Target to drop all physical media from stores by 2025
 

First Best Buy, and now Target. I don't feel so good physical media bros:

https://twitter.com/PhysicalMedia_/s...88163243164136

And with Toys R US gone and Gamestop on life support, pretty much only Walmart will be left for physical media and they may follow this as well.

Physical media bros, we're losing the war. It's almost over. By 2030 owning movies/TV shows and games physically will be a high-end collectors thing.

you are not a Physical Media Bro, Mr I pirate everything from Illegal websites :roll:

I buy online anyway so as long as Amazon and Ebay are around I can get my stuff there

It has shrunk to just one aisle and a stands of new released and that is it at my local Target. I don't understand the phase out of physical media. How else can I own a movie I enjoy after it's theatrical run? Having a digital copy is not a real copy and streaming services can add and pull without notice and having to keep up with a film switching services especially to ine a person does not have? I thought the streaming bubble was getting closer to bursting. Perhaps this puts a pin in my theory and hope.

The consumer resisted the phase out of DVDs, hopefully the consumer will be able to give the industry the message that digital is not a long-term good idea. It's like how the self-service lines went from one to taking over now it's being rethought industry-wide. We'll, like what was said there is always Ebay and Amazon, it's just not the same.

Exactly, I prefer having a hard copy of my faves, since streaming can just make them vanish forever at will. If we have to get them through Amazon or whatever... fine. I mean, Target's section is small anyhow and doesn't offer much, but it better not signal the eventual death of the companies that make physical copies, too. :( At the very least, keep giving distribution rights to those like the one that finally released the 2003 set.

Yeah, it's kinda lame to have it be all streaming and "digital copies". I mean, screw that, physical releases and the used market is just about the only legal way movies can be preserved for casual use once the distributor decides they are no longer profitable.

And what is the maximum amount of streaming services the average person is willing to pay for? Wouldn't subscribing to Netflix, Paramount+, Max, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Hulu and Peacock all at once set you back like 550 dollars or something every month? Who in their right mind would do that?

What videos?

Sure... the vinyl records. lol

You'll still be able to guy discs on amazon or whatever, but the less retail presence for physical media means a lot of the big companies will be less likely to produce discs in the future as well. I'm sure the biggest movies will always get blu-ray releases, but I think we're looking to the end of regular TV shows coming out on DVD/blu-ray.

If Best Buy and Target have dropped physical media, Walmart probably isn't that far behind and they were the 3 biggest stores. For videogames, once Gamestop goes bankrupt finally that'll be another huge blow. The Playstation 6 may not even have a disc drive.

I'm a Best Buy shopper and I was disappointed that the disc version of the 4K movies I want are no longer being sold. I may have to go to eBay, but that's going to be a minor issue, because sellers tend to remove the digital code and sell the disc, where as I want both.

The only movies I want on physical media are in 4K; my DVDs and regular Blu-Rays I ripped and put the MP4 files on a 2TB flash drive and put the disc copies in the basement so I can make room in the man cave for my whole collection.

There are a lot of movies I want in 4K, but a handful I really want while they can still be on physical media some day, such as: Ninja Turtles 1 - 3 from the 90s; Big Trouble In Little China; Ninja Scroll; The NeverEnding Story; and Twister.

I don't give a crap about picture quality so I am a dvd collector. Luckily dvds are pretty cheap these days. Especially used ones from ebay. You can find almost any used dvd disc for about 2 bucks at the moment. I just use some dvd binders to store them in and collect away. Now I own hundreds of movies. I am already prepared for this new age of physical media no longer being sold at major retail outlets. Bring it on.

I have about 200 laserdiscs available for sale if anyone really wants to enhance their entertainment center.

Ah, laserdisc. The pizza oven of physical media.

The death spiral continues...

Soon they will be specialty items, which also mean they will have specialty prices. Don't expect to be able to load up on $10 4K discs during sales for much longer, new releases anyway.

Honestly everyone did this to themselves.

It is very frustrating! But one of the biggest, undeniable flaws in the human design is their absolute inability to understand and appreciate what they have until it is gone completely. People endlessly cry about how they ”miss the good times” yet they themselves all gleefully jump into the latest trends that the rest of the mindless consuming masses declare is “the next new thing” that directly beats to death the former way of doing things (aka; the illusion of “convenience” by allowing multi-billion dollar studios and streaming platforms to have total control over every last bit of the entertainment that they consume or carelessly letting physical stores die because they WORSHIP doing nothing). I despise the concept of paying physical money for a non-physical product. If I am not buying an item that I can hold in my hands, then I am simply paying yet another bill or tax just for the “privilege” to watch or listen to something that someone else owns and completely controls. I am not actually owning the movie or album myself unless I can hold the DVD/CD in my hands and have something to show for my investment in entertainment. No thanks!

I also strongly hate and blame digital pirates who believe that it is their God given right to consume whatever their precious entitled little hearts desire without any need to actually pay for it at all.

I think it's mainly Gen Z kids born after the 2000's that's the main reason for this. Think about it, they were 10 years old in the year 2010 and teens by the mid-2010's and by then digital was already pretty mainstream. They grew up downloading stuff on their phones and computer.

It's the same reason digital games outsell physical games on consoles now too, which is why many believe the Playstation 6 won't have a disc drive and Microsoft is already going digital only. Nintendo will probably stick with physical games for the next few gens though.

Im gonna be the one that waits for an actual source on this, because there's no way Target Corp just tells a random dude on Twitter this.

Remember how in 2023 we heard Best Buy was dropping all physical media in early 2024 and people didn't believe it? Well of course it was true. There's no reason why Target wouldn't do the same, physical disc's are just not selling in stores anymore.

Best Buy also condensed their movie sections over the years before they announced that too. Target never really had that big of a movie section.

Who even buys DVDs and Blu-rays from Target anyway? It’d be cheaper to buy them at Wal-Mart or even off Amazon.

I was thinking the same lines. I do check out the (paltry) physical media sections in the Electronics department when I go in looking for NECA Turtles stuff, and I only really consider buying it if it's really cheaper. But I'm a little more likely to buy disc-media from Target.com, so I guess that will eventually go away too.

It used to be sort of neat to go into a Best Buy and just roam down the aisles of Blu-rays, sometimes seeing movies or collections I'd never heard of or forgot all about. I'd often end up buying (and then, seeing) movies I never would have otherwise.

Same.

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Not me, but our nearby Target has only been open for a few years max and never had much of a section to begin with. It's surprising they even bothered the one.

I've looked at it once in while going past, and I've seen Turtles at least, so that's nice, but nothing I was interested in or didn't already have. Got MM, the last DVD I've bought, from Walmart, but in part because I was just there on a weekly basis anyhow. Go to Target less because it's super busy (which is good though) and a pain to get in and out of there.

ROFL! Best line I'm gonna read today. :D

I suppose people could try to make them trendy, like the movie version of vinyl albums, and actually make them popular for once. lol


True... true.

Digital became the new thing and saved space, but people won't like it someday when they want to rewatch something they no longer can and it's just gone from existence.

In some cases, that's for the best (Willow: the TV series).

:lol:

10+ free characters for ya.

Simpsons gave up DVD, only to return to it a couple of years later.

Pretty soon everything will be digital. No disc drives on consoles, no blu-ray players, don't a lot of computers these days not have a disc tray either for that matter? Even a lot of comic books/novels sell better digitally on kindle that physical copies.

Pretty soon even clothing will be digital. We'll be able to download new clothes and just get them to overlay on our bodies.

This past Black Friday was the first in over a decade where I didn’t spend a dime at Walmart. The reason? They had no BF priced movies on sale. I was pissed! I tried 3 different Walmarts cause I thought it was maybe just fluke at my two local stores. But I used to spend hundreds on DVDs and TV box sets. Then I saw Target only had a very select few choices. So then my only hope was Meijer, who did have several shippers of DVDs and Blu-Rays, but even their selection didn’t compare with the large selection Walmart used to have. It was the main thing I looked forward to every Black Friday. So it looks like it will all come down to Meijer now.

And, of course, humanity will do absolutely nothing to try to fight back against it. They will excitedly do exactly as their puppet masters will them to. :x

Target's response


https://www.ign.com/articles/target-...res-and-online

Sounds like they're still heading to phasing them out. It'll be a select few high profile movie releases for awhile and then it'll gradually stop

I might have had the same experience, now that I think of it. Digital movies just don’t make for great gifts to people.

I wish I didn't give a crap about picture quality. I have mostly DVD's and some Blu-ray's but not too many of them though. Never owned a 4k disc (even though I have a 4k TV :lol:) but after seeing people praising them online I keep obsessing about getting a 4k player and getting some movies and shows on 4k see what the fuss is about. I sort of don't want to get too much into the 4k craze though just incase I become fussy with picture quality.

Just get a PS5. There's your 4K player and you can also play games.

So basically its just gonna be New releases, the Halloween/Christmas based movies and then whatever's not competing with Amazon.

I think the surprising thing is while this felt inevitable, the phasing out of physical media is happening a LOT faster than expected. I honestly thought we'd be in the mid 2030's before this started becoming a thing, but it's probably going to happen by the end of this decade. I do think we'll still get 4k and blu-ray releases of the biggest movies, but you'll have to order them online and they'll start to become collectors item type stuff.

But average DVDs and blu-ray sets of TV shows and not popular movies are probably going to be a thing of the past. And this may also be the last gen for physical videogames, at least from Sony and Microsoft. I do think Nintendo will hold out longer than the other two.

Yeah, having not bought a new computer in many years (still got my XP going, albeit on light duty now -- it'll be 20 next month!) it was weird to me at first that a lot of PCs don't default have an optical drive anymore, but I chose to include it in my custom choices for the new one I got a few months ago. I've got way too much, esp photos, etc saved on discs that I don't want to lose access too.

But they may as well just come out with computer/TV compatible external drive/player that can automatically download all the digitally purchased movies, etc people have, so they at least don't have to lose them.


And some people like to complain about yoga pants... Just gonna be clothing patterns spray painted on like a big human printer.

It's a complicated issue. MOSTLY it's the studios wanting this and pushing this... but we ourselves have made them even be able to do that at all, and also we've been getting more and more comfortable about it along the way.

Frogs just sitting there boiling away...