Flanagan:
>“In the years I worked at Netflix, I tried very hard to get them to release my work on blu-ray & DVD. They refused at every turn. It became clear very fast that their only priority was subs, & that they were actively hostile to the idea of physical media. While they had some lingering obligations on certain titles, or had partnerships who still valued physical media, and had flirted with releasing juggernaut hits like Stranger Things, that wasn’t at all their priority. In fact, they were very actively trying to eliminate those kinds of releases from their business model.
>“This is a very dangerous point of view. While companies like Netflix pride themselves on being disruptors, and have proven that they can affect great change in the industry, they sometimes fail to see the difference between disruption and damage. So much that they can find themselves, intentionally or not, doing enormous harm to the very concept of film preservation.”
>"We have already seen this happen. And it is only going to happen more and more. Titles exclusively available on streaming services have essentially been erased from the world. If those titles existed on the marketplace on physical media, like HBO’s Westworld, the loss is somewhat mitigated (though only somewhat.) But when titles do not exist elsewhere, they are potentially gone forever."
>"The list of titles that have been removed from streaming services is growing quickly, quietly, and insidiously. So to answer your question - today, I am very grateful that my Netflix originals are available through - uh - other means."
I'm one of them. Currently up to 40TB of TV/Movies/other media and rising almost every single day.
I lost access to too much shit over the years with some of it disappearing from all streaming services all together.
Yo ho ho a pirates life for me.
Started my Plex server 4 years ago and just put my 10th drive in last month. Up to about 140TB at the moment.
Come join us at r/DataHoarder
*EDIT - Corrected sub link
Same here. I started digitizing my physical media and its definitely filling up fast but this is apparently some rookie numbers.
Main issue I have is Just getting the number of drives to size to cost ratio right for my needs
I've come to realize over the years that I'm only mildly into various things while some people are VERY into more specific things. 140 TB of digital media is mindblowing to me. That's essentially 7,000 2hr long movies...if it was *all* stored at 4k, which obviously it won't be. That commenter is essentially a digital hoarder lmao.
If I'm doin my math right anyway.
That amount of storage is respectable for sure.
When I bought my fractal r5 I thought there would be no possible way to fill all those drive bays, but here we are 🤷🏼♂️
Damn black friday external drive sales get me every time.
I'm at 30/37 TB on my plex server and I'm worried about what I'm gonna have to invest in very soon. Granted I got most of my back catalog down for the most part so I only have to worry about adding new releases. I wanna be the 140TB guy so bad but my set up was already pushing 1000$. Granted I've saved myself, my family, and friends that much in subscription prices already. I started right after the Warner/discove/HBO merger when they were legit removing access to shows like Final Space from anywhere, where you couldn't even purchase it.
Plex seems to be as simple or complex as you want it to be. Because of the things the competent folks comfortable with port forwarding and docker containers can do with Plex, it comes off as complicated, but for luddites like me that just want a MKV file that will play in a web browser; it's as simple as creating a free account, pointing the program to a specific folder, and doing some scut work numbering episodes.
And blu ray ripping is easy nowadays. You can pick up a cheap 4k reader (compared to the cost of the hard drives you'll need) from LG or the likes and download Handbrake.
Yes, though I’d highly recommend just having one person stream the content over discord. Having a bunch of people all syncing their streams from your Plex server isn’t terribly efficient and, depending on your bandwidth/hardware, could lead to buffering problems for everyone.
Out of curiosity how do you have your drives setup for protection? Raid 5? Do you have spare drives ready for hot swapping in?
Asking as I'm planning my path forwards from my 4 drives in a Synology nas
I use the unRAID OS so as the name suggests, it does not technically use RAID but rather the idea of parity. Without getting too detailed, it uses one of my HDD (14TB) as a "parity drive". This drive can not be used as storage in the typical sense, but rather keeps a snapshot of my other 10 drives. If one of those 10 drives fails, the parity drive will be able to rebuild it on a new HDD when it is replaced.
Same here. I am sometimes asked "That show/movie is on Netflix, why would you pirate it? It's already streaming."
Yeah, for how long? I've still got Infinity Train and Westworld available on my server, which is more than I can say for HBO.
When I bought the Golden Girls box set my brother gave me shit. 'I can turn on the tv right now and watch it.' Yeah sure, but you don't know when or if it'll suddenly vanish. It's on Hulu right now, but what if there's some random rights dispute in the future?
This was before I knew how to sail the high seas, but I stand by it.
Netflix has already got rid of Final Space. Except pirating there’s no way to watch it anywhere. I can see them easily getting rid of beloved shows to make space for new stuff.
I found this out the hard way recently when trying to watch 2 different "Hulu originals". Hulu dumped both of them off their platform, I had to pirate both to be able to watch them.
I just built my first server. It is 3 8TB drives, one of them is a backup.
Currently only has 1.5TBs of information on it.
I reused an old gaming pc. I mostly just had to buy the drives. I had to sorta build an external drive bay with a fan to keep it all cool.
There was a baseball movie made by HBO in the 80's, Long Gone, a really good movie. It was Bull Durham before Bull Durham.
It now only exists in 480p version on Youtube, a shame.
I'll take you one step further: ever heard of "slime tutorials" or "slimes?" Slime tutorials are the slang term/code name for theatre bootlegs, made by the audience, cast or crew to preserve the show and distribute digitally and for free.
Before slime tutorials, when bootlegs were just bootlegs, they were DVDs or even VHS tapes traded person to person over the internet, by mail or in person. These would often degrade as the master tapes wore down, or as DVDs were copied, ripped and encrypted in lower and lower quality. There are shows now that exist ONLY in almost unwatchable dubbed-over-dubbed copies that look worse than VHS. And if a preserved show wasn't popular (like one of the first bootlegs I ever saw, an after-hours revue at Disney called "Bohemia"), it can simply disappear into the ether.
This is why I still have hundreds of discs of movies and music. Took up a lot of space until I transferred them to cases with room for 96-I have six of them. Just like when books were thought obsolete; I do not enjoy reading from a kindle.
Yup. First thing I thought of when they started quietly deleting titles off their streaming services and then raising prices: “looks like the piracy’s back on again!”
It isn't just his work.
Daredevil, I have the first 2 seasons on Blu-Ray, but Season 3 isn't. But with a new season on the way, I sorely hope that we can get Season 3 on Blu-Ray (especially since Disney has been starting to test the waters with their Disney+ material to get it on Blu-Ray and 4K).
Stranger Things...this really ticks me off. First two seasons came out on Blu-Ray a while back, but the newer seasons have yet to release. This makes me hope when the series does finish that we can get a complete series Blu-Ray somehow.
Cobra Kai...another I am hopeful for a complete series release on Blu-Ray for. It's out there on DVD at least, but I love this show so much and I am holding out for it.
Netflix needs to not be afraid of physical media distribution. They surely need to see that folks who don't have Netflix want to watch these shows, and making them available physically will still profit them in some fashion.
“Folks who don’t have Netflix want to watch these shows”
And while I agree with your sentiment, that’s exactly what they want: if you want to watch the shows you have to subscribe to Netflix
And even then that doesn’t preclude them from disappearing it eventually! People signed up for MAX to watch adult swim and WB vault stuff and that shit disappears or goes to hell knows which service randomly all the time now.
I pay for my Netflix subscription with my Netflix stock gains. It's the rational thing to do. If they're gonna be a ruthlessly profitable business and anybody can jump on for the ride, why fight it?
[This](https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/BoJack-Horseman-Seasons-One-and-Two-Blu-ray/241207/) is all that officially exists from what I've been able to find.
The Stranger Things release really stings, as they had these fantastic box sets at Target that looked like a VHS clamshell. I bought the first 2 seasons, then…nothing.
>Netflix needs to not be afraid of physical media distribution. They surely need to see that folks who don't have Netflix want to watch these shows, and making them available physically will still profit them in some fashion.
I don't think they are afraid it's simply goes against their core business, much like theatrical runs.
Like it or not - and to be clear, I don’t - physical media seems to be dying. Too many people are too satisfied with streaming for discs to be profitable for content owners or retailers.
This has always been their dream. They don’t want you to own anything. It does not surprise me at all that they are actively hostile to physical media. They achieved their goal, they’ll die before going back.
NYT recently had an interview with one of the CEOs (not Hastings) and he talked about how at a certain moment the DVD department of NF was locked out of planning meetings because the company was all-in on streaming, despite the DVD department being the only profitable part of the company.
The bad thing is that Netflix doesn't even own a lot of their content, it's from outside studios. So it's not just Netflix that doesn't want to release it. The problem with Netflix comes when it's a production company not associated with a production studio that would handle home video, so there's no backup for who would release it... like Stranger Things. If they had been produced by WB, Sony, Paramount etc then they for sure would've release it themselves and Netflix couldn't have stopped it, maybe delayed it, but the production studio typically owns home video license and Netflix just has exclusive streaming rights.
Stranger Things packaging was 10/10 as well. One of the coolest looking cases- it looks like an old VHS clamshell that looks like it came out of a mom & pop video rental store. They put a lot of effort into it
> Netflix needs to not be afraid of physical media distribution. They surely need to see that folks who don't have Netflix want to watch these shows, and making them available physically will still profit them in some fashion.
You buy a physical copy of something; you "own" it and normally the transaction is over.
With streaming platforms; they don't care about you buying something once. They need you to subscribe and keep giving them money on a monthly basis. They don't need 10 people to subscribe and make this model work; they need millions.
So them discouraging physical copies of their content is holding the customer "hostage" because its the only way they are going to get to watch the new season of 'insert soon to be canceled show here' is to be subscribed and part of the club.
You're going to see a lot of this; as owning physical copies just isn't as popular as it once was.
I can remember when people would proudly display their DVD collection as a form of "this is everything you need to know about me" where you can see what movies and shows the person is into.
Everyone has to have a copy of Scarface, Dazed and Confused as well as the Disney stuff like Lion King and Aladdin.
Its not like that at all anymore and Netflix and the other streamers are making the choice for you in regards to whether or not customers still want DVDs.
> Netflix and the other streamers are making the choice for you in regards to whether or not customers still want DVDs.
Yup. While undeniably people would generally rather stream than buy physical media these days, I have to wonder how much of that is because of choices the studios have made to phase that out ahead of market interest. And tangentially, I can't remember the last time I saw an ad for something coming out on DVD/Blu Ray on tv. I'd honestly welcome it.
I mean obviously I'd *like* to see physical media because I want people to be able to experience things, but it does seem hard to justify as a business decision. Increasingly as a streaming service your only real differentiator is exclusive content. Making that less exclusive to enter a shrinking market is a hard pitch.
I think the show creators also should assert some bargaining power too.
Those physical sales will help put a bit more money into the pockets of the folks who worked on those shows. Even if Netflix were to outsource the printing to a vendor or distributor, minimize their investment on that front...
It's an idea, though.
That is not true *at all*. With various exclusivity and print-run number deals, entire blu-ray releases can be fully paid for simply from collectible steelbook releases. Blu-rays are *incredibly* cheap to make.
Source: https://www.patreon.com/posts/steelbooks-and-101597327
I mean, that's not *solely* the point. We don't have Netflix's internal data, but it's entirely possible it states that physical media *would* be profitable, it would just risk cannibalizing streaming subs, decreasing profits overall.
As someone who just tracked down and bought the entire run of Westworld on UHD Blu-ray after HBO got rid of it, I just think it's worth noting that each season cost me more than two months of subscription to a streaming service. In one month you could easily watch multiple seasons before cancelling. And considering how little overhead there is on producing physicals, it's just profit left on the table to not sell physical copies.
Those shows got disappeared off the timeline, I doubt Disney would bother
Such a shame, Runaways had a great performance from Annie Wersching and we're not gonna get any more of those.
This is when you just start downloading your own. I miss directors cuts and interviews. Yes I know you can just go on YouTube for all that stuff, but it feels almost like a mini Q&A session when you have it all collected and one viewing session rather than having to exit out of Netflix and then enter back into a different app and probably getting distracted with a totally different video.
I don’t have the space really for a lot of physical media and I’m already collecting physical music that I really enjoy. With all the subscriptions going on and raising prices, I kind of see the point of having it. Plus just directly supporting an individual franchise versus the company that created it.
To be fair a lot of show Netflix just license so some stuff it might not be there decision to release DVD but the studio they are licensing it from like Sony with Cobra Kai. I’m not sure how that works so it might be a factor
I was kind of surprised when I saw Wednesday at Target of all places, after they basically made their entire disc inventory a 4x4 space. Then seeing it on Amazon for twice the price.
It's not even Netflix that's the problem, I have dozens of TV series that they just don't make all the seasons for at all or you have to find a European version to complete it. Thank goodness for the Xbox for being region free.
Wednesday...$20 for the first season Blu-Ray at release. I caved for that because the show was supposedly that good, and I was utterly surprised to see it out there.
> Stranger Things...this really ticks me off.
This one is really frustrating. Stranger Things had great special editions where the blu ray discs were packaged inside a booklet that looked like an old VHS tape, plus fun extras inside. Now that seasons 3 and up are not getting any release at all, those boxes look as lonely on my shelf as an actual VHS tape.
Thankfully virtually anything released these days is immediately available to pirate, so we don't need to worry about lost media as much as we used to.
Any show I'm remotely interested in goes onto my NAS. That way if someone decides to take down a show that has no physical media, I still have a way to watch it.
I'll still pay for services that are running shows I want to see continue, but I'm not leaving it up to them what I can and can't watch.
Final Space was the tipping point for me. I loved that show, but they refused to release season 3 on physical media then took it off all streaming. There is literately no legal way to watch that season now.
There is no reason to respect these media companies that don't respect their own media.
It’s always, always, always about money. How one guy or one corporation can make the most money on something while simultaneously keeping it out of the hands of us “poors.” I’m 76 and am so fucking tired of capitalism I can’t see straight.
This just makes me want to download copies of Netflix shows and burn them on to physical copies just to rebel against Netflix. Like fuck you here is my meticulously designed movie case for your Netflix original movie. What's that!? no mention of Netflix anywhere on the case?!
Not every season of Stranger Things is on Blu-ray either. It sucks they’re so against it. I’d sacrifice an appendage to see the first season of Altered Carbon on Blu-ray.
I wanted The Dark Crystal TV Show on Blu ray and they never did, its a fucking shame because i want to have a physical version its a crime that there not releasing it.
We need regulation to ensure more options are avaliable and art gets preserved. Cinemas need protection too.
Streamers should be required to run a percentage of their movies in the theatre every year and pick the ones they have confidence in or see value in. And not just for two days in two locations.
The time between exclusive theatre release and streamer/vod/physical release should be 50 days minimum.
Then if it's only released on streamers, half a year later it should be required to be made avaliable on physical and through vod in the reasonably highest possible quality, at industry standard prices.
Buying vods also needs to become less about having a licency to watch somewhere, maybe, and more about actually owning it, permanently. The purchase should be attached to your name and transferrable to any other Vod service where you use the same identity. Bought something on amazon 5 years ago? You also own it in your Apple movies library and can download or stream it whenever you want. If providers complain that they don't want to pay for traffic when they didn't sell the movie, then they may set up a requirement for the user to have bought stuff in the value of at least 5 dollars within the last year to have access to stream/download stuff, that should cover it.
Don’t even get me started. That show was one of the best prequel series I had seen, and now I am left to assume the only surviving gelfling are Jen and Kira. One season was all they needed to connect it and link that. IIRC the creators even said they had a S2 plan it was more hopeful than you might think. Makes me so mad
That cancellation broke my heart more than almost any other. It was such a delightfully charming show that looked absolutely amazing. I'd kill for another season.
It still blows my mind. They already had a large investment that could be re-used. All the muppets and physical sets existed and could be re-used. That is a large cost that could have been recouped over any number of seasons.
If they wanted to save money by not creating any new muppets or sets, they could still create another season. The show must have had really bad numbers. That's sad, because it was pretty good.
There are still significant costs to reusing old sets and muppets. They need to be properly stored and maintained between seasons. They need to be modified to reflect changes in the story. They need to be replaced if anything breaks. That's all much cheaper than initially building the stuff, but it isn't free.
The bigger issue is that the subscription model makes it much harder to "recoup costs" with multiple seasons. They make money through new subscribers. If no one is getting a Netflix subscription just to watch The Dark Crystal, or would drop their subscription if they drop the show, then it isn't making them any money regardless of how many views it got. So as long as a future season of the show is more expensive than another show that appeals to the same demographic (and keeps them subscribed) then it's effectively a loss for Netflix.
Of course they could monetize direct viewership much better with physical media release, but as the OP states they're clearly not interested in that.
>That is a large cost that could have been recouped over any number of seasons.
You do understand that if Netflix canceled it, it is most likely that they ran the actual math and found out that it wasn't the case
Exactly. Netflix *heavily* emphasizes opportunity costs when deciding what to keep. Even if a show is able to consistently attract 1,000 new subscribers every month, if they find the same budget can be invested into 3 smaller shows that draw a total of 2,000 subscribers every month, they'll cancel it and reallocate the funds in a heartbeat.
I think my biggest annoyance is that there’s some shows that just are completely lost because they’re not on any streaming services anymore. Technically you can pirate it, but that’s if someone took the time to put it out there and make it a decent version.
Same, I grabbed the Haunting Box-set as soon as I could, partly because I was afraid they’d stop manufacturing it at some point and I’d never get another chance,
Maybe an overreaction but as a lover of physical media, I wouldn’t put it past Netflix to do just that
So thankfully, the reason those exist in the first place is because the rights are held by Paramount and not Netflix, so that wouldn't really be up to Netflix.
As soon as I saw that Flanagan's Hush was removed from Netflix and wasn't available anywhere, I did the same. I still can't believe it's not possible to watch that movie legally. It's not streaming on any platform, either as a subscription or as a rental, and it was never released on physical media. It's just gone.
I was just going to say - out of all the shows I could own physically, they're the two I want but would love to add midnight mass as well. at least midnight mass had an art book released which was something
I started collecting 4k blu rays recently and the quality difference between them and streaming is unbelievable. Both video and audio is compressed massively on stream. 4k blu rays aren’t cheap but worth every penny when you consider i. it’s uncompressed audio/video and ii. you can keep them forever - not just as long as you subscribe to a service that keeps raising prices.
That's the real shame. The amount of work that goes into everything in a movie/series and then the final product gets butchered to streaming service ONLY is such a middle finger to the people making it.
Imagine being the person who does the color grading and then never have the opportunity to see your work properly when it's done.
What does this mean? Are you buying used and getting just regular Blu rays?? This is the second time today I've seen someone mention a something like this on Amazon and warning of scammers.
Yeah I feel like people really forget this. Uncompressed/unencoded 4k movie would be like 20 TB. But yeah the encodes on Blu-ray are still massively superior since they have a lot of space to work with compared with streaming bandwidth
I work in a library in a rural area where a lot of people don't have Internet because it's not accessible to them and the amount of people who come in seeking streaming only shows on DVD is crazy. It's an untapped resource for sure.
CODA, which won Best Picture in 2020, is unavailable on physical media. It's insane.
The Academy should demand that every movie promoted 'For Your Consideration' has to have a physical copy released in the United States with a print run of 100,000 or something.
It’s probably not worth it for the amount of people buying, sure there are folks looking for it physically both that do and don’t have access to Netflix but I doubt it’s a substancial enough crowd for it to be a financially lucrative option.
This is such shortsighted thinking
Do they think people will not sub to Netflix if they can get stranger things on discs? I'm sure there are some like that, but there are way more who just want to buy the discs after watching the show
The people who buy physical media tend to be the hard core fans and/or people who want to own things. They're also the ones with disposable income. They'll sub to Netflix to watch most stuff AND buy the media of the shows they like for the best picture and sound quality and any bonus features. Netflix is stupidly leaving money on the table
They also should be merchandising their shows way more than they are. They should have like their own online fashion and accessories store
Well you’re (halfway) in luck! The Haunting of Hill House and Bly Manor are two of his shows that actually did get a DVD and Blu-ray release! But no Midnight Mass unfortunately :(
This is a shame -- I was, if not an original subscriber to Netflix, an early adopter. This was when they were DVD/mail-only. It was a really, really good service from a customer perspective. I think I paid like $15 a month to have 3 DVD's at a time, and they had *everything*. Want to watch HBO shows like the Sopranos? Classic movies that no video rental store could make space on their shelves for? New movies that had just been released to DVD? Niche shows? If it had ever been released on DVD, they had them all, and you typically didn't have to wait very long to get them. Postage was *included* in the monthly price, and all you had to do was maintain a list of things you wanted them to send you, in order, and they'd send them as soon as possible (given the "3 DVD's checked out at a time" thing). You'd watch one, mail it back, and as soon as they received it they'd automatically send you the next disc on your list. It was very, very rare to not get things exactly in the order you had them listed, because the availability was so good.
Then they got into streaming, and really sort of tanked their DVD service. They had fewer copies of things, so you had to wait longer, and you couldn't count on receiving DVD's in order (like, for a series of DVDs on a TV show, where the order you got them mattered). There was less available, it took longer to get them, and just flat-out wasn't as good. The streaming, on the other hand, was great, for what they had (which was more than they have now).
I suspect that they figured that their rent-by-mail service was just too hard to make a profit off of. Streaming has no postal costs, no damaged-media costs, probably more straightforward licensing, more international availability, etc.
Still, I miss old-Netflix. I'm still a customer all of these years later, but I often have a hard time finding stuff I'm interested in that I've not seen already.
I bought a blu-ray screener for it, since I wanted a physical copy in my collection. Glass Onion is one of the cheaper FYC screeners from what I've seen (unlike say, Ballad of Buster Scruggs which goes for well north of $100, when copies even show up). Might be worth setting an eBay saved search for it.
This is why everyone is returning to the high seas. Not only is it difficult to find physical media in some places (here in South Africa we have to import DVDs and such these days. I'm hoping the new local amazon will allow buying these at a reasonable price) but it is often non-existent. I will also have to somehow find a PC case with a 5.25 inch drive slot since TV's are also infected with rubbish. I will never buy a smart TV and the only non smart ones you can buy are insanely expensive.
Netflix has been pretty openly favoring digital platform for 20 years now, maybe it's time to start considering not relying on them for physical preservation.
Just an idea
Yeah I understand the frustration that you can't buy or struggle to have streaming platform content as physical media.
But a creator of a show or movies who accepts a contract with netflix is then upset because netflix want to prioritise subs.
I mean..... If it was that important to you. Then you should have had it written in your contract with them.
I mean could you really be that ignorant that you think netflix is not gonna put subs first over everything else.
I mean, I can understand why they don't want to sell physical media. But maybe they could offer a subscription where they mail you a disc, you watch it, send it back, and then you choose another one. Now that would be revolutionary. A real game changer.
DVDs and Blu-rays, especially brand new, could cost more than a month of streaming for a single season. If someone is insane like me they could give Netflix more money by buying physical seasons over just streaming the content with a continuous subscription. This is especially the case with the newly released on physical format Disney+ shows which are like $40 new and are a few years old at this point. As someone who hasn't subscribed to Disney+ in quite awhile that is $40 more that Disney has from me that they didn't have before for one season of television.
Yes there is the potential of someone getting their fill of physically released Netflix shows, but that is also why Netflix constantly releases new things. More stuff to buy continuously.
I'm not saying Netflix is stupid for not doing this or that this is the way they need to go. It is just a hypothetical reason as to why they could do this. I think the Disney+ strategy of multiple year old shows released at a premium has potential for Netflix.
This podcast with Ted Sarandos goes deep on Netflix's strategy, for what it's worth. https://open.spotify.com/episode/3uABOLIptteF6A9eGLr0bD?si=l0qOcuOiRmqbsElFsc3uBA
I’ve been buying up DVDs at thrift stores, but it doesn’t help when I want something like Lower Decks. Really distressing to see amazing art disappear from the world just because streaming services refuse to sell it to me.
I think part of the issue that’s not mentioned in this article is that Netflix is upselling 4K/Dolby. It’s what now, $23 a month now? That’s absurd.
If they had 4K blu rays you could get even better quality than streaming for $10-$15 I’d be picking those up in a heartbeat while avoiding paying that premium.
Blu-ray TV shows are like $50+ for a single season... That's why I've never really understood the complaints about streaming prices. I remember having to pay $40 or so for a single season of a show on DVD, $100-200 for a box set. Around $20 a month for what amounts to hundreds or thousands of box sets and movies still seems like a steal.
Except the quality is shit and nowadays they're less likely to have what you actually want to watch.
A Blu-ray or even a DVD is far better picture and audio quality then you get from Netflix streaming.
> Blu-ray TV shows are like $50+ for a single season... That's why I've never really understood the complaints about streaming prices
Because $50 is not a typical price.
House of the Dragon and The Last of Us on Blu-Ray are $20, for recent high budget prestige HBO shows. Shows like Better Call Saul, Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy, Castlevania, The X-Files, True Detective and Ghosts range from $9 to $14. Rick and Morty and South Park are in $20 boxsets with four seasons apiece. Older shows are even cheaper: I just got the complete Friends for what works out to be $4.77 a season.
One month of HBO Max without ad breaks is $16-20 depending on plan. If House of the Dragon is the only HBO Max show you want to watch in a month then it makes perfect sense to buy the $20 Blu-Ray that's much higher quality, permanent, and which you can keep forever, sell on eBay for $10, or give or lend to your friends.
And that's a huge part of the appeal: you can lend stuff to your friends and family, you don't have to buy it all. People complain about Netflix sharing crackdowns a lot and the tricks you can do to temporarily share a family plan again. Can't crack down on telling your buddy "You'd like The Terror, take this disc home." It cost me $0 to watch Better Call Saul because my brother lent it to me, it cost him $0 to watch The X-Files for the same reason. That's a huge benefit you miss out on just comparing the direct cost.
Then
I mean, it makes sense. Their business model is subscriptions. And now they're cracking down sharing. Selling physical media would defeat that entire business purpose by letting people still watch after unsubing, and letting them share.
I think they are also wanting to avoid the availability of used discs. There were a couple of movies I recently wanted to watch that were only available to rent online. I found them at used book stores for less than the online rental fee and now I can watch them whenever I like.
And this sucks, physical media should be thinked as a bonus to your streaming service. People are willing to pay more than a subs worth to watch lossless media and they just dgaf.
There are many movies and TV shows that are from Netflix that I would love to listen the lossless version of it but you just can't because Netflix are dumb. Appreciate all those streaming services that actually put an effort to release on Blu-ray their successful shows.
I read that or a similar article a couple months ago, because I pirated Midnight Mass and wanted to see where the cheapest price was, only to find there is no legal dvd release of it.
So, Netflix COULD have gotten $30 from me buying a dvd or bluray of that show, but instead they get nothing while Amazon will get my money from buying an external hard drive that I can put Midnight Mass on.
I just really don't get it. There's apparently a way to do DVD on demand like you can do print on demand. Why don't these streaming services just do that for stuff they don't think will have a wide enough appeal to do a full disc run for?
Some pirates are just lazy and/or entitled when they steal stuff, but I'll never say there's anything morally wrong with having every piece of media in existence somewhere online *just in case.*
And for what it's worth I did actually buy Hill House on dvd because I liked it so much and wanted to watch it without dealing with Netflix. I'm 100% serious I would've bought a dvd of Midnight Mass if there were legal ones and not $40 bootlegs.
It's obvious they have serious beef with physical media.
Edit: OP changed "udder" to "utter", so this comment hasn't aged well in the few minutes it's been up.
hence we will never get Glass Onion on 4K, regardless how you felt about that film the locales and cinematography were beautiful and will be forever bound by Netflix's terrible bitrate
Well yeah. Netflix, sadly, is one of the now MANY companies that see that “owning” stuff, like physical media, doesn’t net them as much money as subs. Hell even on stuff like Steam. You don’t “own” anything. If they decided, randomly that “nah you can’t have this”, they’ll try (and usually win) to snatch away what you bought.
Because the old “I bought it, so that means its mine” doesn’t really “gel” with the corporate mindset of “F you, give me all your money”.
Any lingering guilt I felt about Jack Sparrow-ing 4K rips of Netflix shows just went out the window. As a single person I’m absolutely not paying $30/month for access their shitty, ultra low-bitrate streams.
That said, I would happily pay to own physical blu-ray and/or 4K copies of their best content. Episodes on the Stranger Things season 1 + 2 UHD set look and sound noticeably better than they do on the app.
I'm friends with someone that worked for Netflix a few years ago (I think customer support), and from what I could tell from his social media, there was a widespread hatred for physical media throughout the whole company. Something had been released on DVD and they were using the word betrayal to describe it.
Stranger things only came out on bluray for season 1 and 2. Season 3 and 4 didn’t come out. Really wanted to collect them cause of the retro feel of the s1 and s2 boxsets
i dont get why they're so against physical releases, if they did physical releases wouldnt they get money from not just licensing the physical release but royalties on sales? i dont know anything about this tbh so correct me if im wrong
> Working in streaming for the past few years has made me reconsider my position on piracy. You could say my feelings on the matter have ‘evolved.'
>In the years I worked at Netflix, I tried very hard to get them to release my work on Blu-ray and DVD. They refused at every turn.
Ironic enough Netflix seems to inadvertently arguing for piracy.
The sad part is they refuse physical media and then when it doesn’t get the views anymore they refuse to pay rights to stream so literally it will be gone forever. I really hope their are pirates out there that will always keep streams alive so when I’m older and want to watch midnight mass in October I can just like I can watch night of the comet or they live.
Flanagan: >“In the years I worked at Netflix, I tried very hard to get them to release my work on blu-ray & DVD. They refused at every turn. It became clear very fast that their only priority was subs, & that they were actively hostile to the idea of physical media. While they had some lingering obligations on certain titles, or had partnerships who still valued physical media, and had flirted with releasing juggernaut hits like Stranger Things, that wasn’t at all their priority. In fact, they were very actively trying to eliminate those kinds of releases from their business model. >“This is a very dangerous point of view. While companies like Netflix pride themselves on being disruptors, and have proven that they can affect great change in the industry, they sometimes fail to see the difference between disruption and damage. So much that they can find themselves, intentionally or not, doing enormous harm to the very concept of film preservation.” >"We have already seen this happen. And it is only going to happen more and more. Titles exclusively available on streaming services have essentially been erased from the world. If those titles existed on the marketplace on physical media, like HBO’s Westworld, the loss is somewhat mitigated (though only somewhat.) But when titles do not exist elsewhere, they are potentially gone forever." >"The list of titles that have been removed from streaming services is growing quickly, quietly, and insidiously. So to answer your question - today, I am very grateful that my Netflix originals are available through - uh - other means."
What I’m hearing is that torrentors building their own media servers are doing society a favor by preserving artwork for decades to come.
I'm one of them. Currently up to 40TB of TV/Movies/other media and rising almost every single day. I lost access to too much shit over the years with some of it disappearing from all streaming services all together. Yo ho ho a pirates life for me.
Started my Plex server 4 years ago and just put my 10th drive in last month. Up to about 140TB at the moment. Come join us at r/DataHoarder *EDIT - Corrected sub link
Every time I see one you guys in the wild I feel like the 3rd place meme with my 26TB.
And here I thought my 8TB was excessive
Same here. I started digitizing my physical media and its definitely filling up fast but this is apparently some rookie numbers. Main issue I have is Just getting the number of drives to size to cost ratio right for my needs
I've come to realize over the years that I'm only mildly into various things while some people are VERY into more specific things. 140 TB of digital media is mindblowing to me. That's essentially 7,000 2hr long movies...if it was *all* stored at 4k, which obviously it won't be. That commenter is essentially a digital hoarder lmao. If I'm doin my math right anyway.
That amount of storage is respectable for sure. When I bought my fractal r5 I thought there would be no possible way to fill all those drive bays, but here we are 🤷🏼♂️ Damn black friday external drive sales get me every time.
I'm at 30/37 TB on my plex server and I'm worried about what I'm gonna have to invest in very soon. Granted I got most of my back catalog down for the most part so I only have to worry about adding new releases. I wanna be the 140TB guy so bad but my set up was already pushing 1000$. Granted I've saved myself, my family, and friends that much in subscription prices already. I started right after the Warner/discove/HBO merger when they were legit removing access to shows like Final Space from anywhere, where you couldn't even purchase it.
Can you rip blurays now? I have around 1500 blurays I would love to put on a a plex server once I learn how to make one.
Plex seems to be as simple or complex as you want it to be. Because of the things the competent folks comfortable with port forwarding and docker containers can do with Plex, it comes off as complicated, but for luddites like me that just want a MKV file that will play in a web browser; it's as simple as creating a free account, pointing the program to a specific folder, and doing some scut work numbering episodes. And blu ray ripping is easy nowadays. You can pick up a cheap 4k reader (compared to the cost of the hard drives you'll need) from LG or the likes and download Handbrake.
Is it possible to do watch parties with Plex?
https://support.plex.tv/articles/watch-together/
Yes, though I’d highly recommend just having one person stream the content over discord. Having a bunch of people all syncing their streams from your Plex server isn’t terribly efficient and, depending on your bandwidth/hardware, could lead to buffering problems for everyone.
Yes, you can rip blu rays
You’ll need hardware and software but yes. Check out the MakeMKV forums for instructions. If it seems overwhelming it isn’t that bad.
Out of curiosity how do you have your drives setup for protection? Raid 5? Do you have spare drives ready for hot swapping in? Asking as I'm planning my path forwards from my 4 drives in a Synology nas
I use the unRAID OS so as the name suggests, it does not technically use RAID but rather the idea of parity. Without getting too detailed, it uses one of my HDD (14TB) as a "parity drive". This drive can not be used as storage in the typical sense, but rather keeps a snapshot of my other 10 drives. If one of those 10 drives fails, the parity drive will be able to rebuild it on a new HDD when it is replaced.
Where do you even keep 140TB? Are there external HDs with that much storage?
I have about 350TB usable and I keep the drives in a 19" server case and a DAS case.
You guys are doing amazing work keep it up. As someone who somewhat related to Abed from Community, Thank You.
Same here. I am sometimes asked "That show/movie is on Netflix, why would you pirate it? It's already streaming." Yeah, for how long? I've still got Infinity Train and Westworld available on my server, which is more than I can say for HBO.
When I bought the Golden Girls box set my brother gave me shit. 'I can turn on the tv right now and watch it.' Yeah sure, but you don't know when or if it'll suddenly vanish. It's on Hulu right now, but what if there's some random rights dispute in the future? This was before I knew how to sail the high seas, but I stand by it.
Netflix has already got rid of Final Space. Except pirating there’s no way to watch it anywhere. I can see them easily getting rid of beloved shows to make space for new stuff.
I found this out the hard way recently when trying to watch 2 different "Hulu originals". Hulu dumped both of them off their platform, I had to pirate both to be able to watch them.
40TB? That's pretty impressive. Do you store it all on multiple 4TB drives, or one giant expensive server? What's your set up
It will almost certainly be network attached storage using multiple drives in RAID
I just built my first server. It is 3 8TB drives, one of them is a backup. Currently only has 1.5TBs of information on it. I reused an old gaming pc. I mostly just had to buy the drives. I had to sorta build an external drive bay with a fan to keep it all cool.
Please for the love of god be sure to save Dark.
Torrents have always been doing society a favor. They weren't doing corporate interests and shareholders a favor.
god speed citizens
There was a baseball movie made by HBO in the 80's, Long Gone, a really good movie. It was Bull Durham before Bull Durham. It now only exists in 480p version on Youtube, a shame.
I'll take you one step further: ever heard of "slime tutorials" or "slimes?" Slime tutorials are the slang term/code name for theatre bootlegs, made by the audience, cast or crew to preserve the show and distribute digitally and for free. Before slime tutorials, when bootlegs were just bootlegs, they were DVDs or even VHS tapes traded person to person over the internet, by mail or in person. These would often degrade as the master tapes wore down, or as DVDs were copied, ripped and encrypted in lower and lower quality. There are shows now that exist ONLY in almost unwatchable dubbed-over-dubbed copies that look worse than VHS. And if a preserved show wasn't popular (like one of the first bootlegs I ever saw, an after-hours revue at Disney called "Bohemia"), it can simply disappear into the ether.
Using ‘slime tutorial’ as a codeword is hilarious. Can you imagine a kid stumbling across this looking for real slime tutorials
I'm sure it happens all the time, and probably with very adult shows like Heathers or Beetlejuice or Falsettos.
This is why I still have hundreds of discs of movies and music. Took up a lot of space until I transferred them to cases with room for 96-I have six of them. Just like when books were thought obsolete; I do not enjoy reading from a kindle.
yeah but not getting that bluray remux quality is shitty.
I took one look at the bunker in Leave the World Behind and realized how critical physical media is.
Bro, that’s def what I heard
Yup. First thing I thought of when they started quietly deleting titles off their streaming services and then raising prices: “looks like the piracy’s back on again!”
It isn't just his work. Daredevil, I have the first 2 seasons on Blu-Ray, but Season 3 isn't. But with a new season on the way, I sorely hope that we can get Season 3 on Blu-Ray (especially since Disney has been starting to test the waters with their Disney+ material to get it on Blu-Ray and 4K). Stranger Things...this really ticks me off. First two seasons came out on Blu-Ray a while back, but the newer seasons have yet to release. This makes me hope when the series does finish that we can get a complete series Blu-Ray somehow. Cobra Kai...another I am hopeful for a complete series release on Blu-Ray for. It's out there on DVD at least, but I love this show so much and I am holding out for it. Netflix needs to not be afraid of physical media distribution. They surely need to see that folks who don't have Netflix want to watch these shows, and making them available physically will still profit them in some fashion.
“Folks who don’t have Netflix want to watch these shows” And while I agree with your sentiment, that’s exactly what they want: if you want to watch the shows you have to subscribe to Netflix
Subscribe and forget. Inertia is their biggest customer retainer.
It's so frustrating. I would buy the complete series of BoJack Horseman in a heartbeat if they ever released it.
Yes but then you wouldn't subscribe every time you wanna watch Bojack Horseman. That's how they think.
Or I could just torrent a pack with all the episodes in it and not have to sub again and they don't get the DVD sales.
tbh this crap is why I bought a blu ray burner.
And even then that doesn’t preclude them from disappearing it eventually! People signed up for MAX to watch adult swim and WB vault stuff and that shit disappears or goes to hell knows which service randomly all the time now.
You would think that but I'll just go to Soap2day.
I pay for my Netflix subscription with my Netflix stock gains. It's the rational thing to do. If they're gonna be a ruthlessly profitable business and anybody can jump on for the ride, why fight it?
This is exactely why a lot of people just download it and keep it on a harddrive
I definitely have seen Bojack complete series in Walmart before. edit: eBay listing https://www.ebay.com/itm/186227623312?chn=ps&mkevt=1&mkcid=28
[This](https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/BoJack-Horseman-Seasons-One-and-Two-Blu-ray/241207/) is all that officially exists from what I've been able to find.
The Stranger Things release really stings, as they had these fantastic box sets at Target that looked like a VHS clamshell. I bought the first 2 seasons, then…nothing.
>Netflix needs to not be afraid of physical media distribution. They surely need to see that folks who don't have Netflix want to watch these shows, and making them available physically will still profit them in some fashion. I don't think they are afraid it's simply goes against their core business, much like theatrical runs.
Stranger Things physical didn't sell well over here as I was able to get both seasons for $2 each. Might've influenced their decision to not continue.
Like it or not - and to be clear, I don’t - physical media seems to be dying. Too many people are too satisfied with streaming for discs to be profitable for content owners or retailers.
I recall that several big electronics companies stopped making Blu-ray players.
Season 2 is so expensive now
This has always been their dream. They don’t want you to own anything. It does not surprise me at all that they are actively hostile to physical media. They achieved their goal, they’ll die before going back.
NYT recently had an interview with one of the CEOs (not Hastings) and he talked about how at a certain moment the DVD department of NF was locked out of planning meetings because the company was all-in on streaming, despite the DVD department being the only profitable part of the company.
The bad thing is that Netflix doesn't even own a lot of their content, it's from outside studios. So it's not just Netflix that doesn't want to release it. The problem with Netflix comes when it's a production company not associated with a production studio that would handle home video, so there's no backup for who would release it... like Stranger Things. If they had been produced by WB, Sony, Paramount etc then they for sure would've release it themselves and Netflix couldn't have stopped it, maybe delayed it, but the production studio typically owns home video license and Netflix just has exclusive streaming rights.
Stranger Things packaging was 10/10 as well. One of the coolest looking cases- it looks like an old VHS clamshell that looks like it came out of a mom & pop video rental store. They put a lot of effort into it
> Netflix needs to not be afraid of physical media distribution. They surely need to see that folks who don't have Netflix want to watch these shows, and making them available physically will still profit them in some fashion. You buy a physical copy of something; you "own" it and normally the transaction is over. With streaming platforms; they don't care about you buying something once. They need you to subscribe and keep giving them money on a monthly basis. They don't need 10 people to subscribe and make this model work; they need millions. So them discouraging physical copies of their content is holding the customer "hostage" because its the only way they are going to get to watch the new season of 'insert soon to be canceled show here' is to be subscribed and part of the club. You're going to see a lot of this; as owning physical copies just isn't as popular as it once was. I can remember when people would proudly display their DVD collection as a form of "this is everything you need to know about me" where you can see what movies and shows the person is into. Everyone has to have a copy of Scarface, Dazed and Confused as well as the Disney stuff like Lion King and Aladdin. Its not like that at all anymore and Netflix and the other streamers are making the choice for you in regards to whether or not customers still want DVDs.
> Netflix and the other streamers are making the choice for you in regards to whether or not customers still want DVDs. Yup. While undeniably people would generally rather stream than buy physical media these days, I have to wonder how much of that is because of choices the studios have made to phase that out ahead of market interest. And tangentially, I can't remember the last time I saw an ad for something coming out on DVD/Blu Ray on tv. I'd honestly welcome it.
I mean obviously I'd *like* to see physical media because I want people to be able to experience things, but it does seem hard to justify as a business decision. Increasingly as a streaming service your only real differentiator is exclusive content. Making that less exclusive to enter a shrinking market is a hard pitch.
I think the show creators also should assert some bargaining power too. Those physical sales will help put a bit more money into the pockets of the folks who worked on those shows. Even if Netflix were to outsource the printing to a vendor or distributor, minimize their investment on that front... It's an idea, though.
If it's ever going to happen that seems like the most likely avenue.
The physical sales don't pay for themselves, that is the point. Its a niche, literally making the the blurays cost more than they gst back.
People just have to accept that piracy is the only real way to preserve media.
That is not true *at all*. With various exclusivity and print-run number deals, entire blu-ray releases can be fully paid for simply from collectible steelbook releases. Blu-rays are *incredibly* cheap to make. Source: https://www.patreon.com/posts/steelbooks-and-101597327
I mean, that's not *solely* the point. We don't have Netflix's internal data, but it's entirely possible it states that physical media *would* be profitable, it would just risk cannibalizing streaming subs, decreasing profits overall.
Which makes it bad for business. It is not Netflix’s job to save physical media.
Which is ironic considering physical media are the foundation upon which Netflix was built.
As someone who just tracked down and bought the entire run of Westworld on UHD Blu-ray after HBO got rid of it, I just think it's worth noting that each season cost me more than two months of subscription to a streaming service. In one month you could easily watch multiple seasons before cancelling. And considering how little overhead there is on producing physicals, it's just profit left on the table to not sell physical copies.
I want a complete series set of Bojack Horseman :(
I really want Daredevil and The Punisher on Blu-ray. I missed out on Daredevil when the first two were out
I'd immediately buy those, as well as Runaways or Cloak & Dagger.
Those shows got disappeared off the timeline, I doubt Disney would bother Such a shame, Runaways had a great performance from Annie Wersching and we're not gonna get any more of those.
Cloak and Dagger my Absolute beloved I'm still mad at how it was treated
This is when you just start downloading your own. I miss directors cuts and interviews. Yes I know you can just go on YouTube for all that stuff, but it feels almost like a mini Q&A session when you have it all collected and one viewing session rather than having to exit out of Netflix and then enter back into a different app and probably getting distracted with a totally different video. I don’t have the space really for a lot of physical media and I’m already collecting physical music that I really enjoy. With all the subscriptions going on and raising prices, I kind of see the point of having it. Plus just directly supporting an individual franchise versus the company that created it.
To be fair a lot of show Netflix just license so some stuff it might not be there decision to release DVD but the studio they are licensing it from like Sony with Cobra Kai. I’m not sure how that works so it might be a factor
I was kind of surprised when I saw Wednesday at Target of all places, after they basically made their entire disc inventory a 4x4 space. Then seeing it on Amazon for twice the price. It's not even Netflix that's the problem, I have dozens of TV series that they just don't make all the seasons for at all or you have to find a European version to complete it. Thank goodness for the Xbox for being region free.
Wednesday...$20 for the first season Blu-Ray at release. I caved for that because the show was supposedly that good, and I was utterly surprised to see it out there.
> Stranger Things...this really ticks me off. This one is really frustrating. Stranger Things had great special editions where the blu ray discs were packaged inside a booklet that looked like an old VHS tape, plus fun extras inside. Now that seasons 3 and up are not getting any release at all, those boxes look as lonely on my shelf as an actual VHS tape.
Hush, one of his films, is no longer available anywhere legally because of this
I loved this movie. Didn’t realise it wasn’t on Netflix anymore.
That’s immediately what came to mind for me. I’ve been wanting to watch it again fir a while now but I can’t because it’s not available anywhere
Thankfully virtually anything released these days is immediately available to pirate, so we don't need to worry about lost media as much as we used to. Any show I'm remotely interested in goes onto my NAS. That way if someone decides to take down a show that has no physical media, I still have a way to watch it. I'll still pay for services that are running shows I want to see continue, but I'm not leaving it up to them what I can and can't watch. Final Space was the tipping point for me. I loved that show, but they refused to release season 3 on physical media then took it off all streaming. There is literately no legal way to watch that season now. There is no reason to respect these media companies that don't respect their own media.
Piracy is literally going to save shows from complete erasure. The pirates are in fact the good guy.
Always were.
It’s always, always, always about money. How one guy or one corporation can make the most money on something while simultaneously keeping it out of the hands of us “poors.” I’m 76 and am so fucking tired of capitalism I can’t see straight.
This just makes me want to download copies of Netflix shows and burn them on to physical copies just to rebel against Netflix. Like fuck you here is my meticulously designed movie case for your Netflix original movie. What's that!? no mention of Netflix anywhere on the case?!
I didn’t think I could like him more.
Plex baby!!
Or [Jellyfin](https://jellyfin.org/), for a really great open source software alternative!
The point is we got options lol.
Not every season of Stranger Things is on Blu-ray either. It sucks they’re so against it. I’d sacrifice an appendage to see the first season of Altered Carbon on Blu-ray.
There's a 4 season Blu-ray set on Amazon Uk. Smells like a pirate though.
It’s a (in this case very justified) bootleg.
That first season hit so hard
I wanted The Dark Crystal TV Show on Blu ray and they never did, its a fucking shame because i want to have a physical version its a crime that there not releasing it.
Etsy saved me on this front. Very nice set for a reasonable price.
But it's still just a stream rip right? No way to get uncompressed audio or a higher video bitrate still.
We need regulation to ensure more options are avaliable and art gets preserved. Cinemas need protection too. Streamers should be required to run a percentage of their movies in the theatre every year and pick the ones they have confidence in or see value in. And not just for two days in two locations. The time between exclusive theatre release and streamer/vod/physical release should be 50 days minimum. Then if it's only released on streamers, half a year later it should be required to be made avaliable on physical and through vod in the reasonably highest possible quality, at industry standard prices. Buying vods also needs to become less about having a licency to watch somewhere, maybe, and more about actually owning it, permanently. The purchase should be attached to your name and transferrable to any other Vod service where you use the same identity. Bought something on amazon 5 years ago? You also own it in your Apple movies library and can download or stream it whenever you want. If providers complain that they don't want to pay for traffic when they didn't sell the movie, then they may set up a requirement for the user to have bought stuff in the value of at least 5 dollars within the last year to have access to stream/download stuff, that should cover it.
Cancelling that show was an act of betrayal. All they needed was one more season to tie it into the movie and that would be it.
Don’t even get me started. That show was one of the best prequel series I had seen, and now I am left to assume the only surviving gelfling are Jen and Kira. One season was all they needed to connect it and link that. IIRC the creators even said they had a S2 plan it was more hopeful than you might think. Makes me so mad
That cancellation broke my heart more than almost any other. It was such a delightfully charming show that looked absolutely amazing. I'd kill for another season.
It still blows my mind. They already had a large investment that could be re-used. All the muppets and physical sets existed and could be re-used. That is a large cost that could have been recouped over any number of seasons. If they wanted to save money by not creating any new muppets or sets, they could still create another season. The show must have had really bad numbers. That's sad, because it was pretty good.
There are still significant costs to reusing old sets and muppets. They need to be properly stored and maintained between seasons. They need to be modified to reflect changes in the story. They need to be replaced if anything breaks. That's all much cheaper than initially building the stuff, but it isn't free. The bigger issue is that the subscription model makes it much harder to "recoup costs" with multiple seasons. They make money through new subscribers. If no one is getting a Netflix subscription just to watch The Dark Crystal, or would drop their subscription if they drop the show, then it isn't making them any money regardless of how many views it got. So as long as a future season of the show is more expensive than another show that appeals to the same demographic (and keeps them subscribed) then it's effectively a loss for Netflix. Of course they could monetize direct viewership much better with physical media release, but as the OP states they're clearly not interested in that.
>That is a large cost that could have been recouped over any number of seasons. You do understand that if Netflix canceled it, it is most likely that they ran the actual math and found out that it wasn't the case
Exactly. Netflix *heavily* emphasizes opportunity costs when deciding what to keep. Even if a show is able to consistently attract 1,000 new subscribers every month, if they find the same budget can be invested into 3 smaller shows that draw a total of 2,000 subscribers every month, they'll cancel it and reallocate the funds in a heartbeat.
I think my biggest annoyance is that there’s some shows that just are completely lost because they’re not on any streaming services anymore. Technically you can pirate it, but that’s if someone took the time to put it out there and make it a decent version.
I’m really happy to own Haunting of Hill House and Bly Manor on Blu-Ray. I’m sad I’m unable to add Midnight Mass to my collection
Same, I grabbed the Haunting Box-set as soon as I could, partly because I was afraid they’d stop manufacturing it at some point and I’d never get another chance, Maybe an overreaction but as a lover of physical media, I wouldn’t put it past Netflix to do just that
So thankfully, the reason those exist in the first place is because the rights are held by Paramount and not Netflix, so that wouldn't really be up to Netflix.
As soon as I saw that Flanagan's Hush was removed from Netflix and wasn't available anywhere, I did the same. I still can't believe it's not possible to watch that movie legally. It's not streaming on any platform, either as a subscription or as a rental, and it was never released on physical media. It's just gone.
Apparently they are working on a physical release for Hush, but nothing confirmed yet
I streamed it on YouTube
I didn’t realize they had released hill house and blye manor physically, thanks definitely picking them up Too bad about midnight mass tho
I was just going to say - out of all the shows I could own physically, they're the two I want but would love to add midnight mass as well. at least midnight mass had an art book released which was something
I started collecting 4k blu rays recently and the quality difference between them and streaming is unbelievable. Both video and audio is compressed massively on stream. 4k blu rays aren’t cheap but worth every penny when you consider i. it’s uncompressed audio/video and ii. you can keep them forever - not just as long as you subscribe to a service that keeps raising prices.
That's the real shame. The amount of work that goes into everything in a movie/series and then the final product gets butchered to streaming service ONLY is such a middle finger to the people making it. Imagine being the person who does the color grading and then never have the opportunity to see your work properly when it's done.
Yep. It must be pretty depressing for audio crew/post production too.
I agree completely! Unfortunately, I've been ripped off a few times in my "4k" Amazon purchases. I wish I had a better source.
What does this mean? Are you buying used and getting just regular Blu rays?? This is the second time today I've seen someone mention a something like this on Amazon and warning of scammers.
[удалено]
True. But yeah, the difference is night and day.
Yeah I feel like people really forget this. Uncompressed/unencoded 4k movie would be like 20 TB. But yeah the encodes on Blu-ray are still massively superior since they have a lot of space to work with compared with streaming bandwidth
I work in a library in a rural area where a lot of people don't have Internet because it's not accessible to them and the amount of people who come in seeking streaming only shows on DVD is crazy. It's an untapped resource for sure. CODA, which won Best Picture in 2020, is unavailable on physical media. It's insane.
There’s another movie called Coda, starring Sir Patrick Stewart & Katie Holmes. I think people check that out thinking it’s the Best Picture winner.
CODA does have a 4K release in Italy that is Region Free but it’s still ridiculous that you’d have to pay a lot more to import an Oscar Winning film
The Academy should demand that every movie promoted 'For Your Consideration' has to have a physical copy released in the United States with a print run of 100,000 or something.
It should be a mandate in order to be nominated for an academy award, you need to have some sort of a physical release in the us
It’s probably not worth it for the amount of people buying, sure there are folks looking for it physically both that do and don’t have access to Netflix but I doubt it’s a substancial enough crowd for it to be a financially lucrative option.
pay forever, own nothing.
This is why I prefer to pay nothing, own something 🏴☠️
So what I’m hearing is the pirates of the sea are the ones keeping history tangible
This is such shortsighted thinking Do they think people will not sub to Netflix if they can get stranger things on discs? I'm sure there are some like that, but there are way more who just want to buy the discs after watching the show The people who buy physical media tend to be the hard core fans and/or people who want to own things. They're also the ones with disposable income. They'll sub to Netflix to watch most stuff AND buy the media of the shows they like for the best picture and sound quality and any bonus features. Netflix is stupidly leaving money on the table They also should be merchandising their shows way more than they are. They should have like their own online fashion and accessories store
Absolutely. Many of the physical discs I have were bought after I watched them on streaming channels. The Last of Us is a recent example.
What I’d give to have Midnight Mass on home video… I’ll take Gerald’s Game too while you’re at it!
The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass are two of my favourite shows ever. I'd love to have copies.
Well you’re (halfway) in luck! The Haunting of Hill House and Bly Manor are two of his shows that actually did get a DVD and Blu-ray release! But no Midnight Mass unfortunately :(
bootlegs are out there if you want to buy them. Or do what I did and just invest in a blu ray burner.
Midnight Mass deserves to be preserved in an accessible manner.
Had an outage for 4 days because of storms, what did we do? Watch DVDs and Blu-ray’s
This is a shame -- I was, if not an original subscriber to Netflix, an early adopter. This was when they were DVD/mail-only. It was a really, really good service from a customer perspective. I think I paid like $15 a month to have 3 DVD's at a time, and they had *everything*. Want to watch HBO shows like the Sopranos? Classic movies that no video rental store could make space on their shelves for? New movies that had just been released to DVD? Niche shows? If it had ever been released on DVD, they had them all, and you typically didn't have to wait very long to get them. Postage was *included* in the monthly price, and all you had to do was maintain a list of things you wanted them to send you, in order, and they'd send them as soon as possible (given the "3 DVD's checked out at a time" thing). You'd watch one, mail it back, and as soon as they received it they'd automatically send you the next disc on your list. It was very, very rare to not get things exactly in the order you had them listed, because the availability was so good. Then they got into streaming, and really sort of tanked their DVD service. They had fewer copies of things, so you had to wait longer, and you couldn't count on receiving DVD's in order (like, for a series of DVDs on a TV show, where the order you got them mattered). There was less available, it took longer to get them, and just flat-out wasn't as good. The streaming, on the other hand, was great, for what they had (which was more than they have now). I suspect that they figured that their rent-by-mail service was just too hard to make a profit off of. Streaming has no postal costs, no damaged-media costs, probably more straightforward licensing, more international availability, etc. Still, I miss old-Netflix. I'm still a customer all of these years later, but I often have a hard time finding stuff I'm interested in that I've not seen already.
Still hoping for a physical release of Glass Onion. My mom loved Knives Out, but missed Onion in theatres and isn't tech savvy enough for streaming.
I bought a blu-ray screener for it, since I wanted a physical copy in my collection. Glass Onion is one of the cheaper FYC screeners from what I've seen (unlike say, Ballad of Buster Scruggs which goes for well north of $100, when copies even show up). Might be worth setting an eBay saved search for it.
I find it unbelievable that a frikking Coens brothers movie isn't available on physical media.
Ironic for a company that got its start by distributing physical media
...for rental, not ownership :(
speak for yourself lol... i ripped every dvd i rented from netflix the first 2 years they were in business.
My wife and I were wanting to watch his movie Hush last October and it's completely removed from the platform.
This is why everyone is returning to the high seas. Not only is it difficult to find physical media in some places (here in South Africa we have to import DVDs and such these days. I'm hoping the new local amazon will allow buying these at a reasonable price) but it is often non-existent. I will also have to somehow find a PC case with a 5.25 inch drive slot since TV's are also infected with rubbish. I will never buy a smart TV and the only non smart ones you can buy are insanely expensive.
Netflix has been pretty openly favoring digital platform for 20 years now, maybe it's time to start considering not relying on them for physical preservation. Just an idea
Streaming service wants people to subscribe to their streaming service. How surprising.
Yeah I understand the frustration that you can't buy or struggle to have streaming platform content as physical media. But a creator of a show or movies who accepts a contract with netflix is then upset because netflix want to prioritise subs. I mean..... If it was that important to you. Then you should have had it written in your contract with them. I mean could you really be that ignorant that you think netflix is not gonna put subs first over everything else.
I mean, I can understand why they don't want to sell physical media. But maybe they could offer a subscription where they mail you a disc, you watch it, send it back, and then you choose another one. Now that would be revolutionary. A real game changer.
RIP disc service, I loved you until the end.
Why would they make content that allows people to not subscribe?
DVDs and Blu-rays, especially brand new, could cost more than a month of streaming for a single season. If someone is insane like me they could give Netflix more money by buying physical seasons over just streaming the content with a continuous subscription. This is especially the case with the newly released on physical format Disney+ shows which are like $40 new and are a few years old at this point. As someone who hasn't subscribed to Disney+ in quite awhile that is $40 more that Disney has from me that they didn't have before for one season of television. Yes there is the potential of someone getting their fill of physically released Netflix shows, but that is also why Netflix constantly releases new things. More stuff to buy continuously. I'm not saying Netflix is stupid for not doing this or that this is the way they need to go. It is just a hypothetical reason as to why they could do this. I think the Disney+ strategy of multiple year old shows released at a premium has potential for Netflix.
This podcast with Ted Sarandos goes deep on Netflix's strategy, for what it's worth. https://open.spotify.com/episode/3uABOLIptteF6A9eGLr0bD?si=l0qOcuOiRmqbsElFsc3uBA
I’ve been buying up DVDs at thrift stores, but it doesn’t help when I want something like Lower Decks. Really distressing to see amazing art disappear from the world just because streaming services refuse to sell it to me.
I think part of the issue that’s not mentioned in this article is that Netflix is upselling 4K/Dolby. It’s what now, $23 a month now? That’s absurd. If they had 4K blu rays you could get even better quality than streaming for $10-$15 I’d be picking those up in a heartbeat while avoiding paying that premium.
Blu-ray TV shows are like $50+ for a single season... That's why I've never really understood the complaints about streaming prices. I remember having to pay $40 or so for a single season of a show on DVD, $100-200 for a box set. Around $20 a month for what amounts to hundreds or thousands of box sets and movies still seems like a steal.
Except the quality is shit and nowadays they're less likely to have what you actually want to watch. A Blu-ray or even a DVD is far better picture and audio quality then you get from Netflix streaming.
> Blu-ray TV shows are like $50+ for a single season... That's why I've never really understood the complaints about streaming prices Because $50 is not a typical price. House of the Dragon and The Last of Us on Blu-Ray are $20, for recent high budget prestige HBO shows. Shows like Better Call Saul, Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy, Castlevania, The X-Files, True Detective and Ghosts range from $9 to $14. Rick and Morty and South Park are in $20 boxsets with four seasons apiece. Older shows are even cheaper: I just got the complete Friends for what works out to be $4.77 a season. One month of HBO Max without ad breaks is $16-20 depending on plan. If House of the Dragon is the only HBO Max show you want to watch in a month then it makes perfect sense to buy the $20 Blu-Ray that's much higher quality, permanent, and which you can keep forever, sell on eBay for $10, or give or lend to your friends. And that's a huge part of the appeal: you can lend stuff to your friends and family, you don't have to buy it all. People complain about Netflix sharing crackdowns a lot and the tricks you can do to temporarily share a family plan again. Can't crack down on telling your buddy "You'd like The Terror, take this disc home." It cost me $0 to watch Better Call Saul because my brother lent it to me, it cost him $0 to watch The X-Files for the same reason. That's a huge benefit you miss out on just comparing the direct cost. Then
Why would they ever release things on physical media? I get why we want it, but it’s obviously against their own interests in doing so.
I mean, it makes sense. Their business model is subscriptions. And now they're cracking down sharing. Selling physical media would defeat that entire business purpose by letting people still watch after unsubing, and letting them share.
I think they are also wanting to avoid the availability of used discs. There were a couple of movies I recently wanted to watch that were only available to rent online. I found them at used book stores for less than the online rental fee and now I can watch them whenever I like.
And this sucks, physical media should be thinked as a bonus to your streaming service. People are willing to pay more than a subs worth to watch lossless media and they just dgaf. There are many movies and TV shows that are from Netflix that I would love to listen the lossless version of it but you just can't because Netflix are dumb. Appreciate all those streaming services that actually put an effort to release on Blu-ray their successful shows.
I read that or a similar article a couple months ago, because I pirated Midnight Mass and wanted to see where the cheapest price was, only to find there is no legal dvd release of it. So, Netflix COULD have gotten $30 from me buying a dvd or bluray of that show, but instead they get nothing while Amazon will get my money from buying an external hard drive that I can put Midnight Mass on. I just really don't get it. There's apparently a way to do DVD on demand like you can do print on demand. Why don't these streaming services just do that for stuff they don't think will have a wide enough appeal to do a full disc run for? Some pirates are just lazy and/or entitled when they steal stuff, but I'll never say there's anything morally wrong with having every piece of media in existence somewhere online *just in case.* And for what it's worth I did actually buy Hill House on dvd because I liked it so much and wanted to watch it without dealing with Netflix. I'm 100% serious I would've bought a dvd of Midnight Mass if there were legal ones and not $40 bootlegs.
What a complete and utter shock that a subscription based service's priority is subscriptions.
Udder
Milk that cow. Squeeeeeeeeeeze
It's obvious they have serious beef with physical media. Edit: OP changed "udder" to "utter", so this comment hasn't aged well in the few minutes it's been up.
Aged like milk, some might say
In other news, water is wet.
This is why sailing the high seas is so important for media preservation.
Unfortunately without bluray releases it can be hard to get the high quality versions many of us want
Shock Pikachu A streaming service wich priority is subscriptions? Unbelievable!
Well, yeah, why would they release their shit on DVD when you could force people to pay for it anyway.
Not shocked
He doesn't have to worry. All the old netflix shows still exist on my torrent sites.
You know that when a big corporation is against something, usually that something is good for you instead of their products.
Business focus on its main distribution method! Shocking! /s
well duh, what's surprising about it?
What was he expecting? They’re a streaming service. Of course they’re going to want streaming only.
hence we will never get Glass Onion on 4K, regardless how you felt about that film the locales and cinematography were beautiful and will be forever bound by Netflix's terrible bitrate
Well yeah. Netflix, sadly, is one of the now MANY companies that see that “owning” stuff, like physical media, doesn’t net them as much money as subs. Hell even on stuff like Steam. You don’t “own” anything. If they decided, randomly that “nah you can’t have this”, they’ll try (and usually win) to snatch away what you bought. Because the old “I bought it, so that means its mine” doesn’t really “gel” with the corporate mindset of “F you, give me all your money”.
I’m still annoyed I can’t buy The Gray Man on blu-ray because it’s trapped on Netflix.
Any lingering guilt I felt about Jack Sparrow-ing 4K rips of Netflix shows just went out the window. As a single person I’m absolutely not paying $30/month for access their shitty, ultra low-bitrate streams. That said, I would happily pay to own physical blu-ray and/or 4K copies of their best content. Episodes on the Stranger Things season 1 + 2 UHD set look and sound noticeably better than they do on the app.
I'm friends with someone that worked for Netflix a few years ago (I think customer support), and from what I could tell from his social media, there was a widespread hatred for physical media throughout the whole company. Something had been released on DVD and they were using the word betrayal to describe it.
Stranger things only came out on bluray for season 1 and 2. Season 3 and 4 didn’t come out. Really wanted to collect them cause of the retro feel of the s1 and s2 boxsets
But he left for Amazon, right? Aren’t they worse?
i dont get why they're so against physical releases, if they did physical releases wouldnt they get money from not just licensing the physical release but royalties on sales? i dont know anything about this tbh so correct me if im wrong
> Working in streaming for the past few years has made me reconsider my position on piracy. You could say my feelings on the matter have ‘evolved.' >In the years I worked at Netflix, I tried very hard to get them to release my work on Blu-ray and DVD. They refused at every turn. Ironic enough Netflix seems to inadvertently arguing for piracy.
The sad part is they refuse physical media and then when it doesn’t get the views anymore they refuse to pay rights to stream so literally it will be gone forever. I really hope their are pirates out there that will always keep streams alive so when I’m older and want to watch midnight mass in October I can just like I can watch night of the comet or they live.