Are you happy with your streaming services? How many have you got? How much are you paying monthly? Have you ever forgotten that you still had one, and got stung by a charge you weren’t expecting? And when was the last time you watched a great film on a streamer?
I’m not sure about you, but I’m guilty of all the above. But more recently, I’ve been getting into DVDs. And I’m not alone.
Film lover Charlie Roy has opted out of all streaming services, in favour of DVDs. He borrows them weekly from the library, but he’s recently started buying ones that he really likes to start his own collection.
“I think part of it is to do with the fact that everyone’s sick of streaming services.”
What do filmmakers think about DVDs? I spoke with writer-director and AFTRS lecturer Jonathan Ogilvie.
“The problem with a streamer for a filmmaker is that it’s on for a while … and then it gets lost in the morass of product.”
“My first feature film The Tender Hook was released in 2008, and at that time every DVD library would be buying DVDs so there was a market for the distributor. Nowadays when you have a distributor, it’s even questionable whether they’re going to bother to do a DVD release on an Australian film.”
“There’s a move back to actually having an object,” says Ogilvie. “You have the benefit of the film but you also have the extras, and you have a package, which I think a lot of people are being increasingly drawn to rather than seeing something on a streamer.”
So why do we continue to spend money every month on streaming services? Perhaps it’s convenience. Perhaps we’re too lazy to cancel. Perhaps it’s that streaming services make it quite hard to cancel. At the end of the day, DVDs aren’t cheap. But at least they’re an asset you can keep. A physical object that you don’t have to relinquish to Big Streamer. Much like the renaissance of vinyl records, DVDs are back. The future of watching films at home might lie in the technology of the past.
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