Doom-and-gloom naysayers have been acting up again recently with predictions about the impending death of Blu-ray and physical media in favor of a future where all home video distribution will be handled by digital streaming. The big developments that happened at Netflix at the end of last week ought to put a damper on some of that enthusiasm.
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On Friday, Sony Pictures pulled its movies from the the StarzPlay VoD service that supplies Netflix Instant with recent releases. This means that high-demand titles like ‘The Social Network’ and ‘Battle: Los Angeles’ can no longer be streamed. A “temporary contract dispute”<\/em> was cited as the cause of the decision. No doubt, Netflix hopes to resolve the dispute and put those Sony movies back on the service eventually.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, this should serve as a reminder of one of the biggest shortcomings of streaming distribution. Quite simply, the content can disappear at any moment for reasons that might seem arbitrary or capricious to users who simply want to watch the movies. In a blink and with no warning at all, a major Hollywood studio’s entire catalog vanished from the largest streaming provider in the country. And this is hardly an anomaly. Every week here in The Bonus View<\/em>, our “Netflix Stream” updates list off interesting titles about to be dumped by the service for reasons that typically aren’t even explained at all. <\/p>\n Coupled with the growing problem of bandwidth caps being forced by internet providers across the country, as well as the video and audio quality issues already inherent to even “HD” streaming content, it sure seems to me that there are plenty of good reasons to keep a Blu-ray player and collection of discs in active use. <\/p>\n