morriscroy

I would not count on this 100%, especially if I was in marketing/business.

Historically, some might retain their frugal ways well into middle age. For example, my grandparents (and other grand-relatives) who were teenagers or young adults during the 1930's great depression, were still frugal when the economy recovered and well into the post-war boom.

When I was a kid, I was wondering why my grandparents were extremely "cheap and stingy" when it came to $$$$$ and shopping.

Gizmo

Digital movies isn't the same as Streaming.

I can download hundreds of "digital movies" and keep them on my iPad, external HD etc. and watch them with or without internet. On my iPad I can watch them even with the power goes out unlike a Blu-ray.

You must be talking about STREAMING. If you have issues streaming you likely have a very poor internet provider or are paying for the slowest speeds. Shame on you. That's like complaining your Big Mac isn't as good as a $20 Burger.

My wife has Netflix or Hulu on multiple times a day and she never complains of freezing or stalling except a rare moment once in a blue moon (usually because something else is happening on my network).

Gizmo

Because DVDs and Blu-rays NEVER skip or freeze.

You also don't need to wait for a firmware update of the latest "security features" to watch the latest movie.

Or wait through unskippable trailers/previews on the disc.

So much control with Blu-ray and DVD. Unlike Streaming where I click 'Rent', wait 5 seconds, and the studio logo comes up. It's terrible.

Adam Tyner

It still baffles me that DVDs and Blu-ray discs take for-friggin'-ever to just let me play the movie. I would've figured that if the home video divisions of these studios had learned anything from streaming, something resembling convenience would be near the top of their lists.

I also hate it when I finish watching a movie and have to cycle between (literally!) 35 copyright notices in every conceivable language, with 'top menu' disabled so I can't just get to the extras like I want. Why do I need to be subjected to a warning in Croatian that I can't show this movie on an oil rig?

E Unit

Because you never know when you may end up in Croatia and want to show X-Men to the oil rig crew. But really, the copyright crap at the end is not an issue since all we have to do it hit the menu button before the credits end. But the copyright stuff on the beginning is ridiculous.

orangerunner

Don't expect that to last too much longer. Where there's an audience and there's revenue to be made, there will be commercials!

bruceames

I hate commercials more than mosquitos, if they force them on digital rentals or purchases then I'm out.

orangerunner

You also have to remember that growing up in the 1930s, kids weren't exposed to hyper-commercial surroundings like they are today.

I think these things go in waves like the 1960s generation that turned their back on the consumerism of the 1950s only to embrace it with a vengeance in the 1980s once they were in their 30s & 40s.

I imagine the Millenials will be very similar. Anti-materialism, collecting "life experience" through their 20s and then realizing they have nothing to "show" for it, will start buying lots of stuff (and throwing lots of stuff out), especially when kids are in the picture.

davidh777

The irony is that the Millennials also love those faux-Polaroid cameras that crank out a physical print. So they do like some physical things.

So like Hulu?

Alan Smithee

I love hearing people use pre-movie trailers as a reason why digital is "superior"- you just KNOW that if digital gets any more popular they'll start playing forced trailers before the movie, and this time you sure as hell won't be able to skip them! DVDs hardly ever had trailers the first few years they were out.

I have an external hard drive I can hook up to my Oppo player and potentially get decent quality if the movie is encoded right, but it's still more limited space than my shelves (and if you've seen my shelves, you know the space on those isn't unlimited!) I'm not going to keep buying hard drives to store all my movies on, and what happens if one hard drive dies? I can watch DVDs and Blu-Rays on my laptop computer if the power goes out, but why the hell would I WANT to do that?

Even if you could (legally) burn downloaded movies to blank discs, I still wouldn't pay more than $3 or so for each one. If I'm paying money, I want the whole package.

morriscroy

A decade earlier, the roaring 20s was allegedly almost like a decade of easy money and "decadence". Offhand I don't know how it compared to other more recent decades.

Before my grandparents and other grand-relatives died, they thought the late 1990s dotcom/nasdaq silliness was like another "1929".

bruceames

Not a la carte subscription per se, I meant single movie rentals or purchases. Paying $6 to rent a movie and then being forced to watch commercials would be unacceptable.

Alan Smithee

I'm paying for the fastest-possible internet speed right now, but sometimes I still get buffering on Vudu HDX. Could be a problem with the modem, as I usually unplug it for a while when that happens and then it's fine after that- a minor inconvenience when I'm doing general web surfing but a big pain when I'm watching a movie I've made time for and it does that. And that's happened a LOT more than defective discs have frozen up on me (I've never had any do that due to damage because I actually take care of my stuff! I've watched some from the public library though where idiots use them as coasters and don't even get charged for damage.)

I could say if you have issues playing discs you likely have a poor player or are paying for the absolute cheapest one available. Shame on you. A $50 Cyberhome player won't be as good as a $500 Oppo.

bruceames

I get a lot of buffering sometimes with VUDU as well. I believe the problem is on the transport chain, with them either throttling or a bottleneck somewhere along the way (or both). I never have problems with Netflix.

Adam Tyner

Why? It's an advantage until it's not.

kgrogers1979

No matter how good you take care of your discs, "dvd rot" is very real. I take good care of my discs too, and I have still had some "rot." From what I understand of "dvd rot" it happens when the glue binding the layers together erodes or melts. No matter how good care you take, eventually this glue is going to erode. Glue doesn't last forever.

Sure, hard drives and such can fail too, but the idea that your DVD/BDs will last forever if you take care of them is also wrong. Nothing actually lasts forever.

morriscroy

(From an historical perspective).

I vaguely remember from the early days of the music cd (ie. mid-1980s), there was some subtle propaganda going around which asserted that optical discs could possibly last a lifetime. This was during a time when vinyl records could wear/scratch easily and high frequencies "dulling" on cassette tapes, with each subsequent play.

I don't know what or where the source of this subtle propaganda was from. But if it existed, most likely it came from the "stress testing" of actual optical discs in controlled lab conditions. Such stress testing would have involved putting them in extreme conditions of temperature, humidity, sudden shocks (ie. dropping them on the floor), submerged into water, alcohol, etc ... and examining whether the "stressed" discs were still playable.

Unfortunately lab conditions do not always correlate precisely to real world conditions.

PhantomStranger

Hollywood is quite aware that consumers loathe the warnings and junk that appear before a movie on home video. You can take it to the bank they will introduce forced commercials before viewing a streaming movie once that market has become thoroughly entrenched. The added revenue will make too much sense once other legal alternatives dry up for movies.

davidh777

Yes, it would, but it also sucks to pay for Hulu and get commercials. Many people would pay extra for no commercials.

orangerunner

If they offer movies for $4 with three commercials at the start, some may find this to be a fair trade-off. With DVD we've rented discs for $6 and had to endure commercials/FBI warnings as well.

kgrogers1979

Not sure if you're agreeing with my post or with the supposed lab tests.

I have definitely had dvds suffer from the "dvd rot." I don't mishandle my dvds, but yet I have had a few go bad regardless of how well I cared for them. Sure my case is just a personal anecdote, but you can find a lot of personal anecdotes mentioning the same thing.

There is a rumor that Hulu may soon introduce a $12-$14/month commercial-free option.

Hulu has commercials because the majority of their content is current. They have TV episodes available for streaming as soon as the day after they first air, so the TV networks force commercials on Hulu. Netflix and other streaming sites don't have current content, so the TV networks don't force them to have commercials.

Personally, I don't mind Hulu's commercials because they are significantly shorter than broadcast/cable/satellite commercials.

Think about this for a minute: A typical half-hour episode is really only 20 minutes long. A typical hour episode is only 40 minutes long. That means for a half-hour episode you spend 10 minutes watching commercials and for a hour episode you spend 20 minutes watching commercials. You spend literally a third of your time watching commercials. That's a lot of wasted time.

Commercials on Hulu are significantly shorter. For a 20 minute episode on Hulu you spend about 3-4 minutes watching commercials compared to the 10 minutes you would spend watching commercials on broadcast/cable/satellite for the same episode.

Saying all that, I would still pay $5 more per month for a commercial-free Hulu, so I really hope that rumor does come true.

morriscroy

Regardless of what any lab tests say, we know now that optical discs do not last a lifetime.

Recently I discussed rot, earlier in this thread around a month ago.

http://forum.dvdtalk.com/hd-talk/578...ng-up-107.html

bruceames

It always suck to have commercials, but in Hulu's case what can you expect for access to thousand of movies and tv shows for $8 a month? You're certainly not paying anything extra not to have them. However for a $6 rental you're paying a lot to watch a single movie and I think that qualifies as paying "extra".

bruceames

There are always exceptions which in this case are badly made discs, but the norm as that they'll likely last a lifetime...unlike hard drives which you'll be lucky if it lasts 8 years.

bruceames

For the same reason you'd watch a movie when the power doesn't go out: for the enjoyment of it. Besides, I don't know about you but being without power sucks and it can be boring. So why not watch a movie to pass the time?