According to the accountants’ ledgers, DVDs are dying. Sales of those shiny discs, along with their shinier sibling the Blu-ray, amounted to £894 million last year, which is almost a fifth lower than in 2015 and less than half of what was achieved a decade ago. And last week we finally said goodbye to the postal DVD service Lovefilm, too. The explanation for this decline is the explanation for many modern declines: digital is taking over. Nowadays, downloads and streaming services make more money than the old physical formats.
But accountants don’t know everything. From a different perspective, through the bloodshot eyes of a cinephile, DVDs are thriving — and they’re doing better in Britain than in most other countries. This success is measured in quality rather than quantity. A smallish band of homegrown distributors is working to make more films available in ever more wondrous editions.
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