Is it available?
Checking home DVD, video and download availability in Britain
Any title currently available to buy on DVD or Blu-ray in Britain can usually be ordered directly through a good retailer - on the high street, by mail order, or online. Online retailers often boast comprehensive catalogues of available titles which are usually searchable by actor, director or genre, as well as by title. There are an increasing number of retailers and distributors also offering titles as authorised downloads, either to purchase or to 'rent' for a limited period.
Search Film Links Gateway for a selection of links to sites offering titles to purchase, rent or download. Public reference libraries should also have the facility to help check whether a particular title is available to purchase on DVD, and the UK Film Council’s FindAnyFilm collates information on availability across a range of formats from a number of retailers.
For titles released on DVD and Blu-ray by the BFI, please see our Filmstore. A number of BFI titles are also available as downloads for customers within the UK from Jaman and LOVEFiLM.
Unavailable titles
Many titles, particularly older films and most television programmes, will never have been released on DVD (nor previously on video) in Britain and will not be available to download. Other titles will have been released at one time, but will have since been deleted from distribution and will therefore not be available to purchase.
If a title cannot be ordered from a retailer, you will probably not be able to purchase a copy. Copies of titles on DVD that have recently been deleted by distributors may sometimes still be found for hire in rental outlets or via public libraries.
There are a number of companies in Britain who specialise in the supply of deleted or 'hard to find' DVDs and videos. For relevant links, search our Film Links Gateway using the search term "deleted".
DVDs which may be available in other countries will not necessarily be available in Britain, and those purchased from overseas retailers may not be compatible with British players. For example, DVDs purchased from North America (region 1) will only play on a British DVD player if it has multi-region playback; North American videos will only play on a British VCR if it has NTSC playback. Downloads will also often be available to purchase in particular territories only.
If you wish to view a particular film or television title for research purposes that you cannot otherwise obtain, the BFI National Archive holds viewing copies of a large range of material. Viewings are made by appointment with the archive - please see Research Viewing Services for more information.
For British terrestrial television programmes, the two largest commercial archives in Britain are BBC Motion Gallery and ITN Source (which handles Channel 4's archive and a large part of ITV's output). Please note, however, that these archives are focused to supply commercial, rather than private, usage.
