dolphinboy

I was looking through my HD on-demands movies and there were a few films that haven't been released on blu yet as options and today I'm looking for something to watch for a bit and Career Opportunities is on Cinemax HD and it looks pretty good. Maybe even very good considering this isn't 1080p and may or may not even be in its OAR (I'm too lazy to look it up).

In the past, it did seem like when I was just about to get a catalog releases, the darned movie would show up on some HDTV channel.

So, does it even mean anything that these movies are being shown in HD? Does it means an HD master exists and the studio is probably planning on releasing it at some point in the "near" future? Or does it mean absolutely nothing and do cable channels have some less expensive ways to present these movies in what looks to be very good quality HD (certainly way better than an upconvert of the DVD) that requires little or no investment from the studios?

Even Arachnophobia and Holes, movies I'm not interested in myself, just so happen to be playing on HDTV, with their BDs being released soon and The Horse Whisperer is on too and it just came out on Blu.

Just a coincidence or might I be safe to assume Career Opportunities (and other things we see on HDTV) will be making its way to BD in the not too distant future?

joliom

Not necessarily. There are lots of movies that have been making the rounds on the HD channels the past few years that haven't been released. For instance, HD-MGM has been running Modern Girls for two years now and that still hasn't come out on blu-ray. It was released on made-to-order DVD-R earlier this year, but other than that, there hasn't been a proper DVD release either. The fact that HD transfers of these films exist certainly can't hurt their prospects, though.

JeffTheAlpaca

Judge Dredd was in HD on one of the premium channels last year and the Blu-ray comes out in Sept

Graffitti Bridge, The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, & The Perfect Score other examples though there are no Blu-ray releases.

Drexl

Yes, they have lots of HD masters of films that haven't been released on BD yet. This is why some catalog titles look so bad; the master may be several years old, and they just now get around to releasing it on disc.

This is also why we're seeing some of these other labels like Echo Bridge get to release some of these titles. The studios have the masters ready, but for whatever reason they decide they aren't worth releasing themselves.

E Unit

MGM HD has shown a ton of great 70's flicks, like Bronson's The Mechanic, Truck Turner, Coffy, Thief, and a bunch more that look pretty damn good. As much as I hope these would get a blu release, I'm not holding my breath. Amazon Prime just put out Before Sunrise which I saw last night in HD, and it looked great. I'm hoping we'll see Before Sunrise/Sunset get released at some point. Maybe after the rumored third film is released.

PhantomStranger

The studios are all preparing for a digital streaming and download future, so HD masters for broadcast are being prepared all the time with no intention of a BD release.

dolphinboy

Well, I know different people have different opinions of what a "bad" catalog release is, but considering all that's been put out so far, I'm seeing a lot of good looking stuff on TV, so I'd certainly be satisfied considering how little they charge for so many catalogs. If Career Opportunities, hardly a film Disney would put much effort into, looks close to as good as the HDTV presentation suggests it should, I'd be thrilled.

And if seeing it on HDTV means they already have a master, I'm fine even if it takes a year to fit into their schedule. I'd just rather know they're going to keep releasing them and not just stop like Sony pretty much has.

Mabuse

I have noticed some correlation between the MGM-HD chanel and the MGM titles that end up getting released by Criterion.

The Fugitive Kind
Night of the Hunter
The Killing
and the upcoming Thief

All showed up on MGM-HD about 3-6 months before the Criterion Blu ray announcement.

orangerunner

Remember as well that many films released on DVD, even before Blu-ray/HDDVD were available, were transferred from a High-Def source master.

I'm sure there are many more titles out there that have been transferred to High-Def although I imagine most of the earlier titles were 1080i, not 1080p.

Whether a film gets a Blu-ray release or not is usually just a money issue. Is there enough interest to warrant a release and will it be profitable to do so?

dolphinboy

But then how do you explain a film like Mystery Men getting released? I'm not bashing anyone's tastes, in fact I might pick it up. But I don't see how that can possibly be profitable compared to the many titles that not only aren't on blu yet, but many which might not ever get there. Sleepless in Seattle? Panic Room? But Mystery Men does get release?

And a better example is a movie called Fire with Fire. I remember this only from being a kind and seeing it so many times on cable tv. It's not a good film, but I like it, I have soft spot for it, whatever. I used to think about it from time to time, but I totally do so in the context of wishing it would maybe be on tv again. I didn't think it stood a chance of being released on bd and, unlike a lot of other films that are getting snubbed, I wouldn't have blamed the studio for not releasing it. How many people are out there like me to warrant the money to be spent making it? But it's coming soon.

But Sony licenses As Good As It Gets to TT?

I'm still struggling with the whole profit thing, because everyone blames the consumers for waiting for the price drops on bds, but they keep releasing movies that are worth more and would sell more for $10. Total Recall with a new transfer and almost all the supplements and it's under $10 right off the bat. They don't even want as much as I gladly paid for The Horse Whisperer? So, do they want to make a profit? Because $15 for Total Recall would sell.

It just seems so inconsistent that, as a consumer, I really have no idea what to expect. If they really are heading towards a big shift from BD to streaming HD, I'm going to be very disappointed. There are a LOT of dvds that I truly think should be put out on blu and would make as much money as any number of other titles have before they change the game again to yet another format for receiving the majority of our HD content.

Here's hoping Career Opportunities shows up on bd in the next year.

PS-Just flipping through the channels are wouldn't you know it, there's WarGames!!! And it just pops when the bd is scheduled for release in August. This seems to be happening a lot.

Drexl

You'll go crazy trying to figure out why some titles get released and some don't. The titles you mentioned are from Sony, which has cut back on their releases recently. Mystery Men is from Universal. Actually, that title doesn't seem that odd, considering the popularity of comic book movies (it's like a bizzaro version of The Avengers ).

Sometimes they wait for anniversaries. Next year will be the 20th anniversary of Sleepless in Seattle (I feel old), so maybe we'll see it then. On the other hand, this year is the 10th anniversary of Panic Room and I don't see a BD announcement.

I don't believe there's much, if any, connection between TV airings and BD releases. You just notice it when it happens and assume it happens often enough for a correlation.

orangerunner

I think the entire industry is struggling with the whole profit thing too. This whole transition period has left the business in a holding pattern for a few years.

Sales of physical media are down, more people are downloading. Do they flood the market with cheap Blu-ray discs to get the volume up?

What if "cheap" isn't cheap enough and sales are still sluggish?

I think if every Blu-ray was under $10, the sales volume wouldn't be much higher. People just don't seem to want to put more money into a movie collection like they used to whether it's the economy or a matter of physical space in their house.

A few video stores had closing-out sales and many Blu-ray titles failed to movie out the door at $2.50 per title.

The Toronto company Cinram was once one of the biggest replicators in the world. As of last month they filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection and were forced to sell out.

The industry is in limbo right now and it has many scratching their heads as to what the new stable model will be in future. Will there ever be a new stable model?

dolphinboy

Why not let people order blu-rays directly from the studio? I'm not rich. I work full-time as a counselor and my wife works part-time, but mostly is staying at home with our 2 girls. But I think people are really getting spoiled by the low catalog prices and I blame the studio for releasing so many things at such low price points and having quality and supplements that are all over the place.

I have about 40-45 dvds left to have an all-blu collection. That's only movies, not concerts, videos, or all television programming. Personally, I don't care if Buffy is ever in HD. Add about 10-15 movies that aren't particularly old that were never released on blu for reasons I don't understand that I didn't buy the dvd of, so that is about 60 titles or so. I'd pay $30 a pop to get even a TT-like release of all of them, then to think I might end up never getting even half of them on bd ever in my life.

I'm 42, I'm too old to get into streaming content. Everyone I know has an HDTV, why aren't people buying blu-rays, at least enough to satisfy the studios to keep releasing them? Aren't video game still $50 a pop?

Lastdaysofrain

So can I get Career Opportunities in Blu Ray soon or not? I need to know. I have to make sure my system is properly calibrated to accept a full 1080p Jennifer Connolly tank top. I don't want any strobing.

PhantomStranger

Those HD transfers intended for DVD look awful when repurposed for Blu-ray. It's why Universal has been lambasted for their catalog titles. What looked decent in 2004 looks awful now.
The economics of selling BDs or any other media directly to consumers simply don't work for a studio. They will start selling movies directly to customers when the download infrastructure can handle it.

dolphinboy

Well, Career Opportunities looked pretty damned good as have a lot of movies I've seen only on HDTV. I'd take it looking the way that it did if that's the only way I'd ever get it.

I think most people are too hard on Universal and I watched Phenomenon last night, which probably had an old master too and it looked fabulous from Disney, who just released to horrid looking The Color of Money. It certainly appears to me that far more catalog releases look good than don't.

orangerunner

I think part of the consumer's ambivilance towards Blu-ray is part of this. What looks great and what looks awful seems to be a narrow gap and is very subjective.

A title like Collateral on Blu-ray looks quite grainy which, I believe, was the director's intention. This website site gave the picture quality 4.5 stars (I think) but to Joe Six-Pack it probably looks like crap because the expectation is that of an absolutely crisp, sharp image.

I think the studios would love to strip away the costs of manufacturing physical media. They tie up a lot of money in manufacturing, packaging, transporting & storing discs, not to mention dealing with lots of middle-men and distributors.

A movie stored on a server that is downloadable is, cost-wise, the most ideal form of delivering movies to the consumer.

If a film is on their server, they also have much more control over the content compared to discs which get easily copied and distributed illegally.

The problem is there are so many different companies have their fingers in the cookie jar that there's no sense of a solid future format. When we had VHS tape, it was dominant. When we had DVD, it was dominant. With downloading/steaming, there's little or no standard "go-to" format as of now.