I understand if they stopped printing new blu rays / DVDs, but it’s outrageous and disappointing I can’t just buy the digital edition.
Is there an actual reason companies do this? Do they hate money or what?
It takes more than zero dollars to prepare media for a new format, like streaming.
Many old series did not have contracts that covered streaming, since it didn’t really exist at the time.
Many old series had music licensed for a specific format, and they would need to renegotiate those contracts for the new medium.
That is why some series have made it to streaming but with replacement music or are only available to buy but not be included in netflix or hulu as part of a subscription. Others haven’t made it because the company either thinks they won’t make their money back or they are working on something that they expect will make more money first.
No I’m not saying streaming but buying it
The making money back, contracts, and music applies to sales too.
The reason they don’t have it for sale is because they like money.
That’s why Netflix’s Evangelion don’t have “fly me to the moon”
Disney used to do that a lot, ‘get it now before it goes back into the vault’ in some effort to make it special/get-it-while-you-can.
Having everything available all the time would leave them with little to put on a pedestal as a coming soon limited time thing. Just one person’s theory though.
Because they make more money on licensing than selling the digital copies. Companies that offer a purchase option, like Amazon, usually only sell you the right to access the media through their platform and offer no way to take it out.
Now as time has shown us they can take that away as well as you don’t actually own the digital content you purchased. For example Sony pulled titles that people bought and thought they owned from their store and offered no way to download the content.
It’s just more bullshit and corporate greed. Part of why companies aren’t selling physical media anymore is because if you can’t own something they can keep charging you for access to that thing and infinitely double dip.
I mean, can you give an example or two?
There’s probably not a single answer for everything. Depending on what you consider “old” there’s a chance no one saved a copy.
It might be that contracts were better back then so the studio wouldn’t make much releasing it.
Chuck, for example. It’s available in the US afaik but where I live, it’s available only in streaming on prime video. The blu rays aren’t available at all either
So it’s a region locking thing.
That sucks for everyone. I remember back in the day when vpns got new regions, and there was so much more available.
But physical media needs to be physically produced. It’s available in DVD and I think it came before Blu-ray even so you’re kind of asking a lot here
does anybody even sell digital movies that you can download anymore? I thought they were all streaming sites now that you lose access to your content when they lose the license
You’re going to need to be more specific. What movie are you looking for and on what platform?
It’s not profitable or it’s risky.
It costs money to produce, archive and distribute older or more obscure media in the current sales infrastructure, and you’d have to get the rights from whoever owns the rights, so it’s just a big hassle that costs them too much money that they don’t know they’re going to make back.
Or they do know that they’ll definitely not make it back.
Whereas they know if they sell Frozen five they’re going to make money on it.
Some are on Youtube, if its a series try putting in the season and
complete, or if its a playlist, get an app like Airy that can download complete playlists
