The Future of Home Video

[Gregory]

There's some extremely bad statistical analysis and logic in that piece.
Some anonymous college student in 2012 said he hadn't seen anyone use iTunes in a really long time. What more proof do you need?
Not even the title of the piece makes sense. Just because Apple created a streaming service, it doesn't mean they've accepted that buying music is now obsolete (a really silly claim).
Will the revenues for permanent downloads vs. streaming in the U.S. and Canada completely reverse their current trends so that streaming totally dominates as in South Korea? Maybe, but that's just speculation about the future. Tech "journalists" love to do that, and people rarely come back later and call them out on how wrong their forecasts were. It reminds me of the constant stream of articles that extrapolated data about the growth of e-readers and tablets and loudly proclaimed dead or dying the practice of buying printed books and magazines.

[colinr0380]

Gregory, how much do you feel that this kind of thing is slightly lazy journalism, or do you feel that there is sometimes an element of a journalist almost trying to wish a new paradigm into being, even if it their argument is built on shaky research? That something has been hyped to be the next big thing, so it needs to be promoted over any other existing service?

[Perkins Cobb]

The funny thing about that Vox piece is that I read it as a list of reasons why I don't want a smartphone rather than a list of reasons why I don't want to own music.

[Gregory]

Colin, yes, I believe the longstanding premise to be true that our culture has a consumerist obsession with getting new stuff all the time, and manufacturers and retailers are extremely heavily invested in selling us the newest and latest thing, and most consumers buy into that to the extent they can afford it. Having the newest stuff is valued, but being able to use the same devices and formats for years and years is not. That method of selling us "new and improved" stuff that's quickly devalued goes back at least to the "model year" format of auto manufacturing but seemed to fully take hold after WWII as things became increasingly disposable, as a result of a consumer economy of planned (deliberate) obsolescence, which tries to make sure the things people have already bought quickly become undesirable either because (a) they stop working or (b) they come to be seen as out-of-fashion.
That lifespan of desirability has generally become shorter in recent decades, I think, partly as a result of the pace of actual technological improvement , but not entirely; there's also a kind of cheerleading or hurrying along of old technologies into their graves (and dramatic exaggeration of how drastically this will occur) to make room for the latest stuff. Aside from the nostalgia factor many have for old computers, Ataris, etc. I've noticed that our culture is very easily amused by older things that have fallen out of fashion. Those bulky old cell phones seen in Clueless and the like are now considered absolutely hilarious. The moment that Facebook caught on, people who still used MySpace became the butt of many jokes. Not even real jokes but just, "Lol, who even uses that anymore?" kinds of comments, which I've also seen leveled at DVDs any many other things. Middle-aged people who don't know how to properly use texting slang, emojis, social media etc. are endless unfunny comedy fodder. And on 30 Rock, one of the running gags about what makes Liz's ex Dennis Duffy such a loser is that he's perpetually trying to start businesses based on technologies like beepers that no one uses anymore.
In addition to the novelty factor is the notion that we constantly need more and more convenience, which is understandable if technology can actually provide it. Still, putting a disc into a player has always been a very convenient activity for me, so I'm not likely to jump on the bandwagon who seem to think that watching a DVD/Blu-ray is some ridiculously cumbersome thing that no one wants to do anymore. And I listen to music all the time on physical media that isn't available on streaming services. Searching for what I want to listen to on said services is what I would call a major inconvenience and a disappointment as well. But I'm the kind of person invisible to the author of the linked article, whose data about physical media is so big-picture and over-generalized that it doesn't even seem to acknowledge that vinyl never died and in fact made a notable resurgence. The hundreds of thousands of different releases of music, movies, etc. on physical media that still come out each year are mostly invisible because they don't fit the simple narratives of old things becoming totally moribund.

[manicsounds]

Home Media Magazine Article: "Blu-ray producers say studios should shift expectations about physical media"

[tenia]

Home Media Magazine Article: "Blu-ray producers say studios should shift expectations about physical media"

While this is very interesting as a whole, it also sounds like the usual rant about the physical market collapse with quite superficial elements.

When I read "I find it impossible to believe that the people who were buying movies 20 years ago suddenly stopped buying movies. I think they’re there.", I think this says a lot about how some still don't want to understand the state of the current market and how, actually, yes, some have suddenly stopped buying movies... at least on a physical support.

There also are quite obvious statements such as :

Panelists sung the praises of independent distributors such as Shout Factory, Criterion, Olive Films, Arrow Films, Twilight Time and Kino Lorber, among others, who have continued to embrace physical media with new special-edition Blu-rays of catalog titles.

“It’s a niche business but they’re finding their audience and they’re targeting that audience and they’re delivering quality,” Hunt said. “But the studios aren’t interested in doing that. They just don’t want to be part of that niche business.”

Obviously studios don't want to be part of a niche market. That's never been their scale at all, they want to have the biggest lot size possible and aim at a worldwide distribution. Independant labels already work at a lower scale because of the right-holding system that often prevent having a worldwide deal, but even so : it's now well known that this niche business have indeed found an audience but a more and more shrinking one, so that's not a glowing business either.

Finally, on ST:TNG, the restoration has been paying for all the past mistakes on TV Shows : people just waited for the whole show to be released because they didn't want to miss extras, or things like this. Paramount already chose to keep some extras exclusive to the special episodes releases, why wouldn't they do like many others before and not release a Complete Series boxset with exclusive extras for a cheaper price ?
And when you look at the cost of the restoration, it was quite obvious straight from the beginning it would never recoup on BD. In France, even a simple 2K feature-length movie restoration doesn't recoup on BD, so it heavily relies on TV acquisitions.

[MichaelB]

One of the most depressing online discussions I've ever read was on the Britmovie forums when the BFI announced its fundraiser for the Hitchcock silents. With a couple of honourable exceptions, the responses fell into two categories:

1. I've got the DVD and it looks fine to me;
2. Why can't they just borrow the money and pay it back from sales afterwards?

The restorations averaged out at £100K apiece. Even high-profile titles like The Lodger and Blackmail (the lesser-known silent version) wouldn't make more than a fraction of that kind of money, and the idea that Champagne or The Farmer's Wife would raise more than a few thousand pounds is fanciful in the extreme. Indeed, the mere fact that most of these restorations remain unreleased on video several years after they were completed speaks volumes in itself - the films have immense cultural importance, but they're simply not strong commercial propositions.

[tenia]

Well, I remember Gaumont not being able to release on BD Lola Montès for like 3 years because of the lack of demand, and TF1 having restored Renoir's Le carosse d'or for 2 years and they will only release it on BD end of this year.

[colinr0380]

I'd agree on the "studios not wanting to be part of a niche market" comment, though they do have a presence there in licensing their films out to Twilight Time, Criterion, Arrow and so on, third parties who can provide the kind of care and attention that just couldn't be there in featureless bulk releases of MoD discs. It seems that some of the responsibility for production is being passed across to these smaller labels, who in turn themselves have the prestige of a well known release to compliment the rest of their catalogues. Hopefully if the economics work out everyone wins from this kind of situation: the studios have revenue from titles that they might not be able to justify spending time on getting care and attention paid to them just for a back catalogue release, the third party producer gets to work on a title they have an interest in, and the consumer gets a better product too.

On the Hitchcock issue, have any Hitchcock silents been shown on UK television? I remember a late night screening of The Lodger back in 1995 and of Blackmail in 1997 (though that was the talkie version), but nothing since them. How important were television partnerships in funding such restorations, knowing that it would be good for a prestigious TV screening at least, before that came to an end?

[MichaelB]

On the Hitchcock issue, have any Hitchcock silents been shown on UK television? I remember a late night screening of The Lodger back in 1995 and the Blackmail in 1997 (though that was the talkie version), but nothing since them. How important were television partnerships in funding such restorations, knowing that it would be good for a pretigious TV screening at least, before that came to an end?

When was the last time any silent film was shown on a British TV channel of sufficient clout to spend a decent amount on the rights?

This is part of the problem, of course.

[GaryC]

On the Hitchcock issue, have any Hitchcock silents been shown on UK television? I remember a late night screening of The Lodger back in 1995 and the Blackmail in 1997 (though that was the talkie version), but nothing since them. How important were television partnerships in funding such restorations, knowing that it would be good for a pretigious TV screening at least, before that came to an end?

When was the last time any silent film was shown on a British TV channel of sufficient clout to spend a decent amount on the rights?

This is part of the problem, of course.

A Cottage on Dartmoor was shown on BBC4 in 2006 and BBC2 in 2007. That's the last showing of a silent film on any of the five main channels I can think of. Film 4 have shown Orphans of the Storm a few times, once as part of a season to accompany the showings of Mark Cousins's Story of Film (which was shown on More 4, not the main channel).

BBC2's old-film slot on weekend mornings is less than it was in 2013 and mostly dug into the RKO catalogue, but the earliest it went was 1931, with The Gay Diplomat.

[tenia]

I'm quickly using the opportunity of this topic on home video to make a bit of advertising for something I've been working on these past weeks.

I've started in February 2014 to work as a Blu Ray reviewer for Retro HD. I've been wandering around many forums for some years, and have been able to gather a small address booklet which I used this summer to do a dossier about labels, freelancers and "web journalists" (in a broad way).

Starting on August 2nd, we'll publish there each Sunday 2 interviews (1 at 7am, the other at 4pm).

We have been lucky enough to get positive feedback from : BFI Video, Arrow Video, Masters of Cinema, Carlotta, TF1 Video, Jérome Wybon, David Mackenzie, Michael Brooke, DVD Classik, EcranLarge, DigitalCiné (& most likely Wild Side), which will bring the last publications on Sept 6th.

The interviews will be available here : http://retro-hd.com/documents/interviews/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Be warned though : they will all be only in French.

I can't stress how we're grateful to all the interviewees who have given us their time and support on this project. I'm very enthusiastic of their work before anything, and it has been a tremendous opportunity to be able to discuss with them.

[Warren D]

Apologies if this is not posted in the correct place. I did look for a more appropriate thread but could not find one. I just have a quick question about how to find out which licenses are held by specific distributors/boutique labels (ie. Criterion, Arrow US, Shout Factory, Blue Underground, etc.) in the US.

Many members here have posted (with what seems to be legitimate authority) which distributors hold licenses to release films (specifically blu rays) in the US. My question is, what resources are available to find this information online?

I have done some searching but could not find any comprehensive lists for who has the rights to what.

Thanks in advance for any and all help.

[MichaelB]

This stuff is a private contractual matter between the companies concerned - there's no central database or anything like that. Detective work can be a key element of the rights acquisition process!

[JAP]

This would probably be more appropriate on the defunct (hélas!) The Great Aspect Ratio Debate thread, but according to this guy 1:0.56 is the way to go . Talk about a narrow view...

[domino harvey]

These two look like the last people I want to listen to about anything other than how to do a sweet ollie on a fixie

[Gregory]

Vertically oriented videos are the lingua franca of at least a half-dozen social and video apps, including Snapchat, whose users watch three billion mostly vertical videos every day.

That's just because a lot of people tend to hold their phones in that direction, usually without regard for how it will look when viewed. That's not what a lingua franca is.

[zedz]

Vertically oriented videos are the lingua franca of at least a half-dozen social and video apps, including Snapchat, whose users watch three billion mostly vertical videos every day.

That just means that a lot of people tend to hold their phones in the same direction, usually without regard for how it will look when viewed. That's not what a lingua franca is.

It's an aspect ratio that's only good for skyscrapers and other erections.

If this aspect ratio really were a lingua franca, then when news programmes make use of phone video they wouldn't do that ridiculous edge-smearing / hall of mirrors effect to make it fill the widescreen frame. I don't know if it's absurd or depressing that they assume this will deceive people into thinking that it wasn't amateur footage shot on somebody's phone.

[Zot!]

Vertical is fine for spreadsheets, writing code, paintshop, etc, that is why computer monitors often offer it as a feature. Widescreen is actually an awful ratio for a reading book for instance (see the kindle). You'd have a hard time convincing me anything less than academy has any place in moving pictures, but it would be more tolerable if the reason this was happening was because people were making a conscious choice and not just being ignorant.

[Gregory]

Also:

The future of video, it turns out, just may be vertical ... According to the venture capitalist Mary Meeker, we now collectively spend about 30 percent of our screen time with devices that are best held vertically, like smartphones and tablets. That time spent is growing quickly, and on tall screens, vertical videos simply look and work better than those shot “correctly.”

Best held vertically? When watching a video on a smartphone or tablet, you can just turn the thing 90 degrees! Even I know that.
I know that journalists love to throw around rash predictions about The Future willy-nilly (tech journalists are particularly guilty of this), but what about basic things that never change, conveniently ignored in the article, such as the fact that the human field of vision is horizontal?

“Think of a baby’s first steps,” Mr. Whaley said. “The baby is vertical for the first time ever and the best way to capture that whole body is vertically.”

In most videos of a baby learning to walk, the baby isn't all alone with the person shooting the video; there's another parent or caregiver the baby is walking to or from, and that's part of the scene. If there is more than one person in a video, in almost all cases they're arranged somewhere along a horizon line.

And yes, I'm apparently feeling a little antsy for today's announcements.

[PillowRock]

If this aspect ratio really were a lingua franca, then when news programmes make use of phone video they wouldn't do that ridiculous edge-smearing / hall of mirrors effect to make it fill the widescreen frame. I don't know if it's absurd or depressing that they assume this will deceive people into thinking that it wasn't amateur footage shot on somebody's phone.

I don't think that they have any expectation or intent of deceiving anybody. (Note that the effect that you're talking about isn't reserved only for phone videos; it's also commonplace when clips of old 4:3 TV video is inserted into HD programming, as with old sports highlights.)

I think that TV producers are just used to expecting a lot of people to dislike having "black bars" on their TVs instead having the screen filled, and that those people tend to be more vocal about complaining.

[MichaelB]

Vertical is fine for spreadsheets, writing code, paintshop, etc, that is why computer monitors often offer it as a feature. Widescreen is actually an awful ratio for a reading book for instance (see the kindle).

My iPad's Kindle app is "widescreen", which I'd argue makes more sense than the hardware Kindle arrangement since it allows you to see both the page you're reading and the facing page - which is what you'd see if you were reading an actual book.

[Zot!]

Vertical is fine for spreadsheets, writing code, paintshop, etc, that is why computer monitors often offer it as a feature. Widescreen is actually an awful ratio for a reading book for instance (see the kindle).

My iPad's Kindle app is "widescreen", which I'd argue makes more sense than the hardware Kindle arrangement since it allows you to see both the page you're reading and the facing page - which is what you'd see if you were reading an actual book.

Far be it from me to tell you how to read a book, but I imagine the app would similarly allow you to hold the pad vertically and get a full page view of a single page that is larger and easier to read and even hold. On a "mini" or a iPhone, I would have to imagine this is almost necessary. The two page book is a constraint of the printed form, and not of the content. I can't think of any text off hand that was intended to be read horizontally across pages, except perhaps the rare comic book. I'm not even convinced that authors would typically control the layout of their text to that degree. If it was good enough for God to give to Charlton Heston, it's good enough for me.

[MichaelB]

Far be it from me to tell you how to read a book, but I imagine the app would similarly allow you to hold the pad vertically and get a full page view of a single page that is larger and easier to read and even hold.

It does, but this is clunky and awkward. The two-page version is a much more comfortable reading experience.

I note, incidentally, that you clearly haven't tried this yourself, and so your original claim that this is "an awful ratio" is based entirely on supposition. And my daily practical experience (since I generally prefer reading books on my iPad unless there are portability/bright sunlight issues) very much suggests otherwise.

[domino harvey]

When I showed the film of Andy Warhol eating a hamburger to my students, they got vocally upset and frustrated afterwards because he was "eating it wrong"-- people take their personal preferences for granted and assume they're right. That said, you're a madman, Michael