Latest news with #physicalmedia
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Movie Buffs, Take Note — It's the Last Week to Save Up to 50% on the Criterion Collection
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Rolling Stone may receive an affiliate commission. Between price hikes and the constant flow of movies and TV shows on and off various streaming services, it's no surprise that, while the overall trendline points down, there's a devout community of collectors committed to movies on physical media. Nowhere is that more evident than the fanbase around the Criterion Collection, which restores and reissues acclaimed classics and arthouse films. More from Rolling Stone The Best Soundcore Earbuds of 2025 See Your Legends While You Can: From Guns 'N Roses to The Who, These Legacy Acts Are Hitting the Road for (Maybe) the Last Time Sling TV Review: A Highly Flexible (Yet Affordable) Way to Free Yourself from Cable for Good And while their titles tend to command a premium, Barnes & Noble is currently running a deal that offers 50% off dozens of Criterion titles, including recent releases and sought-after classics. The month-long sale kicked off last month and runs through July 27, meaning it's the last week for cinephiles to save. Barnes & Noble typically runs deals on Criterion Collection Blu-rays and DVDs twice a year, with the next sale slated for the holiday season. Even beyond the community of collectors, the Criterion Collection has continued to generate buzz among movie buffs. Take its Closet Picks series, which features actors pulling films from the shelves and discussing their favorites. To celebrate its 40th anniversary, Criterion took the closet (which is actually in a van) on the road for fans to have their own Criterion Closet experience, causing massive crowds to line up. And while not everyone got a chance to peek inside the closet, Barnes & Noble's sale is a very worthwhile consolation prize. These are our closet picks, or you can browse the entire sale here. Prices shown are for Blu-ray discs, though many of these films are available in 4K or DVD as well. Parasite $19.99 $39.99 50% off Buy Now at B&N No Country for Old Men $19.99 $39.99 50% off Buy Now at B&N Ikiru $19.99 $39.99 50% off Buy Now at B&N The Before Trilogy $49.99 $99.99 50% off Buy Now at B&N Anora $19.99 $39.99 50% off Buy Now at B&N Barry Lyndon $19.99 $39.99 50% off Buy Now at B&N Chungking Express $19.99 $39.99 50% off Buy Now at B&N Brazil $24.99 $49.99 50% off Buy Now at B&N Blue Velvet $19.99 $39.99 50% off Buy Now at B&N La Haine $19.99 $39.99 50% off Buy Now at B&N Paris, Texas $19.99 $39.99 50% off Buy Now at B&N Sorcerer $19.99 $39.99 50% off Buy Now at B&N Carnal Knowledge $19.99 $39.99 50% off Buy Now at B&N Mulholland Dr. $19.99 $39.99 50% off Buy Now at B&N The Wes Anderson Collection $349.99 $499.99 30% off Buy Now at B&N Godzilla: The Showa-Era Films $112.49 $224.99 50% off Buy Now at B&N Best of Rolling Stone The Best Audiophile Turntables for Your Home Audio System
Geek Vibes Nation
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Vibes Nation
No Streaming Required: Physical Media Spotlight For The Week Of July 15th
We at GVN aim to keep you informed of the newest and best in the world of physical media. Over on our YouTube Channel, you can find us talking about everything you need to know on No Streaming Required, our weekly guide to all the latest 4K UHD, Blu-Ray, and DVD releases. For the week of July 15th, we have some incredible releases making their way to our shelves. Read on to get a brief overview of what you should have on your wishlist, then be sure to dive into the full rundown in the video below. This week, we spotlight the 4K UHD Blu-Ray debut of the action-comedy Novocaine from Paramount. The film starring Jack Quaid comes with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos audio along with a trio of featurettes. Also debuting on 4K UHD Blu-Ray are Batman Ninja and Batman Ninja vs. Yakuza League from Warner Bros. Both are presented in Dolby Vision with Japanese and English audio options, plus a smattering of supplemental features. The fine folks at The Criterion Collection have a pair of wonderful new releases this month. First, we have the Oscar-nominated drama You Can Count On Me starring Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo hitting 4K UHD Blu-Ray from a new 4K scan of the 35mm Interpositive in Dolby Vision supervised by director Kenneth Lonergan. The release comes with a commentary track, new interviews, and more. We also have a 4K UHD Blu-Ray upgrade of Fritz Lang's iconic film noir The Big Heat from a 4K restoration of the 35mm Original Camera Negative and a Fine Grain Master Positive in Dolby Vision with a new commentary track, a visual essay, interviews, and more. The folks at Shout! Studios have rescued another indie gem with the Blu-Ray debut of the cult comedy Strangers with Candy newly restored in 4K from the 35mm Interpositive. This release includes a commentary track, deleted scenes, and more. The comedy gets a bit darker with the incredible, award-winning A Different Man starring Sebastian Stan on Blu-Ray from A24. The release includes a Dolby Atmos audio track, a commentary track, deleted scenes, featurettes, and more. The heroes at Arrow Video continue to deliver quality work with an exciting slate of titles this month. Action fans can celebrate the 4K UHD Blu-Ray upgrade of Cobra starring Sylvester Stallone, derived from a 4K restoration of the 35mm Original Camera Negative in Dolby Vision with three commentary tracks, an extended TV version of the feature in standard definition, a visual essay, interviews, and more. This is not the only 4K UHD upgrade as the Larry Cohen cult horror favorite The Stuff gets a 4K restoration of the 35mm Original Camera Negative in Dolby Vision with commentary tracks, documentaries, interviews, and more. Perhaps most importantly, there is a remastered Pre-Release cut of the film included with over 30 minutes of never-before-seen footage. Finally, the label has the thrilling Nightwatch Collection double feature on Blu-Ray starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. This release includes a commentary track, visual aids, interviews, and more. The thrills continue over at Shudder and their release of Ash from director Flying Lotus on Blu-Ray. The release is loaded with interviews, featurettes, a making-of documentary, and more. Fans of Japanese cinema can look to 88 Films and their release of Teruo Ishii's motorcycle exploitation drama Detonation! Violent Riders on Blu-Ray which includes a commentary track, a video essay, and more. This is only a taste of what you can discover on No Streaming Required this week, so be sure to check out the full video below. What releases are you planning on picking up? Let us know over on Twitter. Before we let you go, we have officially launched our merch store! Check out all of our amazing apparel when you click here and type in GVN15 at checkout for a 15% discount! Make sure to check out our podcasts each week including Geek Vibes Live , Top 10 with Tia , Wrestling Geeks Alliance and more! For major deals and money off on Amazon , make sure to use our affiliate link !
Daily Mail
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Gen Z covet DVDs and CDs with nearly three-quarters purchasing physical media in the past year
Sales of physical media are booming, sparked by those aged 13 to 28. In an era of gaming, film, music and TV via the internet, Britons are now hankering after owning tangible goods. Some 54 per cent have bought a physical media item in the past year – spending an average £273.80, a Gumtree poll has found. DVDs and CDs were most popular, with a quarter of buyers snapping these up. This was followed by computer games (22 per cent) and vinyl records (14 per cent). The retro revival is being led by Gen Z – those aged 13 to 28 – with nearly three-quarters purchasing at least one physical media item in the past year. Gumtree says 66 per cent of those aged 29 to 44, 52 per cent of 45 to 60-year-olds and 35 per cent of 60 to 79-year-olds have also bought some, the survey of 2,000 people found. A surge in vintage formats has also led to a rise of old tech being bought to use them. Some 15 per cent of Gen Z have purchased a CD player and a similar number have obtained a record player. The revival has been sparked by the idea of being able to own, feel and display such items, with 30 per cent citing this, with nostalgic reasons coming not far behind. One in five bought physical media because of their obsession with the 1990s and love of collecting items from that era. Kim Faura, from Gumtree, says: 'The 1990s revival is more than a fashion moment – it's changing how Britons consume media. 'The desire for the tangible and nostalgic is pulling people back to physical formats, from CDs to Walkmans.'
New York Times
13-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
When Streaming Won't Cut It and You Need the DVD
Last month, a young man walked into Night Owl, a store in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn that sells Blu-rays, DVDs and even a few video cassettes of movies and television shows, and browsed for several minutes. Eventually he plucked a case from a shelf: A handsome Criterion Collection release of 'The Royal Tenenbaums,' the first Wes Anderson movie he had ever seen. 'I had a ton of DVDs growing up,' Noah Snyder, 27, said. But reading about the way contemporary conglomerates treat films and television programs on their streaming services had prodded him to acquire physical media again. Snyder cited the actress Cristin Milioti's recent comments about 'Made for Love,' her show that was not only canceled, but removed altogether from the HBO Max streaming platform. 'The stuff the CEOs do, they're bad decisions,' Snyder said. 'I don't want something I love to be taken away like that.' In the last decade or two, the story of physical copies of movies and television has been overwhelmingly one of decline. Blockbuster is essentially gone, streaming is ascendant, Netflix no longer sends DVDs through the mail, and Best Buy no longer stocks them in its stores. Many manufacturers have ceased making disc players. Retail sales of new physical products in home entertainment fell below $1 billion last year, according to the Digital Entertainment Group, an industry association. Yet amid the streaming deluge, there are signs — small, tenuous and anecdotal, but real — of a rebellion. Alex Holtz, a media and entertainment analyst at International Data Corporation, compared Blu-rays to vinyl albums. Holtz, an audiophile, gladly streams new music while on walks, but he buys records he loves. 'We're in a back-to-the-future moment,' he said. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Japan Times
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Japan Times
‘Our ultimate goal is to save every single Japanese video game'
Don't let the rows of boxes on store shelves deceive you — video games are now a digital commodity. In 2024, global sales for video games comprised 95.4% digital downloads, good for $175.8 billion in revenue versus just $8.5 billion for physical releases. For consoles, like Sony's PlayStation 5 and Nintendo's Switch 2, CDs and game cartridges fared a bit better at about 16% of total sales, but on PC, just 1% of all games purchased last year were physical media. Increasingly, those products in the stores may not even contain the game itself. In May, Doom: The Dark Ages, the latest entry in the popular shooter series, shipped with only a fraction of the game's full data on physical discs, with players needing to download 85 gigabytes of data when first running it. And in December, the disc for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle included just 20 out of a hefty 120GB. With the release of the Switch 2, Nintendo has thrown its weight behind digital-first distribution: The console's ' Game-Key Cards ' merely include digital access codes to download full titles. And subscription services like Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus are pushing players toward models akin to Netflix or Spotify, with catalogs of games available for a monthly fee, skirting ownership altogether. Given that Steam (the largest PC digital games storefront) announced last year that consumers only acquire a license instead of outright purchasing ownership rights to games via its marketplace, games as a whole are leaving behind a past built on the legacy of physical media. The Games Preservation Society largely deals with archiving and digitizing floppy disks and casettes issued for Japan's early personal computers of the 1980s and '90s. | GAME PRESERVATION SOCIETY This relentless march toward digitalization is raising concerns about an often neglected problem: game preservation. Damian Rogers, 42, is international relations lead at the Game Preservation Society (GPS), a registered nonprofit working to save the data and materials behind Japan's retro games for future generations of researchers and players. 'We believe video games are more than just toys,' says Rogers. 'They are just as culturally relevant as movies, books and works of art. We want to preserve them not just as an aspect of Japanese culture but of human culture.' The organization is headquartered in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward and has several branches across the country. Though its roots stretch back to the early 2000s, when individual collectors in Japan began coordinating preservation efforts, GPS became an NPO in 2011. After 15-plus years, its task grows more monumental with each passing day. 'Our ultimate goal is to find, archive and save every single Japanese video game,' Rogers says. 'Such a massive undertaking must be approached logically, so we focus first on the games that are most at risk of completely disappearing from the world.' Damian Rogers, international relations lead at the Game Preservation Society, says video games are just as "culturally relevant as movies, books and works of art." | COURTESY OF DAMIAN ROGERS These are the games on floppy disks from the late 1970s and into the '90s, the vast majority of which were never released outside of Japan. They provide insight into the cultural and entertainment landscape at the time, including 1985's Karuizawa Yukai Annai (The Karuizawa Kidnapping Files), a text-based mystery game with both erotic elements and gameplay mechanics that would inspire later RPG classics, and a mint-condition floppy disk of 1982's Galactic Wars, the very first title released by iconic developer Nihon Falcom. GPS' current archival work focuses on digital migration from this fragile media to modern backups, along with scans of the materials included with the games, all while preserving the original media in a climate-controlled location. 'Our baseline for such backups is that if the last copy of a certain game were to disappear from the world entirely, we have the data and materials to perfectly re-create it,' Rogers says. All work is done with museum-grade tools and protocols, which is an expensive undertaking. Getting the necessary funding has always been a challenge for the organization, but this year it came close to game over. Back in spring, it became clear that the project would be out of cash by the end of summer. Rogers says this situation stemmed from a gap in communication with those outside Japan. The nature of retro games being tied to archaic technology means a failure to digitize titles leaves them at the mercy of the extinction of their necessary media. | GAME PRESERVATION SOCIETY To Joseph Redon, head of the Game Preservation Society, "preservation is not something that is ever done." | GAME PRESERVATION SOCIETY 'Our Japanese supporters are happy with occasional updates on the work we do via newsletter. But on the international stage, services like Patreon have become the norm, where people can directly support projects while receiving unique benefits in return. So our traditional system of joining as a member and paying annual dues seems antiquated outside Japan, which makes it difficult to obtain new supporters.' He also blames a dearth of English-speaking staff for the lack of activity on the organization's social media channels, which in turn gives the impression that GPS is 'dead.' To counter this, GPS President Joseph Redon sat for an interview — a 'sort of Hail Mary' — with the retro gaming website Time Extension. 'Preservation is not something that is ever done — it is a never-ending process,' Redon, 50, tells The Japan Times of the equally eternal struggle for funding. 'Some steps are done only once, such as acquisition of the item and migration to a digital backup, but after that comes long-term conservation and eventually public access in the form of exhibitions and as a library.' The result of a single outlet's coverage? GPS' ledgers were sent immediately back in the black. To Joseph Redon, head of the Game Preservation Society, "preservation is not something that is ever done." | GAME PRESERVATION SOCIETY 'The response was staggering,' says Rogers. 'We have enough new memberships to continue through the next year and are still responding to messages offering assistance. We set up an anonymous donation page for those who wish to donate without having to join as a member, which was also quite successful.' GPS is now working to expand its online and international presence. Rogers points out that while its core mission is to preserve games, the group also wants to increase awareness about Japanese gaming culture and history — especially those games and creators who are not well-known overseas. As an example, he points to GPS-produced documentaries on lesser-known Japanese developers Yuichi Toyama (a pioneer of real-time strategy games) and Rika Suzuki (one of Japan's first mystery game devs), both available on the organization's YouTube channel . 'I think this will be the biggest shift for the organization going forward — a move towards a larger staff focused on more content creation to captivate and educate the public about Japanese gaming history and why preservation is so important,' he says. That doesn't mean GPS will slow down its archival work. Instead, it will continue to focus on the games and data that are most at risk: those for Japanese PCs. 'We have around 25,000 games on floppy disks and cassettes in our Tokyo archive, which is quite the backlog to work through. We continue to research new ways of data migration, such as the best way to preserve cassette tape-based data and data from optical media such as LaserDiscs,' says Rogers. Much of the work at the Games Preservation Society is concerned with developing and perfecting technologies to turn obsolete technologies into works that can be enjoyed in perpetuity. | GAME PRESERVATION SOCIETY This means any expansion into more modern platforms is unlikely in the short term. When asked about the current situation of the decline of physical media in games, digital ownership and preservation, Rogers remains neutral, explaining that he doesn't personally play modern games, with 2000's PlayStation 2 being the newest console he owns. But how about GPS as a whole? 'The organization does not have an official stance on the topic, though I'm sure all members would agree that physical media is important for preservation. The situation with modern games is outside our current scope as we work to preserve games that are most at risk of being lost — those from 30 or 40 years ago that aren't being remastered and re-released, whose rights holder status is foggy or are stored on fragile magnetic media .' However, GPS has faced issues with digital-only games. In 2021, mobile phone operator NTT Docomo shut down its i-mode store, ending distribution of hundreds of games for the gara-kei feature phones of the 2000s. The vast majority of these games weren't released on any other hardware, including titles from popular series like Sonic the Hedgehog and Final Fantasy. 'GPS made a last-ditch effort to download as many of these games as we could in the last days of the service,' Rogers explains, 'but even at that point, i-mode was well past its prime and many storefronts had long since closed. Nowadays, some people hunt down these old phones and hope to find classic games still stored within, but it's a gamble.' Rogers sees it as an instructive example of an ever-digitalizing world — and one that enthusiasts of modern games shouldn't soon forget. 'This is the issue we will be facing in the future as there are more and more digital-only releases: When the service is gone, so are the games.'
