“The mass market of DVDs is dead,” warns one boutique home video distributor.
Yep, the multinational entertainment companies want to move everyone to digital, which gives them total control (and ownership) of what we collect.
“Physical media has had a resurgence in recent years, helped by the curating and marketing of 4K heritage titles in attractive packaging for a keen, if niche, market of collectors,” reports Variety. But that’s the only good news from a “Heritage Roundtable discussion held as part of the Locarno Pro section of the Locarno Film Festival.”
“Having seen a drastic collapse in the mass market,” the report adds, “the panelists agreed that the one area of growth was the curation of heritage titles, restored to 4 or 2K and presented with an abundance of extras.”
What they mean is this: The time when a Warner Bros. or Disney or Paramount would dig back into their catalog and mass-produce a popular title — e.g. Animal House, Shane, The Road to Utopia, etc. — has come/is coming to an end. In the future, if you want a physical copy of Slap Shot or Dark Victory or Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, you will either have to purchase a used copy from eBay or hope that a boutique distributor like Diabolik, Shout!, or Kino Lorber obtains the rights.
People like me love those boutique distributors, but the price of their offerings, because they are specialized and come with a ton of extras, is high.
Even some of the studios are getting in on this. For those of you who don’t mind paying $20 to $40 for Blu-rays that used to cost $9.99, Paramount created Paramount Presents.
Anyway, here is the quote that should worry every freedom-loving American. Ronald Chammah of Les film du Camélia said:
“We have the feeling that American studios are less interested to have a movie release, either by themselves or by somebody else, on physical media, because their main goal is VOD, and for them, maybe physical media is the enemy of the video platform.”
This is true and beyond sinister…
Before anyone accuses me of playing Mr. Smartypants, trust me — I am not. Like an idiot, about ten years ago I decided to go all digital. I started transferring my physical media to digital and then selling off the physical. But then I discovered that even if you “purchase” a movie from a digital platform, you don’t really own it. You are only licensing it, and that license can expire, which means you lose the movie.
Worse still, the evildoers in the studio will remove content from your purchases, or censor content. This is no different from a fascist studio representative entering your home, walking up to your movie collection, and removing a title entirely or switching out a movie for a “more sensitive, inclusive, and less offensive” version.
Additionally, you can’t lend your digital copy to a friend. You can’t leave your digital movie collection to your heirs or the local library. That means you don’t really own it, which is the whole idea.
You can already see what’s happening to our country. We’re becoming a renting, leasing, subscription culture where no one owns anything. You don’t buy music, you subscribe to music. You don’t own books, you subscribe to books. You lease your car. You rent your home. It’s even worse with movies. You buy them and still don’t own them.
Physical media is the only way.
John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.
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