Don’t believe the sales - DVDs are thriving!

"According to the accountants’ ledgers, DVDs are dying. Sales of those shiny discs, along with their shinier sibling the Blu-ray, amounted to £894 million last year, which is almost a fifth lower than in 2015 and less than half of what was achieved a decade ago. And last week we finally said goodbye to the postal DVD service Lovefilm, too. The explanation for this decline is the explanation for many modern declines: digital is taking over. Nowadays, downloads and streaming services make more money than the old physical formats. But accountants don’t know everything. From a different perspective, through the bloodshot eyes of a cinephile, DVDs are thriving — and they’re doing better in Britain than in most other countries. This success is measured in quality rather than quantity. A smallish band of homegrown distributors is working to make more films available in ever more wondrous editions. Labels such as Eureka’s Masters of Cinema, Arrow Video and Second Run are now familiar to movie fans all over the world. Strangely, the decline of physical media is helping to sustain these distributors. There was a time — sometimes referred to as ‘the Golden Age of DVD’ by weirdos like me, who have collected thousands of discs — when the big studios brought their archives to home-video wholesale. Digital streaming and downloads could be just as democratic as DVD — maybe more so. But they’re not there yet. (...) This will surely change. The accountants will make sure that digital delivers and, when they do, it will be a moment of joy for cinephiles, but also of sadness. Some boutique labels will find that their small niche within the entertainment industry has become too small to support them. Some major films — perhaps including Erich von Stroheim’s Greed (1924) — will never get the DVD releases they deserve. For now, however, this old format keeps on keeping on. The most legendary label of all, the Criterion Collection, has recently expanded into Britain from its home in New York. Others, such as Powerhouse Film’s Indicator series, are starting up for themselves. More items keep on being added to the list of amazing forthcoming releases: new restorations of Buster Keaton movies, a Sacha Guitry collection, The Colour of Pomegranates (1968) in high definition. If only all deaths were so full of life." [Spectator]