Hi friends. I hope you’re all well. I’ve been thinking a lot about DVDs lately. And not unlike Austin Powers talking to an un-killable villain, I’ve been asking, “Why won’t you die?”. Given that ‘superior’ products have been available for quite some time now, why does the DVD format cling to life? I explore this below. Enjoy.
I find it remarkable that DVDs are still a thing. You might argue that they’re only still around because a minority of people are stuck in the past and refuse to upgrade. But Hollywood studios still release their films in this format, so it’s not just a small handful of people keeping the industry alive. I guess it’s a bit of a chicken/egg situation; do people keep buying DVDs because Hollywood keep releasing them, or does Hollywood keep releasing them because people are buying them?
One thing is for sure, Hollywood studios don’t do sentiment. If they’re continuing to release their movies on DVD, there must be a market for it. But why is there still a market for it?
I thought DVDs were finished about a decade ago. Let’s not forget, DVDs have two different successors: Blu Ray and Streaming. Which makes their survival all the more impressive.
Us humans can tend to be a bit bad at predicting the future, especially when it comes to tech. I’m still waiting for my flying car and hoverboard that Back to the Future II said would be firmly established by 2015… However, me predicting the fall of DVDs was based on the analogous demise of VHS.
VHS had a good run. After winning the fight to become the undisputed video format against Betamax, VHS was the defacto entertainment choice for nearly two decades. But then along came DVDs.
Officially, the first DVD player was available in the UK in June 1997. Given it cost £600, it wasn’t exactly a common household item at the time. I remember having the South Park Movie on VHS. That film came out in the cinema in August 1999, so wouldn’t have been available for home entertainment until late ’99 at the earliest. So DVDs certainly weren’t a thing for me until the year 2000 maybe, and I imagine that was the case for most of the nation.
The last movies released on VHS came out in 2006. So even if we’re being generous, we can say it took just nine years for VHS to become completely irrelevant. Blu Ray was first available in June 2008. Here we are, 14 years later, and DVDs are still around. Why have they endured, while VHS crumbled?
There are a couple of reasons I can think of. Firstly, it’s worth bearing in mind how much of a game-changer DVDs were. DVDs allowed us to jump straight to any scene we wanted; with VHS, you had to slowly fast forward if you wanted to find somewhere specific. DVDs also brought an interactivity with them, allowing us to navigate a menu to change settings or to select the scene we wanted to watch. Coupled with special features, this was a world away from what we had with VHS tapes.
Did Blu Ray really move the needle in such a dramatic way? I don’t think so. Physically, they look virtually identical. But more than that, there aren’t enough new features with Blu Ray; not enough for people to give up on DVDs anyway.
Blu Ray’s biggest difference to DVDs is one of quality. Sure, the HD offering that Blu Ray provides is appealing, but not everyone cares about picture quality. Of those that do care, I’m guessing not many had HD TVs in 2008. Obviously HD has become more popular since, with plenty of people now having not just 1080p HD, but 4K TVs too. But even so, the way a lot of lounges are set up, TV screens are usually too small and/or people sit too far away to benefit from the increased quality anyway.
The second reason DVDs have lingered is the special features. I mentioned them briefly above, and though they are available on Blu Ray, there’s virtually nothing when it comes to streaming. I really think streaming services missed a trick by not incorporating special features. While it could cause some UI/UX headaches for the app designers, it surely wouldn’t be too difficult to have a special feature subcategory per movie?
Perhaps the people developing the top streaming services just underestimated how much the audience enjoy behind-the-scenes clips and commentary from the actors/director. Streaming offers many good solutions, but it doesn’t enable you to listen to Ben Affleck mercilessly mock the film Armageddon. Seriously, if you’ve never heard Affleck’s DVD commentary for the Michael Bay extravaganza that is Armageddon, check it out, it’s hilarious.
DVDs will die out eventually; it’s simply a matter of time. But the fact they are still going on strong in the era of two would-be successors is incredible. When they do go, they can go with their heads held high. Until then, why not dust off that DVD player (or buy a new one, as they’re only about 20 quid), grab some popcorn, and enjoy them while they last.
A bit of a shorter read for you today, which I’m sure some of you will be grateful for. Me and the family have recently returned from a caravan holiday, which was a lot of fun. If you have any holidays coming up before the summer is over, have a fantastic time. Take care.
Rob Recommends
Succession – TV – 10/10
What a show this is! I’d heard so many good things about it, I assumed it would be decent. But it surpassed every expectation I had going in.
It took me a few episodes to get into it, truth be told. But once I understood the characters and their dynamics, and once the story really got going, I was hooked. And yes, the theme music is just as brilliant as you may have heard it is. I watched the show on demand, so I had the option to skip past the opening credits, but I never did.
A shout out as well to the fact that there are no major stars in this; it just goes to show that if you find the right actors for the parts, you’re onto a winner. Brian Cox is a legendary actor, but he’s not exactly Sir Anthony Hopkins when it comes to fame and success.
Jeremy Strong is a solid actor who had mostly done supporting roles up to this point (I had to Google his name, as I forgot it). Kieran Culkin (who is fabulous in this by the way) has been living in his brother’s shadow for most of his life. And the peak of Alan Ruck’s career was surely as the teenage Cameron in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I don’t think I’ve seen any of the other principle cast members in anything besides Succession. But this ensemble cast is phenomenal.
Now that I think about it, HBO is somewhat renowned for this. Barring perhaps Sean Bean, none of the other actors in Game of Thrones were really household names in the beginning. It was the same for The Wire and The Sopranos as well. No real superstars, not to begin with at any rate.
Anyway, I digress. Succession is a brilliant show that should be going straight to the top of your watch list. It’s too good to miss.
A Rob Blog 