The Best Time to Buy 4K and Blu-ray Movies at a Discount Every Year

Prime Day (July)

Amazon Prime Day has consistently been one of the best times of year to buy physical media. In 2025 that was especially true as Amazon launched a massive “Buy 2, Get 1 Free” sale on a ton of movies. This promotion was in addition to some great discounts on popular 4K movies and TV series box sets. Prime Day takes place sometime in the middle of July every year, so it’s a great time to grab discounts on popular titles from the previous summer that got released earlier.

Criterion Collection Sales

If you’re specifically looking to buy movies from the Criterion Collection, you’ll be happy to know there are usually four times a year when you can find savings. The biggest Criterion Collection sales take place at Barnes & Noble, with a blanket 50% off sale on everything in the collection except for preorders. The sale typically occurs throughout July and has now returned for Black Friday. Outside of that, the Criterion website has two 24-hour flash sales a year that offer similar discounts for a much smaller window of time. The next one of these will supposedly take place sometime in October.

Holiday Weekends

While discounts on 4K and Blu-ray discs aren’t as guaranteed during holiday weekends, they are still usually a pretty good time to find deals. Almost every major online retailer will have some sort of sales page for Labor Day, Memorial Day, and even Presidents’ Day—which usually means discounts on movies as well. These types of sales will usually take place about a week before the actual federal holiday, so you can usually start shopping ahead of the weekend to find price cuts. Amazon also has a tendency to offer one of its “Buy One, Get One” sales around these times that make shopping for your collection worthwhile.

When to Find Deals on Steelbooks

If you’re building a collection, you are likely going to want to add at least a few steelbooks to your collection. These are movies or TV series collections that are wrapped up in a special steelbook case with some sort of limited-edition artwork on the front and bonus features inside. Because of these extras, they tend to be the most expensive version of any release. That being said, they do go on sale and when those discounts actually happen varies.

Near the End of the Preorder Window

The ongoing list of upcoming 4K and Blu-ray releases includes a mix of steelbooks of the most new movies of the year as well as re-releases of popular older movies. When preorders for these steelbooks first go live, they tend to be at their most expensive. Depending on how popular the movie is, limited-edition steelbooks have the potential to sell out pretty quickly. However, if it isn’t a really sought after title then you can usually find some sort of discount closer to its actual release date. So if it’s a collector’s edition of something you really want, you can potentially wait for a discount and hope it doesn’t sell out. Amazon also offers a preorder price guarantee that will automatically get that discount if the price does drop, so you can always take the route of preordering early if your don’t want to miss out on your chance to get it.

A Month or More After Release

Assuming a steelbook doesn’t sell out before it actually releases, retailers will likely have an abundance of stock they will need to offload at some point. Sometimes this comes in the form of a discount pretty shortly after the initial release date, but usually you’ll have to wait a bit. Collectors who missed the initial preorder window are often still willing to pay full price for a new steelbook shortly after release. This means you can usually expect discounts about a month or so after the initial release date. You’re unlikely to find these discounts on the really popular new movies with limited-edition steelbooks, but they are often available on the re-releases or anniversary editions of films that don’t get as much attention from being in the zeitgeist as recently.