Don't stop buying physical media.

When I was a kid, there was almost nothing as exciting as getting a new DVD. Living in a country town meant there wasn’t a huge amount of access but every trip to nearby rural cities like Wangaratta or further away to Melbourne came with this tang of excitement because, usually, Mum and Dad would let us buy a movie.
 
At the risk of shocking everyone with the revelation of my being a somewhat weird kid, I would sit in the car on the way back, turning the prize over in my hands, reading again and again what the special features were, analysing the cover art and evaluating how it would look next to other films in the same series (if, of course, it was a franchise instalment). The first thing I’d do upon getting home was ignore all bedtime directives to at least check out what the menu art looked like, to get a tantalising glimpse of the features, maybe of the movie itself. Then it would be telling everyone at school and inviting friends around for a watch party.
 
It's hard now to fully comprehend how exciting a new DVD release in the early 2000s was. It was one thing to be a film fan, but a 2-disc special edition offered so much more than just the movie you loved. Making-of documentaries, deleted scenes, commentaries and so on. One of the reasons the Lord of the Rings Extended Editions are so revered by a generation was the lovingly assembled appendices and how they gave such a complete insight into the making of the films that we ended up feeling like we’d been there alongside the cast and crew.
 
But the truth is, all that stuff was just a bonus. In the end if you wanted to watch something after it left cinemas then DVD was your only way to do it. Whether you wanted to build a library or own a few favourites or just rent something to fill a quiet night, DVD was a necessity.
 
I think the first time I suspected things were changing was around 2006. I would have been 14 or 15, and I still bought DVDs regularly (only now with my own money from after-school jobs and with less hopeful begging of my exasperated parents). I also had some new friends who were fairly internet savvy, and they reacted with faint bemusement at me spending money on movies. Didn’t I know I could just download them?
 
I did not know. Turns out, there was a free and easy (and illegal) way to get any movie or show you wanted. And what was more, it was not reliant on when Australian providers deigned to allow us access. In 2008 everyone my age loved Skins but to watch we either had to wait for a heavily belated DVD release with all the good music changed, scour TV guides for the weird hours it would play on SBS, or illegally download it.
 
Three guesses what we did.
 
In the late 2000s and early 2010s there was a weird tension in how TV shows were consumed, a tension that came to a head with Game of Thrones. In Australia we didn’t have reliable streaming services yet and VOD wasn’t releasing episodes in much more a timely a fashion than DVD or blu-ray. Meanwhile, most of the best shows were only airing on pay TV and even then with a delay from the US release. Which meant that if you wanted to watch Walking Dead or Game of Thrones or Mad Men or Breaking Bad without being spoiled, chances are you were pirating. Providers like Foxtel made a lot of aggressive noise about cracking down on this, but singularly failed to provide a better alternative.
 
Meanwhile, I kept buying DVDs – or, by this stage, blu-rays. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t pirating everything I wanted to watch and buying only what I wanted to keep. I was a student and it was impractical to spill every tiny bit of money I had into physical media releases. But I also was a film lover who liked having his favourites on his shelf.
 
I was already being mocked for this. What’s the point, people would ask. I didn’t have much of an answer. At first I would say that it was about quality, that owning something on blu-ray meant better sound or visuals. It did, for a while, but soon download quality caught up. So I would say special features, but that wasn’t entirely true. By this point in my life I was too busy to just sit and watch deleted scenes or making-of stuff.
 
By the time Netflix and Stan and every other streaming service hit our shores, my continued buying of blu-rays was starting to look a bit ridiculous even to me. It was like how I kept buying Empire Magazine years after it stopped having much value to me as a news or behind-the-scenes resource. An exercise in stubborn nostalgia that was, in all likelihood, a big waste of money. But still, if I really liked something I would buy it. Even if it sat on my shelf and was never taken out of its plastic wrapping.
 
It wasn’t until quite recently that I began to understand the value of what I’d kept on doing. I was talking to a friend about the intensely underrated Exorcist III. Convinced, he told me he’d watch it, only to report back that it wasn’t available on any streaming service. Or iTunes or Google Play. Or at a JB Hi-Fi if he wanted to go down the DVD route.
 
Lucky that about a month beforehand I’d spent $70 on a limited-edition blu-ray.
 
I’m being a little facetious, so let’s actually unpack this. The Exorcist III isn’t some universally beloved classic, but it is a cult favourite sequel to one of the most iconic films of all time. And now you can’t see it unless you shell out for a release clearly intended only for hardcore fans or collectors?
 
The blu-ray market for serious collectors continues to flourish, thanks to imprints like Criterion, Kino Lorber, Arrow, Vinegar Syndrome, Shout Factory and more. These companies produce beautifully remastered editions laden with new special effects. Often they’ll release cult obscurities – like my beloved Tammy and the T-Rex, which I also spent a ridiculous amount of money on.
 
But the thing is, these releases aren’t for the average punter just out to watch a movie. They’re like the Folio Society equivalent for movie lovers. The problem is that they’re increasingly becoming the only way that certain films are actually available to the public.
 
Disney recently announced that they would no longer release physical media in Australia. Understandable, given most big retail outlets won’t stock them. Blu-rays or DVDs are now relegated either to niche stores like the wonderful Play Music & DVDs in the city, or else JB Hi-Fi. And look, this has been coming for about twenty years and there’s little point in bemoaning it. Times and technology move on. To most people, physical media is unnecessary and redundant clutter.
 
But the problem with not buying the movies and TV shows you love is that you are now entirely beholden to the whims of whoever owns the rights. There has been a not-insignificant wave of TV shows being edited to remove ‘offensive content’, which would seem noble if it wasn’t a clear and cowardly case of big companies erasing their own less than stellar histories to try and look better. In some cases this spills into pearl clutching and patronising overreach, like one of the best episodes of Community being pulled from streamers over what was reported as but absolutely not blackface. Now, unless you own certain episodes on DVD or are willing to pirate, you might never get to see them again.
 
Even if you’re disgusted by the censored content, it’s hard to see any upside to a corporation deciding what you can and can’t watch.
 
Then there’s the troubling and increasing practice of streamers dropping their own TV shows for a tax write off. Willow, Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies, Star Trek Prodigy and more have been removed after only months of release because they weren’t seen as big enough hits. These streaming exclusives never got physical releases. So if you ever wanted to watch them again, or even watch them for the first time, your options are less than limited.
 
My point is this; if you love film and TV, then you shouldn’t stop buying physical media. I’m not saying return to the early 2000s way of buying anything you might one day have a vague inkling to check out, but rather grab your favourites whenever and wherever they’re available. Because streamers are fickle and things fall through the cracks. There have been plenty of cases where a movie I want to watch with friends isn’t available on streaming and I’ve (somewhat smugly) been able to pull out the DVD. And that disc you own can’t be edited or changed or removed or slapped with disclaimers about outdated attitudes. It’s just yours, as it is, forever.
 
Physical media won’t entirely die out. Considering the resurgence of vinyl in the past decade I’d be stunned if blu-ray didn’t endure in a similar way. But it’s important that it does endure, because without it there’s a decent chance you’re going to lose a lot of the stories you love to corporate mergers and tax write offs. 

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