On the face of it DVD’s are going the way of the dodo, even blue ray has a few people thinking back to days of beta max. Yet in the last year we have had a few surprises in store that seem to show that some people still have a soft spot for a physical disc.
Why are some DVD Players doing well?
This year we stocked a blue ray DVD player. The DMP UB 900 is a 4K blue ray player from Panasonic, and at just under £600 it is on of the highest end DVD players on the market. With DVD’s a little bit of a dying breed we were pretty sure this was going to be quite a slow mover, something every store had maybe one or two of that was going to go to the tech-y who wanted the best of everything. Yet I have to admit we were wrong. This has been one of the big surprises of the year for us, we didn’t expect such an niche piece to sell as well as it did and when talking to other stores and suppliers it appears no one has had problems moving it. Even Panasonic had thought this might be a bit of a long shot, which is why it came with two free blue ray’s to show case the “ultra HD” picture quality and add a little extra value to the product. Yet because of this offer and peoples love of real world media, this DVD player flew off the shelves.
The future of DVD’s
Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that DVD’s are going to make some giant come back, real world discs just don’t offer the choice that steaming does. But much like vinyl there will always be a group of people who value “owning” rather than streaming something they love. I think moving forward we will see a trend towards owning fewer but better DVD’s. Instead of owning every film you have ever watched, you might only own ten of your favourites, things you will watch again and again that you can switch on when the Wifi is playing up or when you want image quality higher than your broadband allows. 