Last fall, Best Buy announced it would start slowly phasing out the selling of DVDs and Blu-rays.
Then, last month, the process officially began and hard copies of movies started disappearing from store shelves.
Given the ubiquity of streaming services and the endless categories of tiles to scroll through on a given night, the need for physical media is a thing of the past.
Still, as a buyer of physical media and someone who once had a robust DVD collection, I can’t help but to feel something is lost as these dwindle away and I can’t help but to wonder where it goes.
At one time, at the height of my moving buying habit, Best Buy had aisles and aisles of movies. Not only did it have the new release titles that came out that Tuesday, it had the things that collectors like me loved to find. In those days, you could find the anniversary and director’s cut of a Japanese horror movie from the 1970s or a re-mastered, two-disc special edition of a Hollywood classic with never-before-seen special features. Those movies weren’t at some specialty store or a back room bin in some obscure video rental place, it was at a large chain store and easily accessible to any and all eager buyers.
In those days, I could find copies of my favorite movies that, to this day, I watch over and over. I could own the things that brought me so much joy as a kid or find new and interesting things just because they were there for me to discover. I turned my movie shelf into a kind of personal, reference library so I could check out that shot from Taxi Driver whenever I wanted or show a friend something they had never seen but always wanted to.
I can hear the overly practical people say, “Why bother? We never really own anything anyway” or “All of that stuff is available on YouTube for free or on streaming.”
Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. You are at the mercy of their licensing agreements in a changing digital age.
Perhaps this is a uniquely American desire to own something. The concept of a healthy collection of movies on the shelf that are mine and mine alone is maybe the 21st century version of owning an automobile or your own homestead out on the edge of the prairie. I like to know if I want to watch something, it’s right there in the next room, sitting on the shelf, ready to go.
I just had that experience last weekend when, as I always do around Valentine’s Day, I grabbed my copy of My Bloody Valentine (the 2009 remake, not the 1981 original – which I also have, thanks to the healthy second life re-release in the mid-2000s, at Best Buy). The 2009 version was released right in the middle of the 3D boom and the special edition came with a 3D version and two pairs of those cheap, cardboard 3D glasses, so I was able to pop in the disc, throw on the glasses and have a fun night 15 years later.
I understand this is just one store, but the movie selection at many stores is a fraction of what it once was. And obviously the company is just reacting to the market and the market is just moving in a different direction. If people wanted those DVDs those shelves would stay full. But technology is changing and people want different things. They favor the online world and the digital copy and the decisions made by the robots. Which is absolutely fine and dandy with me. I would just urge them to borrow my two-disc special edition copy of The Terminator and see how that goes.
-Michael Williamson is a reporter for the Journal-Tribune.