{"id":4321,"date":"2018-12-16T14:53:02","date_gmt":"2018-12-16T04:53:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.digital-digest.com\/blog\/DVDGuy\/?p=4321"},"modified":"2018-12-16T14:53:57","modified_gmt":"2018-12-16T04:53:57","slug":"weekly-news-roundup-december-16-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.digital-digest.com\/blog\/DVDGuy\/2018\/12\/16\/weekly-news-roundup-december-16-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekly News Roundup (December 16, 2018)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I finished bingeing (or is that binging &#8211; nope, doesn&#8217;t look right) Narcos: Mexico. It was great. I mean, I wouldn&#8217;t put it anywhere near shows like The Sopranos or The Wire, but it&#8217;s a high quality production featuring some great acting and an amazing but true (well, mostly) storyline. It&#8217;s also reminded me that I should go watch Scarface again, which is exactly what I&#8217;m doing just before I started writing this WNR.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Also watched Alpha, suspected animal abuse aside, loved it for the beautiful cinematography and simple story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And yes, there was still time for some news &#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.digital-digest.com\/blog\/DVDGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/04\/highdef.gif\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Discs sales are on the decline, that&#8217;s clear as day. Blu-ray sales peaked in 2013, it appears, while DVD sales peaked long ago. While Ultra HD Blu-ray has lifted Blu-ray&#8217;s numbers a bit, the general trend is still down, especially for DVDs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.digital-digest.com\/blog\/DVDGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/WalmartTR-2-e1544832008964.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"186\" height=\"250\" src=\"http:\/\/www.digital-digest.com\/blog\/DVDGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/WalmartTR-2-e1544832008964-186x250.jpg\" alt=\"Walmart Blu-ray and DVD Sales Rack\" class=\"wp-image-4322\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.digital-digest.com\/blog\/DVDGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/WalmartTR-2-e1544832008964-186x250.jpg 186w, http:\/\/www.digital-digest.com\/blog\/DVDGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/WalmartTR-2-e1544832008964.jpg 447w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 186px) 100vw, 186px\" \/><\/a><figcaption>Blu-ray and DVD sales still doing well in certain locations, says Walmart<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>The very first Black Friday sales figures I tracked for DVDs had the revenue for the week at\u00a0$386.35 million (this was in 2008). This Black Friday, that figure has dwindled down to\u00a0$116.45 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sure, Blu-ray revenue rose from\u00a0$27.68 million in 2008 to\u00a0$104.37 million in 2018, but that doesn&#8217;t come anywhere near plugging in the hole left by declining DVD sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But according to an EVP at Lionsgate, the decline in discs sales isn&#8217;t happening everywhere, and in rural USA, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.digital-digest.com\/news-64826-Lionsgate-People-Still-buy-DVDs-at-Walmart.html\">sales are still going strong<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the recent Black Friday sales also show one important thing &#8211; people still do buy discs in great numbers, but only if the price is right. The discounting of UHD titles from their usual $25 to $9 on Amazon really helped, and that&#8217;s because the perceived value of discs have dropped in a day and age where $11 per month gets you thousands of titles, including many exclusives, like Narcos: Mexico, that you would have paid good money to watch and own previously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"250\" height=\"166\" src=\"http:\/\/www.digital-digest.com\/blog\/DVDGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/the-kissing-booth-250x166.jpg\" alt=\"Scene from The Kissing Booth\" class=\"wp-image-4323\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.digital-digest.com\/blog\/DVDGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/the-kissing-booth-250x166.jpg 250w, http:\/\/www.digital-digest.com\/blog\/DVDGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/the-kissing-booth-768x510.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.digital-digest.com\/blog\/DVDGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/the-kissing-booth.jpg 780w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/><figcaption>Netflix&#8217;s most re-watched Original film in 2018 was The Kissing Booth<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Speaking of Netflix Originals, the streaming giant has put together a review of 2018 in terms the most &#8220;popular&#8221; shows and movies that have premiered in 2018. Netflix is notoriously shy about releasing actual watch figures, so they&#8217;ve used some interesting metrics to measure the popularity of shows, movies and even the fastest rising stars.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/forum.ddigest.com\/redirect-to\/?redirect=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.netflix.com%2Ftitle%2F80143556\">The Kissing Booth<\/a>\u00a0was the most popular Netflix original film because it was the most re-watched;\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.ddigest.com\/redirect-to\/?redirect=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.netflix.com%2Ftitle%2F80117809\" target=\"_blank\">On My Block<\/a>\u00a0just beat out\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.ddigest.com\/redirect-to\/?redirect=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.netflix.com%2Ftitle%2F80000770\" target=\"_blank\">Making a Murderer: Part 2<\/a>\u00a0as the most popular original series because it had the higher\u00a0average watch time per viewing session (I think that&#8217;s what you would normally call binge-factor), and\u00a0The Fab Five from Queer Eye were the most popular stars because their Instagram follower count increased the most.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And you know what, hardly any of the movies and shows listed by Netflix will ever make it to Blu-ray or DVD. And this, perhaps more than pricing, is the biggest obstacle facing physical media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>======<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Alright then, that&#8217;s all for the week. There won&#8217;t be a WNR next week as I&#8217;ll be away for the weekend at a wedding. Might not be one after that as well, considering it&#8217;s so near to Christmas and all that, but will try to pop on and say hello. And now, back to Scarface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I finished bingeing (or is that binging &#8211; nope, doesn&#8217;t look right) Narcos: Mexico. It was great. I mean, I wouldn&#8217;t put it anywhere near shows like The Sopranos or The Wire, but it&#8217;s a high quality production featuring some great acting and an amazing but true (well, mostly) storyline. It&#8217;s also reminded me that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5,3,17,9],"tags":[23,24,25,26,33,28,34,21],"class_list":["post-4321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dvd","category-high_definition_dvd","category-movies","category-news-roundup","category-video_technology","tag-blu-ray","tag-dvd-movies","tag-hd","tag-movies","tag-netflix","tag-vod-streaming","tag-walmart","tag-weekly-news-roundup"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pzVMv-17H","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.digital-digest.com\/blog\/DVDGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.digital-digest.com\/blog\/DVDGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.digital-digest.com\/blog\/DVDGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.digital-digest.com\/blog\/DVDGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.digital-digest.com\/blog\/DVDGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4321"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.digital-digest.com\/blog\/DVDGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4325,"href":"http:\/\/www.digital-digest.com\/blog\/DVDGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4321\/revisions\/4325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.digital-digest.com\/blog\/DVDGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.digital-digest.com\/blog\/DVDGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.digital-digest.com\/blog\/DVDGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}