Bad news for fans of physical media: Disney has announced that it will end DVD and Blu-ray releases in certain regions of the world due to declining sales.

According to Sky News, the first country to pick up physical media will be Australia, where neither DVDs nor Blu-rays will be available after the August 1 release of "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3".

Physical media sales have been declining for years, but the final nail in the coffin here seems to be the success of Disney Plus, Disney's streaming service that competes with Netflix, Prime Video, and Max.

So far, no other markets have been announced by Disney, but this is the first domino to fall and seems to be a sign of things to come.

Those who lived through the 90s will remember the days when VHS collections were all the rage. However, with the advent of DVDs, which offered a sharper picture and did not require rewinding after each viewing, VHS tapes began to disappear from store shelves.

The switch between DVD and VHS is a very different situation in that one type of physical media was replaced by another, but there are still some pertinent similarities. [4K Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD have significant advantages over streaming.

What are the advantages of physical media? For one thing, once you buy physical media, it's yours forever. With shows and movies disappearing from streaming services every month, owning a copy of it means you can watch it whenever you want.

More importantly, however, physical media often represents the highest quality of a movie. All streaming services require digital media to be compressed and sent to the TV via the Internet. Physical media is still compressed, but not in the same quantity, providing the best visual and audio experience.

Finally, physical media can be shared. I love to borrow movies from my collection for friends and family. Denis Villeneuve's "Dune" was one of the greatest films in cinema history, so when I heard that my friend had not yet seen it, I rushed to the Blu-ray shelf and gave him my copy. (That Blu-ray has yet to be returned, but that doesn't change my mind.) In my mind, a movie is something to be shared.