Speaking of things staying the same, Blu-rays and DVDs also won’t have their content altered after purchase, as we’ve seen happen to digital versions of media.
While certainly in decline, the US Blu-ray and DVD disc market made $1.34 billion in the year ending in March 2023, according to market research group Circana. Data from the first half of 2024 from entertainment trade association The Digital Entertainment Group (DEG) found that while overall Blu-ray and DVD sales declined 22.2 percent during that time period, there were some areas of growth, too:
Consumers continue to show strong demand for collectible disc formats with SteelBooks, [or Blu-rays sold in collectible steel cases], up 44 percent and 4K UHD Blu-ray catalog sales growing by 16 percent.
A Dune: Part Two SteelBook. Credit: Steelbook
Furthermore, sales of newly released Blu-rays decreased more slowly, at 14 percent, according to DEG. A look at the top-selling Blu-rays for the week ending on November 30 based on data from Circana shows recent films, like Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and Deadpool & Wolverine, topping the list.
And it was only about a year ago that 4K Blu-rays of the megahit Oppenheimer actuallysold out.
There are still options
For those interested in a new Blu-ray player, though, the options are more limited with LG exiting the market, but that doesn’t mean you’re out of luck. Even though brands like Panasonic and Sony haven’t made new Blu-ray players in years, they continue to sell them. And the market still sees the occasional new release, such as the Magnetar UPD900 that came out last year.
With the benefits of physical media still present, the demise of LG Blu-ray players is notable, but not defining, for physical media aficionados.
For those who don’t want to use their Blu-ray player anymore, there’s always the option to turn it into a laser-scanning microscope.
Enlarge/ A Redbox movie rental kiosk stands outside a CVS store.
Since 2004, red DVD rental kiosks posted near entrances of grocery stores and the like tempted shoppers with movie (and until 2019, video game) disc rentals. But the last 24,000 of Redbox’s kiosks are going away, as Redbox’s parent company moved to chapter 7 liquidation bankruptcy this week. The end of Redbox marks another death knell for the DVD industry at a time when volatile streaming services are making physical media appealing again.
Redbox shutting down
Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, which owns Redbox, filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy on June 29. But on Wednesday, Judge Thomas M. Horan of the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware approved a conversion to chapter 7, signaling the liquidation of business, per Deadline. Redbox’s remaining 24,000 kiosks will close, and 1,000 workers will be laid off (severance and back pay eligibility are under review, and a bankruptcy trustee will investigate if trust funds intended for employees were misappropriated).
Chicken Soup bought Redbox for $375 million in 2022 and is $970 million in debt. It will also be shuttering its Redbox, Crackle, and Popcornflix streaming services.
DVDs in decline
As a DVD-centric business, Redbox was living on borrowed time. The convenience of on-demand streaming made it hard to compete, and bankruptcy proceedings revealed that Redbox was paying employees more than it was earning.
Overall, the past year hasn’t been a good one for DVD or Blu-ray devotees, as many businesses announced that they’re exiting the industry. In August, Netflix quit its original business of mailing out rental DVDs. Now the king of streaming, the remaining DVD business was so menial that Netflix gave away DVDs as it shut down operations.
Once industry disruptors, DVDs and Blu-rays have been further ushered out the door in 2024. In April, Target confirmed that it will only sell DVDs in stores during “key times,” like the winter holiday season or the release of a newer movie to DVD. The news hit especially hard considering Best Buy ended DVD and Blu-ray sales in-store and online this year. Disney is outsourcing its DVD and Blu-ray business to Sony, and Sony this month revealed plans to stop selling recordable Blu-rays to consumers (it hasn’t decided when yet).
Bad timing
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).
Streaming isn’t likely to stabilize any time soon, either. Team-ups between streaming providers and merger/acquisition activity make the future of streaming and the quality of available services uncertain. For example, what’s ahead for Paramount+ and Pluto now that Paramount is planning a Skydance merger?
There’s also something to be said about how limiting reliance on streaming can be for movie buffs and people with unique tastes. Treasured content, like older movies or canceled TV shows, isn’t always put on streaming services. And what is put on streaming is sometimes altered, including with new music and controversial scenes/episodes or embarrassing moments at live events removed.
A DVD company like Redbox closing was years in the making. There are people who believe it’s prudent to maintain a physical media library, but renting one is even more niche. Still, places that offer DVDs have gotten significantly rarer recently, and relying solely on an increasingly cable-like streaming industry for home entertainment is a scary proposition. Seeing an alternative option in the form of a red, slender box outside my grocery store actually sounds nice right now.
Weird Al’s Rambo parody was a drop in the bucket amidst all the other jokes in the film, but it’s among the most memorable.
Shout Factory
This is the promotional image for the collector’s edition with all its physical knickknacks.
Shout Factory
Believe it or not, it’s been 35 years since Weird Al’s quotable cult classic UHF first came out. Right on time for that anniversary, Shout Factory will release an UltraHD Blu-ray of the movie. This will be the first time it has ever been available in 4K.
Releasing July 2 but pre-ordering now, the disc will include a new 4K scan of the original 35mm negative, along with audio commentary from Weird Al and Jay Levy, the film’s director.
It will also come bundled with a standard HD Blu-ray that includes the film in that older format along with a bunch of special features, including video of a 2014 Comic-Con panel on the movie, deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes videos, and some other assets. Some of those return from the movie’s last physical edition, which was a 25th anniversary HD Blu-ray, but not 4K.
There will be deluxe editions that include some physical collectibles, including an 18×24-inch poster of the “original theatrical artwork,” as well as a new, same-sized poster of new poster art made for this edition. You’ll also find 10 scratch-and-sniff stickers alongside a guide with time prompts for using them, plus some stickers “designed to replicate vintage vending machine prism stickers from the late ’80s and early ’90s” and a Spatula City fridge magnet. Add to that a 6-inch “UHF Remote Control Stress Relief Collectible.” All that stuff is limited to 1,000 units.
For an even smaller number of units of the collector’s edition (500), there will be five UHF-themed hard enamel pins.
The set is available in four tiers priced at $40, $53, $76, and $130, which is a mess, but if you’re not interested in collecting all the physical doohickies, it’s that first price for just the movie that you need to know.
UHF was released in 1989, and it was parody musician Weird Al’s first movie starring role and writing credit. Conceived as a series of bits that would allow him to satirize films in the same way he was known for satirizing songs, it, unfortunately, was a box office flop. It gained a small and passionate cult following on VHS throughout the ’90s.
Another movie written in part by Weird Al, Weird: The Al Yankovich Story, was released on Roku’s streaming channel in 2022. It was a very different kind of movie. Instead of rapid-fire spoofing numerous films like UHF did, it spoofed the musical biopic genre, with Daniel Radcliffe playing Weird Al in a heavily fictionalized account of his life.
The limited-run nature of this UHF release suggests that while the film still has its cult following, it remains outside the mainstream. Its fans probably like it that way, though.
