In the age of streaming, why is physical media seeing demand?
Calgary video store says an increasing number of young people are nostalgic for VHS tapes and discs
Walking into Rough Cut Video in Calgary's northwest community of Varsity, the store's owner Pascal Fortin says expect to see films that would never be found on streaming services.
"Harder to find stuff like Japanese monster movies, old kung fu movies, Italian horror movies," he said. "Cult cinema."
The shop's shelves are lined with Blu-rays, 4K discs and VHS tapes imported from across Canada and internationally from countries including the U.K., Australia, Germany and the U.S.
Fortin says when he opened the physical media store in 2023, he thought it would eventually succeed but didn't anticipate business taking off right away. Now, he says, he gets new customers all the time — and a new generation of collectors are eager for his inventory.
"We're not far from the university, so a lot of young kids come in here to buy VHS tapes. [They're] nostalgic for a time that they didn't even live in," Fortin said.
"They think it's cool to actually own and hold a movie rather than just watching it on streaming and then it's pretty much gone and forgotten about. When you actually own your movies, you kind of curate yourself your own collection and it says something about you rather than, you know, a watch history."
Fortin said he has customers as young as 16 that regularly visit the store.
He became a film enthusiast at a young age, watching 1950s Japanese monster movies and branching out to more "obscure" movies from there.
'A physical, tangible thing that isn't going to disappear'
Calder Fertig is a long-time film collector and a regular patron of Rough Cut Video. Part of the allure of collecting physical media, he says, is the joy of discovering something new to watch.
"Some of my fondest memories are going with friends to the video store on a Friday night and you'd always go to rent the big new movie and 90 per cent of the time it was rented out," he said. "So you'd be scouring the shelves looking for something else, and that's where you end up finding some of the hidden gems."
And another reason to collect, he adds, is being able to actually display those films on a shelf.
"In an era where we're seeing just how transitory, maybe, files on the internet are, it's kind of nice to have a physical, tangible thing that isn't going to disappear," Fertig said. "There aren't going to be ads put on it, you know. No rising subscription rates."
The cost of streaming
In October, Disney+ increased its cheapest monthly subscription plan for Canadian streamers from $7.99 to $8.99 per month, which includes ads and limits streaming to two devices at a time. Netflix discontinued its cheapest ad-free subscription plan in Canada altogether last year.
"I think we're all kind of getting a little bit frustrated every time there's a [price] hike every few months on our subscription services," Fertig said. "And, you know, you don't want to kind of lose access to everything that they contain."
Charles Tepperman, an associate professor of communication, media and film at the University of Calgary, says when streaming was first introduced, there was "the hope or promise that you would maybe pay a subscription to one service like Netflix and that you'd be able to get everything that was released through that service."
He explained many people have had the experience of looking through multiple streaming services for a particular movie that they want to watch, and then not being able to find it on any of the services they own.
"Instead now there's this kind of patchwork approach [with movies spread across various streaming services]. And so you start to wonder how many of these you need to subscribe to in order to watch the shows that you want to watch."
The joy of discovery
Fortin's store has held special screenings at Globe Cinema and other venues in Calgary to bring Rough Cut Video's selection of hard-to-find films to the community.
Audiences have come to watch without knowing what film they'll get to see, and so far, Fortin said he's had positive feedback from attendees.
LISTEN | Physical media is back
For Fortin, finding something new and unexpected is what it's all about.
"Getting that sense of discovery when you come in here to look for something that we have and right next to it on the shelf is something that you never heard of but looks cool too," Fortin said.
"That's just part of the whole experience of being in an actual physical media store."
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