Best Buy stores to stop selling DVDs, Blu-ray in 2024 • Hacker News Board

Re: Best Buy stores to stop selling DVDs, Blu-ray in 2024

#61

Post by glimshe » Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 6:43 PM UTC

ramesh31 wrote: post #56

spunker540 wrote: post #44

I may be an outlier— but I live in Manhattan and have two Best Buys each roughly a ~20 min walk away. A few times a year I’ll need a cable or an external hard drive, or a new controller, mouse etc, and want it right now and I’ll just walk to whichever Best Buy has it in stock. When I do I still have the same feelings I got as a kid when I’d go to circuit city and the impulse to browse is hard to resist. They have a l…

It's honestly the best place to buy electronics at this point if you don't have a Microcenter nearby. I buy all my laptops and TVs there now. Once upon a time, retail was the more expensive option, as they marked up prices and couldn't compete with the low overhead of online sellers. Now that equation has completely flipped, and anything sold online will rapidly inflate in price due to dropshippers and scalpers. The…

Microcenter is king, though. It's the legitimate heir of Fry's, which in its heyday was a geek's paradise.

PS: I miss Radio Shack badly :(

Re: Best Buy stores to stop selling DVDs, Blu-ray in 2024

#62

Post by glimshe » Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 6:44 PM UTC

_the_inflator wrote: post #40

I am back at DVD. Stuff I like isn’t or not anymore streamed, only available via DVD. DVD however is annoying. Waiting for the Menu, FBI warning - everything you don’t need nor want as paying customer. So I am considering doing what needs to be done: NAT sever with ripped DVDs. Local streaming. ;)

Unfortunately, the new DVD is a DRM-free mp4/mkv downloaded from Piratebay. According to a friend, of course, I never checked it out myself.

Re: Best Buy stores to stop selling DVDs, Blu-ray in 2024

#63

Post by taeric » Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 6:51 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #57

taeric wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a TV is about the only thing there I would consider buying from them. Fitness stuff seems far better to get from the manufacturer, or a sporting goods store. Phones seem best from carrier, or Apple. Is that not the case? Not sure on the rest of the appliances. Is an odd listing.

By fitness stuff, I meant Fitbits and that kind of thing. Personally, I very rarely go into a Best Buy. Yes, I might buy a TV or a major appliance there but those are very rare purchases. I might browse once a year to see what the latest wearable and Internet of Crap stuff is out there but I literally can't remember the last time I bought something at a Best Buy.

My gut was that most of what they sold were "giftable" things. But, taking away games, music, and movies feels very against that.

Re: Best Buy stores to stop selling DVDs, Blu-ray in 2024

#64

Post by WorldMaker » Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 7:15 PM UTC

eat wrote: post #21

beowulfey wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It probably marks the beginning of the end for the medium though

To me it looks more like a continuation of the decline of brick and mortar retail. Even if I want to watch films on blue-ray, why would I ever want to drive to a Best Buy to purchase them?

Because of overall efficiencies in carbon emissions and packaging waste when things are delivered by a palette load to a local-to-you retailer rather than individually packaged to be sent directly to homes?

Re: Best Buy stores to stop selling DVDs, Blu-ray in 2024

#65

Post by FigurativeVoid » Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 7:20 PM UTC

This makes me a bit unhappy.

Recently, I have been leaning more on physical media as the price of streaming has gotten higher. I have a few comfort movies and shows, and I was able to trade HBO max for a few disks.

Like how records had a resurgence, I suspect that DVD/blu-ray will also have a resurgence. Especially if gamers still demand disk drives.

Re: Best Buy stores to stop selling DVDs, Blu-ray in 2024

#66

Post by cvhashim04 » Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 8:40 PM UTC

ramesh31 wrote: post #56

spunker540 wrote: post #44

I may be an outlier— but I live in Manhattan and have two Best Buys each roughly a ~20 min walk away. A few times a year I’ll need a cable or an external hard drive, or a new controller, mouse etc, and want it right now and I’ll just walk to whichever Best Buy has it in stock. When I do I still have the same feelings I got as a kid when I’d go to circuit city and the impulse to browse is hard to resist. They have a l…

It's honestly the best place to buy electronics at this point if you don't have a Microcenter nearby. I buy all my laptops and TVs there now. Once upon a time, retail was the more expensive option, as they marked up prices and couldn't compete with the low overhead of online sellers. Now that equation has completely flipped, and anything sold online will rapidly inflate in price due to dropshippers and scalpers. The…

Also quality control of tech at places like Amazon and others like it is so poor. I’m not spending a $100+ to get fake or broken products.

Rather get my electronics at Best Buy, Target, or Apple Store whether in store or online.

Re: Best Buy stores to stop selling DVDs, Blu-ray in 2024

#67

Post by jareklupinski » Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 8:45 PM UTC

spunker540 wrote: post #44

I may be an outlier— but I live in Manhattan and have two Best Buys each roughly a ~20 min walk away. A few times a year I’ll need a cable or an external hard drive, or a new controller, mouse etc, and want it right now and I’ll just walk to whichever Best Buy has it in stock. When I do I still have the same feelings I got as a kid when I’d go to circuit city and the impulse to browse is hard to resist. They have a l…

> I live in Manhattan

"you go tah BNH!"

Re: Best Buy stores to stop selling DVDs, Blu-ray in 2024

#68

Post by mjevans » Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 8:57 PM UTC

fullshark wrote: post #19

mjevans wrote: post #8

Reminds me of how restaurant chains get bought out, and the menu's "optimized" for the best sellers only. Cutting ingredients that are used in the niches. Narrowing in on the stuff that sells the most only. Until all that is left is the same thing you can find in any of their competitors. No differentiation left. Followed by a slow death spiral towards closure as the race to the bottom leaves only one store of type X…

Fry’s electronics was the antithesis of this in this context. They are now dead.

I suspect Fry's had other issues.

At least when they finally came to the Seattle area they picked one of the worst possible locations to open. Much like the ill-fated 'supermall' that opened in the valley south of Seattle (slightly closer to the secondary city of Tacoma) decades before it, they entered an area already well served by surrounding malls/businesses without enough value to the consumer to be worth the drive / trip to a new out of the way location. This was also during the era when it was still reasonable to order things from Amazon, without too much worry of co-mingling / risks; let alone newegg which had pulled back from a brick and mortar expansion to focus entirely online.

In the last few years of Fry's Electronics operating their Renton WA (South Seattle) location they were barely even better than E.G. BestBuy or Walmart for emergency part procurement. In fact both of those stores had methods of pricing online and IIRC also buying / checking inventory directly at the local store.

Offhand I suspect there was also some sort of toxic sales person focused competition among employees, since they always seemed to really want to have documentation on the sale of helping a customer reach their purchase.

Talking about it, Fry's Electronic's reminds me of what happened to Radio Shack. Really a failure to continue delivering value and adjust to the current market (which isn't to say eliminating the niche that makes them what they are within a market).

Re: Best Buy stores to stop selling DVDs, Blu-ray in 2024

#69

Post by taylodl » Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 9:16 PM UTC

glimshe wrote: post #61

ramesh31 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's honestly the best place to buy electronics at this point if you don't have a Microcenter nearby. I buy all my laptops and TVs there now. Once upon a time, retail was the more expensive option, as they marked up prices and couldn't compete with the low overhead of online sellers. Now that equation has completely flipped, and anything sold online will rapidly inflate in price due to dropshippers and scalpers. The…

Microcenter is king, though. It's the legitimate heir of Fry's, which in its heyday was a geek's paradise. PS: I miss Radio Shack badly :(

Best Buy has better TVs and Microcenter doesn't even touch home theater, home stereo, or photography. Microcenter is great for the DIY crowd and for getting cables. I prefer Best Buy for most anything else.

Re: Best Buy stores to stop selling DVDs, Blu-ray in 2024

#70

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Wed, Oct 18, 2023, 5:52 AM UTC

gremlinsinc wrote: post #51

userinanother wrote: post #4

Are they just going to convert into another cellphone shop? Last time I was there they literally hid all the good games and dvds to reduce shrinkage but it also made it appear like they were out of stock on everything. There wasn’t even a slip or something to know to ask the front desk for inventory.

I'm thinking more they're getting ready to liquidize. Brick and Mortar stores are empty AF, and failing left and right. People want to go back to the 1800's when you built a farm, and went to town once a month for supplies, and that's that. Everything is online, so why not. Walmart has the luxury of being somewhat essential having grocery departments, so they can keep foot traffic that way - but a lot more people get…

> Everything is online, so why not.

Because that was the point of Best Buy - if I was going to buy something online, I'd just get it from Amazon|eBay|Newegg. The point of Best Buy is that it's a physical store that you can go to in order to see the physical object before you buy it, buy it immediately (zero shipping time), and also as a secondary but important angle since it's an actual store you completely skip the "market" where people try to sell you counterfeit flash drives.