DVD Polizei

Ender's Game would be nice to see on 4K.

Alan Smithee

I didn't have as big a problem with the "smaller" market for LD, since it catered more to enthusiasts than the typical idiot consumers, as I did with their PRICING- average price for a movie was $40, some more some less. I don't know if the market could EVER go back to that kind of pricing- possibly for something really "cool" or "exclusive" but not for something like an Adam Sandler movie. I was going to grab one UHD disc at Best Buy just to have one of the first, but couldn't bring myself to spend $30 on it. That might've been a bargain in the laserdisc era, but I can't see them selling many of these at that price at least for long (the first Blu-Rays were priced about the same however and they've since dropped. Laserdisc prices on the other hand kept going up until DVD came out and took away most of its market.)

AaronSch

I'm not upgrading again. It's the law of diminishing returns. UHD isn't going to improve the experience enough to justify the ridiculously high added cost. Few films will benefit and most aren't worth the upgrade—"You can put lipstick on a pig but its still a pig." Two-thirds of us still prefer DVDs and never made the transition to Blu-ray. An even smaller fraction of the high definition audience will buy into UHD and it will give new meaning to the words "niche market." Sorry folks, it's DOA. I've never had so much dis-interest for new technology. Yawn.

consoleman

I'm pretty much taking the approach of not buying stuff again and again each time a new generation of media comes out, not unless it is deeply discounted and I feel like I'm getting much more than what I have already.

I do admit to upgrading a good number of dvds to bluray but only when the price dropped to $5 or less. The majority of my bluray collection are new stuff I never owned before. While I don't plan to upgrade to 4k anytime soon, there will come a time that's not too far in the future when it becomes cost-effective to buy the 4k version of new movies especially since the regular bluray is included. My plan is to only buy the newest movies in 4k and I will probably stop buying regular blurays now and wait for the 4k version to drop in price.

No plan to buy the 4k player till a year or two from now. Can't afford it. But that won't stop me from collecting 4k movies when prices really drop even if I don't have the machine to play it yet.

E Unit

I guess we're going to continue the bitching here about this rather this on the thread in the HD forum?

consoleman

This belongs exactly where it is. As deals come up, we can get an idea of who's buying now. Just because some people, including myself, say we're not jumping in quite yet, there will be those who are and it'll be good to hear from them.

E Unit

Think of the Amazon deals thread. It's for DEALS. Sure, people stray off, but every once in a while people have to get reminded that it's meant for posting deals. Again, there's a thread in the HD forum where we're talking about the pros and cons of 4k blu ray. Why not stick to that thread if we're going to argue about the format or when we plan on buying in.

Adam Tyner

This is a Bargains forum. Discussion should therefore be primarily oriented around bargains. It's okay if things briefly veer off-point as a natural part of the discussion, but "is Ultra HD Blu-ray as a format worth it?" really has no place here. There's a thread for that in the appropriate forum. I really don't want this to end up like, say, the PS Vita Deals and Discussion thread at CAG which is 95% chatter and borderline-zero deals.

Why So Blu?

E Unit

Speaking of, I picked up Ender's Game from Fry's. So first 4K purchase for me. I passed on Expendables 3 because, well it's Expendables 3. Now I need to be on the lookout for a player...

consoleman

Good to see that the title of this blog has been changed from 4k/Ultra HD Blu-Ray: Discounts and Thoughts to Discounts and Deals if opinions of 4k is frowned upon.

Forum has been way too quiet these days. Seeing deals to get excited about has been few and far between. Just remembering the old days when the forum used to be jumping with discussions of all kind.

masetodd

That being said, does anyone honestly think $29.99 is a "bargain"?

E Unit

No, but for now $19.99 is, like the 2 titles Adam posted.

jjcool

Most certainly not. My guess is most people won't be jumping in to the new format until we start regularly seeing actual bargains, and on titles that people actually want.

Adam Tyner

It's not ideal , but when the MSRP is $39.99 - $42.99 (!), 25-30% off qualifies as a deal. The FoxConnect deal I posted -- down to $18 and change a disc -- is by any measure a bargain.

Why So Blu?

I'm surprised that there aren't buy an UHD player and get 6 UHD discs for free like when the the Blu-ray/HD war of 2006 started up.

davidh777

That's what I said when this thread was first started.

No one is frowning on opinions. There have been plenty of them expressed in the other thread.

SterlingBen

I would imagine there will be packages with tvs players and discs this Black Friday.

DVD Polizei

Nope. And if you think about it, it's what Blu-ray should have been in the first place, as far as actual data capacity on a disc. I was expecting almost all Blu-ray movies to be on a BD-50, with the best possible picture. And whatever happened to the BD-100 disc for epic movies like Lawrence of Arabia or Spartacus. Never happened.

BD-25s, baby. That's what I see the most. Even when a studio COULD increase the bandwidth, they throttle it.

And when there are a shitload of new features? We see studios cram their features on a BD-50 with a feature movie. Doesn't happen all the time...but it happens enough to where it should NOT happen.

And remember when the idea of putting DVD releases on Blu-ray to save space if there was no Blu-ray release...that didn't happen, either.

Blu-ray still has so much potential, but once again, the studios have moved on to something else, and we'll see even more data-confusing releases.

davidh777

But was that an industry idea or a consumer idea? It seems a lot of discussion here was that the industry didn't want to do that because it wanted to sell the idea of BD as a picture format and not a storage medium for SD content. So yeah, you could certainly cram a ton of SD TV episodes on a BD, but there could be confusion if people expected HD content as well.

E Unit

The cloud became a more cheaper and viable option, so the push for physical media to continue it's development ceased.

Glad we went back to talking about discounts here....I'm waiting for players to start dropping sub $400. I'll buy in at $300.

PerryD

$29.99 is a decent price to me. 3D Blu-ray movies sell discounted for $27.99, and most regular blu-rays are around $24.99. Considering the Ultra HD version includes the 1080 blu-ray inside, it's a reasonable price difference to upgrade, at least for the day-and-date new releases. I suppose catalog titles should be $19.99 though. I bought dozens of 3D blu-rays before I had the ability to watch them when the difference was $5. I'll do the same with Ultra HD. If the upgrade price is $5, I'll pay the difference to future proof my collection.

consoleman

I have followed your same strategy of buying discs in a format long before I have the ability to watch them. So far Ultra HD doesn't look like it's following the path of early dvds and blurays by releasing barebone titles skimping on extras. That's good to see and makes buying these early 4k titles a better deal than those first-wave DVD and bluray titles. However, I will buy when it's closer to the time to when I can afford that 4k tv and player as prices for these first-wave titles will surely drop. $19.99 is a good price if you're jumping in now.

The dilemma comes when they release a 3D version and an Ultra HD version. Which version to get? Each offer a viewing experience unique from the other. For the time being, only because I can play 3D, I will buy 3D without regret and will buy Ultra HD some time in the future when the cost have gone down. I have felt the pain of buyer's remorse during my long history of collecting DVD, HD-DVD and bluray-always kicking myself for buying stuff way too early and seeing prices dropping with the passage of time.

Do take advantage of these sub-$20 prices now if you are jumping into 4k now as there will likely be a period where you'll be lucky to see prices this low. But prices will surely drop as 4k becomes commonplace. Give it a year.

davidlynchfan

A quote from the other site:

$30 bucks and Fox can't afford to put a slip on these? PASS!

Alan Smithee

Yet the ones from Fox that I saw at Best Buy were the only ones I even CONSIDERED buying, since the ones that did have slips all had Best Buy's dumb stickers on them. Question is who would pay $30 for a disc that did have a store sticker on the slipcover?