Is the DVD dead? Not according to these devotees.
In a world with countless movies available on an absurd number of streaming services, some people still want to own a physical copy of their favorite films
Fred Robertson considers himself a movie buff. He buys a lot of DVDs from the Criterion Collection, the home-video distribution company that specializes in cinephile releases. He also indulges his guilty pleasures. Anybody else itching to own a complete edition of the Captain and Tennille’s TV specials?
Asked about his collection of DVDs and Blu-ray discs, the southern Maine homeowner guessed he has “definitely a few hundred, maybe more.” Later that day, he texted back. He’d taken a closer look at his shelves.
“I’m easily in the neighborhood of nearly a couple thousand,” Robertson noted. “Way off.”
For collectors of any kind — Robertson is also a lifelong record collector — that’s a familiar refrain. You don’t think you have a problem until the numbers start to get away from you.
Robertson represents one of the more stubborn corners of the collecting landscape. In a world with countless movies available on an absurd number of streaming services — now more than 200 worldwide, according to Forbes — some people still want to own a physical copy of their favorite movies.
Some of those folks are seeking vintage films that might be hard to find in the virtual universe. Some have seen cherished films dropped from Netflix or inadvertently erased from the DVR function of their cable box. Others don’t want to navigate the briar patch of monthly fees and passwords that accompany multiple streaming subscriptions.
“I don’t have any streaming services,” said Casey Buckles, a warehouse manager who lives in Gloucester. Partial to obscure “yakuza” movies from Japan, he thinks he may have close to 1,000 titles on DVD.
“I don’t blanket-buy like a hoarder would,” he said. “I try to be calculated in the things I will buy.”
Still, Buckles may want to take a trip into Boston. In a small second-floor shop overlooking Downtown Crossing, James Bennett and his business partner, Aaron Crawford, have been selling martial-arts and classic Blaxploitation films since 2001. They maintain about 500 titles at their store, Kung Fu Video and DVD.
Bennett, known to his friends as “B,” grew up in Boston watching “Creature
Double Feature” and the kung fu showcase every Saturday on WLVI, Channel 56.
“After that, I’d go outside and play,” he recalled.
These days, much of the shop’s business comes from the smoking paraphernalia they carry. But Bennett said he still has some customers who make regular stops looking for rare films. Visitors from overseas — Germany, Jamaica — are pleasantly surprised to find the place, and he draws occasional film students from Emerson College and Suffolk University.
“We get a lot of younger people, and that makes me happy,” he said. “I’m an OG.”
In recent years, total sales of DVDs and Blu-rays have fallen, from roughly $4.7 billion in 2017 to around $1.5 billion in 2022, according to Digital Entertainment Group. But there are signs customers may be willing to spend some discretionary income on the latest upgrade, the crystal clarity of 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray discs. In November, Universal had to appease consumers when it sold out of its initial release of 4K Blurays of “Oppenheimer.”
“The DVD is not dead,” said Rob Newton. “It’s not even on life support.”
Newton, who owns and operates Cape Ann Cinema and its charity video store, Helpflix, works with DVD wholesalers every week. He cherry-picks the
‘Gen-Z is all about CDs right now, and I think they’re going to be the DVD generation, too.’
CHELSEA BERRY, product buyer for Bull Moose, an employee-owned entertainment chain
best titles for his well-curated, 10,000volume store (“I’m like a video truffle pig,” he joked), and redistributes the rest. He has a popular section in the store called “Seldom Streamed.”
Generation Z, the high school- and college-age segment of the buying public, are sparking a resurgence of interest in physical media, said Chelsea Berry. She’s a product buyer for Bull Moose, an employee-owned entertainment chain with 11 stores in Maine and New Hampshire.
Because that age group grew up with iPods and Netflix, they’re fascinated by an album or movie you can actually hold in your hands.
“Gen-Z is all about CDs right now,” Berry said, “and I think they’re going to be the DVD generation, too. Or even VHS.”
Fred Robertson’s two daughters, who are 19 and 17, still pull out the Disney and Pixar movies he delighted in buying for them when they were younger. Each Christmas they’ll gather the family around a cozy screening of the “Peanuts” holiday box set.
Berry cites “the Taylor Swift effect” as one big reason for the shift. New buyers come in seeking a blockbuster release: “Once they’re in the store, they’re like, ‘Oh, man, look at all this other cool stuff.’”
In some cases, those buyers have been burned by streaming services. Disney regularly removes underperforming titles from its catalog. Sony recently announced it planned to sunset the anime subscription service Funimation, leaving its successor, Crunchyroll, to contend with some customers who lost purchased content in the handover.
For her own personal collection, Berry buys a lot of old, low-budget horror movies, which are “ironically” getting lavish reissue treatment these days, she said. She also owns every John Candy movie, “because I watched them a lot growing up.”
Back when Berry worked at an old Bull Moose location in Portland, they had a customer, a diehard wrestling fan, who showed up every Tuesday morning to buy the latest DVDs from the WWE. He’d buy two copies of every release, she recalled — one to watch, and the other to keep sealed.
“Everyone is into their own thing,” she said, “and we want to have it for them.”