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Answerman - Why Don't More Anime Discs Come With Digital Downloads?

Something as easy as DRM-free download-to-own movies at maximum quality is just going to invite people everywhere to make copies and give them to everyone they know. It would be the absolute easiest set of conditions to make illegal copies of a movie or TV show, and so the largest amount of people will do it. It'd be the equivalent of a bank or jewelry store that not only has no security, but leaves every door open all night long, including the front doors. It practically invites thieves in (though there may be some who would hesitate because of how suspiciously open the place is). No matter how well-protected the place is, there will be a burglar capable of getting in, but having some amount of security, or even the threat thereof, will deter potential burglars from trying.

Now, personally, I'm sick of getting DVDs. I just want the Blu-ray, and as nice as Funimation's LE editions with the boxes are, you generally onl need the box because they put both the DVDs and Blu-rays in there rather than just the Blu-rays. Otherwise, they'd just have the one case with two discs in it (at least for the single cour shows). So, while I like the box, it means that the shows are eating up more shelf space just because they insist on bundling the DVDs with the Blu-rays.

So, while I can understand why they do it, I'm also quite sick of it. I just want everything to be on Blu-ray and for DVDs to become as obsolete as VHS. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like that's going to happen any time soon, because too many folks simply don't care about video quality.

You could theoretically do SD-BD, like Discotek did with Samurai Pizza Cats. Of course, consumers have this idea that bluray must equal high definition. You also see the same type of complaints whenever a TV show or special that was shot on videotape comes out on DVD. There is only so much you can do to make video look good. If the masters are garbage, then you are often out of luck.

I think there are two very simple reasons why combo-packs are still very much a thing. First and foremost is the simple fact that there are literally hundreds of millions of perfectly-functional DVD players out there, the majority of which aren't ever going to be replaced for Blu-ray players. You have everything from built-in players on TVs to older laptops (and even a lot of newer ones) to those little portable DVD players to older gaming consoles to built-in car players to...well, you get the idea. Even in our house, the family has a Blu-ray player for the main TV, and I have a BD-RW drive in the desktop I custom-built (honestly optical drives as a whole are getting to be a bit of a rarity among the enthusiast crowd), but beyond those we have at least 7 or 8 functional devices I can name off the top of my head that play DVDs. A BD-only release is locked out from playing on that myriad of devices, and while you're going to get the dedicated fans buying it, you're potentially cutting off a huge portion of your audience. Plus, as other people noted, if you have both in one package, you might just persuade a few more people to upgrade to BD players. Just about the only big Hollywood releases I can think of that are BD-only are either cheap re-releases that wind up in the $5 or under bin at stores, or else special editions like my big Lord of the Rings extended-edition set.

The second reason is that I seem to remember Justin mentioning that, these days, pressing DVDs costs just pennies per unit if you're doing it in any sort of large quantity. If you're already putting out an SKU for a movie or series, and it's that cheap to toss in an extra DVD copy, why not go ahead and do it? Hell, it might actually save distributors money over having to put an entirely separate DVD-only SKU. They all get shoved into a standard-sized case anyway, so it's not like you're losing any additional shelf space either.

It's funny you should say that, because on the gaming side of things, GOG.com has been managed to create a successful business model out of selling completely DRM-free versions of games over the past several years. I'm sure there was a lot of resistance by publishers at first, but their success speaks for itself, and over time they've managed to even get the likes of EA and Activision to release back-catalog titles onto their service, along with any number of new releases by indie developers. Shockingly enough, customers tend to appreciate it when they're not treated like potential criminals, and if even the most DRM-saturated titles out there get cracked versions put up on torrent sites within a day of release, what good does punishing the people who legitimately buy games actually do?

I've heard about GOG having DRM-free stuff, but I didn't know it was to that extent. I always figured computer gaming would be the medium that's most vulnerable to piracy, and maybe the games on GOG do get pirated a lot. If these companies can turn a profit even like that, then that's quite interesting, and a result I would not have expected.

Didn't the music industry almost collapse because of music piracy, and it surviving only because of a la carte music purchases like iTunes?

Even then, songs rarely reach the sales numbers they were when CDs were the dominant means of listening to music.

I don't think that there's any question that piracy has both helped and harmed the music industry, but I don't know how well it has ultimately balanced. And a lot of the problems that the music industry has had was because consumers didn't want to function the way that the music industry wanted them to. However, it's my understanding that music industry is actually doing very well. They don't sell as many CDs, but they make their money in other ways (concerts in particular are huge money makers), and it's not like digital music sales are doing poorly - though with the a la carte model, they likely do get less per song in general, because folks don't buy the songs that they don't want. And the vast majority of folks who would have pirated music previously without paying now use services like pandora or spotify which do result in at least some money going to the folks who make the music as opposed to the nothing that they would have gotten before. The industry has shifted, and it may need to shift more (e.g. artists really don't get much via spotify), but it's still doing well.

By no means do I promote piracy. I definitely think that consumers should be paying the creators of the stuff they consume. But it's also the case that piracy tends to often help instead of harm, and a lot of the problems are caused by businesses that refuse to adjust their business models to changes in technology. So, it's a very complicated issue, and the folks making the content generally do better by adjusting how they function in order to take advantage of how their consumers function rather than constantly trying to prevent them from infringing on their copyrights and going after them when the do.