Posted on 06/23/2026 7:13:34 PM PDT by Red Badger
People are tired of paying more to scroll longer.
Streaming was supposed to make movie night easier. Somehow, it made it exhausting.
When every app wants more money, the old DVD shelf starts looking sane again.
BRIEFING
Grant here. Streaming literally revolutionized the way we all consume entertainment. Gone were the days of cable boxes and trips to Blockbuster. Instead, from the comfort of your own home, you got to choose exactly what you wanted to watch. But this convenience over the years has morphed. It's become more expensive and more complicated, and people are starting to yearn again for simplicity. Let’s break it down.
A viral X post from Alphafox shows a couple that are ditching streaming services and kicking it retro with a DVD player they randomly decided to buy from Walmart. They say that it's just become exhausting scrolling through the endless amounts of apps just trying to find something halfway decent to watch. So now, they pop over to the store, look at a shelf filled with DVDs, pick some, head home, and pop it into their player. Simple and, as they say, more "intentional."
SOURCE
Honestly, it's easy to relate to this couple's frustration. You open Netflix, then Hulu, then Disney+, then HBO Max, then Prime, then whatever app has the one movie you thought you owned but apparently was rented from the void for $3.99 eight years ago. Then, by the time you actually find something, the dream is dead and everyone is doom scrolling on their phone.
And this whole thing is bigger than just nostalgia, plastic cases, and scratched discs. People are literally yearning for some simplicity. Just going somewhere, choosing a movie and calling it a day. But it's also about the ownership, ritual, shelves, collections, and the strange little thrill of finding something in the wild instead of being spoon-fed another algorithmic menu.
This also comes at a time where streaming services just seem to be getting more and more bloated and expensive. Disney announced another U.S. Disney+ price hike in 2025, raising the ad-supported plan to $11.99 per month and the ad-free premium tier to $18.99, marking its fourth consecutive year of Disney+ fee increases. Netflix also raised prices across its U.S. plans again in 2026, and HBO Max also raised U.S. prices in 2025, including increases across its Basic, Standard, and Premium tiers.
So people are paying more, but the experience isn't getting any better. Nielsen’s Gracenote reported in 2025 that nearly half of streamers would consider canceling a service if it was too difficult to find something to watch, and 19% abandon a viewing session when the search fails. That number actually jumps up to 29% among viewers ages 18 to 24. So even younger folks are feeling the frustration.
And speaking of the youngsters, Los Angeles Times reported that Gen Z is reviving DVDs and Blu-rays, with young customers citing subscription fatigue, scattered content across platforms, and the appeal of physical ownership. It also noted that physical media sales declined only 9% in 2025 after sharper drops of more than 20% in both 2023 and 2024, which suggests the collapse may be slowing as interest returns.
DEBRIEFING
The DVD comeback is still small, but it definitely seems to be picking up steam. And who knows? Maybe Blockbuster could still make its grand comeback, because clearly, streaming has created the same fatigue across many generations. Even the ones that didn't grow up with "Be Kind, Please Rewind."
Us "elders" remember when picking a movie was a simple and rather enjoyable experience. You went to the shelf, grabbed the case, and watched it. That's it. Younger viewers may not have lived through the peak Blockbuster era, but they understand the exhaustion of paying for five apps, scrolling through all of them, and still feeling like there is nothing worth watching.
That's the part streaming companies seem to be missing as they're chasing the almighty dollar. People aren't just annoyed by the price hikes. They're sick and tired of the whole arrangement. Everyone is fed up with content moving between platforms, annoyed with ads creeping into paid services, frustrated with subscriptions stacking up, and tired of needing a search party just to find one friggin movie.
With DVDs, you buy the movie, you own the movie, you put it on the shelf, and when movie night comes, the choice is much simpler. There's no algorithm nudging you, no disappearing title, no $4.99 rental cost attached to one old favorite.
This is why this trend cuts across generations. For some people, DVDs are nostalgia, and for others, they're a discovery. But for everyone, the appeal is the same: less scrolling, less renting, less price creep, and a little more control over what should have stayed simple in the first place.
NOW YOU KNOW
Streaming promised freedom, but a lot of people are starting to miss ownership.
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People like to own stuff??
Music streaming makes sense and easier to browse for what you are looking for and prices are often decent even for unlimited choices and premium bit rates/sound quality. Amazon Music includes dolby atmos and sony 360 sound files and UHD streaming....
Bandcamp offeres unusual hard to find artists and cheap down loads...of course there is apple and spotify.
But i have to agree about the video streaming...what’s worse is having to rent out what the streamer is not offering for free and often what is being offered “free” under the streaming price is stale, old low bandwidth 80’s B movies or for niche interests that few actually watch. Prime does have interesting in house programming that isn’t very political, Netflix or Obama central forget it. Apple TV has some great sci fi but is very snooty about access and actually accessing thru some platforms is nightmarish.
We have a gazillion of them up at our RV on our rural property. We watch them over and over. I’m pretty sure I have memorized the dialogue for Boondock Saints and Twister. 😆
Most video tape players break when belts go
Also have a manual turntable, all my jazz and classical vinyls, a tube-powered pre amp to drive the turntable and two wood-enclosed bookshelf speakers.
And a fully functional Olympus OM-1 35mm SLR camera which with a light meter and a tripod and cable controlled shutter takes the most beautiful pics you've ever seen.
Am sick of cell phone technology and am sorry I gave up our landline years ago.
Anyone who knows how to build themselves a new PC has my respect. I had to be dragged kicking & screaming into the computer age. I only got a laptop due to the Lewinsky ‘situation’. I had the ‘need to know’ more.
One question: When someone designs and assembles their own PC, must you send out any announcement to the government, or purchase some kind of copyright, that this is indeed your design? Or, no, things are not nearly that regulated yet?
Who’s laughing now, Cousin Sid?
“Cold Mountain” is one that should
Be Worn Out by now for me but..
I’ve got spares....
I hate the fact that you don’t own anything anymore.
I buy a piece of software, movie, a game, and I don’t have ownership of it. It’s on some BS server somewhere.
Haven’t bought MS flight sim because of that. Screw them.
Thing is the Tape itself degrades...
You are wise to the ways.
I’ve noticed that with some Apple apps. You’re not actually buying the app. You’re buying a license to use the app.
I suppose there’s a good reason for that. Whatever the reason is, I’m sure it doesn’t benefit the consumer in the least.
Building a new PC these days and finding a decent case with 5 1/4” Drive Bays for DVD/Blu Ray decks limits your choices significantly as I recently discovered.
You may want to consider an external USB enclosure such as:
Another cheap connection option for just connecting a bare drive:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07452Z3KH?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title
I use both of those for various reasons and have had no issues with reading or burning on various DVD drives and Pioneer Blu Ray writers.
Just make sure the external enclosure connection speed is at minimum USB 3.0.
I have an LG tv and i have been accumulating blue-ray DVDs for a long time. The LG has a app called smartshare that builds a database from the copies of the blue-rays which are on my NAS. The app runs on my laptop and plays MKV files created via MakeMKV and Handbrake. It’s a great system.
Same for Fawesome.TV
We have every Chuck Norris movie, 3 John Wicks, A bunch of Jason Stratham videos. Rambo you name it. 😆
And they have the greatest commercials for those stupid casino video games! But hey, that is when in the middle of Braveheart that I step out off of the porch and do my business. TMI.
om 2009 tells me it’s a nice drive. Swell.>>. And you can use MakeMKV and copy all the DVD’s to a hard drive making MKV files. You can make certain optical drives able to copy just about any DVD. My LG TV has an player and database builder that catalogs the MKV files very nice. No getting up to fetch the DVD and the MKV files are lossless copies.
I buy Blu-Ray movies and TV shows.
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