I’m sure that just about everyone is aware that later this month, Disney will launch a streaming service called Disney+. This has the potential to change the way people watch films at home, which got me thinking about how we did that in the past, and how did we get here?
To begin with it was very simple, people had to watch films on mostly small TV screens. Some were shown on BBC channels which meant no adverts, and then along came channels like, 4, Five, and countless others that did show a varied amount of films, but you had to endure an advert break every fifteen minutes or so and then it would resume five minutes later. One interesting observation I unintentionally made once was that they always seemed to keep the more family-orientated content for the weekend, and there would only ever seem to be exceptions during holidays of some kind. And the likes of TCM, Film Four, and the Sony and Sky Movies channels have had a hand in this So we went from, say, a season of films dedicated to beloved directors (Hitchcock, Welles, Chabrol, Ford etc) in the 80s on BBC Two or Channel 4, to having many stations to watch films on. You just might have to wait a long time for that one film you’re specifically looking for (I speak from experience), and it still carries on today in a world that’s very different from the one it started in.
But in 1976, another method came along, a South Korean film called the Young Teacher, on a format that the world would call the VHS tape. They were extremely expensive to begin with and of questionable picture quality, but they had their pros as well. For the first time audiences could choose what they wanted to see when they wanted. You could also play, pause, rewind and fast forward them to your heart’s content. You could use a blank tape to record your favourite show if you were going to be out when it was broadcast. And when broken down, doesn’t that idea of recording something and then watching it later feel a lot like an early attempt at what TiVo and Sky+ would eventually do? When they got hugely popular, chain stores dedicated to letting you browse, rent tapes and eventually DVDs and video games started showing up in many countries around the world. The most famous was probably Blockbuster Video, which at a young age I may or may not have visited. But as I did have some tapes of my own for a while, and I saw a lot of them being used in different places in my younger years, I feel I have a clear idea of how they worked. But unfortunately, they didn’t survive as long as films on tv and went through a decline that saw them vanish from the shelves. Now there is only one Blockbuster store in the whole world- in Bend, Oregon, of all places. The tapes enjoy a reduced status as objects of nostalgic value. I also can’t help but wonder how we are going to explain them to future generations that never had the VHS experience. I’m going to just say “it was a different time” and leave it at that.
For a while a new format was at war with VHS and emerged as the eventual winner. This was Digital Versatile Discs or simply DVDs. The first commercially released DVD was in 1997, and though it’s up for debate what come out on DVD first, the most frequent answer appears to be Twister. I know that my saying I have great admiration for the DVD is not going to surprise anyone as I, along with many other people of my generation, grew up using them. I do also think that there were good reasons why they became so popular. They had vastly better picture quality than VHS tapes, took up far less space on the shelf and were more robust. Many DVDs use their increased capacity to give us a selection of special features to check out after the film is finished. One similarity they have with the old tapes is that you often have to sit through a few trailers – or as with tapes, you can fast forward to get to the main menu. And that was another welcome change, the menu usually gives several things to choose from: as well as simply playing the movie there are often options for different languages and subtitles. Also scene selection which can allow you to find your favourite scene of a film instantly, another upside. As the years went on, things like game consoles and portable DVD players enabled people to take their films with them anywhere they wanted.
But DVDs, great as they are, had to contend with a few big new ideas the companies tried that now feel like gimmicks. For instance, Sony tried to replicate the portable DVD idea by having a significant number of discs released on a format called Universal Media Disc or (UMD), playable on their PSP consoles. It has been discontinued. Another is the HD DVD which is now regarded as obsolete and only lasted two years as it appeared to be the loser in a so-called format war with DVD’s successor, the Blu Ray Disc. Blu Ray promised both better picture and sound than ever before. It was truly believed to be the future, just look at how many Blu-ray trailers are at the start of films from the mid-2000s. But their downside is that they are usually quite pricey when compared to DVDS and I have to say that after watching the likes of The Lego Movie and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone on Blu-Ray, I don’t believe I noticed anything very remarkable; so I dropped them and went back to the standard format that I know and love.
In 1997 a new kind of DVD provider came on the scene, it was dedicated to letting people order films over the internet and deliver them to your doorstep, they were flexible on flat-fee rates, and they had no late fees, which was something Blockbuster held onto dearly. I’m talking of course about Netflix. They had a slow start but peaked when the company saw how well people responded to the streaming videos of Youtube. It was decided that streaming would be their goal, and it worked. Netflix has an ever-growing library of films and tv shows, plus their own original content. It’s easily viewable across any number of devices such as computers, smartphones, game consoles, even on exercise equipment in gyms, and it’s all available at the press of a button. While it’s easy to sing the praises of Netflix there are one or two downsides that might make you want to consider still using DVDs. Netflix is reliant on a strong internet connection so if something happens to the internet, your movie could suddenly black out. Also, the content depends on what country you’re in, for instance the content on UK Netflix isn’t the same as in the US, in fact the latter has a lot more. I’ve seen the difference for myself and it’s quite surprising. I have used Netflix in the past and while I don’t love it because of the potential problems, I do see where it can be quite useful and I will continue to use it when I feel the need and still make time for DVDs. When it comes to arguments like this, I very often see myself Stuck in The Middle -sorry, I felt I had to do that.
Now we have Disney+ and with everything that it promises people, it will be interesting to see how it turns out. Will it rise as a long-awaited worthy competitor to Netflix, or will it perhaps go the way of HULU and become a service that does everything the superior service does but fail to reach the same heights? I can see this as another format war, but like all chapters of history that are yet to unfold, all anyone can do is wait and see.
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