The hill I will die on: Streaming is rubbish – take me back to the golden era of DVDs | Frances Ryan

Deliver me from the hassle of multiple platforms, ‘double paywalls’ and the nagging feeling I’m helping to fund Jeff Bezos’s next yacht Streaming has many strengths: producing some of the best shows of recent years, convenience, the chance to spend hours of your life scrolling through algorithm-suggested content only to watch nothing and then pass out at 1am. But when it comes to watching films on the platforms, I am one extortionate paywall away from buying a DVD player off eBay and Googling: “Does Blockbuster still exist?” It is not simply that Netflix and co are killing cinema – although, yes, that is a thing that is objectively bad. It is that the advent of streaming has made watching a movie in your own home more costly, more restricted and often incredibly annoying. As a millennial, I like to think I grew up in the golden era of film. You could go to the cinema for a fiver to watch a movie that wasn’t three hours long. And really brilliantly, you could take a trip to your local DVD shop to rent something or buy a physical copy that was yours for ever (at least until the format became outdated and you sold it in a bundle for £1 on Facebook Marketplace). Nowada

Mar 16, 2026 → Mar 20, 2026