slop101

In 1080p? I think not!

SPIDERone

I think one of the reasons I like DVD, Blu-Ray.. physical media in general.. so much is that I "own it" and can watch it whenever I'd like. I don't need to worry about having an internet connection, having the title licensed (I've been noticing licenses "expiring" and not being available on streaming sites like Netflix). With DVDs, titles go OOP.. but if you bought it earlier, you still have access to it (or can find it through 3rd-party sellers). With online streaming, it's just gine.

..And then having to worry about the DRM used.. On downloadable titles I need different DRM for my iPod than my PSP than my Windows Media portable devices. Not to mention having to have either a device connected to my TV, or having files stored only on a hard drive.

Even with a fast internet connection, I get skipping/stuttering once in a while and the horrible "We've downgraded the video because your internet connection slowed down" messages.

I definitely do see the advantages of both (streaming and downloadable) and actually use them.. but I don't feel like I own the content, even though I've paid for it. It's like I have access to it.

Besides the convenience (not having to store physical media, load it into a player, keep discs "mint", etc..), I don't get lossless audio, HD video or bonus features! Some titles offer limited extras (a featurette or bloopers) but nothing like you'd find on a good special edition DVD or Blu-Ray.

smurr05

Absoutley Agree 100%!!!

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

1080p? That's how my grandpa watches things. I won't buy any movies unless it's VR.

But really, that makes it sound like you care less about the movie and more about the specs. Tons of people still don't have 1080p capable sets, let alone HD sets and they still manage, somehow, to still be able to enjoy movies. I'm in the group that enjoys movies first followed by the technology that they come as. That's why I can still keep a movie that hasn't made it past a VHS release and play it on my TV while others complain that they can't watch it because they're too hung up on the media format, which has replaced their level of love for the movie.

Streaming is great and it has it's place. It's called rental. I don't see why people get their panties in a bunch when they can stream something. You don't have to buy every single thing that you're going to watch and for something you're only going to watch once, streaming looks really good, quality-wise.

Silverscreenvid

There was a restaurant in the city where I live that was a "do-it-yourself" steak house. They would marinade the steaks and then you would cook them yourself on big grills they had.

It didn't last long. People who wanted to go to a steakhouse for dinner did not want to literally stand over hot coals themselves (even though it was a bit cheaper than a traditional steakhouse).

I don't want to hassle with downloading and figuring out where to store movies on the limited hard drive space I have available. I don't want to have to access a remote server any time I want to watch a movie (even if technically I "own" it). I don't want to burn my own disk if I want some degree of portability. If a movie was free, I might do this now and then (I watch some TV episodes online now), but if I'm going to pay, I want the maximum amount of convenience possible.

There is an audience for downloadable movies. There's also an audience for traditional hard-media movies.

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

That's because American's are fat and lazy.

Those are popular, and kick ass, over in Japan. Difference is that getting your meat and stuff is buffet style. It's filled with different cuts and kinds of meat and other things to grill and since it's buffet, all the better.

Now if they combined buffet place that had alcoholic drinks you mixed yourself with the grill buffet, I'd be in heaven.

mdnitoil

It would appear the audience is shrinking rapidly since, outside of the latest releases, the hard media has now become cheap burn on demand crap. Is streaming/downloads really that much worse?

Eddie W

When I was a kid, we had two options if we wanted to see a movie: see it in a theater or wait until it comes on TV. Movies would quite simply disappear for years at a time. The concept of having a library of your favorite movies at your disposal was some fantasy if I ever got really, really rich. So a collection probably means more to me that to kids that grew up with stacks of DVD's.

But there really are two very different markets. If I could rent the latest Hollywood blockbuster in Blu-Ray quality with lossless audio from some 'cloud' instead of waiting for the Netflix disc, sure I'd probably watch most movies that way. But would I buy the new version of The Exorcist that's coming out on Tuesday this way instead of on Blu-Ray? Hell no.

slop101

But really really, I was being sarcastic.

Drake

This is so true,Kids today(or at least since the mid 80's) have grown up with
cable with hundreds of channels at their fingertips.
Growing up in the 70's you had to go to the cinema and then you would never see that movie again unless a network bought the rights to broadcast and that would be like 5 years later.
We grew up watching old movies on B&W TVs and enjoying the movie, now it's just about the delivery or technology behind it.
Today the public takes a lot for granted.

Wannabe

I recently started streaming Netflix to my Xbox and frankly I'm amazed at the quality, convenience, and the availability. Of course, not everything is there, but I think the selections are quite good. I've already deleted a bunch of movies that were on my Amazon wish list. Movies and television shows that I've purchased and wanted to purchase are now instantly available. Frankly, it's a bit discouraging to know that I've paid good money for a bunch of DVDs that I've watched once and are now available on Netflix for $8.99 a month. For example, I have all six seasons of Rockford files on DVD - I probably paid around $180 for them. I never got around to finishing the first season - and now they're all available on streaming Netflix. And I'd rather watch them on Netflix than pull out the DVDs and wait for the FBI warnings and forced trailers to end.

bogrod

That is a good question. But here's another few to ask: Do people (in general, not audiophiles) cherish their old viny? Do people cherish (again, in general) their laserdiscs? Do people cherish their vhs tapes? Most people don't.

Even I was an ardent holdout on dvd, because I had learned to love laserdisc so much, but the truth is, dvd was a better format. And perhaps more specific to your post, it made most if not every one of my laserdiscs obsolete. So yes, those are a space-wasting obsolete technology. Just as whatever vhs tapes I happen to still have somewhere in my basement.

Noone actually "owns" the films that they have on home video. We own the right to watch the movie, on a consumer format.

For me, what this essentially gets down to is a couple of things:

If studios go (somewhere down the line) to nothing but downloads of their studio vaults, would we pay a flat fee per title, and be able to download that specific title - like in the case of my hard drive crashing?

And secondly, would studios still be interested in putting money towards any sort of special edition suppliments/features when movies go to nothing other than download?

With all of this said, I think most of this gets down to nothing more or less than what we are use to. We're use to handling a physical format. A lot of us (including me) are also somewhat resistant to a new format and/or a new technology delivering a format. But certainly in my case, I give in - eventually, and I think that will happen when we inevitably move to downloads.

orangerunner

I grew up in the early 1980s with having to watch the Sunday Night Movie on ABC which premiered a "new" movie three years after it came out in theatres. The movie channel was grossly expensive and a VCR was $700 minimum and blank tapes for that VCR were $15 each.

Owning studio pre-recorded tapes was completely unheard of as they were made almost strictly for the rental market. I think Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was the first new release "sell-through" priced title in 1986 at $29.95.

I placed a real sense of value on being able to watch a movie at home and owning the original copy of the movie.

Nowadays it's all seen as cheap and disposable. You can buy a DVD cheaper than you buy a National Enquirer magazine. A DVD player is the same price as a family meal at McDonald's. DVD-R blanks are $.20 a piece (same price as a stick of licorice?). Netflix is $7.99/month all-you-can-watch. 350 channels to choose from on satellite, youtube, web surfing etc.

Yet there's still only 24 hours in a day to take it all in.

bogrod

One word (just in case someone else hasn't mentioned this) - Netflix.

I've never, ever paid for a video on demand from my cablebox. For $5, I'd rather run down the street to my favorite (and very cool) video shop and pay $3.50.

But, again, Netflix is simply the beginning. I can download a significant portion of their catalog, as many times as I want, for one flat fee. I don't need a hard drive, I use theirs.

I also can certainly see other new companies providing competition to Neflix's business model.

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

I've seen more than a couple people say similar things and being completely serious.

Travis McClain

I know there are numerous threads about this same topic, but since this one has my attention at the moment, I'll add some thoughts here that have recently been on my mind.

In the VHS era, I think the largest size my personal library ever reached was about 40 titles. Of course, I was born in 1978 so it's not like I was concerned about The Classics or exploring a filmography (a word that didn't enter my vocabulary until the late 90s. I liked renting movies, and would sometimes rent the same title a few times, without ever feeling the compulsion to own a copy of it.

Three of my favorite VHS titles were From "Star Wars" to "Jedi": The Making of a Saga, The Making of "Jurassic Park" and Star Trek: 25th Anniversary Special. I loved the movies, and I loved going behind the scenes. Those three really whetted my appetite for the kind of bonus content that would come to be common place on DVDs, and they're the reason that I've always preferred to own the 2-disc Special Edition versions where possible.

I was of the mindset that movies would always just kind of be available, for rent from my local rental store, or on TV, or if I had to, for purchase from one of the places in one of the malls. Everything was in 4:3 aspect ratio, so what did it matter? Laser Disc players were for rich people who cared way more about movies than me.

The DVD format, taking up much less shelf space and increasingly laden with bonus content from commentary tracks to making-of features, revolutionized my perspective on having a library. I bought my first DVD player for the entire purpose of seeing Tombstone in widescreen. Had it been available on Widescreen VHS, I may have resisted the format for a lot longer.

For the last several years, I've found so many cheaply priced titles that my Unwatched Pile is larger than my VHS Owned list ever was. I'm using the monthly challenges as an impetus to finally get through a lot of those titles, but now that we can stream movies from Netflix, I confess that while my viewing numbers are way up this year, a lot of my DVD cases have continued to collect dust. I justify every purchase I make with the same logic as ever: The price is right, and I can get to it whenever I want.

I have to confess that I've reached a point of saturation where I have to say, delineating between my actual favorites and movies that I honestly could live without ever seeing again, I could really pare down my library to my VHS era totals, taking my chances that the rest would still be accessible to rent, or see on TV or whatever.

Drake

That's the biggest question , why would the whole Movie Industry want to cheapen their product by letting companies like Netflix or Redbox give it away so cheap?

Travis McClain

Because Netflix and Redbox are national companies, it's easier for them to strongarm arrangements in their favor than it was to have to control all the mom & pop local rental stores that are now either dead or dying. A studio can revoke the streaming license on a title to keep it out of circulation enough to build up interest in an inevitable DVD/Blu-ray re-issue.

And in the mean time, studios can defer to the rental and streaming figures to see which catalog titles might actually be worth remastering and re-issuing. They're effectively letting the free market be a new kind of focus group.

Drake

Well there you go, then why would people want to stop owning titles?...There are no guarantees that all these titles would stay on a streaming network.

So you might be able to stream The Rockford Files now , BUT in 5/10 years someone may determine to pull it because there is no market for it?

Travis McClain

I can only speak for myself, but I'm at a point where, like the VHS era, I'm only buying to own the titles I really, really want to have. For a while, I figured we were better off to pay $15-20 to buy a DVD than to go to the theater, which is why our theater attendance is scarcely one feature a month on average these days. For the same money, we can own the movie and trade it in if we don't like it, whereas once we leave the theater, it's all over. We own nothing, can't re-watch the feature, there are no commentary tracks or features to watch, and if it sucked we're just out the money with no opportunity to recoup it.

Now, our philosophy is that for less than the price of a new DVD, we can rent and stream whatever we want. If it turns out that we really enjoy something, we can then go about tracking down a copy to own, but otherwise, like in the VHS era, I'm largely contented to have just seen the movie in question, mark it off the To See list, and move on to the next title.

The studios are hedging their bet that if I can afford to stream a lot of movies, I'll be inspired to go buy those movies. I'm content that my Netflix monthly fee is budget-friendly and can expose me to quite a lot more movies than I could ever have rented from my local video rental store.

What remains to be seen is where the equilibrium will actually lead us: will the studios decide to keep circulating titles on disc because the rental demand suggests enough people want to own them, or will they decide that most consumers are content to just stream a movie once and not come back to it? If that's the model, then the emphasis would be on rotating digital content. It's still too early to tell.

orangerunner

The digital format has been somewhat of a curse because of the file sharing over the internet and it's only going to get easier, faster and more widespread. The easy access to titles has made it cheap. How do they compete with free?

The impact of pirated VHS tapes back in the 80s was a drop in the bucket compared to today because of the speed, quality and easy distribution of digital technology vs. analog.

I suppose they license to Netflix because they may as well get a smaller piece of the pie than nothing at all. There's no effort or risk on their part. With physical media there is manufacturing costs, higher advertising costs, warehousing, transportation costs, dealing with many different distributors etc.

With the streaming Netflix template, all of that time and cost is virtually eliminated. The revenue will not reach DVD levels but the new way of delivering media is changing and they have to adapt.

ShellBeacher

This is the gist of it for me...

And...there is indeed no guarantee that "everything will become available" in a digital capacity just because the technology is there...if a studio decides to sit on titles it owns (the same way studios have held off many titles in physical formats), who's to stop them?

Furthermore, it's been on my mind a lot recently...what happens to all of the (often wonderful) special features that so many studios and talent spent valuable time and effort creating as "added value"? Perhaps an option of a .zip file containing audio commentaries/production diaries, etc. could be offered with the film for a "special edition" price? (I know, don't give them any ideas!)

But really, this is one of my primary concerns...I really appreciate the supplemental features on many releases, either A) which give historical/industrial insight into the production (even if some of it is sugarcoated), and B) audio commentaries, deleted scenes, etc. which give you a fuller idea of what the film could have turned into...

At least for people like me who study film, this kind of stuff is always valuable and frequently fascinating, and I just wonder where this stuff will end up if the industry moves completely to digital downloads...

For now, I'm very happy with a physical collection...and in fact in recent months, I've accelerated my accumulation of many "classic" films as a lot of semi-obscure stuff and/or editions with special features are beginning to disappear, in my small effort to preserve a cinematic heritage for the rest of my lifetime, and hopefully, for someone else...

(How hard is it for a studio to transfer all of a DVD's special features to the Blu-Ray edition, by the way?? Is this seriously just all about planned double-dipping, or are they just being lazy?? And if this is any indication of how little they care about preserving all the supplemental features work they've produced, then I believe my concerns are justified...)

bogrod

Well, when (I don't really say "if" anymore) downloads become mainstream, and the infrastructure to fiber in the home becomes widespread, it would be wise for any studio to offer downloads at some price.

I think that some studios have been hesitant to release some smaller or more obscure titles on dvd because of their small audience, and that they do not feel that they'll pull a profit if they do not sell enough. Downloads kind of fixes that problem, because there's no manufacturing or distributing costs involved. It's pure profit once the movie has been scanned and put into a server.

This is one of the biggest concerns for me - the special features. For example (but certainly not limited to) the Blade Runner special edition. IMO, a fantastic release, perhaps the best "study" of any single film ever in the history of the home video format. Would a studio still put the kind of money up front to get a project of that overall scale & scope together? Would they charge a premium for it (in other words, would all of the extras be priced separately than the film)? Big questions, for sure.

A lot of it is double-dipping, and I am sure it will get more common. And it does not really cost them that much to really transfer it, particularly if any extras have already been scanned at a higher resolution. I have also seen a lot of extras discs on blu-ray sets that are in standard def.

One thing to note: The recent release of the television show "Dexter" on Blu-Ray has all of the extras available only via BD-Live. A reviewer of the set summed it up perfectly when they asked just how many years would these extras stay available?

Travis McClain

Firstly, I think we've been seeing a decline in studios feeling each and every film is worth the cost of producing and including a lot of bonus content anyway. Contrast Batman Begins with The Dark Knight for just a simple example. Many of us believe that Warner withheld a lot of content so they can justify an inevitable double-dip on The Dark Knight, but it doesn't change the fact that they put very little effort into supplementing the feature for the initial release.

Secondly, look to the iTunes Plus format for an idea of how features might be incorporated into digital releases. For the uninitiated, there are select titles available for download from iTunes that do include a handful of featurettes, though I don't know about commentary tracks. I can't say whether these digital editions include all of their physical disc counterparts, though I suspect not.

Alan Smithee

Universal's already taken all their HD-DVD extras offline, and they were the biggest supporters of that format. Every time I've used BD-Live I just groan at how slow it is.

Wal-Mart's acquisition of Vudu (which they haven't exactly been pushing as the next big thing since they took it over) a few months ago should have been the perfect cautionary tale about 'buying' movies on non-physical media- Vudu had a bunch of porn videos you could buy, then when Wal-Mart bought the company they took all of those offline since porn is so dirty and obscene. Those who 'bought' any porn titles could no longer watch them, though they did receive a refund for what they paid.

If you can't sympathize with people who buy porn, maybe you'd be angry if you 'bought' a Disney movie online, then they decided to put that movie on moratorium for a decade, meaning you wouldn't have access to it anymore?

Stuff going offline is just too big a can of worms for me to deal with- if the quality improves I can see streaming taking the place of rentals, but not collecting.