Ranger

Munich just hit blu this year. So I wouldn't give up, until around 2020.

Though I have given up on waiting for Batman TAS and Zorro blu sets.

Adam Tyner

If you have a multiregion Blu-ray player, The Money Pit and The 'Burbs are available overseas.

I'm baffled by the lack of April Fool's Day on Blu-ray.

Rainet

Who needs April Fools Day when we got Silent Night, Deadly Night.
Or Prenty In Pink when we got Screwballs!

I see so many obscure movies get the blu treatment, but many popular titles don't. Interesting and odd.

Adam Tyner

A lot of it comes down to who can get the rights. An independent production like Silent Night, Deadly Night definitely isn't coming to Blu-ray at the expense of Paramount's April Fool's Day (although Warner would presumably be the one bringing it to Blu-ray). Severin could strike a deal with the indie producer who owns Screwballs, but trying to get Universal to license them Pretty in Pink is a whole other story.

bruceames

I'm surprised The Pianist hasn't been released yet (in the U.S.). Probably some legal thing. That is probably the most popular and highly regarded movie not to get a release here (I think it has like 80000000 IMDb votes, geez).

dvdshonna

Good point (which some people seem to be missing).

The studios should spend less time sabotaging disc sales, and more time looking to increase sales.

They have a product that sells. It's easier to increase profits, offering good prices and selling in volume, than using schemes to sell overpriced product that few consumers are willing or able to buy.

I could spend 24hrs/day blasting the music industry, but it's easier to just walk away and have nothing to do with them. Most people from my age group (50's, 60's) still love music. How many still buy it?

Edit: So how long before people just quit spending on movies? Many people already have with Netflix. It's not all they want but for $8/mo it's good enough.

orangerunner

The studios used the same tactic when Blu-ray arrived on the market. They started making DVDs inferior with fewer extras and putting them in eco-cases.

I think a few studios (Disney comes to mind) tested releasing the Blu-ray 2 or 3 weeks ahead of the DVD in an attempt to sway people to the higher profit margin product.

The studios want digital because it's cheaper as they remove all of the middle-men in distribution channels and they have tighter control of their product and how it's used.

In a perfect world, Wal-Mart would love to convert everyone into an on-line shopper so they can close every store in America and remove the high costs that come with employing people and maintaining a retail store.

It's just the way corporate America sees the future and increasing profits.

Of course they haven't figured out the idea that if people don't have jobs, who is going to be purchasing the items online?

rw2516

Studios license out titles in lots. Somebody like Kino or Twilight Time will license maybe 100 titles. It's a grab bag mixture of some top tier, some middle, and some bottom. That's why you see a lot of lesser known or grade Z stuff hit blu-ray

Rainet

I really want my titles on blu-ray. Guess i'll buy the dvds. And then the preorder will pop up! Right!?

Ranger

Has a kickstarter ever gotten a movie to blu?

Adam Tyner

I backed Cowboy Bebop's Blu-Ray release on Indiegogo. Plenty of movie Kickstarters have had BDs as rewards (Veronica Mars, for instance), Arrow Films used Indiegogo to help fund their expansion into America, and they've also used Kickstarter for at least one restoration with a BD release as a reward.

dvdshonna

Digital purchases and digital VOD isn't working. It FLOPPED.

They've even considered releasing digital simultaneously with new releases at the theatres. Sony experimented with "The Interview" (simultaneous release).

The sooner the studios admit they fu#ked up, the less painful it's going to be.

The only thing that has worked is subscription (SVOD). Big surprise. You can watch movies/tv without commercials for pennies.

I'm not going to pay $15.99 for a movie. I'm not going to pay $15.99 for a hamburger. I'm not going to pay $15.99 for a coke (unless I'm in a movie theatre or stranded in the desert. I don't plan on either of these events happening).

I don't care what schemes they pull out of their ass. It isn't going to happen.

rw2516

I believe what will or won't get a BD release comes down to two things: licensing and quality of existing masters.

Licensing: As long as the studios are willing to license somebody will pick it up and release it. It seems MGM/UA will license almost anything. Columbia, Universal and Fox have been generous so far. Paramount has been generous but only with titles they never released themselves. Warner Bros., who also control MGM, RKO, Monogram/Allied Artists don't usually license as a rule.

Masters: Is the current master adequate for BD quality? If not is someone willing to pay for a new master? Older 4x3 fullscreen films are least likely to hit BD because so much was, and still is, released using the same SD analog masters used for VHS release. Widescreen movies that only received a 4x3 letterbox DVD release were most likely from SD analog masters. If a movie was released in 16x9 on DVD then a new master was made and the likelihood is greater the film is BD ready. If a film is being shown in HD on tv the likelihood it greater it's BD ready.

It may appear that horror and sci-fi titles are selling better than expected on BD. Studios may be taking notice and deciding to release some themselves, or licensees may be more willing to license them.

Josh-da-man

Most of those are low-demand catalog titles. I could see Pretty in Pink eventually getting a blu release, and April Fools Day is a horror title so it has a built in cult audience, but stuff like Ruthless People and The Money Pit are mostly forgotten films that most stores wouldn't want to waste space on.

It also comes down to which studio owns the title. If it's a studio that is averse to releasing catalog titles and licensing them out to third parties, then the chances for a release are nil.

dvdshonna

I don't watch a lot of comedies (I don't think they are funny), but I thought "The Money Pit" was funny as hell.

davidh777

Eco cases were not a scheme to drive people to BD instead of DVD. That was during the environmental push to reduce the use of plastic. Besides, they made BD eco cases (though those might've been launched later--I dunno).

coli

I never thought it was a bad thing that BluRay had a niche market of fans, as I never expected it to appease the masses like DVD's. I wonder how the studio's never saw this? Do they speak to family and friends about stuff like this?

DVD was one of those things that just caught on and everybody loved it. I always look at certain friends and family members who are just casual buyers when it comes to stuff like this, and they were buying a DVD player and boatload of movies too. I never expected them to get into BluRay, because the quality jump to them was no difference (even though we all know there is a difference between BluRay and DVD).

BluRay and eventually 4K can find a market comparable to Laserdisk (even bigger because there are more people with home theaters then 20-25 years ago). And you just don't mass produce except for the big new movie titles (Jurassic World, The Avengers, etc) and the old popular catalog titles (Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, etc).

The studio's just have to know what the market is they are producing for and not think of it as a 'mass' product anymore.

orangerunner

I seem to remember Blu-rays coming in proper cases for the first few years while DVDs were in the eco-cases.

But yes, eventually they just started producing both formats in eco-cases.

orangerunner

It's just the corporate mandate to never think small. EVERYTHING has to outperform and outsell whatever happened last quarter.

Look at the pressure Toshiba put on itself, causing top executives to fake profit figures to save face in the light of dwindling market share.

http://eandt.theiet.org/news/2015/ju...esignation.cfm

Adam Tyner

NPD: Connected-TV Ownership Tops Blu-ray Disc Players

Shannon Nutt

My favorite is to get a movie in an eco-case that ALSO includes a slip cover. It's like the studio saying "we can't decide if we're encouraging you to recycle the box or save it."

Alan Smithee

I know at least two people who have a "smart TV" but don't even have them activated- one of them is my clueless aunt who continues to throw her money away on DirecTV, the other is my friend's clueless mother who throws her money away on Dish Network (mostly to watch Lifetime and the Oprah Winfrey Network.) It doesn't seem like you can even get a good-sized TV WITHOUT any smart functions nowadays.

lamphorn

There are a couple factors here. One, let's not forget what was going on economically during this past decade. The economy wasn't great from 1999-2007 but it was growing and not HORRIBLE. Those were the prime DVD years. Then we have a combination of the economy tanking AND cheap digital streaming at the same time that bluray was getting going.

Yes us older people (and gosh I'm just in my late-30's) who remember the glory days of amazing Warner Bros. editions of classic and even obscure movies that were lovingly restored and full of cool commentaries and extras, roaming the Best Buy/Circuit City aisles every tuesday looking for gems, may not give up our physical-media habit easily... but we now have a generation of young adults who are not used to buying anything! They don't buy CD's (to be fair, I don't anymore, either) and they weren't old enough to buy their own DVD's and they sure as hell aren't going to go spending money on blurays when they can just watch it on netflix unless they are major cinephiles. They just aren't in the habit.

Then even for someone like me who IS in the habit... it's getting tiresome. I just spent $100 on some Criterions last night only to discover today (I know I'm late to this party) that 4K discs are on the way later this year. Just as I have boxes of DVD's now gathering dust because they look crappy on my lovely 1080P TV and I've replaced most of the movies that were important to me on Blu... now I'm starting to think.. JEEZ, are all these Criterions that I have on the shelf just gonna be re-released in 4K in a couple years? It makes us start slowing down.

ALL THAT SAID, I love a great physical edition of a great movie and I don't want to see that stop, because the care and consistency given to our discs are not given to whatever random transfer winds up on HBO or Netflix. I just wish the studios understood that a lot of what keeps them going is the history and romance of the movies and the best way to keep that going is to have gorgeous editions out there for younger audiences to discover. It's almost as if the studios are begging the younger generations not to value their product at all.

PhantomStranger

We've already seen the future of physical product in Hollywood. The music industry shifted to lavish, outlandishly expensive super box sets to sell the same albums over and over again. It will increasingly happen with movies in the coming years.

The future of physical media is a shrinking market in which the studios try to recoup as much revenue as they can from the most diehard fans. We've already gotten a small taste of it in sets like Adam West's Batman.

orangerunner

A slowdown in sales has always been inevitable. When CDs became affordable (ie. $15.99) in late eighties, everyone replaced their record albums and bought everything in sight.

By the late nineties, everyone that wanted The Eagles Greatest Hits, already had it. Even before Napster came long, CD sales leveled off or decreased.

The same goes for DVDs and Blu-ray. Once those catalogue titles have been released, the sales are going to level off or decrease.

Again, the business community does not allow for anything to level-off, it must keep growing to make share-holders happy.

Where the technology sits now, where can it really go? 8K? 16K? 32K? Who cares? Unless they re-invent the definition of "home entertainment" the current quality is good enough to a point where it has plateaued.