Best Buy is saying goodbye to movie-watching with physical discs.
The consumer electronics retailer plans to phase out its DVD and Blu-ray sales by early 2024 — with physical movies set to be sold in-stores and online as they are today through the holidays, Best Buy confirmed to The Associated Press Friday. Video games will not be impacted.
“To state the obvious, the way we watch movies and TV shows is much different today than it was decades ago,” the company said in an emailed statement. “Making this change gives us more space and opportunity to bring customers new and innovative tech for them to explore, discover and enjoy.”
I can’t remember the last time I bought physical media, probably like 7 or 8 years ago. I got a 65" 4K TV and decided to buy a PS4 Pro, which I thought could play Blu-Rays, it couldn’t so I bought a player. Back then each Blu-Ray was like $30-50. I had kept them for years and went to sell them finally a few months ago. They’re like $10-15 new on Amazon now.
PS4 Pro can play blu-ray and DVD but not 4K UHD Blu-ray nor CD. That said, I have a PS4 Pro and the disk never worked for me for movies. I didn’t even buy disc games because I assumed it wouldn’t work. I think the physical disc drives were really poor quality in the entire PS4 generation. I’ve got a PS3 slim and a PS5 we use for movies now. Good point about disc prices. Even UHD is cheap and often includes HD Blu-ray and a digital code.
Yeah, I thought I had seen that it could, and bought a few UHD Bars and then was disappointed.
It didn’t help that the Xbox refresh did include that ability. I was annoyed it didn’t play CDs. I really don’t want extra devices for a function I don’t use all the time.
Yeah, buying the external player and the discs was largely a waste of money because I watched them like once and then pirated copies of UHD movies with HDR became easy to find.