just heard the news that disney and their subsidiaries will no longer be selling dvds or blu rays and i’m just so gutted
“b-but i just stream”
that’s nice for you, but the majority of internet users in this country are:
- paying ridiculous prices for overwhelmingly slow connections ($70/mo for 25/4mbit)
- for sub standard access (majority of infrastructure is copper/hfc based and subject to environmental disruption (nothing fucking works when it’s hot) and random dropouts, this is before we get into satellites and the stuff people outside of the suburbs need to use)
- that isn’t fit for purpose (service providers enjoy legally protected under-provisioning, which means that your actual connection will be AT LEAST 10-20% slower than advertised and if you complain they essentially just laugh at you for expecting a company to tell the truth)
all of this is before you start slapping on “$18/mo in perpetuity” EACH for disney plus, netflix, binge, paramount etc etc
and all of that is BEFORE you take into account that the audio/visual quality is worse on streaming.
“you can still order them from the united states”
yeah, once i've doubled (or more) the cost by adding postage from another continent, and then raising it even more with currency conversion the cost is closer to almost 3-5 times higher per title so this is a really great option, thank you for your kind suggestion, imaginary person who thinks i haven’t heard of foreign companies with illegal monopolies on online retail
it’s a matter of time before
a) other companies follow suit because they also see physical media as a threat to auto-renewing thirty day viewing licenses that they’d rather be selling
b) disney (the company allowed by the us government to own like 35% of their cultural output) follows by rolling this out worldwide (see a) above)
they might have started it, but of course it will be The Rat giving the final neck shot
