Last updated on March 3rd, 2026
Last week, the blog The Digital Bits reported that Best Buy will no longer sell DVDs and Blu-ray discs starting in early 2024. This news was later confirmed by Variety, The Verge, and other major entertainment and tech sites.
Needless to say, physical media fans are less than thrilled by this, going by the number of YouTube vloggers and podcasts discussing this news. One major reason is that this reduces the number of outlets for buying DVDs/Blu-rays. Without Best Buy, the only remaining major United States retailers for DVDs/Blu-rays are Walmart, Target, and Amazon. Walmart’s apparently doubling down on physical media, from a recent agreement with a distributor (per Variety).
In my case, I haven’t bought a DVD from Best Buy in quite awhile; my DVD and Blu-ray disc buying has mainly been from Target and Amazon. Still, in my October 2021 post about the future of DVDs and Blu-rays, something I wrote seems to have partially come true:
Otherwise, the future for home video seems to be streaming services and even digital purchases. My guess is by the end of the decade (if not sooner), Best Buy and Target will either stop carrying DVDs/Blu-rays altogether or reduce carrying them to only specific films.
Physical media is still waning in popularity?
While physical media has plenty of fans, DVDs and Blu-rays are still waning in popularity. 2022 US home video sales showed almost 83% of revenue came from streaming subscriptions (versus over 4% from physical media sales). There’s also Disney recently discontinuing DVD sales in Australia and New Zealand (despite releasing a series of “Disney 100” DVDs/Blu-rays for their 100th anniversary).
Convenience seems to be winning over any of physical media’s advantages, which might leave DVDs and Blu-rays’ future for various niche purposes. I suspect it also helps that paying $5 or $10 a month for a large catalog of TV shows and movies might be more affordable for some than, say, $20 or $30 for a single season of a TV show on DVD or Blu-ray.
Personally, I’ve seen this shift to streaming over DVDs with my family. Last I checked, they aren’t interested in receiving any more DVDs or Blu-rays as Christmas or birthday gifts. The younger family members definitely are more into streaming Disney+ or Netflix.
“Best Buy” by JeepersMedia is licensed under CC BY 2.0. (Flickr / cropped from original)
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We are a non-streaming household that prefers borrowing DVDs from the library or buying them used ($2-4 is usually what we pay, sometimes for a boxed set of a full season of a television series). We do not want to stream but if we want to watch movies and series in the future, it looks like we will either pay for a service we don’t want or just stop worrying about keeping up with the latest movies and series.
Oh, well, that leaves us having to spend the rest of our lives watching the thousands and thousands of wonderful movies and television series of the past. Life’s tough that way …