Yes, Virginia, There IS a Disc Business!

Post Reply
Big Magilla
Site Admin
Posts: 19312
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 3:22 pm
Location: Jersey Shore

Post by Big Magilla »

From Home Media:

Yes, Virginia, There IS a Disc Business!

By :Thomas K. Arnold | Posted: 22 Dec 2010

I take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time my great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of Home Media Magazine:

Dear Editor—

I am 8 years old. Some of my friends in the consumer media say the packaged media business is dying. DVD sales are falling, fast; Blu-ray Disc has yet to really catch on; and the whole world is moving toward electronic delivery. Papa says, “If you see it in Home Media Magazine, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is the packaged media business dying?

Virginia O’Hanlon

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except what they are told. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a vibrant and viable packaged media business. It exists in stores large and small, by mail, in vending machines. People are still enjoying movies, TV shows and other entertainment on disc, and they will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. To be sure, they may have slowed the pace of buying DVDs, but more and more of them are switching to Blu-ray Disc and starting their collections all over again, albeit at a slower pace due to the troubled economy. Others have gone back to renting, since renting a movie, thanks to Netflix and Redbox, has never been cheaper or easier. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no packaged media business! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no true high-definition picture, no movie theater sound, no extras, no special features, no commentaries! We should have no enjoyment, except that which we glean from our computers. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Packaged media dying? Not hardly, Virginia. To the contrary, it lives and will likely live on and on and on. It will continue to make glad the heart of childhood, and be the preferred way of bringing entertainment into the home — and keeping it in our homes, to cherish and enjoy over and over again — for a long, long time.

(Apologies to Frank P. Church and the New York Sun.)
Post Reply

Return to “DVD Discussions”