News Best Buy Quits Physical Media Business: No More Blu-rays at Best Buy

[Admin]

Starting from 2024, Best Buy will no longer sell movies on physical media.

Best Buy Quits Physical Media Business: No More Blu-rays at Best Buy : Read more

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

It's a move that may backfire. With the prices of streaming services increasing sometimes year after year people may start going back to buying their favored series on physical media again. It makes sense to pull them from retail shelves, but they should keep them online.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

One less reason to even think about darkening their door.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

More reason to never visit Best Buy.

 

[bit_user]

The last physical media I bought there was some blu-rays, probably about 10 years ago. Back in the 90's and 2000's, they had some of the better deals on CDs. Most physical media I've bought was online, however.

I'm a little surprised Best Buy wouldn't still stock physical copies of a handful of the latest games and UHD blu-rays. You'd think those would make good impulse buys, for people picking up a console with a UHD drive. Maybe last-minute gifts.

I guess we can't ignore the risk of theft, however. Perhaps that's what pushed them over the edge.

 

[bit_user]

More reason to never visit Best Buy.

Once, I was on a trip and had issues with my laptop's wi fi. I went to a Best Buy and bought an Ethernet cable. However, it was so insanely overpriced that I couldn't bring myself to open it and so I returned it and just made do without.

That was probably about 10 years ago, but it's basically my impression of Best Buy, these days. Unless I see something online that assures me I'm getting a good deal there, my default assumption is that I'm just going to be ripped off.

Back in the 2000's, you could sometimes find some decent deals on computer parts. I bought my ATI 9600 Pro there, on black friday, and probably a couple hard disks. That was probably about the first & last time I shopped black friday (early morning, at least). The checkout line wrapped more than half way around the inside of the store. At the front, they had a themepark-style switchback, and probably about a dozen registers open.

 

[Giroro]

Movies aren't any good right now. They aren't worth watching for free, so forget about buying them.

 

[bit_user]

Movies aren't any good right now. They aren't worth watching for free, so forget about buying them.

The last movie I bought on disc was probably Dune.

In my experience, a lot of movies from the 90's and before either didn't hold up very well or simply weren't as good as people remember them. Some might've won plaudits for breaking new ground, but now there have been movies which did the same things even better.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

The last physical media I bought there was some blu-rays, probably about 10 years ago.

I bought a Blu-Ray a few weeks ago.

 

[bit_user]

I bought a Blu-Ray a few weeks ago.

Retail? I was talking about movies I bought at a physical Best Buy store.

For a while, I bought lots of used blu-rays. There was a records & CD shop which had a good selection and I hadn't yet subscribed to a streaming service (plus, the quality wasn't comparable to blu-ray, back then). The prices were typically not much more than I remember paying to rent DVDs at Blockbuster, back in their latter days.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Retail? I was talking about movies I bought at a physical Best Buy store.

For a while, I bought lots of used blu-rays. There was a records & CD shop which had a good selection and I hadn't yet subscribed to a streaming service. The prices were typically not much more than I remember paying to rent DVDs at Blockbuster, back in their latter days.

From online

 

[bigdragon]

I have a lot of Blu-rays including the UHD kind. Most people don't have 4k projectors, good sound systems, and an overpriced UHD player though. I love the home theater experience and hate noticing the excessive compression that streaming services think is fine. Physical media is just better than streaming. I don't mind if Best Buy stops putting it in stores as long as I can still order discs online.

 

[bit_user]

I have a lot of Blu-rays including the UHD kind. Most people don't have 4k projectors, good sound systems, and an overpriced UHD player though.

It seems like you can hardly buy a TV that's not 4k, these days. PS5 and XBox (disc version) both have UHD blu-ray playback.

I happen to have an Oppo UHD player as my main disc playback engine. I wonder if they still provide firmware updates...

The only reason I ever found not to use an Oppo was to play a Sony disc that has xv.YCC color. Oppos don't support those, but my PS3 and TV did. Also, the Oppo has buggy down-conversion from UHD to FHD, FWIW.

I love the home theater experience and hate noticing the excessive compression that streaming services think is fine. Physical media is just better than streaming. I don't mind if Best Buy stops putting it in stores as long as I can still order discs online.

The two main reasons I still bought media were:

1. Pretty much the only way to watch 3D movies at home, though even 3D blu-rays are becoming scarce.
2. if I found a cheap used title I thought I might watch more than once or loan out.

I've bought a handful of UHD blu-rays, but largely moved away from physical media. I'm usually watching with noise cancelling bluetooth headphones, so the potential benefit of DTS-Master audio doesn't really apply.

To be honest, I haven't noticed much in the way of compression artifacts on streaming services, the past couple years. My internet speeds are pretty good, though. I never had my TV professionally calibrated, but it has a THX picture mode that I use for movie-watching. I think a lot of the time people are complaining about compression artifacts, they're using some il-conceived mode on their TV that's intended to make colors "pop" or make the image more contrasty. Also, I have noise-reduction disabled and the only processing I use is motion-smoothing.

 

[thestryker]

I can certainly understand removing sections from the stores, but it does seem odd they aren't keeping some UHD with home theater. Also very weird that they're not going to be selling them online though I suppose amazon/walmart probably ate their lunch here.

I have a lot of Blu-rays including the UHD kind. Most people don't have 4k projectors, good sound systems, and an overpriced UHD player though. I love the home theater experience and hate noticing the excessive compression that streaming services think is fine. Physical media is just better than streaming. I don't mind if Best Buy stops putting it in stores as long as I can still order discs online.

Streaming services also refuse to pay licensing fees so all audio is AC3. This means piracy actually provides a superior product than what you pay for.

If it's a movie/tv show I'm willing to pay for I definitely just buy UHD/BR. I'll rip it myself if I want a digital copy, and know some people who do lossless rips (I don't wanna even think about what that storage looks like).

 

[g-unit1111]

I remember I used to go to Best Buy like weekly for new releases. I don't think I've bought a new release since like 2019. I think the last one was either Avengers: Endgame or John Wick 3.

 

[derekullo]

I've never bought a music cd, dvd or blu-ray in my life. (I'm not counting blank discs!)
Grew up on napster, kazaa, direct connect and now bittorrent.
Bestbuy's selection was handy for finding new movies ... for later.

I remember my first 1 gigabyte flash drive (bought from bestbuy) imagining I'd never have to buy another dvd again for transferring or backing up files.
Technically that came true, but instead of flash drives I can use gigabit or 10 gigabit ethernet for the transferring and a dedicated NAS for backup!

 

[dmylrea]

Once, I was on a trip and had issues with my laptop's wi fi. I went to a Best Buy and bought an Ethernet cable. However, it was so insanely overpriced that I couldn't bring myself to open it and so I returned it and just made do without.

That was probably about 10 years ago, but it's basically my impression of Best Buy, these days. Unless I see something online that assures me I'm getting a good deal there, my default assumption is that I'm just going to be ripped off.

Back in the 2000's, you could sometimes find some decent deals on computer parts. I bought my ATI 9600 Pro there, on black friday, and probably a couple hard disks. That was probably about the first & last time I shopped black friday (early morning, at least). The checkout line wrapped more than half way around the inside of the store. At the front, they had a themepark-style switchback, and probably about a dozen registers open.

Apparently you've never run a business, especially one with a physical location and employees. It's not cheap.

Not to mention, there aren't many (or any) other places to stop and get an ethernet cable. You needed one, they had one, and you don't say how much it cost, but you compare to buying one from Amazon?

Ever go out and eat at a sit down restaurant and choose a bottle of wine? Do you compare the menu price to what your local grocery store charges? If you did, you'd never buy wine at a restaurant.

 

[vern72]

It looks like it's time to ditch my PS4 for a PS5: to get an UHD Blu-ray player before they stop selling those as well.

 

[randyh121]

Good riddance. Physical media needs to stop being sold.

 

[bit_user]

Apparently you've never run a business, especially one with a physical location and employees. It's not cheap.

I was comparing to what such a cable would cost me at a store like Microcenter or CompUSA. There was no justification for charging like $40 for a ~2 meter Cat 5e Ethernet cable. I forget if that was the exact amount, but roughly in that ballpark. It wasn't even a fancy brand, like Monster Cable - it was just the cheapest Ethernet cable they had.

Best Buy was clearly exploiting that market niche. They didn't need to apply such a markup to it, as they clearly didn't have such margins on all of their products. I walked in there expecting to pay extra, but not to get that badly ripped off.

 

[bit_user]

Good riddance. Physical media needs to stop being sold.

Yeah, who needs a historical reference?

Imagine if we had no film, vinyl records, tapes, or newsprint from the past 100 years. How would that change our understanding of those decades?

If some sort of civilization-ending cataclysm happens, as happened many times in the past, it won't take long for the bits to fade on all the SSDs, HDDs, and even tapes. Optical media currently has the best longevity. If those in the wake of such a disaster are unable to reconstruct the sequence of events leading up to it and understand the cultural context, what hope would they have not to repeat it?

 

[DSzymborski]

Yeah, who needs a historical reference?

Imagine if we had no film, vinyl records, tapes, or newsprint from the past 100 years. How would that change our understanding of those decades?

If some sort of civilization-ending cataclysm happens, as happened many times in the past, it won't take long for the bits to fade on all the SSDs, HDDs, and even tapes. Optical media currently has the best longevity. If those in the wake of such a disaster are unable to reconstruct the sequence of events leading up to it and understand the cultural context, what hope would they have not to repeat it?

While that's true, big box stores aren't really the ones suited to archiving these things. Like the CD business 15-20 years ago, Blu-Rays and DVDs have just become an awful use of space at places like Best Buy. I still buy CDs, though I simply rip them as FLACs for archival purposes on the file server, put the discs in storage, and make a 320K VBR MP3 for the music server (I've already measured through blind A/B testing that I can't tell the difference in fidelity past that quality and at 45, my hearing's only getting worse, not better).

 

[bit_user]

While that's true, big box stores aren't really the ones suited to archiving these things.

To be clear, I was replying specifically to the assertion that "physical media needs to stop being sold".

It's not a top concern, but I do have apprehensions about all the world's information being held in a cloud that's probably not nearly as robust as many seem to think it is.

I recently had the experience of looking for 15-year-old emails, on a hotmail account, only to find the contents were corrupted! They weren't important emails - and, upon reflection, I'm not terribly surprised they got trashed in one of probably several format/database migrations that must've happened since then, but it really was a pretty stark reminder.

 

[DSzymborski]

To be clear, I was replying specifically to the assertion that "physical media needs to stop being sold".

Yeah, that was probably too far, though it's definitely become a real niche product.

 

[Ogotai]

Good riddance. Physical media needs to stop being sold.

speak for your self,

i prefer to buy the physical media, the quality is much better then streaming, and if my net connection goes out, at least i can still watch movies till it comes back...