joltman

Would that include video game consoles as a player? If so I'm sure that's a pretty good percentage of people that have players, especially for the younger sets.

Alan Smithee

Too bad the CED Videodisc attachment for the ColecoVision never came to be- that would have been the very first game system that could play movies.

BuckNaked2k

BuckNaked2k

WeeBey

Wow, although Blu-ray sales were up about 6%, overall disc sales were down for Endgame week. It was going head to head against Infinity War from last year but, because Endgame had a bigger box office, I was absolutely convinced we would see the first up week since April. I wonder if this is an indication of how quickly disc sales are deteriorating. Also curious if word has got out to consumers that Disney will have all their 2019 theatrical movies on Disney+.


Moving forward, nothing really stands out until the September 10 releases of John Wick 3 and Aladdin.

Alan Smithee

Do those numbers include sales outside the USA? I have Endgame on order from the UK since they snubbed the 3D over here. Remember buying the first Avengers at Target on release day and the 3D edition being sold out at many locations; really thought 3D had made it then

Adam Tyner

U.S. only.

I believe this is by far the highest share we've seen for Ultra HD Blu-ray in a week:

Alan Smithee

Anything that lowers the regular DVD percentage is good...

morriscroy

I suspect it will be the bottom feeder movie companies which will still be making new titles on dvd, and the evergreen catalog dvd stuff. For example, such as really horrible stuff produced by The Asylum where they discontinued bluray releases many years ago (except for the sharknado franchise).

Today the dvd patent holders wouldn't be able to kill dvd by legal means via patent law. Almost all the dvd-rom / dvd-video patents have expired already (or soon will be).

Similar to how audio cds have been ubiquitous and patent-free for almost 20 years, I suspect to only way dvd will die is by gradual attrition over a long period of time.

Alan Smithee

The Asylum stopped making Blu-Rays? What reason is there to watch their movies then? (There's a free Asylum streaming channel on Xumo/Channel Plus but I've never had time to watch anything on it. Picture looks better than DVD though.)

morriscroy

No idea.

There's tons of bottom feeder garbage being released through Cinedigm, and Lionsgate (or Vertical) to a lesser degree which is dvd-only. As to who is actually buying any of this stuff, is an entirely different question. Basically garbage which is on par or even worse than The Asylum.

morriscroy

I suspect the first opportunity for cd/dvd to truly die and remain dead, will be once the entire baby boomer and genX dies of old age.

TheBang

I had no idea. If I'm reading this correctly, it looks like all the relevent DVD-Video patents expire by June 3, 2020:

[ Last update: April 1, 2019 ] 01. DVD-Video Player_DVD-Video / Patent List / DVD6C PATENT POOL

Adam Tyner

A lot of Asylum stuff is on Prime Video at no additional charge, if you're an Amazon Prime subscriber.

If Blu-ray sales are $20 lower when this week's data is published, it's my fault. I bought Booksmart on VUDU on Monday, which I think is the first time I've bought a movie digitally. (Rented movies, yes. Bought episodes of TV shows, yes. Bought a movie, not that I can recall.) So I got to watch it a day earlier than I would've if I'd waited for the disc, plus I was able to watch it in UHD/HDR, since Fox opted against a physical Ultra HD Blu-ray release. And it was as perfect an experience as I could've hoped for. I'd been resistant, but now, I can see myself doing this a lot going forward.

morriscroy

That's only half of it. There's two other groups of significant dvd patents.

https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1139578

The other big pool is Sony, Pioneer, LG and Phillips represent by OneRed.

Home - One-Red

The outstanding american dvd-rom / dvd-video patents from the OneRed pool which haven't expired yet are:

Subtitle Duration (expires October 20, 2023)
https://patents.google.com/patent/US8594204




Attribute Information (expires July 9, 2022)
https://patents.google.com/patent/US7840117





Still Picture Playback Control (expires February 1, 2020)
https://patents.google.com/patent/US7242848




If you want to waste time figuring out which Thomson/Technicolor patents haven't expired yet, you can always search through the PremiereBD patent lists.

[ Last update: February 22, 2019 ] Patent List / PREMIER BD PATENT LICENSING GROUP

(The last time I checked, it appears all of the Thomson owned dvd patents have expired already).

BobO'Link

Nope... They'll come back like Vinyl has these days. Most of us boomers were happy to see vinyl go away (I miss only cool album art that was big enough to enjoy) and millennials brought it back as "retro cool."

dvd-4-life

Porn on dvd is still a big industry.

milo bloom

DVDs are already pretty cheap, what will the patents expiring do for the market?

morriscroy

Probably nothing.

All those el cheapo $20-$30+ dvd players made by Sony, LG, Samsung, etc ... wil probably still be the same $20-$30+ price after ALL the relevant patents expire.

morriscroy

Though in the case of computer dvd drives, it's a whole entirely different matter.

Currently all the dvd-specific patents for a dvd-rom drive which can read only dvd-rom and dvd-video discs, have already expired in america, europe, and japan. The patents not expired yet, is for reading burned dvdr / dvdrw and dvd-ram discs. So manufacturing a Y2K era configuration of a computer dvd drive, would be effectively patent-free. (There might still be current patents for more modern stuff like a USB2 / USB3 or SATA connection).

In principle a patent-free dvd-rom drive which does not enforce the CSS encryption system (ie. region coding, etc ...), can be manufactured without being blocked by patent-law. Though I suspect the remaining computer dvd drive manufacturers will probably not do this, largely due to laziness and the costs of rewriting the firmware.

I imagine the movie companies might try to use copyright law and/or the DMCA to block the sale of computer dvd drives which don't enforce the CSS encryption system on dvd-video discs.

PhantomStranger

They'd definitely use the DMCA and their teams of lawyers to stop any company that wanted to manufacture a DVD-ROM drive like that.

morriscroy

Even in the case the movie companies + dvdcca using the DMCA, the question is whether minor (or semi-major) violations of the css protocol is worthwhile to "throw the book" at someone.

As a past precdent and "giant elephant in the room", the dvdcca never pursued any legal action against the folks who wrote the VLC player and the libdvdcss library.

As a hypothetical future example, if someone made patent-free dvd-rom drives which entirely ignored the css protocol and were only sold in places like China, Russia, etc ..., then most likely the movie companies + dvdcca probably won't do much about it.

In the case of a minor violation of the css protocol, I would be quite surprised if the movie companies + dvdcca would spend the monetary (and/or political) capital on lawsuits for very little in return. For example, such as an unlimited number of region changes on a dvd-rom drive. (IIRC before y2k, computer dvd-rom drives had an unlimited number of region changes. Drives made after y2k only had a maximum of 4 or 5 region changes).

morriscroy

With that being said.

An extreme case where the movie companies + dvdcca would definitely "throw the book" at someone, would be a dvd-rom drive which completely removes the css encryption on the fly from any dvd-video disc.

BuckNaked2k

WeeBey

John Wick 3 + Aladdin finally did it. Last year that week the big release was Oceans 8, so it didn’t really stand a chance.