DVDs and Extinction

This weekend, during a black friday shopping spree, I heard a lot of hallabaloo about which TV's were the best and do I want a DVD player or a Bluray player? I got to talking with my husband about how crappy it would be if DVDs were almost obsolete, because I still haven't switched all of my VHSs over DVD and if I had to convert all of my DVDs to microbytes or something, that would suck! My husband told me then that Bluray was already on it's way out, I don't know if I believe him or not, but that's neither here nor there. To the point, he said that Directv and Comcast were taking over and so people don't go out and rent movies anymore. It's sort of true. If you can rent it on the TV and not have to leave your house, why wouldn't you?

Another thing that I thought about was the rental boxes that are popping up everywhere, like Redbox. It's so cheap to rent movies from there, so I vowed never to rent from Blockbuster or Hollywood ever again.

Amazon also provides opportunities for movie lovers. You can buy used movies for really cheap, in most cases, if you wait long enough, you can get movies for cheaper than renting them at the local movie store.

The only issue I have with these alternative ways rent videos, is that many movies never make it to the rental 'floor'. For example, Redbox has only a number of videos and many times it seems to me that they are high budget films or films that have big actors in them. So were do independent films fit in? Will they lose business? Eventually, won't the film industry start losing business too then? I think it's sort of a far fetch, but I think it will be more difficult to get independent films into people's households.

We still have the theatre, but once again, you have to go to a theatre that is all about independent films to see independent films.

Overall, I'm sure that this is a stupid fear because people will find a way to let their art be known. Eventually, Redbox will most likely carry more movie options and Netflix already does carry the lesser known movies.