Will Blu-Ray transfers be dumbed down...?

[ReduxInflux]

Just a stray thought I had today: Now that blu-ray is the format of choice and has a stranglehold on the market - will studios be tempted by this hi-def profit machine and halfass the transfers of older titles just to get them on shelves? (fast food business principles)

[bajor27]

Originally Posted by ReduxInflux

Just a stray thought I had today: Now that blu-ray is the format of choice and has a stranglehold on the market - will studios be tempted by this hi-def profit machine and halfass the transfers of older titles just to get them on shelves? (fast food business principles)

Although Universal did this for HD-DVD, I don't think it will happen for Blu. There is too much competition now for them to release a ton of titles with poor video quality.

I don't know if it's 'dumbining down' but I am extremely worried about excessive DNR on catalog releases. Not so they can pump them out though. Just so that the J6P doesn't complain about grain.

[sokrman14]

It wouldnt be a smart idea. The format still has to win over the hearts of a lot of people, so I think that the quality will remain or get even better.

[Mr. Cinema]

Define "stranglehold on the market".

[arush5268d]

Originally Posted by Mr. Cinema

Define "stranglehold on the market".

I guess that a "stranglehold" is less than 10% or whatever percentage Blu-ray is now.

[Groo The Perverted]

Well there's already a few titles on the market with less than stellar transfers.

Total Recall, T2 and House of Flying Daggers are just three that I can think of that people have mentioned that. I believe they were all among the first out of the gate.

Fifth Element as well, but they've released a remastered edition of that one.

I think that happens with any format though. They wanna start getting titles out there and tend to rush things.

[theprophecy247]

god i hope not

[Blaumann]

I actually expect the releases to get even better on average, as experience is growing with time. Imo even WB will have to get their act together to meet the bar set by their competition.

Best pq, and imo to a lesser part the better aq, is what really sets Blu-ray apart from dvd. Even Joe Public can see that easily and desire it. Dumbing down releases to "save production cost" would be a stupid movie imo.

I can understand, if some titles don't get cutting edge restaurations for a number of reasons. Predator comes to mind. But with a good transfer, how hard is it to mess up the encode and the mastering? I mean Blu actually makes it easier for the compressionists to get great results thanks to the higher bitrate they can use. Less tweaking required, less time needed, less cost to do the job.

[Ex Accountant]

Originally Posted by Mr. Cinema

Define "stranglehold on the market".

I believe he is referring to the high-def war being over. If someone wants to purchase a 1080p disc, it's pretty much going to have to be Blu.

[DetroitSportsFan]

Is not including lossless audio part of "dumbing down" a release?

[GGX]

Studios have already dumbed down many Blu-ray releases with DNR.

[Clark Kent]

DNR has not been a major problem outside of a few specific catalog titles. The only concern I would have is that some studios are reusing older HD masters for their BD catalog releases that simply don't hold up in 1080P resolution. Another concern I have is that some studios will incessantly keep adding BD-Java to releases that starts to negatively impact audio and video quality.

[QuasidodoJr]

Originally Posted by DetroitSportsFan

Is not including lossless audio part of "dumbing down" a release?

Here are the discs released in the past 6 months without lossless audio:
Lonesome Dove
The Lost Boys: The Tribe
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Batman: Gotham Knight
Get Smart's Bruce and Lloyd Out of Control
Fool's Gold
The Bucket List
Sublime
Bonnie and Clyde
Appleseed Ex Machina

Granted, nearly all of them are Warner Bros., but 5 of them are DTV releases. The others are questionable or lackluster films who would probably not have gained much benefit from lossless audio, and two are older films whose audio masters weren't in the best shape.

People on these forums blow every single issue way out of proportion.

[zombieking]

If quality deteriorates, I'll stop buying. I'm sure a lot of other folks would do the same.

[Bobby Henderson]

Originally Posted by ReduxInflux

Now that blu-ray is the format of choice and has a stranglehold on the market - will studios be tempted by this hi-def profit machine and halfass the transfers of older titles just to get them on shelves?

For the most part, no. I think quality level on average will continue to improve.

The customer base for Blu-ray is going to grow by leaps and bounds. That will give movie studios more justification to spend greater amounts of money to transfer catalog films to Blu-ray the right way. And that means taking the best available elements, even the original negatives, and carefully scanning them and treating them via digital intermediate. Quite a few early Blu-ray titles didn't receive such high quality treatment in being adapted to Blu-ray. Old HD telecine masters were encoded in AVC or VC1 and squeezed onto single layer BD25 discs. With more and more potential customers there's less of a need for cost cutting moves like that.

I think disc reviews on various sites (like this one) carry greater importance than they did with DVD for helping customers make buying decisions. Lots of people moving up to Blu-ray are doing so armed with some big, new HDTV monitors that let viewers scrutinize the video quality like never before.

There's not much to worry about regarding lots of new and fairly recent movie releases. Just about any major movie produced these days uses film scanning and digital intermediate steps in post production. That's been the situation for at least the past 2-3 years. For much of this decade a lot of movies have been processed via digital intermediate. The growth of digital cinema makes digital intermediate use in post production mandatory. All of those digital intermediates provide pristine sources for Blu-ray authoring.

[fighthefutureofhd]

most consumers don't really care about quality though. don't you think they might win out over those who do care about quality? certainly those who do care are not near as big in numbers as those who don't. i worry that they will dictate how future blu-ray releases will look and sound like. studios may start sacrificing quality for the almighty dollar.

[Bobby Henderson]

Aside from what the mass market supposedly doesn't care about, movie studios are still sensitive to bad press regarding their home video product. They also want to outdo each other in regard to the quality of their releases.

If there was really some great threat Blu-ray would be "watered down" once it achieved mass market acceptance we would have already seen something similar take place with DVD years ago.

DVD never got watered down. The movie studios just ended up working harder to please a wider variety viewer demographic. They kept die hard tech-heads like myself happy by continuing to release original aspect ratio versions of the movie and delivering some really big special editions for certain high profile titles. They made separate pan and scan "fool screen" versions to make all the "unwashed" newbies to DVD happy too. They didn't force fool screen on everybody (or degrade the video by cramming widescreen and P&S versions on every disc).

Even when Blu-ray does achieve mass market success, the more technically educated enthusiasts who adopted Blu-ray early can influence a lot of buying decisions.

When DVD started really gaining momentum I had lots of friends asking me for advice on particular movie discs, players and other gear. I'm far from alone on seeing that happen. We affect word of mouth sales in a big way. Movie studios will cut corners at their peril. I just don't see how they're going to be able to do that.

[Canada]

Blu ray does not have a strangle hold on the home video market. DVD outsells Blu Ray by a Huge margin, I bet on even huge sellers like Casino Royale, 300, or Transformers (sorry I had to go there). Studios will only make Blu transfers better like they did with DVD. Think about it if people who were Blu told people who wanted to get Blu players what garbage the Blu Ray transfers were people would stick with DVD. (I don't know for sure) But I would guess that studios make more money off DVD sales just because of the sheer volume that is sold, but studio's probably make a lot larger profit margin off of Blu Ray. I would not imagine that the actual pressing a Blu Ray costs that much more than pressing a DVD.

[WvuBill22185]

I think that some releases, especially those that are percieved to sell alot are not gonan get 100% attention from the studio. BD still has to convince all the people w/ regular DVD players to swithc over so movies w/ crappy video, audio, or little extras aren't the way to do it. I really hope this isn;t gonna become a problem lol, BD buyers are very fickle.

[quexos]

Whatever studios choose there will always be websites to review the releases and those who care for quality should be able to be informed. I just hope there are enough people that care for quality to tip the scale