They already are.

Disney has stopped selling physical media in Australia and New Zealand. https://cordcuttersnews.com/disney-stops-selling-blu-ray-and...

Give it another decade and the only way to get content will be digital rental, no real ownership as the content can be yanked at anytime by the provider.

It seems music escaped this fate. You can easily buy most music digitally and DRM free.

Will video not be able to escape this fate?

Music also had a somewhat huge resurgence of physical media thanks to collector culture. It’s almost standard now for any semi notable new release to have at least a vinyl run of a few thousand units. Huge names get pressings in the tens of thousands or more and cds and cassettes are increasingly common.

It’s crazy to me that it’s still going strong. I used to collect vinyl. I still collect used stuff sometimes but prices are nuts now even for used unless it’s in awful shape or something ancient/terrible/no one ever gave a shit about. I refuse to buy new. Back in like 2005 it was a good way to get a physical copy with decent audio quality (and often but not always a better mix versus cd/digital, especially in that era) for like $15-20. Now a single lp is $40 new and the pressing quality is often mediocre. I think nowadays most people just want something to hold onto or a jacket to hang on their wall or whatever, the idea of physical media is ancillary. Maybe they should bring back laserdiscs of movies, I bet they would sell

What’s the best way to assess pressing quality? I have always been a big lover of vinyl and I have somewhere from 50-80 of them, and I don’t even know if the 180g means anything. Any tips would be appreciated - maybe there are some studios that do it better than others?

180g means nothing really, yes. Often lighter weight records sound better but I don’t know if that’s because of the weight or because of effort placed in other areas.

Knowing if a record will sound good is tough these days. You can read discogs reviews but those are a crapshoot because 90% of them are people who are listening on $50 turntables with built in 2” speakers. They either complain about everything being shit while ignorant of their garbage equipment or paradoxically just think everything is 5 stars because “vinyl just sounds better”

That said the steve Hoffman forums music forums (stevehoffman.tv), gearspace.com, vinylengine.com, certain subreddits (forget which, don’t really go on Reddit anymore but r/vinyl is probably a good start) are at least places with more nuanced discussion where you can generally see the rationale for why someone thinks a pressing is good instead of just “omg it sounds so good 5 stars”. You often get great info on their signal chain as well. But they aren’t nearly as comprehensive so don’t expect to find everything

There are also plenty of successful Disney shows that never get a disc release. I'm still waiting for a Star vs. The Forces of Evil DVD or Blu-ray.

The high seas it is then.

That's not entirely correct, because there are people who download the DRM'd files from internet platforms and distribute the "clean" files through p2p networks. You can then keep the file forever.