AaronSch

I don't know, 'cause I own a lot of those early Lionsgate discs and they playback fine. The only disc that I have ever had go bad was a used Universal disc, "Elizabeth: The Golden Age"...it went bronze around the outer edge but played fine...I still traded it in before it became unplayable (my bad). I liked those early discs and their metallic inserts! I suspect discs are more likely to go bad in moist, humid environments.

Why So Blu?

The Bank Job was the first BD that went unplayable. Also, Elizabeth: Golden Age stopped working but that one was the HD-DVD.

orangerunner

The only early Lion's Gate titles I owned with the foil covers were:

Lord of War
Reservoir Dogs
The Descent
First Blood
Basic Instinct

Out of those titles Basic Instinct and Reservoir Dogs became unplayable. I discovered that over four years ago so maybe if the other titles were going to go bad they would done so by now.

20% failure isn't too good. The later Maple/Lion's Gate (Canadian) versions have all been fine.

bruceames

A big factor (going forward) is also the UHD is being sold as a combo and I've read many posts of people buying them even though they don't own a player or 4k TV. This "future proofing" won't be much of a factor on catalog titles though, which was the offering during Q1 (the exception being The Peanuts Movie). But I see good percentage of UHD sales being generated by this, especially if there is only a $5-6 difference (like with The Revenant and Deadpool).

Josh Z

Maybe, but combo packs didn't save HD DVD and haven't done much for 3D.

bruceames

I'll go out on a limb and say that UHD combo packs will have a greater effect on future proofing then did HD DVD or 3D. Warner and Sony UV codes on the UHD combos redeem as UHD so that surely won't hurt matters any. You could probably sell the code for the price difference.

Ranger

Any DVDs from the last few years come with a DTS track?

The few DVDs with DTS that I have were mostly from 2003-2007.

milo bloom

I have 5 3D combo packs, but don't have a 3D player and not really interested.

For extra content only in the 3D pack: Prometheus, The Wolverine and X-Men Days of Future Past (with the artwork and stuff)

Only available as a combo pack: Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor

Found cheap: Puss in Boots (seriously, like $2 at an estate sale)


So, yeah, combo packs are sorta useful for some folks, but I wager there's quite a few folks like myself.

Josh-da-man

Yeah, I'm kind of in the same boat.

I have, on 3D blu-ray, Prometheus, The Wolverine, Doctor Who: Day of the Doctor, Dredd, and POTC: On Stranger Tides.

Only reason I bought them is because the SE was only available on 3D or it was a combo.

When I get a new tv I might go 3D, but it's not a priority. I'm not really in love with 3D and generally prefer 2D, and it's doubtful I'll go back and repurchase stuff in 3D

AaronSch

When I recently bought my new display, one feature that it had to offer was 3D. I did a lot of research online regarding "passive" vs "active" and HD vs UHD etc... I wanted "passive" playback, but ultimately settled on an HD display with "active" playback because a good set of "active" glasses have come down considerably in cost and you lose virtually no image detail. It also didn't hurt that the display was $1000 less than the 4K display I was interested in purchasing. I had also begun collecting 3D discs at local resellers and accumulated an impressive 3D library. It certainly comes down to content. It is hard to justify the feature if you have litte or nothing to watch. In many cases the 3D is truly amazing and adds to the viewing experience. But unfortunately, there are many cases where I just shut off the 3D feature and reverted back to 2D. It is hit and miss and it certainly won't make a bad movie any better. I popped in "The Wizard of OZ" for my Mom and her husband and I couldn't get them to take off the glasses! And there is no doubt that watching "House of Wax" as it was originally intended is a theater-like experience at home. I love 3D when it is good but not so much when it is bad....but when I get that 100" 4k display I'll even watch the bad ones again.

jjcool

Surely I can't be the only one that still finds Blue ray/dvd combo packs still useful, can I? Between still having a portable dvd player, and friends that have not made the switch to blue ray, a dvd comes in very useful for when I play a disc in other than my home locations. I am not saying that I wont go UHD in the future, but I see absolutly no need to rebuy hardware that is working fine. When something fails, I will look at replacing it with something that is UHD compatible. As for buying combo packs with a UHD disc, I don't like buying stuff that is useless to me. That's why I don't buy any 3d discs, since 3d in its current itertion is so shitty. I especially won't spend more money to get an inferior to me product, which a combo pack without a dvd would be.

bruceames

Guys, UHD BD is a brand new format, not an "add-on" like 3D was. Just because it's coming from the same folks who brought us Blu-ray doesn't mean it's an add-on too. Unlike 3DTVs, 4KTVs are not going away. Sales of 4KTVs are even higher than HDTVs were during the same period it its life cycle. The lack of enthusiasm for UHD BD and almost zero expectations, in this forum, is almost astonishing. Do you see UHD BD as some sort of threat to your existing (and probably massive) BD/DVD collection? Is there anybody here who is enjoying the format yet? It is one hell of an upgrade and once you see it then people here will be singing a different tune.

E Unit

Problem with this is that a lot of 4k models have 3D. Which makes it confusing to people wondering where the 4k 3D movies are. Which won't exist, not for another several years, if at all. Stuff I overheard at Best Buy a couple of days ago. It's cluster and then some.

Alan Smithee

3D should not be treated as a different format or even an "add-on"- it's the same type of thing that color was to black and white, or stereo to mono. To me watching a 3D movie in 2D is like watching a color movie in black and white- doesn't matter if the color doesn't "add anything", it has to do with how the movie was produced. (Of course conversions are a grey area; The Wizard of Oz especially should be "seriously" watched only in its original 2D, with the 3D conversion being like a remix of an older album.) Just as a color movie will show in black and white on a black and white TV, a non-3D TV should show 3D movies in 2D (without the need for a separate disc, so when one does get 3D equipment they can then see it in 3D.)

4K discs on the other hand are to Blu-Ray what Blu-Ray is to DVD- they don't deliver any extra dimension or separation, but they are capable of a higher resolution and of course won't play on regular Blu-Ray or DVD players.

orangerunner

All of this is starting to sound like the same back-and-forth banter when Blu-ray arrived on the scene.

For myself, even by 2009/2010 I was not interested in Blu-ray and having to buy a $300 player and possibly replace many of my DVDs.

In retrospect, did I miss-out by not paying $500 for a player and frantically re-buying every title in Blu-ray for $15-$25 each?

Absolutely not. I waited until 2010 and picked up a player for $80 and carefully picked & chose titles to upgrade.

The problem is that many of the Blu-ray titles were not really definitive enough to make you want to get rid of your DVDs.

For instance Fight Club. The DVD came in beautiful slide-out cardboard digipak package with an booklet compared to the Blu-ray that came in a flimsy eco-case with a cheap paper trap sheet.

Basically, I waited until I saw it for $3.00 on Blu-ray before i even bothered buying it - and I still kept the DVD because it is a nicer presentation.

Alan Smithee

Even if you did buy a player sooner, you still wouldn't have been forced to re-buy every title you had on DVD.

orangerunner

There's no "forcing" but when one drops $500 for a player, are they more likely to sit by the sidelines and wait for the catalogue discs to come down in price? Not likely.

Waiting a few years, enjoying DVD in the meantime and saving $420 on the player and picking up a few discs for $5 just seemed like a more reasonable transition.

BuckNaked2k

April 23:

Alan Smithee

Are they going to add UHD discs to that pie or just count them as Blu-Rays?

bruceames

I hope they separate it out after UHD gets a big enough slice to make it visible in the pie. Obviously people want to know how well it's doing compared to the other 2 established formats.

bruceames

True you need to jump start your collection with some catalog. I don't want to pay $30 for that, but I'm OK with $20-25 for now. You get the BD as well and in some cases a UHD digital streaming copy as well. I think for new releases it's a no brainer if you were going to buy the BD anyway, since the price difference isn't that much. But for catalog the price difference can be a lot and one will have to judge for themselves if it's worth the difference.

I know a lot of people don't have a problem with buying Fright Night for $30 + shipping, or buying multiple copies of the hottest new release (like Star Wars) just to get alternate packaging. So doesn't seem to be out of line to pay a few bucks more for a movie to get something better in quality.

Coral

To many (most?) of us, current BD is good enough.
Everyone draws a line in the sand at some point to indicate what they deem is good enough, and that's for a lot of products. Have you adopted SACD? If not, why not? The audio quality is much better than CD/MP3. You can apply that to almost any product.

Personally, I'm not going to buy a new expensive player, a brand new expensive TV that's large enough to notice the 4K difference (75" or larger) and the increased price of titles (can I get UHD BDs for $10 or less? Because that's what I'm paying for BDs now) - all for a marginal upgrade in quality. The extra cost is far greater than the added enjoyment I would receive from upgrading. I'd rather use the money elsewhere and get a MUCH greater level of enjoyment.

slop101

Yeah, I honestly don't even want a screen as big as one required to notice the difference in 4K. I am still more than happy with my 50" plasma, and even that is a bit ostentatious in my medium sized family room.

bruceames

It's all relative. You get used to the bigger size. I have a 65" TV in my small 11x12 family room/spare bedroom. The size looks completely normal to me.

Alan Smithee

I can PLAY them, but there really hasn't been a lot of great material on that format for me to buy a whole lot of them. Same with DVD-Audio (both of those seem to be replaced now with albums on Blu-Ray disc, which I haven't checked out yet.) If the few albums I've bought recently on CD were available on SACD, I certainly would've bought that instead, but they weren't.