The future of DVD/Blu-Ray: sustainable or uncertain?

As a prelude to the 7th edition of the MIFC, the Market hosted its first DVD publishers’ fair this Sunday. On the occasion of the latter, a conference on the future of DVD was held. 

Moderated by Thomas Baurez, journalist at Première and France 24, the round table entitled "The future of DVD/Blu-Ray: sustainable or uncertain? "included Manuel Chiche (La Rabbia/The Jokers), Stefan Dröessler (Filmmuseum München/Edition Filmmuseum), Brian Jamieson (Red Jam LLC/Twilight Time/Redwind Productions Inc) Henri Moisan (Vidéosphère), Sungji Oh (Korean Film Archives) and Vincent Paul-Bonjour (Carlotta). 

But before getting to the heart of the matter, Benoît Danard, Director of Studies, Statistics and Prospects at the CNC, unveiled a study dedicated to the DVD/Blu-Ray market. Based on a Médiamétrie survey carried out on a sample of 1,029 cinema viewers aged 15 and over, this study shows a real appetite among French audiences for heritage cinema (films over 10 years old) and for the DVD/Blu-Ray object, despite a significant drop in the market in 10 years, whose revenues have fallen by 67.6%. And it turns out that heritage films remain the most stable on this market, the French consumer being particularly collectors, interested in the object and the bonuses available, and/or still seeing the DVD as an object to share interest and passion. The complete study can be found by clicking here (available from Monday, October 14). 

Following this introduction, each participant gave his or her vision of the market, according to their country. And it has to be said that the speeches are quite unanimous in France. If the market decline has not escaped anyone's notice, there is still a real enthusiasm to make the best possible editions in the best possible quality to attract an increasingly demanding public. "In the face of a declining market, we need to deploy even more energy than 20 years ago when DVD was at the top. We are asking ourselves questions as film lovers to enhance our editions," says Vincent Paul-Boncour. Diversity in formats is also necessary, as not everyone is necessarily looking for a collector's edition, sometimes wishing for the film alone. It is important to note that there is no technological obsession in France, the balance between DVD and Blu-Ray being stable at almost 50/50. The choice of films to be edited is made at will while remaining conscious of the spirit of the times but the time has come for a decline; and the frenzy of the early 2000s is followed by a desire to produce less but better. 

But this DVD audience is aging, as Manuel Chiche humorously noted, on average it is over 50 years old. It is therefore increasingly difficult to attract younger generations, used to other ways of consuming images, to the DVD object. An observation also made by Henri Moisan who, with his Vidéosphère video library and more than 40,000 DVDs for rent or sale, is seeing his audience aging, especially in a world where video-clubs have mostly disappeared. But he also observes a whole generation, already subscribed to platforms, who returns to this type of store for more advice: « What algorithms can never really do. They will not replace the word of a cinephile ». 

On the side of foreign speakers, the speech was a little less enthusiastic. If everyone shared with the French speakers a taste for the object and quality editions, the tone was more bitter. Thus, on the side of South Korea represented by Sungji Oh, the Korean Film Archives has released some 60 classic Korean films restored since 2004, but the result is no longer very satisfactory and the publication of Blu-Ray, the DVD medium having been totally abandoned, is itself called into question in favour of digital. The same is true in Germany, where the fight against piracy is desperate and where Filmmuseum's research work on bonuses, is not properly recognised according to Stefan Dröessler. For his part, American Brian Jamieson recounted the market's decline in less than 10 years between the time he launched Twilight Time in 2010 when his very limited editions (3000 copies) of classics from studios such as Universal and Fox were running out in a few days and now they are struggling to sell out after several months. Added to this is the difficulty of working with the studios, which are much more involved in the race for streaming than in their catalogue. But none of them seem ready to throw in the towel, out of a passion for cinema above all.

On the other hand, all agreed on the need to set prices that were accessible, but high enough for these editions, in order to enhance the value of the work done and not to encourage a certain culture of free. According to them, the price sacrifice, practiced by platforms like Amazon or others, does not help an industry for which it is increasingly difficult to recover its costs. 

The problems that must be addressed are therefore not only the purchasing power, but also the time available for spectators, as they are submerged with offers, and a culture that is less and less oriented towards the physical object. But for Henri Moisan, it is important to return to the DVD, if only for ecological reasons, since the object is less polluting, in the end, than the platform servers. And Brian Jamieson concluded on the French exception in terms of cinema appeal: "It's in your DNA", he said with a smile. And with this pious wish: "Vinyl is back in fashion, maybe we can hope for that for DVD/Blu-Ray? ».