Watching the slow death of DVD

A little over 25 years after its introduction, the DVD is in its end-of-life-phase. The ease of on-demand video streaming has been pounding nails in DVD’s coffin for years. But the digital video disc and its high-definition successor, Blu-ray Disc, have been holding on.
However, the signs of its demise are easy to spot. From retailers shrinking shelf space for video discs to fewer movies being released on the physical format, you can almost see the obituary for the DVD being written.
Last year, revenue from physical video media fell 20% to $2.8 billion in the U.S. Meanwhile, revenue from digital video services rose 11% to $29.5 billion, according to the Motion Picture Association.
Physical sales have been on a slow, steady decline. In 2014, for instance, disc revenue totaled $10.3 billion in the U.S., the MPA said.
Netflix continues to run a DVD-by-mail service in the U.S., but it has been shrinking along with the overall physical media business.
In the first quarter, Netflix’s DVD revenue fell 20% year over year to $39.8 million.
While Netflix still has a better movie selection than any single subscription video-on-demand service, its catalog has been diminished as older films go out of print and new ones are never put on disc to begin with.
My Netflix DVD queue now has 47 discs in it. But my “saved” queue of movies not presently available on the service is up to 65 titles. Many of those may never be released or are permanently out of print.
My “saved” list would be even longer if I didn’t occasionally remove titles that got to see via HBO Max, Amazon Prime Video, and other services.
And my “saved” queue only includes movies that Netflix has indexed on its website. There are dozens more movies I’ve searched for on the service but just aren’t listed. I keep a list of those movies in my “want-to-see” movies list at tracking service Reelgood.
Elsewhere, Redbox, operator of DVD-rental kiosks, says its business has been hurt by fewer new movies being released on disc. It blamed the lingering Covid pandemic for a smaller number of theatrical releases.
Redbox said it released just 57 new DVD rental titles in 2021, compared with 68 in 2020 and 140 movies in 2019.
Are the bells tolling for DVDs?

Photos: Netflix DVDs (top) and Redbox kiosk.