Auckland filmmaker and writer Tom Augustine cancelled his Netflix subscription last year, and describes it as a \u201cfreeing\u201d experience. While he still pays for Apple TV and Neon, he says that the promise of digital streaming largely hasn\u2019t been fulfilled. \u201cThe reality is that we have traded away any kind of permanence for this illusion of convenience, when actually there\u2019s a whole lot of stuff that\u2019s now totally out of our control in terms of what\u2019s available,\u201d he says. \u201cIf it\u2019s not on one of the streaming platforms, then it\u2019s like it doesn\u2019t exist a lot of the time.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Filmmaker Tom Augustine (Image: Tim D) and his DVD collection (Photos: Supplied)<\/p>\n
To combat this chaos, Augustine has a 750-strong collection of films on DVD and makes a regular habit of ducking into opshops to look for interesting and rare new additions. \u201cIt\u2019s a preservationist instinct on my part \u2013 I want to be able to have these films at my disposal whenever I want, forever,\u201d he says. \u201cIt started as this angry response to the fact that we\u2019ve basically signed over all our watching to people who are going to charge us through the nose for it, but now it has become more of a fun collector\u2019s thing \u2013 and it\u2019s cheap too.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Along with the odd $2 op shop find, Augustine\u2019s collection is also packed with ex-rentals from Videon, the extensive film library on Auckland\u2019s Dominion Road that closed down in 2018<\/a>. One of his prized finds was the Apu trilogy, made in the 1950s by Satyajit Ray. \u201cThe motivation was to get a whole lot of stuff that just would not be shown on major streaming services anywhere here, because there would be no real financial incentive for them,\u201d he says. \u201cWe got heaps and heaps of films that are just otherwise not out there in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n DVD collecting is not just for the film buffs, though. Television enthusiast Lucy Kelly owns dozens of series boxsets on DVD, a collection which she started back in high school. \u201cI was really sick as a teenager, and so I spent a lot of time at home, and there\u2019s only so many hours of Dr Phil that you can watch,\u201d she says. With her local Video Ezy often missing a few seasons of a show, she took to buying boxsets herself, and never stopped. \u201cI like to have them physically there,\u201d she says. \u201cIf I ever want to watch them, they\u2019re there, and I don\u2019t have to go hunting.\u201d<\/p>\n Even in the streaming age, Kelly says she is reaching for DVDs a lot more than she expected \u2013 just last week she bought a few seasons of The Good Wife on Trade Me after being unable to find it on a streamer. Like Augustine, she has found the erratic nature of streamers frustrating. \u201cI was watching Willow, the Disney+ show that is a really campy and fun follow-up to the 80s movie, but then they cancelled it and just deleted it from the service entirely,\u201d she says. \u201cI had a few episodes still to finish, but I went back it was just gone \u2013 deleted from the universe.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Another plus side to DVDs is that not only are they not going to disappear, but they are not going to change. One of Kelly\u2019s proudest pieces is her Charmed boxset, and not just because of the Book of Shadows-shaped packaging. \u201cThe original theme song for Charmed [a cover of The Smiths\u2019 \u2018How Soon is Now?\u2019<\/a>] is really iconic, but they lost the rights to it so now there\u2019s this terrible generic electronic song<\/a> on when you stream it,\u201d she says. \u201cThat\u2019s why it\u2019s important to buy things you love on physical media, because then you get the original version of it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n That said, flying the flag for the humble DVD in 2025 can have its challenges \u2013 particularly as major players like Disney are phasing out physical media entirely<\/a>. One of Kelly\u2019s favourite sci-fi shows is 12 Monkeys, the 2015 reboot of the 1995 Terry Gilliam film, but she can\u2019t stream it anywhere online or find it on DVD outside of hugely expensive limited edition collectors versions. \u201cThe newer shows are not even getting put out on DVD at all, but then you also can\u2019t watch them online anywhere either, so you don\u2019t even get the choice,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Peter Tonks, co-owner of Alice in Videoland<\/a> in \u014ctautahi, knows this struggle all too well. Alice\u2019s boasts a collection of over 30,000 DVDs that are available for people to rent in person or through their mail service across the country. His current gripe is how hard it is to find a copy of Jane Campion\u2019s Oscar-winning 2021 film Power of the Dog on DVD. \u201cIt was shot right here in New Zealand, but you just can\u2019t get it anywhere,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve ordered it a couple times and it just hasn\u2019t shown up for whatever reason, so that has taken me a while to track down.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Constantly curating and updating one of the largest DVD collections in the country, Tonks says the streaming age has put an emphasis on newness over anything else. \u201cEveryone\u2019s always looking out for the latest big streaming release, but some of the stuff they pump out is pretty cheap and nasty,\u201d he says. \u201cMeanwhile there are 1000s and 1000s of old gems that are just as fun as watching the latest brand new release.\u201d Tonks pays for Netflix but doesn\u2019t use it often, adding that he can always select a DVD much more quickly than something to stream.<\/p>\n Alice\u2019s DVD selection has more breadth and depth than many streamers could ever offer, but there are obvious drawbacks to trading in the medium. The scarcity of new releases means many DVDs come from overseas, which requires a multi-zone player. There\u2019s also the skipping and the scratches, with Alice\u2019s losing at least one DVD a week to damage. \u201cBecause we send stuff around, we get the odd shipment with a few broken because they\u2019ve been thrown around the back of the van,\u201d Tonks says. \u201cI do my best to replace them, but some are pretty rare.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite these downsides, Tonks says the overwhelm of streaming options has actually seen an uptick in people attending the boutique cinema and renting DVDs out in person over the last year \u2013 although their mailout service continues to decline. \u201cThe cinema still saves us,\u201d he says. \u2018We\u2019d be hard pressed to survive these days just as a DVD store.\u201d In the hopes of inspiring people to take their viewing habits deeper into the back catalogue, they\u2019ve also released a new podcast series<\/a> in the style of the Criterion Closet and Letterboxd\u2019s Four Favourites.\u00a0<\/p>\n Because while my coveted Bridget Jones\u2019s Diary is not at any risk of disappearing from the cultural consciousness anytime soon, DVD enthusiasts are well aware that their collections could contain movies and TV shows that could soon be entirely forgotten in the streaming age. \u201cWhen we move from physical to digital, there\u2019s always going to be things that fall through the cracks,\u201d says Augustine. \u201cThis is all tied into my desire to hold on to these things, because if we don\u2019t, that\u2019s a whole lot of history that\u2019s otherwise not there anymore.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the age of streaming ubiquity and overwhelming choice, Alex Casey speaks to the New Zealanders who are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9719,492,57807,156,434,409,14741,1094,111,139,69,57808,1066,57809],"class_list":["post-73588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-cinema","tag-comments-enabled","tag-dvds","tag-entertainment","tag-films","tag-movies","tag-neon","tag-netflix","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-physical-media","tag-pop-culture","tag-streamers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}A selection of Lucy Kelly\u2019s prized box sets.<\/p>\n
Peter Tonks, co-owner of Alice\u2019s in \u014ctautahi. (Photo: Alex Casey)<\/p>\n