LG phases out Blu-ray players as streaming strikes another blow to physical media

The company LG will stop making new Blu-ray players, following other large companies like Samsung, which discontinued them back in 2019.

It’s not exactly surprising news, as streaming services have come to dominate the home video market. But relying only on streaming services can make accessing some shows and movies more challenging for consumers.

For media companies, putting a movie on a streaming platform rather than Blu-ray is not only cheaper, notes Michael Smith at Carnegie Mellon — it also gets them data.

“They get a whole lot more information about you and deepen that customer connection,” Smith said.

But streamers can decide to pull content whenever they want, according to Charlotte Howell, an associate professor of at Boston University.

That can lead to the realization that you’re paying $15 or more a month “and you can’t guarantee that I can come back to my comfort show next month,” she said, “because you might take it away?”

One solution is to get a physical copy of it yourself at places like Vidiots, a video rental store in Los Angeles. Their customers aren’t just cinephiles, said executive director Maggie Mackay.

“We’re talking local families. We’re talking older people. We’re talking very little children who have no idea that what they’re growing up with is sort of unlikely in the 2020s,” she said.

They’ve rented tens of thousands of titles, Mackay added, since the store opened as a nonprofit last year.