The Future of Home Video

Discuss North American DVDs and Blu-rays or other DVD and Blu-ray-related topics.
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Lemmy Caution
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Re: The Future of DVD

#51 Post by Lemmy Caution » Tue Jul 27, 2010 11:56 am

Maybe not the best place to put this, but apparently some rule changes in the US regarding copyright for DVDs:
Professors, students and documentary filmmakers are now allowed, for “noncommercial” purposes, to break the copy protection measures on DVDs to be used in classroom or other not-for-profit environments. This doesn’t quite go so far as to grant you and me the right to copy a DVD so we can watch it in two rooms of the house, but it’s now only one step away.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ytech_wguy/2010 ... y_tc3236_2" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
It's just a quick hit in an article about other new regulations, so no further details at that site. Sounds like it is just allowing what is probably already common practice, but good news for the scrupulous.
There should be more info on this out there.

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Matt
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 12:58 pm

Re: The Future of DVD

#52 Post by Matt » Tue Jul 27, 2010 1:27 pm

It's very good news for academic support professionals who are constantly asked by faculty to break the law in the service of education.

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perkizitore
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Re: The Future of DVD

#53 Post by perkizitore » Tue Jul 27, 2010 2:00 pm

Does this mean universities don't have to pay $400 anymore for 'educational use' DVDs and can just buy the regular edition?

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Matt
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Re: The Future of DVD

#54 Post by Matt » Tue Jul 27, 2010 2:29 pm

Well, that's always been the case if you could get around it. But no, this is entirely different. This means that instructors can rip clips from a DVD to, say, put in a PowerPoint presentation for a lecture (or for people to make fair use mashups or documentary films). The act of making clips for lectures was always legal, but DMCA made it illegal to break the encryption on a DVD for any reason.

This new rule is a big step toward restoring the legality of acts that were made illegal-on-a-technicality by DMCA, but it's not the last step.

Noiradelic
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Re: The Future of DVD

#55 Post by Noiradelic » Fri Oct 08, 2010 7:47 pm

NYT article on "premium VOD" that touches on the DVD industry.

"Premium V.O.D. would also bring greater consumer awareness to regular video on demand, which has not caught on as much as other rental options like Netflix..."

VOD hasn't been a big success, so the studios' brilliant idea is to double-down on it. And $25 for a pay-per-view movie strikes me as a joke, as I'm sure it will other members. Twice the price of a movie ticket for the privilege of watching a movie on TV 2 months earlier, but still well after it first comes out?

Noiradelic
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Re: The Future of DVD

#56 Post by Noiradelic » Fri Mar 11, 2011 8:39 pm


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Roger Ryan
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Re: The Future of DVD

#57 Post by Roger Ryan » Sat Mar 12, 2011 3:07 pm

I was a bit surprised that Mr. Kehr bemoaned the lack of CITIZEN KANE on Blu-ray when Warners has already announced it will be released in that format this year. He's right, of course, that the loss of the original negative has affected the way the film has been presented for the last 50 years.

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MichaelB
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Re: The Future of DVD

#58 Post by MichaelB » Mon Mar 14, 2011 7:06 am

Roger Ryan wrote:He's right, of course, that the loss of the original negative has affected the way the film has been presented for the last 50 years.
The technical supervisor of the BFI's releases told me that one of the joys of working on the Flipside titles is that if the original negative survives the chances are it will be virtually pristine, because it will barely have been touched in 40-50 years. Conversely, well-known titles like Night Mail can be a nightmare to deal with, as it was printed so many times that the original materials are in alarmingly fragile condition.

I noticed something similar with the MoC Antonioni releases - the more obscure title, La signora senza camelie is in markedly better condition than Le amiche, despite the latter having been extensively restored.

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Lemmy Caution
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Re: The Future of DVD

#59 Post by Lemmy Caution » Wed Apr 06, 2011 4:00 pm

Dish Wins Blockbuster Auction, Aims To Broaden Strategy:
Dish Network Corp.'s winning bid for Blockbuster Inc. could put the satellite-TV provider on a path to compete with Netflix Inc. (NFLX), although significant hurdles remain.

Stuart Galbraith IV
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Streaming, Physical Media, and the Future of Home Video

#60 Post by Stuart Galbraith IV » Fri Mar 08, 2013 12:24 am

Streaming, Physical Media, and the Future of Home Video, or: Doing it Right

My pal Stephen Bowie and I recently had a lively chat intended to mainly cover streaming but which quickly spread like molasses to physical media, building home video libraries, and the future of home video.

The chat has been posted simultaneously on our respective blogs, mine here, and Stephen's here.

Both Stephen and I invite YOU to share your concerns and become part of this conversation. Let us know what YOU think!

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colinr0380
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Re: The Future of Home Video

#61 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Mar 08, 2013 3:10 pm

So many subjects covered in that fascinating discussion. I have not really explored streaming too much at the moment - I'm a big 'physical media' fan, but more than that services such as the Criterion Hulu channel are even more 'region locked' to those of us outside the United States than even Blu-rays are! (I guess there are ways around it using VPNs, but I haven't really looked into it as of yet).

I would also add that while I theoretically love the idea of streaming there is always the issue of downloading/buffering times (something that you touch on) which until the infrastructure gets better will always be there. As someone who finds downloading podcasts can take ages at times, let alone streaming a feature length video on YouTube, Vimeo, etc (another reason why I have not looked into film streaming too much yet), I would much prefer things to move towards a solution of being able to download and save a film to your hard drive, whether for free or subscription based. Although that would fly in the face of the situation, that you both theorise about, of the studios or licencing companies even after a purchase being made always having the power over access and the final say about removing access to a film (or maybe replacing or modifying a film into different versions).

You both also talk about the way that televisions are merging with computers in the sense of streaming films. I think it would be worthwhile also looking at the way that computer games themselves have been dealing with moving from box products to online services such as Steam. As computer games have evolved from being entirely on a disc to involving multi-player content that often requires an always-on internet connection anyway (a controversial subject in itself), a service like Steam has become a big success in providing a massive hub where people can buy games, download them, download patches or updates to keep their game up to date (In my wildest imaginings, I'd like to think that the film equivalent could be say downloading a pan and scan version of the film and then the service you buy it from updating it to widescreen! Or either for free or a nominal fee, updating a standard definition version of the film up to HD. Or letting you watch the short version of Carlos and then being able to get the TV series for a discount, or something like that!), as well as providing a community service where individal players can communicate with each other outside of games, or get grouped together within a game. By being a service which you sign up to with a username, Steam also allows individuals to transfer their game libraries to another computer, so they are not tied down to one computer where if they have to change it, they likely face the prospect of losing access to their games (as you got in the era where you would buy a boxed copy of a game with a passcode that when activated could not be changed. Steam actually does that but, as I said earlier, it ties it to your username and account rather than to your computer).

Looking at computer consoles would also be worthwhile too in showing where technology is moving too - keep an eye on the new generation of consoles that are coming. There was wild speculation a while ago that the Playstation 3 might be the last console to use a disc player, with the possibility of everything being streamed instead (the Playstation 3 was the only console in the last generation to have a Blu-ray drive, although that was because it was released during the earliest days of Blu-ray, while the other consoles were DVD). Now the specs for the Playstation 4 so far still include a Blu-ray drive (and the new Xbox is apparently going to include a Blu-ray drive for the first time), and some computer games magazines suggest that this means that 4K is going to be a heck of a long way off because of that, due to the need for a new technology that can store and play 4K to be created, not to mention that even if everything moves towards streaming, that what is cripplingly slow to download now is only going to get worse when the file sizes are increased incrementally!

It all comes down to developing new and faster (and more reliable) technology before we can move into either a 4K or streaming future. What is around currently is OK but not good enough yet. Until then, I'll stick with my DVDs, Blu-rays (and yes, my wall of VHS tapes!)
Last edited by colinr0380 on Fri Mar 08, 2013 3:53 pm, edited 2 times in total.

David M.
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Re: The Future of Home Video

#62 Post by David M. » Fri Mar 08, 2013 3:29 pm

Rather than retread old ground, I'll just phrase my preference for optical disc in this April Fools' day parody I did a few years ago.

PS: it's a parody so is not designed to be impartial. But it does voice some of my concerns.

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Gregory
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Re: The Future of Home Video

#63 Post by Gregory » Fri Mar 08, 2013 4:35 pm

What doesn't make sense to me is why the Blu-ray format has performed so much better than most of us predicted, at the same time that declining interest in physical media has continued unabated and it becomes clearer all the time that people value convenience and paying for streaming over paying for individual discs and having permanence and superior quality. It seems like there must still be a big portion of the market that represents people who are not "cinephiles" but who like the simplicity of buying or renting a disc and sticking it into a machine. Especially those, like me, who have slow and unreliable internet service (among other problems) causing glitches when streaming. My partner streams things daily and has paid to download episodes, and it's been a source of consternation.

I know there are also a lot of people who have bought blu-ray players and hooked them up to fairly low-quality TVs with screens so small that the difference of HD appears minimal at best. A lot of these people have bought just a handful of classic blu-rays (the Gone with the Winds, Casablancas, etc.) that mostly sit on the shelf as people stream their routine viewing and only occasionally sit down to watch a blu-ray for the full experience.
So there's a big difference between the masses of that kind of blu-ray buyer and the niche of those who are still building serious libraries that encompass our tastes. The flood of classic titles on disc that sell only tens of thousands of copies each combine to make a pretty impressive showing for the format, but those of us buying lots of those less lucrative catalog titles, newer indie films, etc. are a niche market, and pretty much always have been. Give the vast majority, who are less serious about owning these things, a chance to get away from the previous model, and they'll take it, as long as it's reasonably affordable and user-friendly. They're not that concerned about most of the old stuff falling out of circulation because there will always be new content they want to watch. The impulse to build an expensive "library" is quite rare, statistically.

What surprises me about that discussion is Stephen Bowie's position: he watches pretty much everything on DVD and Blu, yet "got over the idea of wanting to own movies pretty early." So he's at the mercy of disc-rental services like Netflix even as they move away from their core model of mailing discs in favor of streaming, and the selection of discs available becomes poorer and poorer? Seems like that's more than enough reason to rethink not wanting to own movies.

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tenia
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Re: The Future of Home Video

#64 Post by tenia » Sat Mar 09, 2013 9:57 am

Gregory wrote:What doesn't make sense to me is why the Blu-ray format has performed so much better than most of us predicted, at the same time that declining interest in physical media has continued unabated and it becomes clearer all the time that people value convenience and paying for streaming over paying for individual discs and having permanence and superior quality.
It's funny because I read French figures 2 weeks ago and WS shared their thought in a lengthy DVD Classik interview and "performed so much better than most of us predicted" is not really the conclusion I have.
I don't know in the US, but in France, even if there has been a +555% BD volume since 2008, it still only represents 17% in volume and 20% in money of the overall market. And every Christmas, the DVD boxsets are still 5 to 10 times more exposed in stores than any BD boxsets (and I mean this very litterally). Except in a few places, BD is still over-shadowed by a DVD that doesn't want to die, even if its market is now 19% less in volume than in 2008, but nobody seems willing to push forward the only optical video media going forward.

We are here in a situation where no national editor is making money out of most of its catalog movie, and where only a happy few movies are able to explode the scores (exemples : French Cancan in BD is about 1000 copies sold, Drive 400 000, Killer Elite 2000 for BD+DVD together). And the online video like Hulu is not working at all in France.

I'm honestly quite pessimistic about the future of video releases, especially physical. If editors and studios are not willing to push here the BD more than currently, DVD market will continue to collapse without any accepted and understood replacement in customer's minds. And in a few years, they will be all like "oh shit, we would have known better, we would have try harder to push more the only physical format which was progressing"...

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: The Future of Home Video

#65 Post by matrixschmatrix » Sat Mar 09, 2013 12:01 pm

From some figures posted at the High Digest forum, it looks as though in the US blu has between a 25% and 33% market share of titles sold, and has gotten as high as 45% on weeks when some popular blu set was released. Moreover, since blus are more expensive than equivalent DVDs, the actually money share is higher still. So it looks as though DVD isn't exactly dying yet, but blu-ray is absolutely big business and has a sizable slice of the pie.

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TMDaines
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Re: The Future of Home Video

#66 Post by TMDaines » Sat Mar 09, 2013 12:03 pm

It all depends on location too, I'd imagine. It would surprise me if Blu-rays had as big of a share of the market in Italy as they do in Britain and the US, for example.

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MichaelB
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Re: The Future of Home Video

#67 Post by MichaelB » Sat Mar 09, 2013 1:01 pm

I've been keeping a keen eye on the Blu-ray situation in Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, and it seems to me that you don't need more than two hands to tot up the total number of "classic" (i.e. pre-2000) films from those countries combined.

(I make it Ashes and Diamonds, Austeria, The Firemen's Ball, Hippolyt the Butler, Lemonade Joe, Marketa Lazarova, Night Train... and I'd love to know if there are any more out there!)

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Gregory
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Re: The Future of Home Video

#68 Post by Gregory » Sat Mar 09, 2013 2:19 pm

It definitely depends on the place. I was referring to Blu-ray sales in the U.S. and other countries where the vast majority of the discs are being produced.
I'm a little surprised to hear that in France Blu-ray is "overshadowed" by DVD still. Here in the U.S. on the rare occasions when I go into a big box store it looks to be about a 50-50 split between the formats (someone else probably has actual data on this!). Even if Blu-ray unit sales have not caught up to DVD yet, these companies are well aware that DVD sales are declining and Blu-ray sales are growing, despite the generally higher price tag (which=more revenue per square foot of retail space for Blu-ray rather than DVD) and so they want to push the format that has the much brighter future. There's no question of the DVD format "dying" anytime soon, though. I've predicted that media like CDs and DVDs would die hard, far less suddenly than many have said they would. They've declined and will continue to, but people will still buy a significant number of them for a long time to come. It's just not the same as with computer media, where suddenly "everyone" (people in richer countries, that is) switches to a better data storage format and in relatively little time no one uses floppy disks or zip disks anymore.
Anyway, what's surprising to me is the consistent major growth in Blu-ray sales every year despite the emerging preference for streaming. The Digital Entertainment Group reported that for 2012, Blu-ray spending rose nearly 10 percent for the year and spending on Blu-ray catalog titles went up 25 percent for the year.

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vsski
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Re: The Future of Home Video

#69 Post by vsski » Sun Mar 10, 2013 2:49 am

I live in the US but travel a lot internationally and since I love movies whenever possible I visit larger stores that are known to have a good selection of DVDs and BDs. And from my observations, although I have never tried to proof it with statistics, the number of BDs compared to DVDs in the US is by far greater than any other country I have been to in the last years. The UK is probably second, but this past New Year I was in France (Paris and Strasbourg) and was shocked to see how few BDs there were in even the biggest Virgin and FNAC stores. So for anyone living in the US the situation is clearly not comparable to the rest of the world.

If I of course look at the movies I really like and compare what is issued in the US vs. the rest of the world (although often in non English friendly versions), then the story is a very different one. :roll:

peerpee
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Re: The Future of Home Video

#70 Post by peerpee » Sun Mar 10, 2013 4:03 am

Countries not doing too well with Blu-ray could definitely leverage more sales by better explaining what the fuck the technology is all about. A very limited number of people fully understand the technology, and even fewer understand that their equipment needs tweaking in order to view Blu-ray optimally.

TV manufacturers have a lot to answer for with their MotionFlow shite, ambient backlight, and pisspoor factory settings all set to default right out of the box. It wouldn't be at all hard for them to have a "24fps 35mm Blu-ray" setting which automatically turns all that shite off and effectively calibrates your display for optimal Blu-ray viewing.

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tenia
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Re: The Future of Home Video

#71 Post by tenia » Sun Mar 10, 2013 6:15 am

peerpee wrote:Countries not doing too well with Blu-ray could definitely leverage more sales by better explaining what the fuck the technology is all about. A very limited number of people fully understand the technology, and even fewer understand that their equipment needs tweaking in order to view Blu-ray optimally.

TV manufacturers have a lot to answer for with their MotionFlow shite, ambient backlight, and pisspoor factory settings all set to default right out of the box. It wouldn't be at all hard for them to have a "24fps 35mm Blu-ray" setting which automatically turns all that shite off and effectively calibrates your display for optimal Blu-ray viewing.
That's exactly my main trouble with the whole story, I couldn't agree more with you on that, and it is also a point tackled by Wild Side in their ITW.

There are also lots of clichés that still live because no editor or manufacturer did enough advertising explaining what is what. I mean, BD is close what ? 8 yr old now ? and I still hear too many people complaining about grain and no understanding why there are so many old movies on BD. When you think that it takes 5 minutes and a couple of exemples to make them understand, you tend to think that all these years are an awful lot of wasted time.
vsski wrote:I live in the US but travel a lot internationally and since I love movies whenever possible I visit larger stores that are known to have a good selection of DVDs and BDs. And from my observations, although I have never tried to proof it with statistics, the number of BDs compared to DVDs in the US is by far greater than any other country I have been to in the last years. The UK is probably second, but this past New Year I was in France (Paris and Strasbourg) and was shocked to see how few BDs there were in even the biggest Virgin and FNAC stores. So for anyone living in the US the situation is clearly not comparable to the rest of the world.
I always understood that there was much more advertisement for BD in the US than elsewhere, but that's certainly due to the fact that it's a market so big that it easily absorb almost any production / distribution / manufacturing oncost. Whereas in France, when you do a catalog release in BD, you're stuck with 1000 copies sold... WS said they were happy to have now sold 10 000 DVDs + BDs of THe Night Porter but it took 3 years. 4 flies of grey velvet, it's 1200 BDs sold. That's definitely not a lot, and I'm quite sure than even some of the slowest seller titles at Criterion sells more than this.
matrixschmatrix wrote:From some figures posted at the High Digest forum, it looks as though in the US blu has between a 25% and 33% market share of titles sold, and has gotten as high as 45% on weeks when some popular blu set was released.
We also have a few titles having a 50%+ share of BD VS DVD, usually big titles like The Avengers or Iron Man 2, but that's about it.


Anyway, if anyone wants to have a look, you have French figures here in PDF for 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012.

I'm not saying that it's bad though, just that it's far away from a success, and that the current BD market in France is quite cold, jeopardizing even some releases. For instance, Gaumont was supposed to release Lola Montès in BD before Criterion. FNAC told them "no, we won't take it, it won't sell enough". Done. It's only going to be released this year.

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TMDaines
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Re: The Future of Home Video

#72 Post by TMDaines » Sun Mar 10, 2013 7:15 am

One of the elephants in the room is that the catalogue of DVD releases is still far more exciting and adventurous than Blu-ray releases. How many films make their DVD/Blu debut on Blu? Only contemporary cinema; so few classics. The most exciting labels for me are those that are continually making more stuff available in decent editions: Cristaldi Film, Edition Filmmuseum etc. I'd rather have Blu-ray die out in an instant than be left with companies all over the world just giving us more of the same in 1080p.

Of course, this line of argument means nothing in terms of the mass market appeal of Blu-ray.

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tenia
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Re: The Future of Home Video

#73 Post by tenia » Sun Mar 10, 2013 9:08 am

I don't know, I'm buying almost only catalog movies (probably 90% of what I buy), and the only DVDs I'm still buying are some Classic Confidentials, some MoC and a few BFI I have late like the COI collection. In 2012, I only bought about 40 DVD releases. I bought something like 350 BD releases.

I don't especially disagree with you, especially when it's clear that not all catalog movies can get a BD treatment. But I just wish that DVD would die for anything that has material HD-worthy, and that DVD would only be used for when the material is not in a good shape.

When some Classic Confidentials DVD releases are from HD material, but are only released on DVD because the market doesn't allow a BD release to be viable, it is extremely sad. In France, we are currently in a state where most of the Introuvables from Wild Side that are being released only on DVD, are released on BD by Olive (That Cold Day in The Park, for instance).

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TMDaines
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Re: The Future of Home Video

#74 Post by TMDaines » Sun Mar 10, 2013 9:54 am

Well put it this way. I'm far more indifferent to the announcements of Criterion and, to a lesser extent, MoC nowadays, because there seems to be less and less stuff making its DVD/Blu-ray debut. Whereas I'm far more excited to see that what the aforementioned labels (and some others) have on their schedule, as they continue to put out other films for the very first time anywhere in the world.

Don't get me wrong, one of the great things about Criterion is that virtually all mainline releases are getting BD releases now. This means that certain things such Rosi's Il momento della verita', which would never get a BD release elsewhere, are getting one. At the same time, however, it seems that because everything needs to be on BD, films that can't justify one financially or artistically are no longer getting a look in. I still don't think it's been a good thing that Criterion and MoC have got access to the majors' catalogues. In a ideal world, they themselves should be putting their own films out, but alas.

In summary: nine times out of ten I'd rather see something new on a decent DVD, then a film making the leap to 1080p - and I say this as both an ardent supporter of Blu-ray and someone who will also watch a terrible, VHS-sourced transfer of a television recording of a battered print, if that's the only way a film can be seen. I'm just here for the films themselves, first and foremost.

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vsski
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Re: The Future of Home Video

#75 Post by vsski » Sun Mar 10, 2013 11:42 am

While I agree with the basic premise that it's better to see a new film on DVD than having the "7th version" of Casablanca on BD - although the last version of Casablanca is a noticeable improvement over the previous BD-, for me just having a new film in any format and quality is no longer sufficient (unless it's a movie I've been dying to see for 20 years and can't get my hands on otherwise).

Quality plays a great role for me nowadays and I seldom buy anything blind anymore. E.g., in the beginning of DVD I bought all the Wellspring titles (listed elsewhere on this forum as now OOP), because Wellspring published so many titles I really wanted to see. But most of them are in very crappy editions and I seldom look at them anymore. So if they came out on BD there are quite a few I would repurchase, provided they are high quality BDs.

I also feel that my time is very limited and I can't possibly watch everything I want, so I focus on those titles that I know or have read about as being quality releases.

To go back to one of the origins of this thread, if it's titles I really want to see, but that I know aren't up to my desired quality standards either due to label screw ups or film elements, those may be the ones where streaming will become an option for me (but so far I have no intention of going in this direction, as my kevyip is far too great still).

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