Best Buy is officially getting out of the DVD game
Starting in 2024, Best Buy will no longer sell DVD or Blu-ray discs
It’s getting harder and harder to get your hands on actual, physical copies of film and television. The advent of streaming pushed video stores and rental companies out of business; Blockbuster is gone, and just last month Netflix shuttered the DVD service that put the company on the map. Big box stores like Target and Walmart (in addition to major online retailers like Amazon) are among the final places to purchase physical media. But as of next year, there’ll be one less place to cop a DVD, because Best Buy will no longer be selling them.
Best Buy confirmed to The A.V. Club that it would no longer sell DVDs, Blu-rays, and discs. “To state the obvious, the way we watch movies and TV shows is much different today than it was decades ago,” a spokesperson for the company said in a statement. “Making this change gives us more space and opportunity to bring customers new and innovative tech for them to explore, discover and enjoy.”
Disc sales will continue in stores and online through the holiday season. (Video games, by the way, are exempt from this physical media exodus.) Starting in 2024, you’ll have to turn to the aforementioned big box stores for actual discs, or find one of the 29,000 Redbox DVD rental kiosks that remain in operation throughout the United States (per Variety).
According to Media Play News, Walmart is actually the largest retail seller of DVDs and Blu-ray Discs, “with an estimated market share in excess of 45%.” Per the outlet, even Walmart has cut “floor space allocated to discs by about 20%,” but in August the company was reportedly in talks with Studio Distribution Services (SDS) to help “manage parts of its physical media business.” (SDS is a joint venture of NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery that provides “end to end packaged media distribution services including Sales, Trade and Retail Marketing, Finance and Supply Chain services,” per its website.)
In other words, DVDs aren’t dead just yet, but the Best Buy news is another sign of the format facing extinction. Film and television fans may want to grab copies of their faves while they can, because as we’ve seen over the last few years, a lot of media is disappearing from the streaming landscape without a trace.