Whenever I make a film or TV show recommendation, or even mention my own films, these days I’m met with a few variations of the same response – ‘What’s it on?’ ‘Where’d you see it?’ or ‘We can’t watch because we aren’t subscribed to that streaming service’. Added to this, I’m often asked why I keep my 500+ collection of DVDs, Boxsets and Blu-rays (it used to be double the size but I’m bad at two things – lending a film and forgetting to ask for it back and downsizing here and there each time I move home).
Well, the next time you search for your favourite film or show on streaming, it might not be there. Most of the time, they get rehomed – contracts run out, copyrights change and companies expand to new streaming platforms. It’s an entirely different story, however, when streaming services remove their own content, which might not end up somewhere else.
In the world of streaming, nothing is permanent. No matter how impactful a release might be, a company can remove it without warning just to save on residuals. Think of a huge film, a classic, that you would love to watch sometime soon and see if it’s available right now without paying outside of your current subscriptions to watch it again – a quick search revealed ‘The Godfather’ wasn’t on a subscription service (in the UK), ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’, ‘Aliens’, ‘Lord of the Rings’, ‘Shawshank Redemption’…all unavailable without additional purchase.
Sure, physical media is physical. It takes up space on your shelves. Some degrade over time (hi VHS) but nowadays physical media is more important than ever. It’s a small price to pay, to preserve your favourite pieces of media. Think about it – what would you do if your comfort show was taken off the internet today? If you bought the DVD version now, a one-time purchase, you own it forever. No monthly service fee needed. Consider how many times you’ve wanted to see a favourite film of yours that you don’t own but then have to pay on demand (again!) to see it – not a problem if you own your own copy.
The appeal of streaming platforms is to have hundreds of movies and TV shows at your fingertips at all times, but with recent removals and subscription increases, it’s difficult to justify trusting streamers to keep our favourite releases around. Added to this, how often do you find yourself endlessly scrolling the home screens and not finding anything to watch?
As a kid, I loved picking through the extensive VHS, DVD and CD collections of others. Our neighbour (who once let me borrow Jurassic Park for a year when I was eight, and I watched that film every week for that entire year!), my uncle (who I picked films at random from his collection and discovered ‘Boogie Nights’, ‘Almost Famous’, ‘Touch of Evil’ to name a few), parents of friends (how I came across arthouse films by Kieslowski and Kurosawa, not to mention the music of Tom Waits and Nick Cave), discovering things I’d never heard of before. Whenever I wanted, I could get my favourite film, stick it in the player and go to town – no Wi-Fi connection required – it doesn’t get more user-friendly than that. And I still can.
If you want to start expanding your physical media collection, whether it be through DVDs, CDs, records, books, games or anything else, there’s easy places to start. I get a lot of my DVDs (and especially books) second hand and they’re incredibly cheap. Also, by purchasing physical media, you can also support dozens of small businesses, rather than giving Bezos even more of your money maybe?
I can’t help but compare this time to an era over 100 years ago, when silent films were at their peak. Despite the thousands of films produced during this time, approximately 14% of silent films survive to this day which is beyond a tragedy. Some decomposed due to the unstable film they were produced on, while others were scrapped or repurposed by studios once talkies rolled around. We’re doomed to repeat this history if we don’t learn from it. No piece of media, however unprofitable, should be relegated to the trash pile of history.
Streaming services can be useful to find new and exciting releases without shelling out money for them upfront. If you like it, however, consider going out and buying the DVD to keep it around. Just because it’s gone from a streaming service, which is very likely, it shouldn’t mean it’s gone forever. You never know who might want to borrow it, or if it’ll change their life. It did for me.
