For years, Best Buy was the place to find all the entertainment you wanted. Aisle after aisle of DVDs meant that you could even find the most obscure movies, and Best Buy was where I bought my first DVD player. The chain was on the leading edge of Blu-ray and 4K entertainment.
Sadly, that era is coming to an end in the next few months. Best Buy has announced that it will phase out sales of physical movies after the new year — not just in stores but online as well.
“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,” the Associated Press reports.
“To state the obvious, the way we watch movies and TV shows is much different today than it was decades ago,” the company announced in a statement. “Making this change gives us more space and opportunity to bring customers new and innovative tech for them to explore, discover, and enjoy.”
The change doesn’t affect the sales of video games in stores, and I couldn’t see anything indicating whether CD and vinyl sales would continue. But the move is in line with other trends. Don’t forget that Netflix finally pulled the plug on its DVD-by-mail service — a move that surprised many people, mainly because they didn’t realize the mail service was still an option.
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Best Buy has had a tough go of it lately, with stores like Walmart and Target offering electronics, often at better prices, along with the convenience of consumers buying those items where they buy their groceries. Even stores like Lowe’s and Home Depot are getting in on some of the electronics action, and don’t forget how easy it is for customers to buy anything they need or want online.
The AP reports:
Minnesota-based Best Buy earned $274 million, or $1.25 per share, during the second quarter of 2023. That topped Wall Street expectations but was still below the $306 million the company earned in the same period last year.
Second-quarter sales fell 7.2% to $9.58 billion, slightly better than analyst estimates. Comparable sales — sales from physical stores open at least a year, and digital channels — fell 6.3%, dragged down by declines in computing and appliances. While appliance and electronic sales fell, the entertainment category increased by 9.1%.
DVD and Blu-ray sales have cratered in recent years. According to Gitnux, physical video transactions nosedived from 6.1 billion in 2011 to 1.2 billion in 2021. DVDs now only comprise 7% of the home entertainment market. Streaming is ubiquitous, and even people who want to purchase content (like yours truly) are finding it increasingly more convenient to buy content to stream.
We could say that it was inevitable that we would move away from physical media to downloadable and streaming content. What’s still jarring is that it all happened so quickly.
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