When DVDs hit the market, they were an instant hit with consumers. The video quality was drastically better than VHS, they were much more compact, you no longer had to rewind tapes and the format made special features and other bells and whistles possible.

The discs flooded the market and could be bought everywhere, from department stores to truck stops. However, in the past few years people seem to have turned their backs on their little discs. For one reason or another, they’ve either stopped buying them or have even purged their entire collections.

I’ve been to many garage sales that had DVD collections with hundreds of discs and most people seem to be getting rid of them for one of two reasons: either they don’t have room for them or they don’t go back to rewatch them much since there’s so much streaming content available.

I completely understand these reasons for ditching your shelves full of discs. Why should I pull down that DVD of Ghostbusters when I can just stream it (and in better quality?) However, for film fans and collectors I think many will eventually regret selling off their collections.

The streaming landscape is changing

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Netflix used to have a robust catalog of titles on their streaming service. However, once other players started getting involved and the studios saw sales of DVDs start to plummet, the library of older films on Netflix has been getting worse. What used to have a ton of great older films to sift through is now filling up with original and foreign movies and TV shows while the older titles are fading away. I’ve made the observation that in 2018 if you want to watch movies on Netflix, you’re better off going back to discs-by-mail.

Contracts and licenses causes issues

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While it might be wonderful that a show you love is available to stream, its by no means guaranteed to have a permanent home there. I was used to Saved by the Bell being reliably available on Netflix, yet yesterday I tried to pull it up and it was gone. After poking around, I found that it had moved to Hulu. As much as streaming services were hailed as the end of the cable monopoly, these contracts are pushing us towards the need to have 5-6 streaming services again because these movies are on this service and those TV shows moved over there. Its frustrating and making streaming cost as much as cable used to.

DVDs to the rescue

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When you own that DVD, you know that movie or show will always be available to you to watch at your convenience. No worrying about what service it may or may not be on, or if it moved from Netflix to CBS All Access. If you have the disc, you can watch it. If you want the ‘streaming experience’, you can even rip all your discs to a media server like Plex or Kodi and have all your content available, all the time.

People are practically giving away their DVDs right now

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This is a fantastic time to be a DVD collector. Most of the time, I can pick up discs for 50 cents to $1 at garage sales or pawn shops. Blu-rays usually cost no more than $4. Whole seasons on DVD are usually about $5 each.

I missed out on bulking up my South Park DVD collection this weekend because I found a sale with multiple seasons for $5 each, but I couldn’t remember which seasons I already owned. While that show is streaming on Hulu, its bounced around a few times as well and who knows if will still be there a few years from now. Matt or Trey could say something offensive that causes a media panic and their show is pulled down. This happened to Roseanne just a few weeks ago where Hulu chose to not only remove the new episodes, but the entire back catalog as well.

In conclusion

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DVDs take up a lot of room, they’re lower quality than streaming services and they’re less convenient than clicking a couple of buttons on your remote. However, they’re reliable. You know that as long as you have that disc, you can watch that movie or TV show. You also get all the bonus features that streaming services lack.

We don’t know what Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and other providers are eventually going to evolve into. But those discs on your shelf are constant, unchanging and reliable and they guarantee that when you want to watch a certain movie, its available.

Plus, a wall full of movies is just a great thing to put on display…at least, in my heavily skewed opinion.

Thanks for reading. As always, upvotes, resteems and comments are appreciated!

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