It could be the end of the road for Blu-ray discs.
That news comes from Australia’s Sky News (via Tom’s hardware) and it has sent our physical, media-loving brains into a meltdown. While the news covers just one movie studio and one continent, it could be the start of a grim trend as the top streaming services completely overtake DVDs and Blu-rays as the main way to watch at home.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is scheduled for August 9 on 4K Blu-ray in Australia. The disc includes HDR10 high dynamic range and a Dolby Atmos soundtrack. It also includes a few featurettes, deleted scenes, and a commentary from director James Gunn running throughout the film.
Gunn’s movie is also currently available on Disney Plus, where as an added benefit it’s presented in Dolby Vision HDR – an enhancement that Disney has routinely withheld from its 4k Blu-ray Disc releases, although it’s widely used for movies on the the company’s streaming service.
Analysis: No 4K Blu-rays for Australia – a Disney thing or the start of a trend?
It’s no secret that the Disney company is under financial strain. The company is trying to make a profit sell the content to other streamers – a strategy that category leader Netflix has so far refrained from pursuing – and is looking for strategic partners for its ESPN division. Disney’s ESPN cable TV channel has long been the company’s cash cow given the popularity of sports programming in the US, but cable TV subscriptions have been steadily declining over the past decade.
So while there’s been no announcement from the studio confirming that stopping DVD and Blu-ray disc sales in Australia is a money-saving measure, recent actions by the company have indicated it’s in cost-cutting mode. With sales of physical media declining, stopping disc sales in a particular region seems like a financially motivated decision.
The reality is that Disney prefers viewers to subscribe to the Disney Plus service over buying movies on 4K Blu-ray. Blu-ray collectors have long complained about the lack of Dolby Vision HDR on the studio’s 4K Blu-ray releases, even though the company continues to offer the same titles in that format on its streaming service. Avatar: The way of the water Besides, Disney has also routinely used the 66Gb disc format for its 4K Blu-ray releases instead of the 100Gb disc format, which allows movies to be encoded with reduced video compression.
Still, a movie on a 66GB 4K Blu-ray disc will have a significantly higher video data bit rate than the same movie on streaming services, which generally excel in the 17-25 Mbps range for 4K streaming. In comparison, 4K Blu-ray has a maximum bit rate of 128 Mbps and regular Blu-ray has a maximum of 40 Mbps.
That is the main technical reason why videophiles prefer to collect their favorite movies on disc for playback on the best 4K Blu-ray players. Another is audio: while streaming services all use the lossy Dolby Digital Plus format to deliver soundtracks, including Atmos, Blu-ray Disc uses the lossless Dolby True HD format, delivering superior sound quality.
Another reason people collect 4K Blu-rays, and physical media in general, is ownership pride. Movies come and go regularly on streaming services (check out our monthly Exit Netflix post as proof), but if you own a disc of a movie you love, it cannot be taken away. That’s why I bet other studios won’t follow Disney down this dangerous path any time soon, even if that change seems inevitable.