This Is Why We Need to Return to Physical Media
nofilmschool.com
nofilmschool.com
With physical media on the other hand first of all stopping distribution doesn't automatically mean recall of all existing stock from all shops, and in any case there's also the second hand market to completely legally fall back to.
It is unacceptable that this great work of art is just gone from the world.
Meanwhile, there's a remux of the Blu-ray on usenet that took me 5 minutes to download. There, now I have it on my HTPC where no one can take it away from me, and I didn't have to wait 2-3 weeks for it to ship from the U.K. and rip it myself just to watch it.
Edit: I think I purchased Amélie on iTunes a few years ago but Apple makes it really inconvenient to search your purchase history. You can't do it on the web. You have to do it in this horrible window in the TV App (macOS) or Settings app (iOS) that makes use pick a year, then scroll through it, go back, pick the next year, etc. No search. It's almost as if they don't want you to know the movie went missing. Let's try a GDPR data export. I should know in days... :(
What region are you in?
How else would you ensure universal compatibility? They'd have to also mandate a universal chip into all devices and it's fairly obvious why that'll never happen.
At least, we should hope not.
This is not a solution because it reduces the price of the media to $0. So distributors have no incentive to do this.
- eBooks are often (though not always) available without DRM - to the extent that music is still sold instead of being streamed, no-DRM is more or less universal
Piracy costs video producers (TV, movies) more because the cost of production is higher, they spend way more in marketing, and most importantly, their power to set licensing fees for that IP is greatly diminished.
Books for the most part are cheap for publishers to make and distribute; no one is getting $10m advances for a mansuscript. Yet they still charge $10 or more for the digital version!
Plus, what are the numbers on alternatives? How much “waste” or pollution is a byproduct of streaming?
Not to mention, one movie is available with Netflix, another with Disney, yet another with Prime and so on and so forth... how does all this even make any sense from a customer's point of view?
We need physical media back. But, a little tweaked to modern way of consuming media.
It would cost exorbitant amount of money for a single person to watch all of what that person watches these days. You can't expect him to buy physical media for all of these. Rentals help, but, as again, you don't own them.
So, you can't afford to own all what you want, and renting is not owning at all. So, what's the solution?
Maybe, movie studios should start with "cheap-to-rent-but-costly-to-own" model initially when a movie releases, and gradually as the time passes, the movie now becomes same price to own as was to rent initially...
Streaming have sucked the life out of the entertainment business. It needs to do go away.
Aren’t we seeing this exact trend already? Or are you saying new digital movies should cost even more than $20-30 initially?
With streaming services, you're buying a license that gives the rightsholder the ability to take it away from you at any time they want. I'm not sure how this is even legal; it gives all the power to the rightsholder.
But there are very few movies that I want to actually own in physical form to rewatch. If I did, I would buy them.
I started to watch Valley Girl (1983) on my Criterion subscription on Sep 30. On Oct 1, I went to finish it. Gone. Can't finish the movie on Criterion. According to Just Watch, I can finish it on Amazon Prime. Maybe? I have Criterion and I have Prime, but who's got time for this crap? I downloaded it from Usenet instead.
In line with your comment, I was wondering what the modern video rental would be. Blockbuster weren’t just sub-leasing their movies, they owned the physical copies. And any given video shop could have an excellent collection in one respect or another.
The modern equivalent might be independent streaming services that legally own their video assets.
Don’t know how viable that would be. But I found it useful as a contrast to the present where we are still in a compromise with studios in the wake of piracy.
Returning to physical media isn't especially appealing.