PhantomStranger

I expect all genres outside sci-fi/superhero/family/animation will be heavily missing on UHD.

The studios will be targeting Blu-ray's superconsumers for UHD's demographic - males aged 30-54 with disposable income. That shapes what we'll see on the format.

Josh-da-man

It makes sense, though.

Disc sales are split up among DVD, BR, and UHD.

It's probably not feasible to release every movie across all three formats.

The sci-fi and superhero films are the movies that will benefit most the increased resolution and HDR. It's also the audience that's going to be most interested in UHD.

Alan Smithee

Still haven't seen any porn on UHD (no, Fifty Shades doesn't count.) I did get the only music UHD disc that I know of, which doesn't even include a regular Blu-Ray with it:

Gizmo

Uhh, Netflix/Hulu/Amazon don't count? Many films not available on disc.

Gizmo

So why would anyone buy discs if movies are so easy to find for free online?

Josh-da-man

Not surprising they aren't embracing UHD.

Porn has mostly moved online now. Seems like streaming sites like pornhub or studios with paid monthly memberships are the way of the future.

Makes sense; folks would probably rather watch porn ot free on clips sites, or pay a monthly AYCE membership fee than buy discs.

orangerunner

For people who care about movies as a "product", illegally downloading zeroes and ones is very different than owning a physical disc that comes complete with nice packaging, disc and cover artwork.

It's like owning a painting to put on your wall versus having a photo of a nice painting on your iPhone. Some may argue that it's the exact same image, so why waste space on your wall? You can't take a real painting with you and show all of your friends on-the-go.

Paying $19.95 to download those same zeroes and ones is, comparatively speaking, a rip-off.

The whole streaming thing should focus on being a replacement for the video store and price their "rentals" at $5.99. Netflix is basically an on-demand replacement for HBO.

All of these models worked together in unison even during the VHS days with all of them appealing to different tastes, habits and budgets.

Coral

UHD really has no chance of becoming anything more than a niche if they can only target this demographic 2 years into the format. More and more people in this age range are converting over to streaming and are abandoning the idea of ownership.

Plus, with the over-saturation of superhero movies, this demographic will probably start to get tired of it... at least to the point where they no longer feel the need to add to their already-large collection of these types of movies alone. They'll be questioning "Do I need to own Avengers 8, Batman vs. Trump and Super-Grandma?".

Gizmo

A painting and a picture are totally different. Are you trying to say a Blu-ray is like hanging a nice painting with a frame and an iTunes movie is a polaroid? Not everyone displaying their movies for everyone to see (unless your Alan smith - the movies are actually furtiniture!)

Not everyone cares about a case, artwork, slip cover, disc art. Its something that goes on a shelf and sits.

The quality is dependent upon the person owning a nice TV, sound system, calibration etc. Most consumers don't care. It's why so many stopped buying and simply Netflix/iTunes now. I have a 4k TV and iTunes/VUDU/Netflix in 4K looks pretty damn good. I do own a few 4k BDs for various reason but have yet to even play them on my Xbox One S (which has been used once).

jjcool

Agreed. But not a good way to get a format to catch on.

orangerunner

A Blu-ray is like owning a painting where you can physically pick it up and appreciate the texture and individual brushstrokes.

iTunes is a portable high-res JPEG image of the same painting.

Both can be appreciated as fine art but one is a tangible physical item and the other is just a collection of organized pixels.

Exactly right. These are perfect streaming customers. People who previously threw-out the artwork because the film is just a form of entertainment that bears no significance to them beyond the content itself.

Some people go to a sporting event and enjoy the game. Other people buy the program, a $250 jersey, a collector beer glass etc. because they view their team and the game as something more than a passing piece of amusement.

There are a lot of people who collect stamps. Some stamps are worth millions of dollars. Some people just see stamps as proofs-of-purchase to send a letter from point A to point B. Some people think "Why not use a barcode as a stamp rather than print some president's face on it?".

You are correct in that more and more people simply view everything as a disposable piece of entertainment which, given the volume and easy accessibility of everything, is not surprising.

There's no right or wrong here, there's just different needs and wants.

People who like physical media are becoming the minority and therefore this will result in fewer and fewer options moving forward.

BuckNaked2k

BuckNaked2k

Josh-da-man

I guess Thor Ragnarok is responsible for the 3-10 increase; don't recall what came out the week before.

WeeBey

Was just thinking that it will be interesting to see what happens with Disney once their streaming service launches. We know that they never really embraced Blu-ray for their older catalogue titles and they’re also not big on licensing movies to the boutique labels.

I bet they will put many, if not all, of their catalogue titles on their service. They’ll want to have a beefy archive to compete with Netflix. A lot of this stuff might be able available in 4K HDR. This might leave only the huge titles coming to disc, stuff like Star Wars, marvel, Pixar, and animated features.

Also, what does this mean if the Fox acquisition goes through? Might be a similar deal.


If the Disney-Fox deal works out well, will we see more consolidation in the industry? Sony, Warner, Paramount, and Universal can’t all release individual streaming services. Will there be more acquisitions? Will there be tie-ups with other streaming services such as Netflix or Disney’s service? Maybe a new entrant (e.g. Apple)?

orangerunner

It wouldn't surprise me at all to see the studios exclusively streaming their own material.

In this day and age, it's not like creating a streaming platform is really difficult and it would give the studios complete control over their titles.

WeeBey

The limit there is the number of services people will subscribe to. They might all try but there will be a shakeout where some of them would have to team up or license to other service providers.

big e

We may already be at a saturation point with that. A couple times last year and I know at least once this year I saw people on the news talking about how there's already too many streaming services and they're getting overloaded with content. The last time I heard this may have been around the time Star Trek Discovery was launched. This whole streaming thing could turn into a really big mess really fast, content wise. Not only do you have independent streaming services like Netflix and Hulu, but you also have the studios and network providers pushing their own services. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm already getting burned out from all the content and am getting more and more weary from watching stuff, in general.

Maybe one solution would be to pay a flat monthly fee to something that would give you access to these other streaming services. The only problem is, that's kind of what we have with cable and satellite, except in this scenario you have access to what you want to watch when you want to watch it.

slop101

Yeah, I only have NetFlix, and I can't even keep up with that, can't imagine subscribing to more.

orangerunner

I agree, there's no definitive go-to provider. The nice thing about studios hosting their own titles is that those titles will, in most cases, be found at that location.

With third-party providers, titles come and go as licenses expire which contributes to a lot of uncertainty and confusion.

Ideally, it would be great to have third-party indexing of titles (perhaps someone like IMDB) to direct consumers as to where to go to find titles. Most people don't necessarily know which studios distribute which films and with independent films, they can often change the distributor we're familiar with.

DvdClon

There's Justwatch.com - is this kind of what you'd want?

fumanstan

Coco, another fairly big release.

BuckNaked2k

bruceames

Blu-ray eeked out another 50+ percent week. That makes 2 in a row. Don't think that's happened before. Very decent YoY as well...for a change, as most of the other positive weeks have been in single digits.

davidh777

I went to Target today, and their movie section has definitely shrunk since I was there for holiday shopping. They used to have a section for multiple-movie/disc sets that was good for bargains, but that's gone.

I was shopping Amazon for Murder on the Orient Express to check if the disc had a digital code, and it was nearly impossible to find a physical version without specifically filtering the search by BD. All the results were digital, and it used to be that going to the digital page would offer links to the physical version, but not now. The only links were to digital rental/purchase, and I accidentally one-clicked it when I was trying to find the BD. Fortunately canceling a digital purchase is easier than it used to be.