DVD industry in crisis as sales slump
Raise your hand if you’ve heard this before, the slumping economy is hurting the **** industry. It seems to be a defacto excuse for a lot of big companies. But…if DVDs and Blu-ray are so dead, then why does a movie like Avatar break records on sales? Inception’s coming out…I think it will do just fine. I think this is more an issue for TV Series viewers who used to have to wait for the DVD to catch an episode they missed. But if the studios now have this additional licensing revenue (either advertising from their streams on their site or the fee a company like Netflix pays them), then doesn’t that counter the loss of physical revenue?
Sure they might not sell 500,000 copies of The Office, but if now they sell 300,000 copies, and they have 1,000,000 people viewing episodes then that sure sounds like a good balance. I’m slightly bothered by the article mentioning that people are going online for “free” episodes they missed–the content airs “free” with advertising on broadcast TV just as it does online. Eventually these will sync up and I think they’ll make even more money in the long run. A good movie/TV show will always be in demand.
Now a combination of the economic downturn and the digital revolution has forced the video industry to face up to the same crisis that still traumatises record companies – how to make up the income lost when your key physical product is in decline and predicted to become obsolete within 20 years. Sales and rentals of DVDs and Blu-ray discs fell by 7% to $10.9bn in the first nine months of this year compared with last year, according to the industry body The Digital Entertainment Group; and the British Video Association says DVD sales fell 5.6% last year. The fall was most severe in new-release titles, which account for 25% of the market, with sales crashing 15% in 2009.
And in tough economic times,
It’s bad movies like Clash of the Titans that keep me from buying new releases. There are a handful of movies a year that I buy. The rest are junk that I get from Netflix that I didn’t want to spend money in the theater to watch. These are the same movies I would’ve watched on HBO/Showtime in the past vs renting from Blockbuster. I find most of the movies I buy on Blu-ray are actually older films that I loved- Blade runner, Labyrinth, Firefly, etc.
oliverredfox wrote:It’s bad
[quote=oliverredfox]It’s bad movies like Clash of the Titans that keep me from buying new releases.[/quote]
Please tell me you mean the remake and not the original?
The original and anything
The original and anything with Harryhausen effects rocks.
Although the remake of Clash of Titans didn’t make me as sad as the butchering of Avatar: The Last Airbender.
As covered by the article,
As covered by the article, the growth of ad-supported online outlets is not considered. Rental of the content has become cheaper and easier due to the rise in Netflix, Redbox, etc. The decline may also be in part a combination of a down economy as well as a general slump in the movie industry. Keep in mind that this is an industry known for its funky math.
Unlike recorded music that
Unlike recorded music that you will listen to over and over, there are very few movies I want to watch twice let alone several times, and I don’t get a charge from the pride of ownership of a rack full of movies I’ll never watch. A few exceptions would be Holiday titles or maybe a really outstanding movie here or there. The rest of my viewing content I will get from Cable, Netflix, Hulu, FX, etc. I think it is only going to get worse for hard media as set top boxes like Roku, Boxee, Apple TV, Streaming capable Blu-Ray players, etc. become more mainstream. There is just an incredible amount of good content that is available piped to your house that people are realizing that there are very few reasons anymore to have readily available content sitting on your shelf.
The only issue is that the
The only issue is that the picture quality is going down more and more. I’m noticing that DirecTV’s PQ has degraded significantly over the past few months, as they’re adding more local channels. I’m noticing this on a 1080i 50″ TV, so it’s only going to get worse when I move to a 1080p TV @ 65″ in the next year or so.
Not only do they need to
Not only do they need to compete with the streaming licenses they sell but the bigger issue is how they have jacked the price up on DVDs. A regular SD DVD is now around $20-$25 each. That is a crock!
I love the fact there are so many places that sell them used.