Silver Vision Memories

[Vhs]

Are either of you Silver Vision guys still around please? Have a couple questions about the VHS releases that I am really curious about? Thanks 

[HellRazer]

Hi, sorry to resurrect and older thread, like many others on this thread I have very fond memories of receiving the Mega Mail catalogues and ordering from Silver Vision back in the day!

I was just hoping someone clear up a query i haven't been able to find an answer to, did 'The Triumph & Tragedy of World Class Championship Wrestling' come with a paper chapter/match listing insert?

I've been searching ebay for a while and every copy on there hasn't had one, so I'm thinking it may not have had one, but I know the region 1 release came with one.

Thank you.

 

[WyattSheepMask]

Figured bumping the thread was the best place for this.

WWE are ceasing with Home Video releases

 

[Hannibal Scorch]

more death of physical media. lets hope the network doesn't start removing old shows, or that it doesn't even going way

[Merzbow]

Isn't there a lot of stuff that's still not been migrated to Peacock?

[RIDDUM_N_STYLE]

Shocking decision as there are people who like physical media, especially for events they personally attended and may not wish to fork out £120 a year for WWE Network

I still pick up the occasional collection or event if I can find it cheap, even though I have a subscription, so it’s a sad day that by the end of next year there won’t be any wrestling media on shelves in places like HMV and Asda or available to purchase online

[Hannibal Scorch]

5 minutes ago, Merzbow said:

Isn't there a lot of stuff that's still not been migrated to Peacock?

Yes. And while we are still with the WWE Network in the UK lots of countries have moved to a Peacock style service already and the network not available

Just now, RIDDUM_N_STYLE said:

Shocking decision as there are people who like physical media, especially for events they personally attended and may not wish to fork out £120 a year for WWE Network

I still pick up the occasional collection or event if I can find it cheap, even though I have a subscription, so it’s a sad day that by the end of next year there won’t be any wrestling media on shelves in places like HMV and Asda or available to purchase online

Exactly. It also leads to impulse buying if you see them on a shelf. It's a mad decision, but other companies like Disney have already started to dip their toes into the stop sell of physical media in some countries. I feel Blu Ray/DVDS will become the next Vinyl in a few years.

[DavidB6937]

Is it shocking/mad though? I can't imagine they'd be doing it unless it made sense business wise. If it was something that still made them a lot of money then I'm sure it'd be continuing?

No idea of the sales figures these days. Would be interesting to see.

[The King of Old School]

Could have at least waited until Wrestlemania 40, that would have a good cut off point i feel.

[air_raid]

6 hours ago, DavidB6937 said:

Is it shocking/mad though? I can't imagine they'd be doing it unless it made sense business wise.

Which it probably did. Physical media, like a lot of to-order commodities, has a minimum order quantity in terms of units. You have to justify a certain return/margin to place the order, which means charging a certain price point x selling a certain % of the units you order. In the post-pandemic, Russia/Ukraine war oil price mess (plus, here, post-Brexit increases to import taxes whenever anything crosses the EU) it’s costing more than it has for ages to produce anything that involves a physical product and a supply chain. Add to that an increasingly savvy consumer who doesn’t want to spend as much for one show as for a Network subscription that grants access to thousands…. Yeah, I can’t foresee the average Backlash selling enough units to make it worth it. I’m shocked it didn’t happen sooner.

6 hours ago, The King of Old School said:

Could have at least waited until Wrestlemania 40, that would have a good cut off point i feel.

Or to be more accurate, a hell of a 40 show collectors crate.

[DavidB6937]

6 minutes ago, air_raid said:

 I’m shocked it didn’t happen sooner.

Absolutely. I was a die hard collector for many years. The older VHS kept me going for ages. Then I moved to DVD then Blu Ray and a lot of the Tagged Classics etc. I dread to think how many I had. But a combination of space and cost and the Network meant it just didn't feel like a necessary collection to carry on with. But that extended to most of my physical media not just the wrestling ones. They were rarely getting watched and the value wasn't really there anymore either.

I do miss that excitement though. The catalogues. Browsing in Woolworths. That sort of thing. It was a really fun hobby to have. You just don't get that same sense of adventure from flicking through Amazon or going on the Network.

Sure its a lot easier but damn I loved having shelves full of physical media. I even got into printing custom covers that people would make and put online. If I had a bigger house I'd absolutely dedicate a room just to shelves of books and physical media.

But yeah it's tough going as a company with rising costs and dwindling demand. A lot of it just doesn't make sense financially now. And while streaming can be challenging from a completionist perspective with the removals etc, I don't think it's a major issue for the majority of users. Certainly not enough to push everyone back to physical media yet anyway.

Maybe that day will come but that'll be more down to the sheer ridiculous number of services these days.

[Abe_Knuckleball_Schwartz]

It is sad, but hardly surprising.

I would like to see sales figures for latest PPV releases as I can well imagine that sales figures are well down since the launch of the WWE Network. Although, I think they could still exist selling a retro range, something like that - personally I think a limited run re-release of the Tagged Classics series could be very finically viable for the company.

As DavidB said, I use to love receiving the old Silver Vision catalogues back in the early to mid 90’s with the £1 Green vouchers included.

 

 

[air_raid]

Anything physical that can be replaced digitally has a limited lifespan. In the 70s when a Kodak employee developed the first digital camera, he was told “that’s cute, but don’t show anyone” because they viewed it as a threat to their business rather than the direction they should go in. Still in the 70s, one of their top brass predicted one day soon nobody would buy physical film and develop actual photographs anymore, we’d all just view them on screens ; he was laughed out of the room and removed from his position. Blindness to the reality of how the world would move was very costly to them in the long run.

I don’t think it out of the realms of possibility in a similar vein that standard watches I.e. not a smart watch paired to your phone etc will become anachronistic within my lifetime now that we all just look at our phone whenever we need to know the time. At least for the everyday John or Jane, there will probably always be a market for ludicrously expensive “statement” brand watches among those with more money than sense.

[The Gaffer]

I'd definitely consider myself as somebody who would have kept their Tagged Classics had they had some mystical foresight into how god awful the Network was going to become and how I'd invariably just end up using it to watch the first 20 minutes of a show when I ate a snack. I guess "Yeah but making yourself watch it for three hours instead because it's on a disc" is a bit of a yearning for the past romantic ideal in a sense, but there is a sort of enforced ritual to it that's lovely.

If I still had a chronological stack of PPVs I'd probably watch one each weekend. And it wouldn't feel like the "Good job, WWE" commitment throwing down a month's sub to the Network (which I've not done in about a year at least) feels like, even to the end that it's a fundamentally broken service. No, I'd just have a grand static tower of discs I already paid for over the years. 

I was a broke student when I sold them all, too. Got a half ounce of crap cheese out of it me and my housemates at the time probably took less than the night to burn through. So the pastime really did go up in smoke. 

Edited December 6, 2023 by Gay as FOOK

[DavidB6937]

1 hour ago, air_raid said:

Anything physical that can be replaced digitally has a limited lifespan. In the 70s when a Kodak employee developed the first digital camera, he was told “that’s cute, but don’t show anyone” because they viewed it as a threat to their business rather than the direction they should go in. Still in the 70s, one of their top brass predicted one day soon nobody would buy physical film and develop actual photographs anymore, we’d all just view them on screens ; he was laughed out of the room and removed from his position. Blindness to the reality of how the world would move was very costly to them in the long run.

Yeah that's always an interesting one. My parents owned a photographic shop when I was younger and it was always seen as one of the most reliable and viable businesses on the high street at that time. People loved taking photos and getting them developed, right? But the technology shifted and it's a far more niche thing now to have (1) actual cameras and/or (2) film. I remember when the first digital cameras came out and the quality was so rubbish that I really wasn't interested, but look where we are now.

There are very few things that are a reliable constant business apart from the things you see on the high streets now - getting your hair cut, eating/drinking and apparently charity shops. Although ironically the latter is swamped with physical media now. Obviously there's a far wider conversation to be had about technology and the impact.