Blu-rays are 8 years old and DVDs still cling to them like a cancerous tumor. Why?

[KRW1]

Originally Posted by iank

No, I don't buy it either. People will always want to actually own things they love, I don't care what anyone says. It's human nature. The studios may want it the other way but that's too bad.

This is very true. There's a guy I work with who worships at the temple of Apple, I'm sure I've said this before, but he wants the whole cashless society, everything online world as soon as possible but he bought a copy of Moulin Rouge on bluray the other week. Why? Well, he wants to keep it, obviously, it's one of his favourites.

Also, he was very annoyed when he had friends around to watch the Dr Who Xmas Special in 3D which was on his hard drive or something. Imagine his annoyance when he realised the BBC had disabled it because it was from a defunct channel; should have bought the disc, innit.

This online thing is bullshit.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by KRW1

This is very true. There's a guy I work with who worships at the temple of Apple, I'm sure I've said this before, but he wants the whole cashless society, everything online world as soon as possible but he bought a copy of Moulin Rouge on bluray the other week. Why? Well, he wants to keep it, obviously, it's one of his favourites.

Also, he was very annoyed when he had friends around to watch the Dr Who Xmas Special in 3D which was on his hard drive or something. Imagine his annoyance when he realised the BBC had disabled it because it was from a defunct channel; should have bought the disc, innit.

This online thing is bullshit.

Even more troubling, he loves Moulin Rouge!

[KRW1]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

Even more troubling, he loves Moulin Rouge!

I know, right? Each to their own, I could only take a few minutes.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by KRW1

I know, right? Each to their own, I could only take a few minutes.

[RockzillaXD]

I feel like the dvds being thrown in with new Blu-ray releases is just an excuse for the studios to charge more for releases. People who want the dvd should just buy the damn dvd. I'm glad WB isn't throwing in dvd copies with some of their new catalog titles.

[eiknarf]

Originally Posted by RockzillaXD

I feel like the dvds being thrown in with new Blu-ray releases is just an excuse for the studios to charge more for releases. People who want the dvd should just buy the damn dvd. I'm glad WB isn't throwing in dvd copies with some of their new catalog titles.

Take the poll

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=240420

[RockzillaXD]

Alright I voted and I hope maybe studios will look into that kind of thing. The idea that combo packs are so useful because grandma might not have a BD player is stupid. Granny needs to go to redbox if she refuses to upgrade.

[Dylan34]

Originally Posted by wormraper

kids have ALWAYS thought that way. when we were kids we wanted walkmans and a discman... we never cared about speakers, receivers etc.. same with movies, we got whatever was cheap... as the person matures, their tastes and habits mature as well.

Walkmans and Discmans used physical media and thats what the discussion was about. How kids today would rather carry around their smartphones or iPods vs owning anything physically. When i was a kid or early teen i should say, i was very much interested in collecting CD'S, VHS, and Laserdisc. I loved going to the music stores to check out my favorite music section and picking up the new Pantera cd or whatever new release i was looking for. Same with movies. I'd go to Suncoast usually, they were real big back in the '90s, and check out all the laserdiscs they had which the one by my house carried quite a few of. I enjoyed that type of stuff which im sure almost everyone on here that grew up then did. Most kids today really dont care about it in the same way I/we did and its a shame.

[mredman]

Man you really dont get it. Collectors will always be there. The days you talk about there still was Young people that didn't buy anything or at least few things only. At those times they rented their movies and Music. Now those people that did that are those you talk about with smart phones and streaming. And like these days there was collectors of movies and there still is just as many. Maybe even more its a reason last Black Friday week broke records just like Christmas week of 2013 also did. And record sales for movies like Hunger Games and superhero flicks.

[mredman]

Originally Posted by Blu-Dog

Gifts from parents...

I have never heard a more laughable excuse. Its actually beyond stupid. So parents give kids things they dont want. Is it that what you are saying

[Icemouth]

Originally Posted by Dylan34

Walkmans and Discmans used physical media and thats what the discussion was about. How kids today would rather carry around their smartphones or iPods vs owning anything physically.

Not the greatest comparison considering carrying around a phone is just simply superior to a discman. Discman/walkmans were absolute nightmares from a technology standpoint. I buy a ton of CDs but I'd never ever want to carry around a discman again.

[Optimus]

Originally Posted by wormraper

/facepalm. I see plenty of youngish people picking up Blu-rays all the time at the store

Are you guys talking about just teens or people under 25 or something like that?

I'm 22 and see plenty of people around my age buying Blu-rays.

[Blu-Dog]

Originally Posted by mredman

I have never heard a more laughable excuse. Its actually beyond stupid. So parents give kids things they dont want. Is it that what you are saying

Are you sitting on something sharp? I don't understand the vituperation.


Parents give kids what they beg for, if it's safe and cheap. Kids movies are safe and cheap. If their friends have it, get one for them on the next trip to Target or whatever.


I guess you don't have kids, or you are a kid and your parents don't listen when you whine for stuff.

[Suntory_Times]

Originally Posted by mredman

I have never heard a more laughable excuse. Its actually beyond stupid. So parents give kids things they dont want. Is it that what you are saying

.... that actually sounds rather accurate, not because the parent don't want to give them what they want, but knowing is another matter entirely.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by OptimusL

Are you guys talking about just teens or people under 25 or something like that?

I'm 22 and see plenty of people around my age buying Blu-rays.

Me too.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by Blu-Dog

Are you sitting on something sharp? I don't understand the vituperation.


Parents give kids what they beg for, if it's safe and cheap. Kids movies are safe and cheap. If their friends have it, get one for them on the next trip to Target or whatever.


I guess you don't have kids, or you are a kid and your parents don't listen when you whine for stuff.

Bu they could whine for the film on a tablet or smartphone. The kids are exposed to bluray and the far, far superior experience you get when buying a bluray. Maybe, just maybe they will buy their own blurays in future?

[Dynamo of Eternia]

Originally Posted by Dylan34

+1. Well said. Kids today only care about how many different things they can watch stuff on, not quality!

Originally Posted by wormraper

kids have ALWAYS thought that way. when we were kids we wanted walkmans and a discman... we never cared about speakers, receivers etc.. same with movies, we got whatever was cheap... as the person matures, their tastes and habits mature as well.

Originally Posted by octagon

We watched movies on 12 inch black-and-white screen and dammit we liked it.

(actually, we did like it)

I'm 34, and the first TV that I had in my room when I was very, very young was a black & white TV. Then around the time that I got the original Nintendo system, my mom got me a color TV. It was only 13 inches and had dials, no remote (I actually still have that TV... haven't used it in a LONG time, though). Then when I was 15 for Christmas I got a 13 inch TV with remote amongst my gifts.

I didn't get a bigger TV until I was 17. I worked at a grocery store, and there was an employee contest that I won, and the prize was a 27 inch TV.


It's not that quality or size didn't matter to me. I was impressed with the much higher quality equipment of the time when I had the chance to try it out.

It's that I didn't really have a ton of money to go and buy things like larger TVs (any money that I did get was going towards buying video games and the like), and it's not like my parents were going to spring for a big screen TV for my room.


I never had laserdiscs, but when I graduated high school in '98, I took some of my graduation money and got my first DVD player, even if I didn't have the most optimal TV to watch them on (still a noticeable improvement).

I got on board with Blu-Ray in summer 2007 just a few months after getting a 37" LG LCD HDTV. Though I had been wanting to upgrade to a nicer TV for a few years, I kept putting it off due to other far more important expenses coming up, and me wanting to keep up with Blu-Ray releases and some other collectibles and such (in the case of the collectibles, things that would cost more to get later on ebay if I didn't buy them while available). At one point year or two back the power board starting having problems in the TV. As this was just after I had gotten a new car and was about to have a new furnace and AC condensor put in, I knew that if I bought a new TV, I would compromise on something of lower quality than what I would like (I was holding out to get something really nice). So I was able to just buy a replacement power board for around $100 and installed it myself to keep that TV going.

That TV continued to be our "main" HDTV until I picked up a 51" Samsung PN51F8500 Plasma 1080P HDTV just last weekend. I was still going to wait a bit longer, but with Plasmas still offering pretty much the best picture and being phased out, I wanted to get one. The picture on this set is excellent, and it's bringing new life to my BD collection that I've been building for years.

The point is that sometimes "life" happens. I would have loved to have a nicer HT for some time now, but other things got in the way (both necessities and other hobbies/luxuries). Heck, even now it would have been nice to have gotten the 60 or 64 inch version of the same TV, but they were way out of my price range. I could have gotten some other type of HDTV of larger size in the same price range or cheaper than the set that I got, but it would have been at the sacrifice of the overall picture quality. So even now, I compromised to some degree (though nowhere near the degree that I would have had I bought one a year or two ago), though I actually spent more than I had even intended to, so it's a compromise that went both ways.




My point is that it's not so much that younger people today don't care about quality. It's that they aren't made of money and will take what they can get, and will often choose convenience over quality.

That doesn't mean that all young people make those same exact choices, or that they don't see the benefit and value in physical media.

I do thing, by the sheer nature of being young, they can be short sighted. Much of my concern about digitally distributed media is long term access.

A movie can be removed from a server somewhere without notice, simply because some kind of agreement between the studio and the service to provide that movie has ended, or if the studio just decided to take it down (even if you "bought" the right to stream that movie "anytime" you want). But one on my shelf will have to be physically stolen or destroyed in order for it to be taken away. I have similar concerns about digitally distributed video games and add-on content for video games these days (speaking as someone who still has every game system that I've ever owned).

I don't think too many young people think in those terms (and for that matter even a lot of older people don't think about long-term ramifications of this kind of thing). They are focused on the immediate entertainment and not being able to access it later.

To an extent I guess I was that way when I was younger, though more so when I was a young child and not a teenager. When I wanted an NES or SNES, it wasn't like whether or not I would still be able to play these games when I'm in my mid 30s was on the fore-front of my mind. But at the same time, as someone who has held onto my older systems, as the game generations kept moving on, I knew I still wanted to play the old stuff and kept them. So by the time I was a teenager, this was a concern to an extent... though not something that I really fretted over since there were no digitally distributed console games back then.


The point is that I can see the various sides to this coin. I can see why some people don't have the most top of the line set up (regardless of their level of interest in it). I can see why some people don't think about the long term ramifications of going from physical media to digital. But I do think educating people as best we can is the key. It will never be perfect, though.

[ZoetMB]

Originally Posted by iank

No, I don't buy it either. People will always want to actually own things they love, I don't care what anyone says. It's human nature. The studios may want it the other way but that's too bad.

The current state of the music and home video industries prove you wrong: physical media has become a minority of sales in the music market. In the U.S., DVD sales are just over half what they were in 2009 ($2.2 billion to date vs. $4.03 billion in 2009), Blu-ray sales are just fractionally above last year to date (+2.75% in units, but down 0.34% in revenue) and still have only a 31.7% revenue share and 21% unit share of the physical media market. The combined physical media market is $1.21 billion YTD below what it was in 2009 and almost 8% below last year.

Younger people don't treat media the same way that we did and they don't need a physical copy to feel that they own something. Or, it may be even simpler: they don't feel the need to own media at all. And the reason for that may be that music and movies seem a lot more disposable today then it was for us because in many respects, it's not as good. Also, we lived in an era before the advent of home video, when it was near impossible to own your own media and music was far more expensive if you equalize for inflation, so we placed a greater value upon it.

Back in the 60s and 70s, I would hear some new track or some new band on the radio and think to myself, "I have to own that!" and go out the next day and buy the LP. I think one difference today is that bands are so much the same, that if it comes up on one's stream, it's fine, and if it doesn't, that's okay too. They'll listen to whatever comes up (which is sort of how we used to listen to broadcast radio). Or, if there is a specific track or band they want to listen to, they'll find it on YouTube or some other site, whether it's there legally or not.

Younger people come into my house and see a living room filled with LPs, CDs, Blu-rays and coffee table books and then go into my den and see a wall of books, journals and more DVDs and Blu-rays and think that I'm totally nuts. They always say, "why don't you take all those CDs and copy them to your computer?" and when I say, "I've copied what I want to hear when I'm using my MP3 player and I keep the rest because of liner notes and packaging," they have no understanding why I see value in that.

Although I've purchased a fair number of e-books, I never feel like I really own the book, consistent with your feeling. But that's not true for younger people. Either they do feel that they own it when they possess a digital copy or they don't care if they own it or not.

Furthermore, with players like Amazon dominating the market and pushing very hard to turn all media virtual, as it will substantially lower their costs, and with the demise of so much physical retail, physical media is largely on the way out, like it or not.

You and I might not like this "new world", but you have to accept that it exists. Physical media isn't going to ever disappear completely, but over time, it's going to become more and more of a niche, collector's market, just as laserdisc once was.

[Dylan34]

Originally Posted by ZoetMB

The current state of the music and home video industries prove you wrong: physical media has become a minority of sales in the music market. In the U.S., DVD sales are just over half what they were in 2009 ($2.2 billion to date vs. $4.03 billion in 2009), Blu-ray sales are just fractionally above last year to date (+2.75% in units, but down 0.34% in revenue) and still have only a 31.7% revenue share and 21% unit share of the physical media market. The combined physical media market is $1.21 billion YTD below what it was in 2009 and almost 8% below last year.

Younger people don't treat media the same way that we did and they don't need a physical copy to feel that they own something. Or, it may be even simpler: they don't feel the need to own media at all. And the reason for that may be that music and movies seem a lot more disposable today then it was for us because in many respects, it's not as good. Also, we lived in an era before the advent of home video, when it was near impossible to own your own media and music was far more expensive if you equalize for inflation, so we placed a greater value upon it.

Back in the 60s and 70s, I would hear some new track or some new band on the radio and think to myself, "I have to own that!" and go out the next day and buy the LP. I think one difference today is that bands are so much the same, that if it comes up on one's stream, it's fine, and if it doesn't, that's okay too. They'll listen to whatever comes up (which is sort of how we used to listen to broadcast radio). Or, if there is a specific track or band they want to listen to, they'll find it on YouTube or some other site, whether it's there legally or not.

Younger people come into my house and see a living room filled with LPs, CDs, Blu-rays and coffee table books and then go into my den and see a wall of books, journals and more DVDs and Blu-rays and think that I'm totally nuts. They always say, "why don't you take all those CDs and copy them to your computer?" and when I say, "I've copied what I want to hear when I'm using my MP3 player and I keep the rest because of liner notes and packaging," they have no understanding why I see value in that.

Although I've purchased a fair number of e-books, I never feel like I really own the book, consistent with your feeling. But that's not true for younger people. Either they do feel that they own it when they possess a digital copy or they don't care if they own it or not.

Furthermore, with players like Amazon dominating the market and pushing very hard to turn all media virtual, as it will substantially lower their costs, and with the demise of so much physical retail, physical media is largely on the way out, like it or not.

You and I might not like this "new world", but you have to accept that it exists. Physical media isn't going to ever disappear completely, but over time, it's going to become more and more of a niche, collector's market, just as laserdisc once was.

There you have it!! True as true can be. That's what i was talking about yesterday without all the black and white facts. Kids simply dont care about physical media nor do a lot of adults. Not saying us of course. Well we can all still go to Blockbuster or Hollywood Video to rent our physical media if we need to. Oh, wait, no we cant!! They all went bankrupt and closed because people started using other services like Netflix streaming and such. Darn it!!

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by Dylan34

There you have it!! True as true can be. That's what i was talking about yesterday without all the black and white facts. Kids simply dont care about physical media nor do a lot of adults. Not saying us of course. Well we can all still go to Blockbuster or Hollywood Video to rent our physical media if we need to. Oh, wait, no we cant!! They all went bankrupt and closed because people started using other services like Netflix streaming and such. Darn it!!

What do you mean, 'there you have it?' It's one man's opinion not the lost scrolls.

I can't work you out Dylan. Are you a streaming fanboy who has scrapped bluray? because imo, you sound like one.