That specific copy is our's free and clear, just like a book or those popular music media that came back into popularity... 8 tracks!

 

[Dark Jaguar]

I haven't stopped buying physical movies. I keep moving on up the quality line as it went, so I'm getting 4K now, though those all seem to still come with standard Bluray copies too. The "special features" are lagging behind, but they still look a lot better than the streamed versions, and I don't have to worry about any issues with internet dropping out or the movie disappearing from a digital front.

That said, I don't buy everything. I'll stream some things and get permanent copies of things I really like and want to keep. Classic movies like the 90's Super Mario Bros. movie, or Troll 2 starring Harry Potter!

 

[Dark Jaguar]

480p is often good enough for me. To be fair, my screen sizes are pretty small by current standards, and my aging eyes are not the best.

I sometimes prefer using DVDs rather than streaming or Blu-Ray because...
- I can rip them to my hard drive without much hassle.
- I can use them when my internet isn't working.
- They don't use annoying algorithms to beg me to watch more.

I don't need either working internet to watch my Blurays, or have to worry about any algorithms at all, and I can rip every Bluray I own.... so long as I have the physical space to put all those gigs on a drive. Now 4K? 4K introduces firmware-locked drives as a requirement meaning I can no longer rip those discs unless I somehow firmware hack my Ultra Bluray drive. Now THAT'S frustrating.

 

[MagicVolcano]

One day you’ll be paying $20 a month to watch 50 year old Star Wars movies. It’ll make the endless VHS rereleases look like halcyon times.

 

[marsilies]

If I remember right, DVDs normally were 480p (although a data DVD can hold higher resolution video files as long as they fit within the maximum size, which is normally 4.7 GB [for single layer on one side] and sometimes 8.5 GB [on double layer discs]).

It depends on what you mean by "DVD". The DVD-Video format only supported a maximum of 480i60 and 576i50 for NTSC and PAL content, respectively. That's the most you could get that would be playable in a DVD player.

However, there's also the DVD-ROM format, in which you could put any file on, even an HD video file. There was a release of Terminator 2 that did this, with a bonus disc containing an HD "digital copy" of the film:

[MEMORY LANE] The Terminator 2 EXTREME DVD... A High Definition relic of it's time

To those that only know Blu-ray, this was one of the first tastes consumers had of real HD content on a DVD. System Requirements basically meant you had to have a dual core at the time where everything was a Pentium 4 Hyperthreading phase… Also, it was the first taste of what was to come for...

forum.level1techs.com

Also, the AVCHD format for camcorders allowed for recording HD content onto DVD discs, in a format very similar to Blu-ray.

AVCHD - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[EarendilStar]

I feel like this article conflates DVDs with Blu-Ray, and renting with buying a bit too much to be useful. Personally, if I want forever media, I buy it on blu-ray. If I want to rent something, I pay Apple or Amazon a couple bucks. I’m not driving to rent a low quality DVD for the same price.

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).

Serious question: is uncompressed 4k on DVDs even a thing? That’s news to me.

 

[oli4vd1370]

I don't mind paying the right price for entertainment. But now, living in Europe, I get locked out of certain content because of my location.
So yeah, I travel the high seas. ..

 

[zangetsu]

one very poorly ran company going bankrupt does not mean DVD 's are going away.

most of the articles i read on ars technica are very good, this was very poor.

 

[M Doiron]

"(nothing's perfect; some DVDs have unskippable commercials)"

MakeMKV can solve this for DVDs and BluRays, HD and UHD. It also solves region locking and NTSC/PAL incompatibilities. MKVToolNix and Handbrake are also helpful utilities.

 

[karadoc]

"(nothing's perfect; some DVDs have unskippable commercials)"

MakeMKV can solve this for DVDs and BluRays, HD and UHD. It also solves region locking and NTSC/PAL incompatibilities. MKVToolNix and Handbrake are also helpful utilities.

This is true. I've used those tools to make convenient file copies of some of my DVDs. It's a bit of a chore though. In many cases its easier to - umm - source the files from somewhere else. For me, ads are the killer. Ads are why I refuse to get a 'smart TV'. And ads are why I stopped buying DVDs.

I found it absolutely absurd when I first got an unskippable ad at the start of a DVD that I'd bought. For me, that totally undermines the entire purpose of buying a DVD. Buying the content is meant to be a reliable way to get the best home-viewing experience; and when ads are included, it is definitely not the best home-viewing experience. Streaming services were alright for awhile, but they too are falling victim to slowly creeping blight of ads and other customer-hostile practices.

 

[omarsidd]

Hmm, DVDs were awful though- low quality video, very slow responsiveness. BluRay and its UHD/8K successors are much better of course... And I suppose modern players perform upscaling and other enhancements on the old DVDs and maybe original BD? But not sure how many households have those (enhanced) disc players.

But the lament for the original redbox products falls a little flat, like wanting VGA gaming.

 

[Dark Jaguar]

Hmm, DVDs were awful though- low quality video, very slow responsiveness. BluRay and its UHD/8K successors are much better of course... And I suppose modern players perform upscaling and other enhancements on the old DVDs and maybe original BD? But not sure how many households have those (enhanced) disc players.

But the lament for the original redbox products falls a little flat, like wanting VGA gaming.

What do you mean "slow responsiveness"? I hit play, the movie plays, and the lips seem to sync up just fine.

 

[Navvie]

Ripping BDs is no harder than DVDs really. You just need a drive that can read them. After that, the process is much the same; sit and wait because optical media is slow as shit.

Ripping discs is slow, so use more drives and rip discs concurrently.

A word of warning though, my experience is that the number of discs waiting to be ripped grows exponentially with the number of drives owned. Situation is not helped by family and friends, and friends of friends, who have heard that you still watch DVDs, and give you their old discs rather than binning them. Storing thousands of discs becomes a problem in itself.

Still, beats doom scrolling through Netflix's library.

Edit: typos, added back doom-scrolling which got nixed trying to make my thoughts understandable.

 

[StuiWooi]

The high seas will always be there, matey!

It's been so long I'm not sure I could get back into it (safely).

DISCLAIMER: I'm not looking for replies with guidance!

 

[Navvie]

Also, the AVCHD format for camcorders allowed for recording HD content onto DVD discs, in a format very similar to Blu-ray.

AVCHD - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I wondered when somebody would mention AVCHD.

 

[dhughes]

I've got a 1m x 0.5m (~3' x 1.5') storage box full of DVD movies I had a bigger box of VHS movies. The VHS were too much of a pain to copy. The DVDs were a bit of an issue I didn't want to play them on my old DVD player and I had nowhere to store them. I bought a Synology 5-bay NAS and three 18TB drives for my files and saw that it was a great choice to store at least some of my movies. MakeMKV to rip and Emby media player now I can watch it's so easy and everything there is something I like unlike streaming services where 95% of what I see I hate. I may shop for old DVDs I like movies from the 60s, 70s, 80s but TV shows it's more 80s,90s, early 2000s.

 

[DoctorO]

Nor those $5000 gold speaker wires.

Did you try reversing the polarity?

 

[RedSox]

For those who still love discs, I recommend visiting The Digital Bits. Discs are still being made and there are a lot of hardcore supporters. The guy (along with other staff) running this website has been reviewing and promoting movies and TV on disc since the 90s.

 

[gefitz]

My employer is a public library system, and they've been alerted to expect a big bump in checkouts due to the loss of local Redbox services. Come on by!