But in that situation you still have possession of the DVDs so it doesn't matter (so much) if the DVDs are withdrawn from sale. You still have the DVDs. If you need to re-download and it's been withdrawn from sale, you're stuffed, OTOH if you had a disaster at home, stuff stored in the cloud will still be there (as long as you remember your password!).

How many people do you know who keep their cloud storage up to date?

There's normally a limit on the number of times you can re-download. To avoid that limit you need to keep multiple copies of your own.

You know far more about licensing than me but I would actually think that it's far more likely that a DVD would be withdrawn from sale than a digital version. There's a cost to physically to produce each DVD and if they don't sell fast then they're sitting around gathering dust in a shop or warehouse somewhere. Once a digital version is made then it can just sit on some server somewhere until the license agreement runs out I guess. I would think that the BBC Store would be the perfect place for this as it would hopefully be easier to renegotiate contracts etc...

With something like Doctor Who, where there are hundreds of DVD's to collect not everyone wants to buy them all as soon as they're released and some people in the USA are already unable to complete their collections because some of the region 1 DVD's are going out of print.

They do get withdrawn. I've been using Amazon Prime video and had (ages ago) built up a watch list. When I recently revisited the list about 50% of the titles had been withdrawn. So, the point is that if you've bought the DVDs and they're withdrawn from sale, you still have possession of the DVDs. If you've purchased a digital download and it's withdrawn, you can still play your downloaded copy, but if you ever needed to re-download, you'd be stuffed. Just as the rights to make DVDs get passed around and expire, the licenses to sell digital downloads expire and move around.

Apart from zero physical space requirements, the only advantage of downloads comes in the event of a disaster at home. A fire would destroy your personal DVDs, and the hard drives that hold your downloads, but you might still be able to re-download your purchases (if limit not exceeded) or recover them from your personal cloud storage, if you've backed them up to the cloud.

OK then better still, give it a couple of years* for 3D printers to become more mainstream then everyone can buy a digital download, from which they can also print off their own physical copy, complete with packaging if they wish to...

*it might take a bit longer than a couple of years

Yes DVDs could get pulled but you could still buy them from online stores or second hand shops where if its a download thats it. You cant access it at all because its a download so once its gone its gone.

I think you're getting confused between subscription streaming services and pay to download. The only way that I would loose access to something which I've download is if I were reckless enough not to have a back up copy or couldn't re-download it from source.

I'm a little puzzled as to why my suggestion seems like such a radical idea anyway. I'm only proposing what Big Finish have been offering for years. For every story they release I have the option of buying the CD or downloading it but crucially the downloaded version isn't inferior quality (at least to my ears) and I still get the extra interviews that they put on the CD's. If Big Finish went bust tomorrow and deleted their entire back catalogue I still wouldn't loose any of my purchases.

All I'm saying is that it would be nice if the BBC Store could work in a similar way, but as it is there is little point in having the BBC Shop and BBC Store both offering different services.

You would think downloads would be cheaper though with no physical stuff not just as expensive.

Yes, the download prices compare poorly with the cost of the proper Classic DVDs, with all their extras, especially as you can often get them in multibuy offers on Amazon (and before then in the BBC shop). It gets worse with longer stories, as the cost of a full story varies according to the number of episodes it has, whereas the DVDs aren't generally priced according to length, other than certain stories hence

A 2 episode story, e.g. Black Orchid, £2.99 or 1.89 per episode
A 4 episode story, e.g. Caves of Androzani, £4.99 or 1.89 per episode
A 6 episode story, e.g. Genesis of the Daleks, £7.99
A 7 episode story, e.g. Inferno, £10.99

I don't download at all as I prefer a hard copy DVD. Is it not possible to download an episode and then burn it onto a DVD ?

Big heads up to anyone who likes to buy downloads from the BBC Store
There is 75% off your purchase TODAY ONLY if you use code LASTCHANCE75

So Series 9 normally £21.99 is roughly £6.00. Bargain if you want it.

https://store.bbc.com/

Haven't searched very hard on the forums, so apologies if I'm re-posting something you already know.

I picked up a copy of The Leisure Hive from the BBC Store and the picture quality is absolutely shocking! Colours are muted and smearing, lines drifting across the screen. Certainly nothing like the quality of the DVD. Dropped a line to the Support people to complain and they tell me that it's the original broadcast version and not the one used on the DVD (which was cleaned up by the Restoration Team). Why on earth would they do such a thing??!!!

There's nothing on the website to say that a sub-par product is on offer and what's worse they clearly use the cover lifted from the DVD to advertise it (which implies that you get the DVD version).

I also picked up a couple of other stories which I've yet to watch. Certainly will not be happy if these are the same.