I’m a big proponent of physical media, so I was disheartened to learn this weekend that Disney, which has always had a tortured relationship with its back catalog of features, is planning to cease production on live-action 4K Blu-rays. The Digital Bits reports, “beyond new release theatrical titles, animated fare from Disney and Pixar, or Star Wars and Marvel-related projects, there were no plans at the studio going forward to release titles on physical 4K Ultra HD—future releases would be 4K Digital only.” Right now it appears the last live-action 4Ks from Disney will be Home Alone and Hocus Pocus.

It’s not so much that 4K is the end-all, be-all of home entertainment as much as those discs were a way to preserve and value older films in a way that would provide them with some permanence. But Disney, with its weird position on how it handles older titles (in addition to the idiotic days of the “Disney Vault” where artificial scarcity was used to create artificial demand, Disney also doesn’t like participating in repertory screenings), is now looking to shoehorn in the titles into their streaming services.

While The Digital Bits is slightly more hopeful that Disney may change direction and invest in their back catalog (which, it must be mentioned now includes the Fox library as well), I remain pessimistic. Ultimately, I recognize that I’m in the minority and most people like to have their titles available on streaming. There might be the occasional film that’s not available on the major services, but maybe you can rent it. Nothing is conceivable out of reach, but it’s still a bad day for cinephiles. There have been rumors for years of a fresh new release of The Abyss, but that looks to be caput. There used to be a film-school-in-a-box, and now those feature-rich discs are a thing of the past. The best you can hope for is that when a movie you enjoy is on a streaming service you subscribe to that it will at least be in the proper aspect ratio.

Update: A spokesperson for Disney says, "There are no plans to discontinue releases in a particular format. We evaluate each release on a case by case basis and pursue the best strategy to bring our content into consumer homes across platforms that meet a variety of demands."