Are blu ray prices going up? Are they TRYING to bury physical media?

Just got back from Best Buy where they are charging $25 for Joker on regular blu ray $30 for 4K.

That is insane, there arent even any directors commentary tracks or significant making of documentaries in the special features.

They also charge $27.99 for Alexandre Aja's new horror movie Crawl on regular blu ray! Movie isnt even that highly rated.

If they dont want physical media to die why dont they make prices more reasonable? Its little more than $10 a month to stream a month of Netflix or Disney etc... new movies shouldnt be more than $10 on disc, maybe $15 for the 4K.

 

They should be 20 bucks. That's what new release DVDs used to be so that's what blue ray should be now.

 

I think Joker is £15 here on Blu Ray, but it's a miserable release. I'm surprised there's not more alternative art work and Ltd editions coming out

 

I got crawl for like 10 bucks on blu ray at walmart

 

Nah, they've gradually gone down over time. They just seem to be stuck at $25-$30. Keep in mind though, that's just for new releases. They hit the $10 bargain bins a lot faster than they used to at a higher volume. Also, like "Joker", a lot of them are Blu Ray/DVD/Digital combo packs, so $25 bucks for the whole package isn't all that bad.

What's more shocking to me, is that stand alone DVD's are still around and retail for $20.

 

Wait a couple of months...

 

Just wait for Black Friday where a lot of 4K discs I bought were way cheaper that day.

 

Yeah, sorry, bro but you're not going to find it any cheaper than that.
$24.99 for the Blu & $29.99 for the 4K disc is about as low as you're going to find right now. It's what Amazon is charging.

That $27.99 for Aja's CRAWL is just insane though. Amazon has it for $16.


Have you gone the 4K UHD route with your equipment yet? If not, but you eventually plan to you might want to do what I did & begin buying new releases in 4K. I began about a year, year & a half before I bought a 4K TV & disc player & when I did I had a nice collection already built up. Just a thought.

 

I'm guessing with Joker the details of the home release were worked out before it even came out at the cinema, things like having commentary exclusive to streaming. I don't think WB ever expected the film to be the massive hit that it has been.

One big issue of buying vs streaming though besides method of payment and long term access is quality, streaming services might be offering 4K/HDR/etc but its highly compressed compared to what you would get on a disk, the bit rate can be 1/4 or less. This is especially obviously in darker scenes were artefacts show up a lot more and detail is lost IMHO, the dreaded colour banding especially.

I actually think the best value/quality combination these days(in the UK anyway) is to see something at the cinema on a cheap deal then if you liked it enough to buy hold off for a few months until the price drops, typically that works out about the same cost as not seeing it at the cinema and buying the disk on release would. Can't think of too many disks in recent years I bought on release at full price, maybe only Fury Road and Rogue One.

 

They literally do want it to die. They don't want to sell you a physical copy of media that you can edit and show and do with as you please.

What they want is to LICENSE media to you, so they can dictate the terms of your usage.

 

Best Buy isn't really the place to go for good prices on movies.

 

Los medios fisicos estan muriendo

 

It makes no sense to me why theyd rather get $10 a moth streaming than having people buy indiidual movies at $10 a pop. Theyd make way more money on the physical media. And it woukdnt be dying if new movies were 9.99. A lot more peoplw would buy them. Thats a great price point. Physical media is dirt cheap to mfr. they re profits would skyrocket.

 

The obvious answer is that more people stream than purchase individual media. Plus, streaming isn't a one size fits all model. You've got people paying $5 to rent a single episode of saturday night live, taking youtube revenue from monetized movie clips, etc, people renting the same pay per view movie multiple times, etc. And the big corporations (which btw I just wanna say Disney cause its basically gonna be all Disney soon) get the monopoly on how and when that content goes to you.

 

Most places you go to have around the same prices for BD and DVD's.

 

Here you go bro, $10:



If link doesn't show: Amazon, 4k Bluray: The Darkest Hour

 

A lot depends on your viewing habits of course, if you watch a lot of series and are mostly one and done with films plus you don't care as much about extreme quality then streaming makes more sense.

Honestly I'v found these days I do much less casual viewing than I did in the past, the net and photo editing have tended to take the place of that. If I'm watching something these days I'm really watching it and that mostly means quality cinema and indeed a lot of rewatching.

 

Perhaps they've lost the economy of scale and its more expensive to produce smaller batches of disks.

 

I just wait till movies hit the WalMart $5.00 DVD bin. Sometimes they are even less in those bins. It is a great time stock up on great older movies because new movies just suck.