Why does the DVD still exist?

As Tiger King 2 Fascinated and shocked the audience and some fans Star Trek: Discovery Sorry for the idea of ​​having to pay for another streaming service subscription, and regret that the once-hot video technology is now more likely to become a temporary coaster for your coffee: DVDs used to be the future-but now they are difficult to transform.

At the height of the DVD boom, as early as 2005, Americans $16.3 billion was spent on these things— The country is US$55.50 per adult and child, which is more than the amount of former US President Donald Trump Spend on the boundary wall where he failed. Today, eBay buyers are not interested in taking them away from you and second-hand retailers Basically don’t pay anything Used for high-definition versions of classic movies.

Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc is not even Things until 2015And it lasted only four years before their inventor Samsung, Decided to stop manufacturing hardware to play them. So, what is the legacy of the DVD revolution?

According to data from the market research company Omdia, the total volume of global physical video transactions has fallen from 6.1 billion in 2011 to 1.2 billion in 2021. It is estimated that global DVD sales this year will only be 300 million, which is lower than the average annual average of 2 billion between 2005 and 2009. But there are still 300 million copies-even if your collection has long since disappeared or is covered with dust on your bookshelf. As the demand for DVDs has plummeted, video streaming has taken its place. The number of subscriptions to services such as Netflix increased from 39 million worldwide in 2011 to 1.2 billion today-almost swallowing the entire DVD industry. Almost, but not quite.

“There is a large group of consumers who like DVDs,” said Liz Bales, chief executive of the British Screen Entertainment Association, an industry body. “This fits their needs.” In the UK in 2020, 7 million people will still buy disc-based TV shows or movies. David J. Holliday, president of Technicolor Home Entertainment Services, said that between April and June 2021, 5 million Americans bought movies for the first time, and the company produced more than 80% of the Disc formats, from DVD to Blu-ray to video games.

Omdia said that DVD purchases account for 7% of the global home entertainment market, while digital video accounts for 70% of the industry.This is a story about two trajectories: the value of the digital home entertainment market in the United States Increased by 33% between 2019 and 2020According to data from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), physical sales fell by 26%. Internationally, the USD 35 billion digital video market is 10 times that of the USD 3.5 billion physical video industry. Holliday said the market is declining, “but in recent years, especially since the outbreak of the pandemic, the rate of decline has slowed.” Surprisingly, given their changing role in the entertainment industry, people think of buying The largest share of DVDs is new movies, while the proportion of collector’s editions and sets is smaller.