Do you remember how DVDs used to be?

Do you remember watching films on Digital Versatile Discs (DVD) back in the early 2000s?

Trailers, Anti-Piracy adverts and interactive menus are all now things of the past.

DVDs have been on the decline. Blu-Ray and Ultra HD Blue-Ray (ironically advertised on DVDs) discs were supposed to rapidly surpass DVDs within just a few years of DVDs peak, that never happened. Blue-Ray was never as affordable as DVDs, usually coming in at approximately £5 more, at an estimate, and players being significantly more expensive. Soon, DVD players were Blue-Ray compatible, and it looked like people would be divided into DVD families and Blue-Ray families. But this never happened. But DVDs are a long way off from disappearing.

This font was allegedly not licensed as it was stated.

But to me, the old DVDs boast a nostalgia that isn't replicated anymore. Those classic soundtracks to the Anti-Piracy ad "You wouldn't steal a car", the "Coming Soon" screen before the traliers and, of course, having trailers to films the distribution company and production company had coming out. A lot of it, you couldn't skip. But when you could, it was a joy!

It was recently suggested that there was a license issue with the music and font used in the Anti-Piracy ad, which just makes it all the more entertaining to me!

Donkey got very annoying in this menu!

Now let's move on to those classic, interactive menus. Do you remember the Shrek 2 (2004) menu? Donkey would periodically speak, asking you to make a choice and it got a little more annoyed at you the longer you left it? Or having hours of additional material to go through that told you so much more about the films? You don't get that as much now. "Collectors Editions" give the really good stuff for significantly more money.

QUICK! Where's the remote? Main Menu! MAIN MENU!!!

And then who can forget "Disney Fast Play"? The idea was so that the film would start and then one or two additional features would play afterwards. This was supposed to skip the menu, ads and trailers. Except... it didn't. It skipped the menu, proceeded to play some trailers and warnings before the film, and it had to be pre-programmed into to disc as to what additional material was "randomly" played. It was worth a shot, and still makes me smile when a Disney DVD offers my wife and I that option. Yes, we still watch Disney on DVD, even though we have Disney+!

Streaming platforms the started coming in. Initially through illegal downloads and dubious sites, videos online became easily accessible. YouTube in 2005, for people to upload homemade videos and clips, saw the start of the rise of streaming and video blogging (vlogging - I hate that word!). A few years later, Netflix would appear and rapidly gather popularity with it's rights to show feature films.

Streaming platforms exploded just in time for the pandemic.

Now we have Now TV, Amazon Prime Video, Paramount+, Disney+, Netflix and Apple TV (to name some of the biggest), and the pandemic in 2020 only helped to boost their popularity and growth. Amazon and Netflix both now boast their own studios, while various deals has only caused them to grow further - such as Hulu being incorporated into Disney+.

The streaming platforms are good. They can have a wider selection of films and shows to watch, but unless it is like Disney+ and boasts a large catalogue of material that it owns outright in some form, the majority will be churning their options over with agreements of how long they can be available, or freely available. This can be both good and bad. You can have a fresher selection of movies available to you as time goes on, and you have staples you know where you can go to find. However, they can be far too many to choose from, and you can spend just as long picking something to watch than you would watching it!

A small portion of 550+ my DVD collection.

At least with DVDs you would be more limited, and you would have things you know you like. But DVDs also help people like myself, who want to own unusual and rarer films that won't be readily available online, if on there at all. I'm not so desperate that I will sign up to every streaming platform and buy every film I am vaguely interested in watching from those channels.

Having a DVD is special these days. You have that film in your house, in your hands. You can show it off to friends and family. You can lend them out and bond over them, watch them whenever you want to and revisit them without fear of them no longer being freely available. It is a one-off purchase that becomes yours to own and cherish, display and hold pride over.

Were you for DVD or Blue-Ray? If you still have them, which is the rarest or most cherished one you own?