Best Buy has officially begun its process of ditching physical media, according to new reports this week that say the retailer has begun removing Blu-rays and DVDs—a format that it helped popularize during its inception in the late 1990s—from all of its retail stores across the nation.
Best Buy has started removing all physical media and displays today pic.twitter.com/BRbMdQKTB2
— Physical Media President (@PhysicalMedia_) January 2, 2024
“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,” Best Buy told the AP in October.
“To state the obvious, the way we watch movies and TV shows is much different today than it was decades ago,” the retailer added in a statement that was also picked up by Variety. “Making this change gives us more space and opportunity to bring customers new and innovative tech for them to explore, discover and enjoy.”
Video games will reportedly continue to exist in Best Buy stores, but DVDs, Blu-rays, and 4K UHD Blu-rays won’t be available from the retailer, neither from its brick-and-mortar locations, nor online.
The Digital Bits, which is credited as being the first website to break the news, had this to say in early October:
The fact that Best Buy is discontinuing physical media sales in their retail locations should come as no surprise; anyone who’s visited a Best Buy store location on a Tuesday recently will be all too aware that the retailer’s disc sections keep getting moved around and have gotten smaller and smaller. Our own experience here at The Bits is that some store locations don’t even bother to stock new-release titles on the sales floor anymore—even their exclusive ones. More than once, in their Southern California locations, I’ve had to ask for the titles and wait while a clerk checks the storeroom.
As of this writing, Best Buy continues to offer over 46,000 Blu-rays and other types of physical media through its website.
The collection includes over 100 exclusives, such as the Avatar 4K SteelBook and The Twilight Saga 4K SteelBook, which are available for $41.99 and $79.99, respectively.
Walmart, Amazon, and Target are now considered the nation’s largest retail sellers of Blu-ray, DVD, and 4K titles following Best Buy’s exit.
Discussion (5 replies)
Join Discussion →I stopped buying physical media for movies when the prices started going up. I remember when BDs were around $20, now I see even higher prices for them. I still depend on BDs though - for BD rips, which is how I primarily watch movies.
I can't even remember the last time I paid full price for one but once the holiday sales start I usually go nuts with getting things from them and Amazon. Their loss though because there's still money to be made and I guess my alternative may end up being Target, at least until they stop too. Honestly though, I'm shock that BB is still in business and this is probably more symptomatic of that but I also have to say that corporate, at least for our single local store, always made crap choices for the movies it stocked. I've got nothing against BB and will feel sorry for its employees if it does go under but I've got my doubts about its continued sustainability. We've easily spent well into tens of thousands throughout the last 10-15 years there but every year it drops more. However, I'm super excited they came through in getting my new laptop for me back in November.
I mean they started removing customers from their stores a long time ago. So why not product.
The stores I'm usually shopping at in Hungary did it years ago. Not just DVDs and Blurays*, but music as well. And the physical games section has also been consistently shrinking over the years. Now it's like one small shelf.
*Blurays barely existed in retail to begin with, way too expensive for the average person here.
I only own one BD, well technically it is not one as it is a box set of the whole BSG remake series. But even if I ever decided to re-watch the series I'd download a rip of it instead of bothering with the discs.
Yeah whenever I re-watch shows (or movies) that I have on physical media, I just grab rips, cuz I don't feel like dealing with the discs.