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Movies Television Entertainment

As Netflix Loses TV favorites Like 'The Office' To New Rivals, DVD and Blu-ray Sellers See a Big Opportunity (businessinsider.com) 54

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: First, we learned "Friends" would leave Netflix for the upcoming streaming service, HBO Max. Now, "The Office" and "Parks and Recreation" are on their way out, as NBCUniversal prepares to launch its new streamer, Peacock. With legacy media brands like Disney, WarnerMedia, and NBCUniversal launching streaming services of their own, Netflix and Hulu subscribers face losing access to the shows they've grown accustomed to binge-watching to their heart's content. But there's an industry that is embracing that uncertainty: stores that sell DVDs and Blu-rays.

Blake Lindberg, a manager at Academy Records -- one of the few shops in New York City that still buys and sells second-hand DVDs -- told Business Insider that even though streaming services continue to bring in significantly more money than DVD sales, some of his patrons are frustrated with the increasingly fleeting nature of content on streaming services. "What we notice from talking to clientele is that these items might be on Netflix or Hulu this month, but they might not be next month," said Lindberg, who's worked at Academy Records for over 20 years. Academy Records mostly carries uncommon films and niche finds for dedicated collectors, Lindberg said, but the store keeps box sets of classic TV shows and new releases that might not be streaming yet available as well.
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As Netflix Loses TV favorites Like 'The Office' To New Rivals, DVD and Blu-ray Sellers See a Big Opportunity More

As Netflix Loses TV favorites Like 'The Office' To New Rivals, DVD and Blu-ray Sellers See a Big Opportunity

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  • When the cost of having to subscribe to each broadcaster's streaming service gets too much, people will start pirating more... again (so to speak). How much are they going to lose because people just don't want to pay that much and elect to hand pick the best shows for pirating. Why haven't they learned about their failed model from which so many have already cut the cord?

    • My days of pirating movies and TV are long gone. But I'm not going to subscribe to three or four streaming services for one or two shows on each one that I want to watch. I'll wait either for the shows to become available on iTunes or Google Play, or for them to come out on DVD. If that means I have to wait six months after the a season's run, then so be it. For instance, up here in Canada, I can buy the first season of Star Trek Discovery for $38 on DVD. To get it streamed, I had to buy a subscription for

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by geekoid ( 135745 )

        For me it's three.

        If there are three things on it, I'll consider purchasing the streaming.

      • So it would cost $10 to get the season from Crave in Compressed All To Rat Shit video quality and with 32 kbit/sec joint stereo encoded MP3 audio (and you could watch it over and over again every day, for one month).

        And you could get DVD quality video and decent DD5.1 audio for $38 (and have it forever, so you can watch it over and over again every day, for all eternity).

        Or you could spend $0 and download a pirate version where the video quality is somewhere between DVD and BluRay quality, and the audio is

        • Like I said, my days of pirating are done. I can't jive it with my personal ethics. So if the show is that important to me (and not many shows are these days), then if it's not on Netflix (the only streaming service I subscribe to now) then I'll wait until comes out on DVD.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Netflix went weird with credit card update, so meh, swapped to local yokel 'Stan', they should be good for a few months and then maybe back to netlfix or on to some where is, I could not imagine not going back to netflix in the future, no could I not image dropping them again to go with someone else for a few months.

        A family might have more than one stream at once but as an individual the idea is nuts. To be honest, I basically pay the streaming fee to save getting up and changing DVDs I already own, the n

    • I do think you have a point. The public will only pay so much. However, pirating wasn't the answer in my case.

      I had cable TV, but cut it 10 years ago.
      I had Netflix, but cut that 5 years ago.

      If there is something I want, I buy it on disc, and pay for it once. I can watch it as many times as I want when I want. There's no fear it will be pulled from a streaming provider, or that I'll have to pay more $$/month later to watch the same damn show.

      The only downsides are an electricity bill (counts as a subscri

  • Yes, I totally agree that some amount of streaming fragmentation (or at least popular shows moving out to less popular services) will drive an increase in disc sales.

    It's just a good idea anyway, for a show or movie you really love - not just because it may move off of a service, but you help support something you really enjoy and give them a substantial bit of money instead of tiny amounts of streaming revenue.

    Even though streaming services sometimes offer extra content, the disc extras always seem to have

    • I don't think I have ever watched that crap (disc extra's) ever. They should do away with that waste of space (along with the "Coming Soon" forced Advertisements) and spend the space thus wasted with better video and audio quality.

  • It's a train, not the tunnel exit.

  • If the market becomes too fragmented viewers will simply move to having one or two active subscriptions at any point and binge watch whatever series you like on the service.

    eg Subscribe to Hulu for a couple of months and binge watch what you like.
    Then cancel and switch to Warner or HBO or NBC and do the same

    By the time you have cycled through the main services once there will probably be some new stuff on Hulu to watch so you start the cycle again.

    Netflix got lucky by being able to sign up a bunch of conten

  • Both (Score:2)

    by vanyel ( 28049 )

    Streaming has been flighty from the beginning, which is why I've always bought the dvds of anything I care about. For the rest, I turn on a stream for a month and watch what it has that's interesting in that month.

    • Same for me. For shows I really like, and know I'll rewatch a lot, I still buy DVDs and Blu-rays.

      However, I'm rapidly running out of shelf space.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by vanyel ( 28049 )

        I hear ya on that one! I've been ripping them onto NAS units and putting the dvds in plastic crates for storage...

  • where have i heard that before, like for all those other movies in the discount bargain bin at the front of walmart, all messed up looking like kids been swimming though them

  • So you guys got it easy. If a movie or TV show is not there to stream, schances are is in the Shinny disk catalogue, and you can request it.

    People in other parts of the world are not so lucky...

    So, will this mean a resurgence of Video rental clubs?
    Not by any stretch of the imagination.

    Will piracy be back?
    Yes and no. Streaming brings an instant gratification that bittorrent and IRC are hard pressed to equal, and services that try to emulate streaming (think popcorn-time) are prosecuted real fast in the game

    • The pickings are getting slimmer in the Disk By Mail program. It used to be you could count on movies being available as soon as the disc version was released for purchase - but that's not true anymore.

      This past weekend I actually exported my disc queue, turned it into an Excel spreadsheet, and am going through it to see what percentage of the titles are available as rentals via iTunes or Amazon. The queue is long, and I'm only 25% of the way through it - but given my consumption pattern (discs tend to gath

    • they only change with your wallet. as long as enough people play there game of 20 different store fronts it wont change.

  • Having your media assets held hostage seems to me like a terrible way of going through life. The media companies got rich selling LPs which wore out, cassettes which were portable, 45s that had just the hits, and then in the CD era you got to buy everything all over again.

    At least with those purchases you had the asset and could do what you wanted with it afterwards. Paying rent to stream a file seems foolish. You end up with nothing.

    • your paying to view a entire libary. when you buy it you make your own library.
    • Sometimes you only want to watch a movie once. Plenty of entertainments are consumed after a single use. Online movie rental is cheap.

      Subscribing to a service makes sense for people who aren't too choosy about what they watch. Surprisingly common.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jabuzz ( 182671 )

        True, but if I want to watch and my brother wants to watch it and my sister wants to watch it, and some random other family member wants to watch it too, with a DVD or BluRay that could be and was passed around. We pooled our DVD collection and now stuff just goes straight to the "family" Plex server.

        I would note that getting rips of some of the Disney stuff after my brothers two girls had used them was tricky. Different drives and polishing to remove scratches enough for a read was the order of the day. Of

  • That in the post apocalypse, as long as you have a few hundred gallons of water stored away, 6 months of food , and a vegetable garden everything will be awesome.

    Of course in my post apocalypse I'd also like to be able to run my big screen and a blue-ray player off my generator.

    Not every day all day. Maybe once a month as a treat.

  • Seriously, who pays money to watch that old stuff? I would rather Netflix spend their money on good new content, not shows from 25yrs ago.

  • I don't even try looking for what I want to watch on "official" streaming services. If I can't get it from the library I get it from, um, oops, I may have already said too much.

  • I haven't even watched most episodes of 'Friends' once, why would anyone want to waste time watching that drivel even more, let alone pay for it?

  • More sci-fi please

    Plenty of "classic" sci-fi series shows that 'flix could add:

    Babylon 5
    Stargate SG-1
    Space 1999 ...

    Also, am grateful for getting to re-watch
    Star Trek
    Voyager
    Battlestar Galactica redeux ...

    Lastly, did like Netflix's originals
    Another Life
    Mother
    IO ...

    • There were some episodes of Space 1999 on YouTube a few years ago. Definitely not as good as I remember, and the entire premise, even by 1970s Six Million Dollar Man standards, was pretty bad. The first season of the original Battlestar Galactica, on the other hand, had some pretty good episodes. The two parter with Patrick Macnee as Count Iblis is actually pretty darned creepy.

    • They had Babylon 5, and Stargate SG-1. Also they had Odyssey 5, The 4400, Stargate Atlantis, all the Stargate movies, V, and a whole pile of other stuff that is now gone.

      • Looks like B5 and the 'Gates moved to Prime Video.

        WTF it can't be on both of them is beyond me, but we knew this was going to happen when World + Dog decided to all launch their own shitty streaming services.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Megane ( 129182 )

          The "Comet" channel is in my local antenna line-up. Every weekday night, two episodes each of SG, B5, The Outer Limits, Atlantis, all there for my MythTV to save if I ever feel like watching them. 480p means they would hardly even take up disk space.

          And I get everything in good quality. Aside from two stations I can't receive at all (one is on RF channel 5 way at the fringe of the market, the other, Ion, is probably low power), they are all perfect. Or at least they are now, since two major network station

  • Let's see. It was originally broadcast OTA. I, and many others, have the right to record said broadcast, so retroactively it should be free to those that could have done that. This is one of the stupidest things about copyright. If I had 100 dvrs and more time than possible, I could record everything, but the moment I outsource that to the internet (along with trimming out the commercials) it becomes a violation. Such bullshit.
    • thats becouse in the 70s big media tried to get the vcr banned. but in the end the courts ruled it was not a violation to record broadcast programming for personal use. same thing for audio tapes they tried the same thing and lost. as for downloading well they say its a violation all they want but the realty of it is the second you actually fight them in court they have no real way of proving it. what i mean by that is they have no way of proving who was using said computer at that time.

    • Maybe, if it includes commercials. I DVR and archive a lot of shows, and the biggest task I have to do manually is removing commercials.

      There are a few free services that show old shows with commercials. Tubi is probably the most similar to having an archive of DVRed shows with commercials.

  • People don't get Netflix because it has (had) The Office. They watch The Office because they already have Netflix and it's a low-risk investment of viewing time. Half the stuff Netflix pushes isn't any good and you don't want to give up 90 minutes of your life to find that out. Watching Steve Carell is guaranteed entertainment, assuming you like that sort of thing.

    • Exactly. No one gets a NetFlix subscription to watch any of the things mentioned. They only watch that crap because it is the best of the crock of shit that is available on NetFlix at the moment.

      Plus, of course, NetFlix now has so much flashing about, making noise uninvited, and auto-roll and auto-play that cannot be disabled, that it is almost completely impossible to actually look at their catalog anymore.

  • All we want is ONE service with everything on it for $15 a month (again that is everything, i.e. any and all content)! I don't want 10 different streaming services that is worse than cable TV. The streaming industry better listen up and fix this quickly or they will die like cable TV has but in a few short years instead of 2 decades. We have only a few music streaming services and they all have just about everything that is working and music industry is happy but it took them years and years to get it righ

  • If these companies realise that their independent services don't get enough subscribers then they will come crawling back to Netflix. It's better to have everything in one place.

  • i find that streaming and physical media (cd/dvd/bd) go hand in hand.
    i still buy music albums, i still buy dvd/bd's even though i've got a netflix subscription since it became available.

    what i do less now, is buy albums/dvd/db's that i regret (and then have to sell them at way bellow the purchase price).

  • Thanks a lot for having this info here. I had a project to writer about Netflix for https://payforessay.net/ [payforessay.net] and this post truly boosted my research!

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