The Criterion Collection

[Spire]

K. Bought Army of Shadows. I eagerly await it's arrival.

[The Great Owl]

Originally Posted by iScottie

Glad you enjoyed it!

I had this movie built up quite a bit in my mind as something that I would enjoy, so I started watching it with that approach.

(Of course, I would not blind buy a movie in the first place if I did not feel that way after doing my research.)

Even so, A Man Escaped really stunned me with how good of a movie it turned out to be. I am impressed at how a movie this brilliant was probably created with less money than the average toilet paper commercial costs these days.


Now it's time for me to watch my Blu-ray of Lost in Translation.

[Fellini912]

Originally Posted by pro-bassoonist

Your analogy isn't very good. I can't see how you could compare newspapers with music and films. Newspapers, and magazines, offer time sensitive information, which by definition isn't collectable (sure, you have some exceptions). Music and films are not time sensitive material, which is why people value and price them differently.

Books vs. music/films is a better analogy, but I am not seeing any indicators ahead of us that books are bound to disappear any time soon. Again, I feel very confident that books will be sold in my lifetime.

Pro-B, I would take retablo's comments with a grain of salt. I mentioned in another thread that he has some of the worse analogies I have read on multiple forums. I guess they make for a good laugh.

The whole conversation about human nature reminds me that it would be great to see a blu ray transfer of Inherit the Wind by criterion.

[Thebunk]

Originally Posted by KRW1

There's this odd idea that one thing has to replace another. It won't, not anymore, we all watch in different ways.

This, and pretty much end of discussion in my opinion.

- I listen to digital music (via my iPod, iPad and PC at work, while running and at home), Sirius XM (car and home), CD (home and car) and vinyl. Sme people listen via other mediums (live performances, traditional radio, streaming Internet radio) and different combinations.

- I watch films via DVD, Bluray, downloaded files, streaming services (Netflix), and sometimes at the cinema. Again others may watch films via other means or via different combinations.

This is the age of choice and some formats will be impacted but you know what, that is not new either as Pro B has mentioned (look at cassettes, 8 tracks, etc). But to think that everything but digital is going the way of the dinosaur is closed minded and just not realistic.

[skylog]

Originally Posted by pro-bassoonist

Again, I don't know where people are getting these ideas from, possibly some forums, or magazines such as PC World that have an agenda to push, but the trends are different.

In 2012, CD sales actually went up. Fact. Article:

http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell...r-second-year/


Pro-B

i am sorry, but citing your own source (in the link above), you are incorrect. it is indeed not a fact. CD buyers, meaning the people who buy CDs increased, but CD sales actually decreased.

“After years of losing buyers, caused by many consumers who simply stopped buying music, the total number of CD buyers increased for the second consecutive year, growing 2% to 78 million [in 2011],” the company said.

further in the same article, stating that CD sales decreased, albeit at a slower rate.

"The average annual expenditure for digital music rose 6% to $49, and although CD sales declined, the decrease was not nearly as steep as it has been over the last five years."

you posted this quote, which again, states that there are more buyers, not any increase in sales. i think this should be expected, given the entrenched moat the CD industry had.

“And 10 years after the advent of Apple’s iTunes, far more people buy CDs than downloads.”

i won't quote further, the article is there, but the article states CD buyers increased 2% while paid download buyers increased 14%

in addition, this was not 2012. the article was from 2012, but the data was from 2011. i have not looked at other data sources, but the trend is somewhat clear, even with the minimal amount of data given. with paid download buyers growing at such a rate, it should only be a matter of time before they eclipse CD buyers. while no real sales data was really given, other than CD sales declining and a 6% average increase in digital expenditures, i would imagine that the digital sales numbers will "relatively" soon also eclipse CD sales numbers.

now, again, i have no other data to provide. i am only really basing my thoughts on this article and also from my demographic and what i see. the change in habits even only from 2011 to today, is, well, insanely dramatic. i do not know, literally, anyone who purchases cds. it is all digital downloads, and also streaming services. of course this is not across all demographics, but more or less from those providing growth going forward.

lastly, this is only music, and really is a different animal than video. that is a completely different argument. simply an opinion, but i feel that video is also going down that road, but it will certainly be a different and longer journey.

[A Sith Lord?]

Like I said boys, physical media for movies and film won't go away until the movie file size to file storage ratio reaches a ridiculous ratio.

I have 1300 songs on my mp3 player, 75% of which I listen to once a blue moon. Storage increase has allowed me to have all my songs in HQ even ones I don't listen to much.

Back when mp3 players came out in early 2000's and storage space was 128mb to 512, my choice was to either put a bunch of compressed songs to fit or a select few hq songs.

Now that you can buy a 32 gb microsd card, I can fit all of my music in FLAC and have extra space.

We haven't reached a ratio of harddrive space to movie file size yet.

A blu ray movie is anywhere between 20gb to 50gb uncompressed. The average 1TB hdd is between 100 to 130 bucks right now. That's only enough to store 10-18 movies.

Its not feasible yet for me to download or rip blu ray movies because id have to spend a ton on storage.

[skylog]

Originally Posted by Fellini912

It is great that your website states percentages with no references. Very questionable, in my opinion.

it was Pro-B's own link, the one he provided....and it is in my post. there were some "questionable" liberties taken with said data

[skylog]

Originally Posted by MasturB

Like I said boys, physical media for movies and film won't go away until the movie file size to file storage ratio reaches a ridiculous ratio.

I have 1300 songs on my mp3 player, 75% of which I listen to once a blue moon. Storage increase has allowed me to have all my songs in HQ even ones I don't listen to much.

Back when mp3 players came out in early 2000's and storage space was 128mb to 512, my choice was to either put a bunch of compressed songs to fit or a select few hq songs.

Now that you can buy a 32 gb microsd card, I can fit all of my music in FLAC and have extra space.

We haven't reached a ratio of harddrive space to movie file size yet.

A blu ray movie is anywhere between 20gb to 50gb uncompressed. The average 1TB hdd is between 100 to 130 bucks right now. That's only enough to store 10-18 movies.

Its not feasible yet for me to download or rip blu ray movies because id have to spend a ton on storage.

i agree with you, to a degree. i agree that it will be some time, perhaps just not as long as you believe.

that said, and this is only one part of it, but perhaps we are looking at different sources, but i can easily find 3TB external and internal drives for that $130 you cited. you know they will only get cheaper and bigger, again, with time. i think that may be sooner than you think. i also may be wrong.

i do think societal changes, with regards to "owning" in general are very much a major factor. not only with regards to digital ownership, but streaming. of course, there will also be those who will want physical things and also those who will want the best hi-res to view film, but i do feel there is a definite change already here. i believe streaming and what i guess i'd term "passive ownership" may be the main concern.

[The Great Owl]

Originally Posted by MasturB

I have 1300 songs on my mp3 player, 75% of which I listen to once a blue moon. Storage increase has allowed me to have all my songs in HQ even ones I don't listen to much.

I've got about 800 CDs in my collection, give or take a few. Like Steve Buscemi's character in Ghost World, my collection is "pared down to the essentials." I probably used to have around 1,400 or so, and I sold a lot of the dead weight just to have more space in my home, but I am down to the CDs that I do not want to give up.

The idea of converting all these CDs to an online cloud database and then selling them just makes me shake my head. I cannot bring myself to do this.

These days, I only purchase about 10-15 CDs a year, as opposed to 50 to 100 a year like I used to back in the peak of my music-collecting fervor. My collection is the soundtrack of my life, though, and I love it. I've been collecting CDs since 1988, so all of this is the grand result of 25 years of my life.

Right now, in 2013, though, I am the only person I know of who still purchases music on disc. This is saying a lot, because several friends and acquaintances review albums for music blogs and attend several concerts each month. When I mention, for example, that I am going to Best Buy to purchase the new David Bowie CD, for example, I just get strange glances and laughs.

I do have a Spotify account, and I built up a massive playlist of over 1,300 songs that I pulled from a lot of my favorite albums that are available on the site. I simply use the free Spotify, because I do not mind the ads, and I listen to my playlist when I am working on the computer sometimes. This will never replace my current CD collection, but it is a nice supplement.

[greekak229]

Can't wait to watch A Man Escaped myself. Blind bought it but I'm quite sure that it will be worth it.

[Scottie]

Originally Posted by The Great Owl

Now it's time for me to watch my Blu-ray of Lost in Translation.

One of Bill Murray's bests. I remember watching it during a religion class in my senior year of high school.

I originally did not think of it as a film that I would enjoy, but after seeing it I immediately changed my opinion. It's fantastic.

Originally Posted by greekak229

Can't wait to watch A Man Escaped myself. Blind bought it but I'm quite sure that it will be worth it.

Trust me, you won't!

[lemonski]

Originally Posted by skylog

i agree with you, to a degree. i agree that it will be some time, perhaps just not as long as you believe.

that said, and this is only one part of it, but perhaps we are looking at different sources, but i can easily find 3TB external and internal drives for that $130 you cited. you know they will only get cheaper and bigger, again, with time. i think that may be sooner than you think. i also may be wrong.

I don't see what the benefit of ripping Blu-Rays to HD is. It took me ages to rip all my CDs (and I probably only had a few hundred), and I can tell you it was very painful. I shudder to think how long 400+ BDs would take. Probably forever. I can only think that this sort of exercise would only be attractive to people who have absolutely no concept of what their time is worth.

Then once you get them to HD, then you have to worry about backup, and powering and maintaining the media center that runs it all. IMO it's a lot simpler, easier, and time-efficient to pull a disc off the shelf And extra shelves are much cheaper and hold more movies than hard drives

[A Sith Lord?]

Originally Posted by skylog

i agree with you, to a degree. i agree that it will be some time, perhaps just not as long as you believe.

that said, and this is only one part of it, but perhaps we are looking at different sources, but i can easily find 3TB external and internal drives for that $130 you cited. you know they will only get cheaper and bigger, again, with time. i think that may be sooner than you think. i also may be wrong.

i do think societal changes, with regards to "owning" in general are very much a major factor. not only with regards to digital ownership, but streaming. of course, there will also be those who will want physical things and also those who will want the best hi-res to view film, but i do feel there is a definite change already here. i believe streaming and what i guess i'd term "passive ownership" may be the main concern.

Eh I know you can find a 3TB for around $130 these days, but we should be hitting a tipping point with file size and price soon.

You have to factor in, download speeds must be to where downloading a 50gb movie is worth it (for legal and illegal downloads).

It won't happen anytime soon.

Collecting is a lesser extreme of hoarding, and hoarding has been in our nature for thousands of years. We collect, keep, hoard plenty of things we don't need.

Even with a 3TB harddrive, you're looking at maybe only 40-50 movies.

I don't think we'll see 20TB or even 200TB mass marketed consumer hard drives for at least 7-10 years. Once we reach that point, presumably download speeds will be faster and movie file storage ratio problem will be balanced.

By then it will be a matter of preferring to own a physical copy vs. owning a digital copy.

[skylog]

Originally Posted by lemonski

I don't see what the benefit of ripping Blu-Rays to HD is. It took me ages to rip all my CDs (and I probably only had a few hundred), and I can tell you it was very painful. I shudder to think how long 400+ BDs would take. Probably forever. I can only think that this sort of exercise would only be attractive to people who have absolutely no concept of what their time is worth.

Then once you get them to HD, then you have to worry about backup, and powering and maintaining the media center that runs it all. IMO it's a lot simpler, easier, and time-efficient to pull a disc off the shelf And extra shelves are much cheaper and hold more movies than hard drives

i am not speaking in terms of ripping, really, just that down the road the storage will be there to perhaps not have a disc at all.

[A Sith Lord?]

Originally Posted by The Great Owl

I've got about 800 CDs in my collection, give or take a few. Like Steve Buscemi's character in Ghost World, my collection is "pared down to the essentials." I probably used to have around 1,400 or so, and I sold a lot of the dead weight just to have more space in my home, but I am down to the CDs that I do not want to give up.

The idea of converting all these CDs to an online cloud database and then selling them just makes me shake my head. I cannot bring myself to do this.

These days, I only purchase about 10-15 CDs a year, as opposed to 50 to 100 a year like I used to back in the peak of my music-collecting fervor. My collection is the soundtrack of my life, though, and I love it. I've been collecting CDs since 1988, so all of this is the grand result of 25 years of my life.

Right now, in 2013, though, I am the only person I know of who still purchases music on disc. This is saying a lot, because several friends and acquaintances review albums for music blogs and attend several concerts each month. When I mention, for example, that I am going to Best Buy to purchase the new David Bowie CD, for example, I just get strange glances and laughs.

I do have a Spotify account, and I built up a massive playlist of over 1,300 songs that I pulled from a lot of my favorite albums that are available on the site. I simply use the free Spotify, because I do not mind the ads, and I listen to my playlist when I am working on the computer sometimes. This will never replace my current CD collection, but it is a nice supplement.

I admittedly have pirated more of the mainstream songs these days since most of the albums have just one or two decent songs.

Whatever I can't find, I end up buying on amazon. That's usually like oldies songs with Nat King Cole, Johnny Mathis, Matt Monro or something like that, that's hard to find anybody sharing online.

My parents collected a ton of CDs, and my brothers and sisters bought a ton of CDs. I myself had a ton of CDs, and I was too lazy to rip them so I just pirated them anyways for the ease of it.

I have 1489 songs in my Itunes, and these are songs I could listen to at any given moment, with about 20-25% of them being songs I could listen to all the time on repeat if necessary. These songs span 9 decades. I don't have filler stuff on my music library (songs that were on albums of songs I love just to have them). If there were ever a time I could potentially have enough storage for ALL my TV Shows, Movies, Films in HQ, I'd probably need a couple hundred terabytes minimum to do the trick. That's simply not affordable in this moment in time.


Music files on the other hand are a different story. Storage space has gotten easy enough to where you can have 50 copies of the same music file without losing quality. I can have it on my PS3, Imac, Ipad, Phone Memory Card, or two of my externals. There's no need for me to actually purchase a CD when I can find the FLAC files online or a highest possible compressed mp3 file for purchase online.

[Scottie]

My iTunes library used to have close to 5,000 songs, but I've since deleted most of the ones I don't like or have any desire to listen to. It's a good thing that iTunes has implemented a re-download option.

While we're on the subject of physical media and whether it will die or not, I feel as if it will not die. Mediums such a books, CDs, etc. are still popular nowadays, even with the evolution of digital media. There's something about reading an actual book that you can't get from reading a Kindle or an iPad.

When I was trading in a bunch of DVDs and CDs to F.Y.E. a few months ago, the manager told me that there's actually a market for CDs again now and therefore I would get more money for trading mine in. I'm personally a physical media guy (with the exception of CDs as I just download them because it's easier, in my opinion). I still use them in my car, though.

With so many collectors, especially nowadays, I don't see Netflix taking over or anything. A lot of people still enjoy the physical media because (while it's more expensive), you still get a lot more usage out of it. I personally hate Digital Copies and I just sell them away on the forums. I don't know much about them, but I don't find watching a movie on my computer very enjoyable.

Long story short, while there is a lot of evolutions in technology and the idea of going digital is very present, a lot of people will continue to enjoy physical media for a very long time.

[skylog]

Originally Posted by MasturB

Eh I know you can find a 3TB for around $130 these days, but we should be hitting a tipping point with file size and price soon.

You have to factor in, download speeds must be to where downloading a 50gb movie is worth it (for legal and illegal downloads).

It won't happen anytime soon.

Collecting is a lesser extreme of hoarding, and hoarding has been in our nature for thousands of years. We collect, keep, hoard plenty of things we don't need.

Even with a 3TB harddrive, you're looking at maybe only 40-50 movies.

I don't think we'll see 20TB or even 200TB mass marketed consumer hard drives for at least 7-10 years. Once we reach that point, presumably download speeds will be faster and movie file storage ratio problem will be balanced.

By then it will be a matter of preferring to own a physical copy vs. owning a digital copy.

again, i do agree with mostly everything you put forward. i just feel, at the very least, some of the changes will happen sooner. also again, while i agree with the collecting/hoarding comment (although i certainly can see current/future generations perhaps not doing so with media, but instead opting for streaming passive ownership), one can just as easily do just that with media in digital form.

anyway, i like the discussion; however, i feel i am contributing to non-criterion talk here...i do not want to get on the bad side of all those members who were gracious enough to show me the criterion way.

[Abdrewes]

Originally Posted by Fellini912

The whole conversation about human nature reminds me that it would be great to see a blu ray transfer of Inherit the Wind by criterion.

If nothing else, I will play the opening credit sequence over and over.

[Abdrewes]

Originally Posted by The Great Owl

I just finished watching A Man Escaped.



A Man Escaped is a superb addition to the Criterion Collection, and it takes the fast track to my list of favorites.

My love of prison escape movies and my love of minimalism are both wonderfully satisfied by A Man Escaped. This movie proceeds at a luxuriously deliberate pace to convey an attention to detail with the protagonist's escape plans, and the viewer is ultimately rewarded with edge-of-the-seat tension.

Films rarely depict the process of handiwork in the same straightforward way that A Man Escaped does, with its multiple sequences of tools being created from everyday items in a prison cell. The focus on these processes illuminates the pressure placed on the main character of Fontaine (inspired by the story of French Resistance member André Devigny) as he listens to frequent executions from outside his cell and observes the shifting of routine as governed by the addition of new inmates and by sporadic interrogations.

The restoration of this 1956 film places the utmost care for the audio quality, and for good reason, because this is a story dependent on the sounds of events that occur offscreen. The Nazi enemies are usually confined to outside of the picture frame and presented as a faceless force of evil, but the danger is always lurking just outside the edge of our field of vision by way of sounds. The use of implied events to generate suspense has rarely, if ever, been put to better use in a film.

This Criterion Blu-ray sports a great-looking video transfer and an even better audio presentation to bring this riveting story of resilience in the face of terrifying adversity to the masses.

You're making me regret only buying Criterions half off. Waitinguntil July is going to be excruciating

[Fellini912]

Originally Posted by abdrewes

if nothing else, i will play the opening credit sequence over and over.

+1