The Cow

Coral is from Canada, perhaps things are different outside the US?

Dan

^ Coral is in Canada. The igloos are too dense to allow a full HD signal to come in. It's just science.

Anyway, Coral said:
Yet you responded:
Which isn't what he claimed. But your latter part...
while this may be true, it isn't the case for everyone and is varies greatly by region. OTA signal is very hit-or-miss. I live in the Houston area and while I get dozens of OTA channels, only 5 or 6 of them come through in HD, and of those, 2 or 3 of them are too weak of a signal (in my area) to get a non-jittery video.
I think most people just don't know (or care) if a channel is available in HD or not, especially OTA.

And up in Canada, it's even less reliable. Hell, my mother has a cable box, but can't get an HD signal out of it at all; only SD. She doesn't care, despite owning an HDTV. I'm not saying she's the norm, or even part of some kind of silent majority, but... I don't think Coral is entirely wrong either. There's a lot of people that just don't care. One family member - 'richer' than any of the rest of us combined - was one of the first in our family to get an expensive new TV and expensive HD cable, and even he would always have the TV on the SD channels when I'd visit.

DJariya

I don't think they sell standard definition receivers anymore. It's HD and now all the way to 4K.

fujishig

But did they drop the fee? Maybe this is outdated but I have no idea how else to look it up. I know they still have equipment and DVR fees. Also I didn't realize they actually have a 15 dollar deactivation fee.

https://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/globa...setId=P1300040

DJariya

No, I just checked my bill and you still have to pay the HD fee regardless. I rarely paid any attention to that small detail, I just looked at it as part of the costs.

I think this thread is getting way off topic with what the OP's intent was, so I'll end my thoughts on this here.

fujishig

I guess bringing it back to on-topic, it does at least make it plausible that people aren't paying the extra for the HD content even if they're forced to have HD receivers.

b2net

I'm sad that through this thread I found out Black Lightning S2 isn't getting a BD release. I would have thought it would have had a Warmer Archive version direct from WB.

orangerunner

This makes sense and I'm surprised they didn't do this sooner but on the other hand, the fact that you can send someone a tangible, nicely packaged physical item is much more enticing than sending a postcard saying "Hey download this and don't forget to vote for me!" A lot of votes come from strong first impressions that start with attractive packaging.

I agree sending DVDs is a waste because they probably never do get watched and members are instructed to throw them away once they are finished with them.

Adam Tyner

I'm really surprised, especially since DC/Warner's other superhero series are getting wide Blu-ray releases. A Warner Archive exclusive for Black Lightning would've been a little disappointing by comparison, but I'd still be happy to have a copy. Also on the CW tip, Legacies also looks to just going the DVD route via Warner Archive: no Blu-ray release announced.

PhantomStranger

I was unaware Warner had dropped Black Lightning altogether from Blu-ray in season two. Wow, that means they don't think they can even sell 750 units of the set. Sales for season one must have been putrid.

fujishig

Do these seasons sell well? Because they drop down to like ridiculously low prices (compared to MSRP) every year.

rw2516

There are a lot of 16x9 tvs out there that are only 720p. Some of the cheap brands still make them and brands like Samsung were still making them in 2017. Mostly less than 40" sizes. Cable still comes in both SD and HD. With SD no box is required and you can run the cable directly to the tv and change channels using the tv tuner, just like the old days. With HD a box is required for each tv and the boxes are like $10 a month per box.plus the programming fee is higher.

Adam Tyner

I have no idea. I keep buying them, but I wait until they're $12-$15 each, which I'm sure isn't helping the cause.

Brian T

Despite this being contested somewhat, I'll throw in my lot with Coral and say that I personally know a few people who receive SD and HD content via satellite, and indeed have no problem watching either on their 1080p sets. My own parents have one receiver that is only SD, and they're fine with it; the other one is SD/HD and they generally only watch it when I'm visiting. Sometimes, and especially at certain ages, the content is the primary concern, not the resolution. It's just something to watch.

More on topic, up until recently, when I would visit my parents a few hours away, we'd usually rent a movie from nearby . . . video store! It was a Family Video, mind you, so its very recent closure last month may have been due to more than just the sudden and extreme rent hike they told customers they were handed by the plaza management. For the many years that it lasted, though, it was great to still be able to wander the new release aisles like in the 'old days' — this store reliably stocked nearly every new DVD-only low-budget indie/regional/genre title, as well, which was catnip to me — but it was also interesting to see just how many fellow customers were renting DVD versions over Blu-ray (you could tell from the different coloured cases they'd have in their hands). Both formats rented equally well, I'm sure, but it was telling that they tended to have more DVD copies of most major new titles than Blu-ray, and even when quantities were similar, the DVDs were usually all rented before the Blu-rays on a Friday or Saturday night . . . even in 2019!


They do mention piracy further down in the article, which was in fact a primary reason for eliminating the Emmy screeners. I can imagine the Oscars will follow eventually if they haven't already.

morriscroy

Most of my interest in F-list bottom feeder films is primarily scifi stuff. I had it with buying $2 scifi dvds (or blurays) which end up only being watched once or twice, which were littering my bookshelves for many years.

As mentioned in another thread on here, recently I went back to buying books instead of dvds/blurays. I've been quickly coming to the realization a lot of scifi books are just as bad, with very few that seem to be worthwhile re-reads or even first reads. Basically the book equivalent of F-list bottom feeder dvds/blurays.

(This might also be reflective of age, where I'm seeing the same scifi tropes over and over again in many movies and books. I might have felt differently when I read the same type of stuff when I was younger).

Sturgeon's Law may very well apply in just about everywhere in numerous other niches in life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

Brian T

I believe that in regards to movies (and most other entertainments), for the most part it's all been done at this point, even as we now have more outlets and more "content" available to us than ever before, and everybody and their mother has access to the tools (whether they should really use them or not). It's just new faces, new locations, evolving filmmaking tech that keeps things seeming fresh, but strip all that away and you've basically got tales that have been endlessly reconfigured and retold for decades. Still, the new cosmetics do make them palatable, I suppose.

The one advantage — for now — that keeps me buying certain lesser-known titles (predominantly genre pictures made by reasonably reputable people that I can track via reportage from the fest circuit) is being located in Canada and having regular access to cross-border shopping (and a U.S. mailing address), where those $1.95-$3.95 Hamilton discs and $3/$5/markdown Big Lots discs can at least be resold (after viewing) at a profit on Amazon Canada's Marketplace. Sometimes they sell within weeks, other times months or years, but generally speaking I always make something on the deal. The same just doesn't seem possible with most used discs in the U.S. Also, due to Canada's sparse population, I've discovered there are many areas outside of our few major cities that still don't have reliable high-speed internet, nor can many Canadian movie buffs find certain offbeat titles on our streaming services, which seriously pale in comparison to their American counterparts. If it weren't for all that, I probably wouldn't bother with as many cheapie discs as I still do.

Coral

I just caught up on the thread and saw the responses to me.

Yes, what Brian is talking about is what I was referring to. I'm not referring to 4x3 TVs, I'm talking about the content people are getting.
I know a quite a few people who have 1080p TVs but the content they receive is only in SD. My mother is an example of this.
I have a Rogers HD cable box and while I have HD content - a chunk of those channels are offered in SD as well on my box. They continue to offer those channels because there's a large enough amount of people who can't view HD content.

There are those who claim that picture quality is important to people, and then say that physical media is so much better than Netflix because of that ... yet how many are using Netflix with this "substandard" picture quality - even if it's considered HD?

Today if people finally want better quality than DVD, they're going to streaming and ignoring BD/UHD-BD entirely. BD/UHD-BD came out too late and people are skipping over it.

morriscroy

(On an historical tangent).

Even if the movie companies want to release bluray (or hddvd) back in the 1990s, they couldn't. IIRC, the blue lasers were tied up in patent disputes until sometime in the early 2000s. Until the patent disputes were settled, there was no point in making bluray or hddvd.

morriscroy

One can go further back than decades. Similar type of storytelling in Shakespeare and the bible.

morriscroy

(Going further offtopic).

I've been going back to reading more non-fiction historical stuff, now that too much current/recent scifi + genre fiction is just plain awful or really bland whether books or dvd/bluray.

Sometimes real world history can be even more interesting and weirder, than fictionalized versions with similar "tropes". For example, seeing how numerous "tropes" in current/recent movies + shows had possible origins from 1930's Germany.

morriscroy

For example back in 2001:

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/communi...e-of-the-rays/

Coral

Timing is everything.

The music format had a similar situation on bypassing a better quality format. Consumers abandoned CDs, bypassed the superior SACD/DVD-A format and jumped on the inferior MP3 format. Convenience and portability trumped quality. For most people - "good enough" is good enough.

JeffTheAlpaca

It seems a lot of Netflix rentals of the new smaller movies are dvd only or they are too cheap to get the blu-ray versions.

PhantomStranger

I think the superhero shows tend to sell, at least the popular ones that happen to match demographics with the Blu-ray purchaser demo. Basically, Flash and Arrow. Others like Supergirl and Black Lightning, probably not so much.

When they put out a season through Warner Archive, they don't believe they will ever sell more than 1500 units. I know for a fact that ratings play into it past the first season - extremely low-rated shows have zero shot at a Blu-ray release.

morriscroy

The big past precedent for this was Human Target in 2010. Season 2 was never released at all on dvd/bluray in america.