DVDs are dying right as streaming has made them appealing again

Stopthatgirl7@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 730 points –
DVDs are dying right as streaming has made them appealing again
arstechnica.com

It's sensible for businesses to shift from physical media sales. Per CNBC's calculations, DVD sales fell over 86 percent between 2008 and 2019. Research from the Motion Picture Association in 2021 found that physical media represented 8 percent of the home/mobile entertainment market in the US, falling behind digital (80 percent) and theatrical (12 percent).

But as physical media gets less lucrative and the shuttering of businesses makes optical discs harder to find, the streaming services that largely replaced them are getting aggravating and unreliable. And with the streaming industry becoming more competitive and profit-hungry than ever, you never know if the movie/show that most attracted you to a streaming service will still be available when you finally get a chance to sit down and watch. Even paid-for online libraries that were marketed as available "forever" have been ripped away from customers.

When someone buys or rents a DVD, they know exactly what content they're paying for and for how long they'll have it (assuming they take care of the physical media). They can also watch the content if the Internet goes out and be certain that they're getting uncompressed 4K resolution. DVD viewers are also less likely to be bombarded with ads whenever they pause and can get around an ad-riddled smart TV home screen (nothing's perfect; some DVDs have unskippable commercials).

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Ripping those disks is legitimately easier than playing them w/o breaking DRM on PCs

Legitimately playing 4K blu-ray video on a PC without cracking the DRM requires an insane combination of requirements:

  • Windows 10 (not 11)
  • An Intel processor between gen 7-10 (nothing newer because Intel ditched SGX in 2021)
  • Intel integrated graphics (no nvidia/amd)
  • Monitor that supports HDCP 2.2 for DRM (some 4k ones don't)
  • An approved optical drive
  • Proprietary playback software which costs about $100 USD, separate from the cost of hardware and Windows
  • Miscellaneous other requirements for the motherboard features, bios settings, etc.

Meanwhile MakeMKV can rip them on basically any Windows/Linux/Mac system with a compatible BDXL drive.

For real, VLC is great, I've totally had issues playing some of them with it. If I recall there's supposed to be a way to let vlc use MakeMKV to break them for playback, but yeah, way more work than just ripping it.