Over the last decade or so, streaming services have grown quite popular in the realm of entertainment. After all, paying for a catalog of films and TV shows is much more convenient than driving to the nearest Redbox and picking up a DVD. This increase in popularity only grew exponentially with the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. With physical locations no longer being viable, many companies turned to online platforms as a replacement, resulting in streaming services becoming quite relevant. Fast forward to 2023, and there are a plethora of services available: Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Prime Video, Peacock, Paramount+, and the list goes on for quite some time. Especially with the introduction of devices such as the Amazon Firestick, physical media is on a rather steep decline.
A specific event in recent times highlights this perfectly. In the summer of this year, Disney announced that following the release of Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 they would no longer be producing DVDs in Australia. Such action has already been taken in Latin America and parts of Asia. While there currently is no official statement that would suggest this will eventually become a global change, it is highly likely that it will as DVDs sink further and further into obsolescence.
While this does seem to be a logical step considering the ways in which entertainment is changing, it also raises a few concerns. Some fear that if a piece of media is removed from streaming, the lack of a physical disc would effectively mean that media is gone. Furthermore, streaming compresses the media it plays, often leaving it looking worse than if it were being played from a physical disc (more particularly Blu-Ray discs, which offer high video quality).
There are a great deal of pros and cons that can be weighed in regard to streaming vs physical media. However, at the end of the day, there is not much that can be done as Disney is going to do whatever is most profitable for them. If that means focusing on streaming and leaving physical media behind, then that’s what they’re going to do.
