That’s a good point Matt; if Criterion are offering many of their titles for streaming (and many of these films won’t receive UHD discs) then what is the draw of a physical release for the portion of the market who don’t have the need/FOMO to own everything physically if there’s just a handful of basic extras that are exclusive to the physical release?Matt wrote: ↑Thu Nov 16, 2023 12:51 amI think about this often, actually: How expensive must it be to keep something like 1000 releases in print, stocked up and warehoused, in constant distribution to retailers? In a market where I can’t imagine anyone is still buying new copies of DVDs first released 20+ years ago!Peacock wrote:But it must be financially extremely hard keeping such a large catalogue (mostly) permanently in-print.
But what compels me to purchase this? Having recently watched the films on the Criterion Channel (and not likely to want to watch them again soon) and not being a Rohmer completist, why should I race to buy this? Or worse, their edition of the Heroic Trio films. There’s almost nothing on the discs except the films. 10 minutes of Anthony Wong?
I’m more like Ryan and swo in needing to have it in my possession for a rainy day, but I suspect a significant chunk of the market share your (probably more sensible!) point of view.
So is the cost of gathering some more extra features higher than losing potential physical disc customers who have streamed the films but don’t see enough added value in owning them in a physical format? I guess Criterion must have run the numbers many times over and decided that yes, it is higher, or that the additional man hours those special features require are too expensive.
But yeah, certainly a unique boutique label in maintaining such a large catalogue of in-print titles, many of which are old and obscure enough that they must surely sell very few copies.