With the announcement that, in Germany and a handful of other European countries, Playstation/Sony will be deleting all of their Studio Canal titles from their digital library physical media (VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray, etc.) have gained a new relevancy. Users who have purchased Studio Canal titles from Playstation/Sony in those territories have lost a significant portion of their digital libraries. With more of this to come, purchasing a digital copy of a movie is more like paying a premium price for an extended rental.
For a while now people who collect physical media have been referring to this moment as a “golden age” for home video. Boutique labels like Vinegar Syndrome, Arrow Video, Severin Films, Imprint, Indicator, and of course the Criterion Collection have been releasing sought after and highly esteemed titles in deluxe editions for some time now. This has led to a culture of collecting that hasn’t been seen since the birth of the DVD. On various social media platforms this community manifests itself with the ardent fervor of Max Renn.
Until recently these deluxe home video releases have merely begged the question “why own a digital copy of a movie at all?” when you don’t get the gorgeous packaging, the re-produced lobby cards, or the hours of special features. Now these highly prized and fetishized objects are the only real way to own a movie. Unless you have it to hold in your own two hands you don’t really own it at all.
With these circumstances has naturally come a renewed nostalgia and interest in video stores. The idea of a brick and mortar location that houses a permanent and well curated library of home video releases has become far more likely and much more necessary. Streaming platforms, on an individual basis, have rather limited selections when compared to the 10,000+ titles in the mom and pop video stores of my youth. To achieve that same degree of diversity one would have to pay monthly fees to subscribe to a handful of streaming services. Really the only reason that the video store seems unable to partake in this “golden age” is that consumers can’t be bothered to go out and rent a movie.
So it falls to community of home video collectors to, through social media and events, fill the void left by video stores. With the Sony/Playstation announcement there may even be a slight rise in Blu-Ray, DVD, and UHD sales as consumers begin to move more towards physical media. An interest in retro technology gave the vinyl LP a new life back in the early 2010s so it isn’t impossible that the same could happen for the DVD and Blu-Ray. In fact there are a number of collectors who do consider VHS a viable format that is essential to their home video libraries.
It’s fundamentally wrong that digital copies of movies are sold this way by corporations like Sony. It calls for outrage, even more so when one considers that home video collectors (even those who work exclusively with digital copies) function as a community. It’s a collector’s community and Sony has done us all a disservice.
