Death To The DVD

It is not surprising the film industry is showing strain while trying to compete with the fast nature of the growing copyright infringers.  You need only look up the wiki on the term ‘torrent’ to find how and why digital movie promotions and direct to DVD patterns are changing.  While stealing a movie is illegal, I would like to take one second and say I do not condone it.  I simply want to shed light on my growing apathy for ‘actual’ DVD’s and other media that is used to package film, music and documentaries.

I remember growing up and perusing my parents collections of VHS tapes and grabbing the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” video and watching it a hundred times.  I also remember feeling that my parents collection of VHS was a pile of accumulated movies that were more “badges” of ownership than a library worth having.  As the years went on, VHS tapes grew and so did my parents collection.  Hundreds of movie titles stacked on shelves.  Nothing impressive.  It was normal to ‘buy’ the latest movie or to get a few on your birthday, holiday or gift bag.  The VHS was a popular gift item as everyone likes to watch movies.

This was all fine until the birth of the DVD.

In 1995, a conglomeration of major companies decided to revolutionize the medium for feeding movies to masses and thus rendering my parents collection archaic and obsolete.  The DVD was better quality.  It was smaller and could even double as a storage medium.  The next few years, as the hype AND price died down, the DVD found success.  Movie goes began buying them in bulk and hoarding collections which set next to the VHS collections.  The biggest attribute (and ultimate doom) of the DVD is that today it can be duplicated with ease and very quickly.  Industry did too good of a job creating a cheap and easy medium.

Well, unless you are the faithful VHS guru, you probably know where this story is going.  VHS cassettes are now rare (and not the good kind) and DVDs have taken over as the shelf stuffer.  But is this smart?  Will the next, albeit Blu-Ray, technology push DVD away from the front and center shelf position only to be hurried out the door in a “blowout” sale?

I believe this to be a resounding “Who cares?”  Stop collecting DVDs/Blu-Rays immediately.  If you want to buy a DVD for sentimental value then do it.  Vinyl records still exist for this purpose.  Do not waste your money on a DVD when you could find the same library on markets like Video On Demand or online rental sites like NetFlix and Zune.  In most cases, you can buy the digital version and move on.

I would much rather have more space in my local Barnes & Nobles walls dedicated to one-click media downloads then $5 sell-outs (which I see everywhere).  I will predict this same deprecated model for Blu-Ray as well.  Collect at your own risk.  At this rate, in less than 5 years all media will be streamed and your “digital” collection will be posted on your favorite social site instead of your bookshelves.