Media Studies: On Control, Censorship, Self-determination and Whether The Mandalorian Will Ever Be Available on Blu-ray

Appointment television is no longer a thing. Most millennials would probably find the notion of having to sit down at a broadcaster-dictated time to watch a programme utterly preposterous, and they wouldn’t be far wrong. Even I, perched precariously on the cusp on middle age as I am, have only watched seven episodes of a show “live” in last couple of years (Line of Duty, obviously). Don’t get me wrong, if my phone pings to tell me that there’s a new episode of Better Call Saul on Netflix, I’m all over it that same day – but at a time when it’s convenient for me.
[image error] Above: The last stand of appointment television - BBC One’s Line of Duty.
Advances in streaming technology have kept pace with consumers’ demand for convenience, creating an extraordinarily low-cost yet extremely high-quality marketplace where viewers and listeners can access unprecedented amounts of content on demand. Assuming that you can afford to subscribe to most video-on-demand services and a single music one, you can feel just like a crewman on the Starship Enterprise, with almost the total sum of human culture only ever just a “Siri” or an “Alexa” away (or a “Computer”, if you don’t mind fiddling with your settings to get the full Enterprise effect).  [image error]
Despite years of careful acquisition and curation, I haven’t listened to any music from my own iTunes library for a long time. It’s all Apple Music these days, quick and seductive. Admittedly, this is largely due to me never getting the chance to listen to any proper music anymore (as my kids dictate the soundtrack to our lives), but, even so, pre-subscription I was throwing away endless £0.99s on some of the most vapid, jaunty tunes imaginable for the sprogs. I miss the excitement of ripping the shrinkwrap off a new CD, though - almost as much as I miss choosing what I’ll listen to. Fortunately, with the marketplace as it is, I know that I could still buy an album if I wanted to (even one of The Mandalorian’s many, many soundtracks), and in the meantime I’m at least saving some wear and tear on my index finger and Apple Wallet.

Even books aren’t immune to the march of expediency, with the likes of Kindle Unlimited attempting to digitise the library experience, albeit with a limited catalogue, and of course Audible serving as its audiobook sister service. There are also newer services like Readly effectively compressing an entire newsagents (sans the top shelf) into a single app. It’s saved the missus a fortune on her monthly magazines already - and the planet a fair few trees.
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In the last forty years, rarely has a decade passed without one home media format superseding another, but never before has the media landscape changed so dramatically – and so fundamentally. In the past, music leapt from vinyl to CDs and back again as it transcended mainstream physical media altogether. There was some messing about with tapes along the way – a form of piracy so feeble that it was tacitly accepted by just about everyone - and even some foolhardy business with MiniDiscs, but those of us who went down that dark path never talk about it. VHS was replaced by DVDs and DVRs, which in turn found themselves quickly outmoded by HDD recorders and Blu-ray discs. The Blu-ray disc evolved to hold twice the amount of data so that it could carry 4K UHD video, and last year’s Game of Thrones release pushed the bar further still with the first triple-layer 150GB discs. Meanwhile, satellite TV grew from a premium multi-channel service to a PVR that allowed its viewers to record, pause and instantly rewind live TV (which, I gather, impressed some people who had yet to realise that it was live TV itself that was the problem – not one’s former inability to rewind it). Throughout all this, though, a single pattern held: people bought stuff. They owned it. Albums on CD. Movies on video. DVD box sets. iTunes downloads. Blu-ray steelbooks. 
[image error] Above: Watch in 4K HDR with Atmos sound on disc, or on NOW in “Full HD” (well, the frame at least might be 1080p...)
[image error] For years, we’d suffer through our favourite shows on the telly as they were carved up into four acts and interspersed with advertisements, only to later buy them on VHS or disc so that we could enjoy them unsullied by logos and ads, in far greater quality than when they were transmitted and alongside some exclusive bonus material. Now, though, once original content drops on a service, it’s available on demand indefinitely thereafter, and even if it’s not quite up disc quality, the difference is imperceptible to many viewers. For the vast majority of people who’ve not invested in a 4K UHD Blu-ray disc player, 4K HDR streaming is sure to be a huge step up from what they’ve previously been used to. As such, to general consumers, the shift from broadcasting and home video to streaming is, obviously, an incredibly welcome one. But such convenience comes at a cost, even if it’s not necessarily financial.

[image error] Subscriptions to even just the most popular of on-demand services will make quite a dent in your monthly outgoings; however, when accounting for inflation it actually amounts to far less than many people will have paid for satellite TV packages and the odd DVD box set in the past, and in terms of quality there is no comparison at all. The best streaming services are now churning out critically acclaimed original movies and shows at a staggering rate, most of them presented in impressive 4K HDR and with decent (if lossy) multi-channel audio to boot, and of course each also boasts a varied – albeit apparently random, in most cases – back catalogue of historic content that can be viewed on demand.
Above: Netflix's Marvel Cinematic Universe shows have only a small presence on Blu-ray and digital in the UK.
No, the real cost of subscription services can’t be measured in pounds and pence, but rather terms of their impact on collective fandom - and in particular the passionate nerd’s instinctive urge to collect. This matter has been quietly gathering steam for several years now, ever since Netflix stopped releasing their various “street level” Marvel series on home video (The Defenders has yet to see the light of day on disc, while later seasons of the peerless Jessica Jones and passable Iron Fist still aren’t commercially available at all in the UK), but the arrival of Disney+, with its new mainstream Star Wars and Marvel programming, has brought the matter to a T-visored head.
[image error] Streaming services not making their originals available to purchase is nothing new, of course, but as wonderful as, say, Ricky Gervais’ After Life, is, the prospect of not being able to own their own copy doesn’t send entire legions of people into the sort of rabid frenzy you might find a Star Wars devotee in when he/she/they realises that, having spent most of his/her/their life slavishly hoarding discs and tie-in merch, The Mandalorian won’t ever sit gleaming away on his/her/their shelf in a case hewn from molten beskar. To such folk, and I’m very much afraid that I’m one of them, the idea of not being able to further their prized collections (they can never be complete...), is akin to telling a Christian that, going forward, the Bible will only be available to read on the Kindle Unlimited service.

But then I had a Mando taking his helmet off sort of moment. As I caught myself idly Googling “Mandalorian Season 1 Blu-ray release date” for about the eighth time this week, a few startlingly obvious truths hit me: 

(i) I could watch The Mandalorian again at any time on Disney+, which I’ve no plans to cancel as it continues to regularly bombard me with enticing new Star Wars and Marvel shows for a preposterously low annual fee; 
(ii) I don’t really want to watch The Mandalorian again at the minute; 
(iii) I don’t have time to watch The Mandalorian again at the minute; 
(v) I still haven’t got round to watching all of the Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian docuseries, which, from what I’ve seen, is of a much higher quality than most home video special features are these days.
(vi) I can no longer count using Roman numerals.

So why do I want to chuck fifty to sixty quid at an environmentally-unfriendly product that both technology and society at large have decreed is obsolete? Surely it’s not just for a shiny steel case? Wouldn’t that money be better spent on another year’s Disney+ subscription? Surely... this isn’t the way?

It’s a difficult question for me to answer, and as such it’s easy to see why Disney executives have yet to commit to any sort of physical or even digital release, particularly when they have to weigh the current exclusivity of their content (and the countless subscriptions that it yields) against any short-term financial gain to be made in making it commercially available in another form. Until this January, The Mandalorian was Disney+’s big poster show, and even with all the new Marvel series gradually assuming its thunder, I still believe it’s their biggest draw.
Whilst on our biggest TV and Atmos sound system, physical media does look and sound much better than purchased or streamed content (the bitrate of streamed 4K is often half of a 1080p Blu-ray’s and just a fraction of a 4K UHD disc’s, and much of Disney+’s content is limited to 5.1 surround - even the Star Wars movies which boasted Atmos soundtracks on last year’s 4K UHD physical release), the most honest answer is that I just like collecting media. I love holding it. Appreciating the artwork. Devouring the collector’s booklets. Knowing that I have the best possible version available to watch on demand without having to sign in to something and get bloated on cookies. Like a rich man who fritters away millions on old paintings, it’s as much about ownership as it is appreciation. I like being a freeholder, not a tenant. This is the way.
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[image error] Such abstruse motivations will be of little interest to Disney and Lucasfilm, though, and constructing a practical argument for home video releases in the 2020s is much more difficult when you consider that, in no time at all, better technology will close the gap in quality between digital and physical content. I can’t even hide behind the old, “My Internet is rubbish” argument anymore because I’m on KC’s best Lightstream package. Though pricey, it is insanely fast and efficient - I’ve had more power cuts in the last year than I’ve had buffering issues. Likewise, whilst I’ve always been quick to lament the shoddy housekeeping of many streaming services – episodes presented in the wrong order (BritBox...), or with the wrong thumbnails (BritBox...), or with metadata so riddled with typos and inaccuracies that it would never have got passed the VPRC (Amazon, Netflix, NOW, BritBox, Apple TV+...) – I certainly can’t level the same complaint at Disney+, which not only boasts a beautiful interface with regularly refreshed, stunning 4K artwork (check out the new May the Fourth images, if you haven’t already), but also appears to take reasonable care when it comes to tagging. Even bonus material – yes, Disney+ movies boast “Extras” of the type once exclusive to home video releases, not to mention specially commissioned docuseries for all of its flagship shows – is neatly presented and nicely tagged under a separate tab. Hell, I can’t even whinge about The Simpsons being the wrong shape anymore as Disney+ lets you choose to watch the episodes in their original aspect ratio, if you prefer, remembering your preference so you don’t have to opt-out of the bastardised versions every time.
Above: Rest in peace, DVD extras?
In the early days of streaming, you’d hear horror stories about content suddenly vanishing – something that shouldn’t happen with media that you own (unless you lend it out to unreliable friends... or get burgled... or accidentally scrape scissors across the surface of a disc, as, unaccountably, a lot of people seem to do). Yet, even with licensed third-party content, most providers now give ample warning on when a movie or series will leave their service, and such things are, to date, unheard of with a service’s original programming – and it’s only such content that I’m concerned with here. A lot of older programming may be destined to forever float between services, but “originals” should have the same sort of permanence as if they were burned into a disc on a shelf.

Or so I keep telling myself.
Above: Remember when The Simpsons used to start their seasons with episode 2? No, I don’t either. 
Yet one or two things give the cynic in me pause. The control freak in me that won’t concede a single decision to anyone else recoils in disgust when he remembers that someone, somewhere in the echelons of Disney decided that The Simpsons’ third-season premiere, “Stark Raving Dad”, was too controversial to be hosted on Disney+ after two men accused guest star Michael Jackson of sexually abusing them when they were young boys. Now I loathe censorship in all its forms, but I particularly take umbrage with people who are unable to separate an artist’s work from their personal life and, rather than simply boycott that artist themselves, they try to force everyone else to do so too. Yet watching “Stark Raving Dad” is no endorsement of Michael Jackson or his alleged wrongdoing; it’s enjoying The Simpsons. Watching The Mandalorian doesn’t mean that you agree with Gina Carano’s contentious social media posts, or indeed the opposing philosophies of her woke co-stars. Entertainment is supposed to be an escape from all that shite.
[image error] Above: Carasynthia Dune - not Gina Carano, the actress who played her before she annoyed the Internet.
But herein lies the danger: when content lives exclusively on a streaming service, it’s vulnerable to the whims and caprices of corporations and their perceptions of viewers’ sensibilities, which have never been more sensitive. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see half the Russell T Davies era of  Doctor Who  vanish from wherever it currently resides just because Noel Clarke is facing allegations of sexual harassment and John Barrowman used to get his cock out a lot on set. Fortunately for me, every potentially “offensive” episode of Who is steel-clad on a disc on my shelf, and so I couldn’t care less about its online fate, but were Disney+ to ever to revise or remove The Mandlorian, there’d be no way for me to see it again, or at least see it again as it exists today. And let’s face it, the franchise has got form on this front: just look at the number George Lucas did on his original Star Wars cut, and that was years before both streaming and hypersensitive consumerism. The only copy of the original Star Wars movie that I own stands all of 326 pixels tall on a letterboxed and pillarboxed DVD, and even that took some hunting down.
Above: Poor Mickey the Idiot. Likely to be struck from the public record just for looking like a young Noel Clarke.
I also find streaming very limited in a practical sense when measured against both discs and purchased digital media. As if punishing subscribers for having spent the late nineties and much of the noughties stretching and compressing the people on their screens using every ill-conceived means that their hefty old widescreen CRT tellies provided them with, most subscription services now lock their content in a 16:9 frame irrespective of its live dimensions. Whether it’s a film in 2.35:1, an old show in 4:3 or a modern programme in any of the dozens of aspect ratios in between, streaming services’ apps lock out your options to zoom in on the image, which is a real pain if you’re trying to watch a 2.35:1 movie on a 16:9 phone or small 16:9 TV. With discs (and iTunes purchases, for that matter), you can zoom in as and when you please - on an iOS device or an Apple TV it’s a simple as a double-tap. Streaming services, rob you of a useful choice with one hand, and with the other give you an option to watch things at the wrong speed. Madness.
[image error] Above: Well that’s gym night ruined. So much for the upcycled dumb TV / Apple TV 3.
Worse still is my inability to watch subscription content where I want to. I have an old third-generation Apple TV in my gym plugged into a 40” dumb TV, and I can mirror any of my iTunes downloads to it using the Apple TV app, but not an episode of something downloaded from Disney+. Or BritBox. Or Amazon. Or Netflix... With streaming services, it all has to be on their (often poorly thought-out) terms. And so the debate on physical media isn’t necessarily about tangible vs intangible, or even renting vs ownership, anymore - it’s all about self-determination. All about control.

And so will The Mandalorian ever get a home video release? Or WandaVision? Or The Falcon and the Winter Soldier? Or The Bad Batch? Or the final seasons of The Clone Wars and Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD? I certainly hope so, for the reasons outlined above, but my feeling on the matter is that over the next few years the last vestiges of physical media will disappear like the Jedi after Order 66. At best, certain high-end, specialist releases may endure as the video connoisseur’s equivalent to vinyl, but I’m not especially hopeful given the apparently poor sales performance of even recent 4K UHD steelbooks. A couple of years ago, pre-orders would sell out within hours of a release being announced, whereas today, Zavvi are still struggling to shift last year’s stunning “Skywalker Saga” 4K UHD steelbooks even having slashed their price (just £24.99 a chuck now, if you’re interested). The main reason we don’t have Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager on Blu-ray is because CBS spent a fortune painstakingly remastering Star Trek: The Next Generation from its original film elements, only to find that there was only me and fourteen other fans waiting to buy it. We must remember that markets are consumer-driven, and passionate fans only account for a fraction of mainstream sales.
Above: Warner Bros and DC continue to support home video with the Snyder Cut on 4K UHD Blu-ray.
Some will take comfort in the fact that many similar franchises (DC, Star Trek ) still make their original content available to purchase on home video (and, in DC’s case, surprisingly rapidly after the shows have dropped on HBO Max, EPIX or wherever), and, indeed, in most studios continuing to release their made-for-cinema movies on home video - Disney chief amongst them. This is still precarious, though, as the COVID-19 pandemic has driven a wedge between studios and cinemas that leaves a question mark over the whole future of the industry. I’m far from convinced that cinemas will return as we once knew them, and if this is the case, then the impact on home video releases is depressingly foreseeable. More importantly, though, we must note the differing practices of Amazon and Netflix: Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is still jailed behind Amazon’s subscription paywall, and while Netflix did, mercifully, eventually release El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie to buy, it was only on Blu-ray and digital HD – you still need your Netflix subscription for the definitive 4K HDR version. If we do ever get a Mando release, then, it will probably be a downscaled, vanilla edition and at a point in the future when it has either stopped working as an effective lure for new subscribers or Disney+ has enough exclusive content not to worry about such things (by which time, home video releases could effectively serve a taster for potential Disney+ subscribers... assuming that they are not as dead as MiniDiscs by then).
[image error] Above: Amazon, obviously, don’t.
If you are reading this article, you’ve almost certainly asked Google whether The Mandalorian is available on Blu-ray, and as such probably have as keen an interest as I do in keeping home video alive. I therefore ask you this: if it ever does materialise on disc, please buy the damned thing; Hell, get your mum one for Christmas too. Because one thing is for certain – Disney certainly won’t be releasing any more of their Disney+ exclusives on home video if it doesn’t sell phenomenally well. Trust me, this is the way.