hanshotfirst1138

I think it's too much to hope for that we'll get many more catalog releases on Blu either with the current state of the market. There are increasingly fewer each year, and the ones there are usually go to Twilight Time. It's a sad truth: the market simply doesn't support it.

PhantomStranger

The major studios are much more willing now to license out almost any film to other distributors. We should still get a decent amount of catalog product from niche distributors, though expect to pay more for the built-in licensing fees.

morriscroy

(On a huge tangent).

I've been using this fact as an easy way of counteracting my ocd compulsive buying/collecting habits.

Very few of these niche distributor bluray titles show up in the local dump bins. (ie. Criterion, Shout Factory, Olive, Kino, etc ...).

Josh-da-man

Yeah, 4K discs, if they even happen at all, will be limited to new releases and evergreen catalog titles (Wizard of Oz, GWTW, Godfather, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Alien, Terminator, etc).

While there isn't a lot going on with catalog titles with blu-ray, the catalog market on DVD has also been dead for some time as well. The only action catalog titles get on DVD are triple and quadruple packs on existing discs.

It's sort of a natural evolution; the studios have movie backlists that run into the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of film and television titles with more constantly being added, there just isn't enough shelf space in stores or consumer interest to serve it all.

With so much material, the studios would probably rather just dump a lot of it bulk to the streaming services rather than tending each title individually.

rw2516

DVD has moved to MOD, but there are still couple dozen new titles per month and studios are digging deeper into their libraries than ever before.

There are a good 20 or more BD catalog titles coming out per month on the boutique labels. Enough to keep me broke. If labels like Twilight Time, Olive, Kino, Shout are licensing large batches of titles and releasing them a few at a time this is a crucial period for the future of catalog BD. If these labels make an expected profit off the first batch of 300 titles, they're more likely to go back to the studios to negotiate a second batch of 300.

milo bloom

If I may ask a question of the community: (and I'm asking here since it's more of a meta issue than a title specific issue)

How many of you that jumped on the $19.99 Complete Halloween set were like me in that you were only moderately interested in the set, and it was only the price point that got you to buy, how many of you would also buy this at $39.99? $49.99? Did Shout/Scream seriously misunderstand what price point was necessary to drive this product to an audience outside the hardcore Halloween fans?

Pulling all these titles together was certainly an impressive feat, but was the price too high for titles that fans have already bought over and over and for extras that (to my understanding) were mostly pre-existing but just collated? And now we're hearing about an audio error?
Did Shout/Scream miss the mark with this price, especially as the Bluray market is in the situation it's currently in?

Adam Tyner

I would've cheerfully paid the asking price if I didn't already have Blu-ray releases of 7 of the 10 movies in this set (hell, two different releases of the first Halloween on BD). I didn't mind rebuying the 4 Friday the 13th flicks already out on BD when that collection came out but there were still a bunch of movies I was excited about revisiting that I hadn't already seen in high-def. I'd like to round out the collection, but I don't want to pay $100-$110 for 3 of my least favorite Halloween movies and some extras.

morriscroy

(More generally and speaking in terms of hypotheticals).

If this was back in 2011 or 2012, most likely I would have picked up such complete series sets.

Fast forward to the present, today I would not pick up such a complete series set, if I wasn't going to watch through most or all of the discs. Especially if it seems like a "chore" to go through every disc. (Even if the "chore" was extracting all the discs' undecrypted isos in their entirety on the computer, to check for bad sectors and other manufacturing defects).

For example, recently I've turned down numerous recent bluray tv season sets of sci-fi/fantasy/action/cable shows I've been regularly watching over the last few years. Largely due to lackluster writing and/or a lack of "rewatch value" for me. (ie. Bluray shows like Falling Skies, Under The Dome, Defiance, Revolution, Helix, Orphan Black, Continuum, The Americans, 24, The Following, etc ...).

milo bloom

Great comment on the bad sectors, as for the TV shows, for the most part, streaming is simply good enough. I'm also interested in shows like Under the Dome and Orphan Black, but I can wait for them to show up on Netflix or HuluPlus. The only TV show I'm consistently buying on DVD or Blu these days is Doctor Who (new and classic).

morriscroy

(To hit home the point, in a more general sense).

Recently I've noticed the local dump bins have been filled with many tv show season sets for $10-$12 a pop (or less), which I might have been interested in back in 2011 or 2012. These are shows which I use to watch (or still watch) that I presently don't own any seasons of, such as:

- The Waltons
- Boston Legal
- CSI Miami
- CSI NY
- White Collar
- Las Vegas
- Blue Bloods
- Rookie Blue
- NCIS
- NCIS: Los Angeles
- Flashpoint
- Ugly Betty
- Dynasty
- How I Met Your Mother
- Bones
- etc ...

As much as I liked these shows, it immediately dawned on me that I most likely would not be watching through any of these tv season sets, if I had purchased any of them. (I still have a huge backlog of unwatched tv seasons sets).

In contrast if this was back in 2011 or 2012, most likely I would have went on a huge buying binge and purchase all of these season sets at $10 a pop or less.

slop101

I'd have to go further back to 2006 or '07.

I do have the first Halloween on BD, but this and other releases like it are just not on my radar any more. I've already built up my collection to "completion", and the only things left are a couple new movies or TV shows here and there, and a couple Criterions per year. I'm pretty much done buying more than one or two titles per month. And man, does it feel good!

morriscroy

I was a late bloomer.

Over the entire 2000's decade, I had very little to no interest in dvds/blurays.

milo bloom

I was interested from the very start, and I've built up a good sized collection (link below). But the majority of them are still unwatched. Most of the time we want to watch something, it's a TV show and it's on Netflix. I'm waiting for my son to get a little older (he's 7 now) so we can start watching more things with him, but embarrassingly enough I find DVDs with the receipt in the case that I bought way before he was born and we still never watched them. For example, I found a used copy of the Dawn of the Dead Ultimate set used way back in 2004, and I just recently got a chance to watch one of the discs a few weeks ago when my wife and son went out of town.

If I had it to do all over again, I definitely would have not bought nearly as many DVDs. Even before streaming there were plenty of options for rentals and even the titles I have watched are low on the list for rewatching priority.

PhantomStranger

You saved yourself an enormous amount of money. The DVD market was already in decline by then and studios were slashing prices on older DVDs.

Josh-da-man

Yeah, I would have bought it if I could gotten it for $40-$50.

I already have most of this material on DVD and blu-ray; the only things in the set that really interest me are the PC of H6 and the SE of H20. I already have both versions of Halloween, The Scream versions of Halloween II and III, and Zombieween on blu-ray, so I already have most of this shit anyway, and I don't want to spend over a hundred bucks rebuying them to get two new titles I am only marginally interested in.

morriscroy

(Somewhat offtopic).

On the other side of the coin during most of the 2000's decade, I wasted most of my disposable income in a futile attempt to "complete" my music cd collection.

Back then, I was looking for and buying numerous "limited edition" cds released by less popular metal and punk rock type bands. The sort of cd titles that only had 1000 cd copies manufactured worldwide. It can become a very expensive hobby, if one ends up buying a lot of Japanese or German imports.

DVD Polizei

And you nailed it. Studios could care less about quality. It's all about quantity, and moving it.

The only way consumers get high quality is when a director shoots the picture intelligently, wanting a super-crisp image. The studios just push it along, putting their mark on it with a cheap cardboard box and high retail price.

4K can suck it. I indirectly bought a Godzilla "Remastered from 4K" steelbook. Didn't look any better than a typical Blu-ray and sure as hell wasn't remastered or given any special attention as the transfer sucked ass. My special edition DVD looked about as good. And I'm kicking myself for selling it.

orangerunner

4K will be an extremely tough sell as people have already invested in their 1080p HDTVs.

I still think the average consumer bought HDTVs because the TVs were thin, slick-looking and could be mounted on the wall, not because they were HD.

The infrastructure, at least in the near-future, cannot handle true 4K streaming and people are not interested in purchasing any more discs which leaves the whole format in no-man's-land.

Paul_SD

If the choice was standard def, thin and slick looking displays that could be hung on a wall vs HD displays that weighed as much as and had the depth of old CRTs, very few people would have higher res now.

milo bloom

I know many of the early models of highdef tvs were CRT tubes, would be interesting to see sales data during the transition from tube to flat LCD/plasma.

Our first was a big tube set, weighed a ton. We found it open box and I had some inheritance money, that's the only reason we splurged on it.

Matthew Chmiel

Fixed.

When most films and television shows continue to be mastered in 2K, why bother?

Most studios aren't going to go to their back catalog and start remastering films to 4K DCPs.

DVD Polizei

Oh, but get ready for a shitload of titles that will be "Mastered In 4K!" and "Taken From 4K Elements!!!!1111gghh00990" plastered all over the covers.

morriscroy

Sony Superbit part 2.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superbit

bruceames

4K Blu-ray will be a tough sell to the studios, never mind the consumers. The studios want everyone to move on to digital, not slow the process down by extending the life of physical. If 4K is exclusive to digital, then eventually the quality whores / early adoptors will grudgingly switch over rather than continue to buy second best 1080p Blu-ray versions. Personally as much as I love physical and the "freedom" that comes with it, I couldn't stand to buy a disc knowing it's not the best quality available.

BobO'Link

The average consumer bought HDTVs because stores no longer sold CRTs. Around here the transition was seemingly done in weeks. One day both were side by side and the next all you could get were "HDTV" sets. It was literally forced on consumers. If the studios truly wanted a conversion to BR they'd do the same and stop DVD production but they haven't. That's partially due to most people not being interested in owning *any* physical copy of movies/TV shows. After all, they're quite willing to rent DVDs from Redbox, watch movies on their phone/tablet, and stream low quality product from Netflix at home. The average family won't purchase 4K sets or product unless everything else gets killed off by the manufacturers.