Re: Is the 4K news slowing down your blu buys?
 

The answers no for me because I pretty much stopped buying movies when blu came out. At first, when I got Blade Runner, I thought this is great. Then I looked at all the DVDs I had that were either unopened or I watched once. I realized that renting and streaming was a better idea for me. I have since purchased less than 10 movies. I just don't see movies being purchased the way they were in the glory days of dvd.

Re: Is the 4K news slowing down your blu buys?
 

Of course it would. And said TV's will eventually become standard. Much as 3D is now just a bullet point on newer TV's rather than a prominently advertised feature.

Re: Is the 4K news slowing down your blu buys?
 

After seven years, Blu-Ray is still seen by many as a niche market. I suspect the 4K crowd will be even smaller. I just upgraded to Blu-Ray in 2010, and I've only had my HDTV for about a month.

Re: Is the 4K news slowing down your blu buys?
 

60 million households sounds a bit more than niche.

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=11050

Re: Is the 4K news slowing down your blu buys?
 

In a current U.S. population of over 315 million, its still a niche.

Re: Is the 4K news slowing down your blu buys?
 

That's great, but there's about 115 million television households. So that's roughly 50 something percent. Try spinning that.

Re: Is the 4K news slowing down your blu buys?
 

It's niche when major studios farm out their Award Winning titles.

/end

4K will be DOA.

Re: Is the 4K news slowing down your blu buys?
 

Tres stated 60 million households. Households and population are very different. About 2.5 people per household.

Laserdiscs were a niche.

Re: Is the 4K news slowing down your blu buys?
 

There were nearly 17k Laserdiscs released in the USA during it's run.

How many Blu-rays in the USA have been released?

Re: Is the 4K news slowing down your blu buys?
 

25. Which is why there's 60 million blu ray players out there.

Re: Is the 4K news slowing down your blu buys?
 

Wikipedia cites 3500 Blu-rays released in the US by 2011:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc

Blu-ray.com lists 10546 titles, although some of those appear to be store-exclusive editions:
http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/movies...lable&page=526


Laserdisc had a near 20 year run, so the number of titles break down to around 850 titles a year. If the Wikipedia article is correct, then Blu-ray has been releasing titles at a rate of only 700 a year. However, LD may have benefited from the burgeoning video tape market, since studios could use one video master for LD, VHS, and Beta releases, and was often the first time a title was available on home video. Blu-ray requires new transfers and masters in many cases, and has to fight for consumer attention with existing DVDs, and even LDs and VHS.

Re: Is the 4K news slowing down your blu buys?
 

The list also includes many re-release, titles split from Boxsets etc.

So even if we go with their number, LD was releasing more titles and apparently that's Niche.

But It really doesn't matter to some here.

Re: Is the 4K news slowing down your blu buys?
 

They were still a niche as only 16.8 million players were sold. (source: http://www.pioneer.eu/uk/newsroom/ne...ayer/page.html). And that is a worldwide sales number. So The US number is much lower.

Be realistic, not that many copies of those thousands of laserdiscs titles were sold as there was hardly any retailer that carried them.

Besides myself, I never knew anyone that owned a laserdisc player. Just about everyone I know has a blu-ray disc player.

Re: Is the 4K news slowing down your blu buys?
 

Blu-ray players can play DVDs. Laserdiscs couldn't play VHS

Blu-ray players are used primarily as DVD up converters and Streaming. Laserdisc didn't do either (well maybe sole of the later LD models could play DVDs, I really don't remember).

Blu-ray "players" are hardly used just for one function. They are heavily advertised as being able to play DVD and Netflix etc.

Don't ask me to be realistic when people parade how awesome Blu-ray is doing. It's not. Retailers are dropping stock and studios are farming out titles. It's doing pretty bad aside from the major releases (which were never going to be a problem). Thankfully those major releases also come with a DVD and Digital Copy.

Re: Is the 4K news slowing down your blu buys?
 

To be clear, the list of over 10,000 titles (which would be a rate of 1400 a year) has duplication. The Wikipedia number of 3,500 in 2011 doesn't have a list attached.

Anyway, does the cited number of 17,000 LD titles not include any duplicates?

What made LD niche wasn't the number of titles, but the quantities each title sold, as well as the overall number of LD players.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laserdisc
http://laserdiscplanet.com/museum2.html
So each LD title only sold a few hundred copies, on average, and LD players were only in about 2% of households. Compare that to Blu-ray, where it's in around half the US households and individual titles sell in the tens of thousands, and something like Avatar can sell 1.5 million copies in one day:
http://screenrant.com/avatar-blu-ray...rd-ross-55782/

Re: Is the 4K news slowing down your blu buys?
 

You always bring up the studios farming out titles subject. They did it with DVD also. I remember buying crappy copies of major DVD movies like Silence of the Lambs released by Image. And they did it with Laserdisc before DVD.

Re: Is the 4K news slowing down your blu buys?
 

I would agree that the quantities of each Laserdisc title sold made it a niche format. Very few stores sold them or they only carried a handful of titles.

I recall Blockbuster video renting them, but again, I'd be surprised if they had more than 100 or so titles.

I think where Laserdisc really did well were places like Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan etc. Having them play Karoke discs as well made them quite popular in Asia.

Re: Is the 4K news slowing down your blu buys?
 

Well, it's hard to say what the "primary" use for the majority of Blu-ray players are, but you're correct that they often do more than just play Blu-rays, including upconverting DVDs. However, this may prove to be a "backdoor" to Blu-ray adoption, since someone looking to buy a new title may look around, and notice they have plenty of Blu-ray players, and get the Blu-ray release instead of DVD (or Blu-ray with DVD release, to cover all the bases).

Also, a few later Laserdisc players could play DVDs. Such as the Pioneer DVL-919.
http://www.amazon.com/Pioneer-DVL-91.../dp/B00000K0ZX

To be fair, a lot of those early farmed out DVDs were because those titles had been farmed out for LD, and apparently those contracts covered DVD as well. Once studios saw how well DVDs were selling, they started releasing the titles themselves once the old contracts started expiring.

If they're farming out catalog titles again, it is because Blu-ray is not selling as well as DVD had. However, it's hard to say if this is because the Blu-ray format itself is "niche," or simply due to catalog overload. People simply aren't buying any physically media in the same amounts as during DVD's boom, probably partially due to streaming, but also the availability of rentals, as well as many people already owning a large back catalog on DVD. LD didn't have any competition except for VHS for much of its lifetime, and still did poorly.

It'd be interesting to know how little these farmed out titles are selling. I'm guessing they're still selling in the thousands, or far more than LDs typically sold.

Re: Is the 4K news slowing down your blu buys?
 

One of the problems with the current home video departments at most Hollywood studios is that the home video executives with any experience in the field have been fired or downsized. The studios now have a bunch of MBAs and other marketing types deciding what to release, and that type of person can really only go by the financials of any release. These are youngish people with little direct knowledge of film history or the quirks of the catalog they control. The more experienced people were let go, who now run many of the niche distributors like Image and Shout Factory.

Look at what happened to Sony's pattern of Blu-ray releases before they quit the catalog market completely. It would have made more money to throw darts at a board as a method for picking what to release, than what they actually released. Someone over at Sony had a real jones for soccer-themed movies.

Re: Is the 4K news slowing down your blu buys?
 

That is the case, and that is the travesty... There's no appreciation of the films themselves left by the young studio MBAs. It's all another product to them, profits are paramount.

And, LD was a niche product, while Blu-Ray is definitely not. When one title can sell in the millions, the product can be said to be successful.

Blu-Ray catalog is not successful because of those MBAs, for one, *and* because it is a product which is popular and caters to the mainstream masses.

Re: Is the 4K news slowing down your blu buys?
 

They easily outsell what any Laserdisc title ever sold. You see these titles at Wal-mart for $5. If each store only sold 10 copies that is more than any Laserdisc title.

Re: Is the 4K news slowing down your blu buys?
 

I use my PS3 for streaming 90+% of the time and bluray/dvd the other 10-%. I know it's just me but I went from buying 25 to 30 movies a year to just about none. I had too many unopened or watched just once. I think blu will be the last physical media as streaming becomes more user friendly and more convienient for the masses. Even the stores like Target, Costco and Best Buy have greatly reduced their movie sections. I know many people buy on line but I think the days of buying lots of movies for the general population is over. Blu sales are going up but overall movies sales are declining, correct? No way that 4K becomes a successful physical media.

Re: Is the 4K news slowing down your blu buys?
 

This was especially true for titles such as Silence of the Lambs which was a victim of Orion Pictures and Orion Home Video going bankrupt in the 1990s. Cut-rate distributors began selling some of the old Orion titles.

When DVD showed promising signs in the market, MGM picked-up many former Orion titles and gave them proper releases. I think 20th Century Fox has now acquired the MGM library.

Re: Is the 4K news slowing down your blu buys?
 

Some people have received the Ghostbusters release (over at bluray.com) and there are some screenshots out there. Basically it's fixed the contrast issue, and went back to the previous warmer color palette. No extras.

Re: Is the 4K news slowing down your blu buys?
 

They did it in the very early years of DVD (like Jay mentioned). When DVD was sorta popular, most of those farmed out titles were released by the proper studios. I remember having some funky looking "big" releases early on.

Today, Blu-ray studios are farming out major titles to small studios. Some have already been released by the studio, but they see very little value keeping them in print (Disney, Paramount, etc).

Pretty different story.