Because Blu-Ray will "obviously" be replaced rapidly by streaming only...

[crazyBLUE]

Originally Posted by Towergrove

Because prices always increase. Show me a consumer product in history that stays the same price without increasing forever??? I cant think of one.

There has been talk in the past about raising the pricing and that will be brought up again.

Again Netflix, the section 8 of home video, the cheap seats are popular, raise the price and not so popular.

[Towergrove]

Originally Posted by pagemaster

I am sure glad we are starting to see br users come out of the woodwork and admit to streaming

Im not sure what your talking about here? I am a purchaser of BluRay media but a strong proponent of Ultraviolet as well (check other forums that have to do with Home Theater and video, Im well know there for my viewpoints on UV, but I also like and prefer Physical mediums, I enjoy posting here -MEMBER SINCE 2007-as well and hope to contribute more in the future). I like the download to own part of UV, the streaming part is just gravy to me.

This Chick loves Bluray AND Ultraviolet.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by pagemaster

So do you have an Apple TV?

I explained agggggggges ago that I did. It was a present, I have rented a few movies and my stance is the same. Bluray is the only way to collect movies. It is completely pointless arguing as I have a home cinema setup designed to get the benefit from bluray and just use Apple TV as a bedroom option. You are content with Apple TV so what is your problem? Yes, it is decent quality, but I am not about decent. I am about top notch quality and that is bluray. Simple. Try watching streaming on a projector and then get back to me when you have.

[bruceames]

Originally Posted by pagemaster

I am sure glad we are starting to see br users come out of the woodwork and admit to streaming

Subscription streaming is actually replacing cable/sat more than physical media. It's basically like a premium movie channel. It's never going to have the latest releases that come out on sell through mediums first.

Physical media revenue has been declining since 2006, well before streaming came along and that rate of decline has not increased since streaming became more popular. Physical media decline is primarily due to saturation and maturity of the optical disc.

So people coming out of the woodwork to admit to streaming is users streaming more movies rather than watching them on cable/sat as has been traditionally done.

[octagon]

Originally Posted by pagemaster

How do you know the price will increase?

Have you already forgotten the significant price increase when they split streaming and disc rentals? The one that cost them upwards of 800,000 subscribers and caused their stock price to plummet from $300/share to the low $60s?

It was in all the papers.

Prices go up. It's what they do. Content providers initially treated NetFlix like an interesting novelty of no real import but those days are long gone. Content providers aren't selling to them on the cheap anymore and there are more players in the game now.

On one hand that kind of increased competition will be a downward pressure on prices. But over the long term - particularly if the long term is as rosy for streaming as you seem to expect - content providers aren't going to just give their stuff away. And network providers aren't going to blithely expand capacity without any expectation of increased return.

[mjbethancourt]

Originally Posted by bruceames.

Subscription streaming is actually replacing cable/sat more than physical media. It's basically like a premium movie channel.

100% correct.

How is it that ANYBODY fails to understand this?

Streaming, renting, and cable TV have been rapidly merging for some years now, they are becoming one and the same. Renting and cable TV never threatened physical sales in the past, basing it out of a server-farm and putting the Apple trademark on it is not a magic, silver-bullet, game-changer that will kill BD. To someone like me who was around for the 1980s, Pagemaster sounds ridiculous, his argument is the equivalent of going back to 1985 and saying "HBO is going to kill the VHS industry". Manic Apple fanboyism is bad for your health.


I don't have time to stream and rent a plethora of movies, I hardly have the time to watch all the BDs that I buy.

In the adult world, we have jobs and kids and don't have the time to enjoy the benefits of an endless buffet of low-quality streaming movies. I believe I am far from alone, in that my movie-watching is not constrained by my budget, but rather by time. Why would I switch to an inferior format, just so I can afford "MORE" of something that I already don't have the time to consume? I've already got TV for that, and TV is free. That would be like ordering a 30-pound bag of dogfood for dinner instead of my nice plate of baked salmon, just because I can "get MORE for the same price!"... doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I can already afford a few high-quality BDs every week, I don't need to cheap-out just to increase my volume. How many people bought thousands of MP3s in the last decade, and probably only had the time to enjoy about 10% of them? I know a lot of people who did, who now care so little about their iTunes library that they haven't even looked at it in months... so in the long run, they got no benefit from being able to buy so many cheap songs. People will come (and to an extent, already are coming) to see the same thing happening with digital-file movies. Hell, I already went through that in the last decade with duplicated DVDs and CDs... "woo hoo! I've got a ton of illegally copied movies and albums, and they all look and sound like crap!" And they all found their way into the garbage, while my commercial-grade originals remain. A long time ago, cassettes knocked off vinyl, but 35 years later, who still exists? These cheap, inferior, high-volume alternatives never last. Like any fad, those who get caught-up in it believe that some day soon the Whole World will be part of the fad, but fads always hit their high-water mark, and disappear fast.

Some of the comments here comparing the differences between the VHS era and DVD era are excellent. Many factors constrained VHS purchases, and those constraints were lifted when DVDs hit, and buyers vs renters became pretty well established, since people could finally afford to do whichever of the two they wanted, in whatever balance they wanted, according to their own tastes. At this point, a cost-nudge is not going to turn buyers into renters, or renters into buyers. Rental does not kill purchase, and no amount of tinkering with prices is going to make it happen. We made it through the VHS era, where renting was vastly more affordable and practical than purchasing, and people still bought plenty of VHS tapes. Similarly, a hard drive may be much smaller than a bookcase, but that insignificant convenience of storage is not going to supercede the simplicity of a $100 dollar player and a pile of $15 discs, versus the technical headache and up-front expense of setting yourself up with a top-end media server just so you can have $5 movies and a smaller storage-medium.

And as for the 'round-and-'round of the last few pages...

seriously, stop indulging the troll.

Apple TV has been around long enough to show that it is a dud. A pure brand-loyalty product. It is a joke, nobody uses it, other streaming services are better and more popular, and those aren't even any good. Every 6-12 months, a new streaming service becomes the new flavor of the month, based mostly on who has the best promotional deal going on, and most people bail on it once the promotion is over. Makes me laugh when I visit friends who were in love with NetFlix 6 months ago, who are just plain sick of it now and can't find anything they want to watch. Ditto for Hulu, Vudu, OnDemand, etc.

Apple TV is not a threat to BD, that's just utterly absurd.

We all know that Pagemaster is saying things that are illogical and untrue, consistent only to shilling for iFruit, and he knows it too. He knows exactly what he is doing, he is a bored Apple fanboy heckling BD people as a projection of his own frustration with the fact that Apple totally miscalculated on skipping blu-ray, and this is how he chooses to act out. Every single one of his so-called "points" has been conclusively refuted, and he knows it, and he persists anyway because

1: some people would rather burn themselves to death than admit that they are wrong about something or that their opinion is just an opinion, and

2: some people have nothing better to do than spend a week of their free time trying to piss other people off.

Let him address his neglected-child issues on his own dime and a therapists time, stop providing him with a free therapeutic outlet at your expense.

[octagon]

Originally Posted by pagemaster

The threat is very real...

Threat to whom?

You've said repeatedly that streaming is not going to replace physical media.

So why should anybody who wants to buy discs care in the slightest whether other people rent discs or stream or watch cable or (I think people still do this) crack a book?

[Dynamo of Eternia]

Originally Posted by pagemaster

What were blu ray prices in 2007?

While the prices of Blu-Rays have come down as tends to be the case as a once new technology ages, the point is that over the course of time the general average price on consumer goods and services tends to go up for various reasons, a bit one being inflation.



Things like cable and satellite TV continue to gradually increase in price year after year. My Comcast bill went up a few bucks after the start of this year.

At some point the price for Netflix streaming will have to increase. In part because of inflation, but also when/if they ever want to actually expand their selection. It's a decent service if you want to watch a lot of old TV shows... for movies it's kind of hit and miss. If they ever want to actually expand their movie offers so they have many solid, recent films in addition to older ones to offer at any given time, they'll probably have to shell out more money to the studios, which means having to raise the price on customers to accommodate it. I also anticipate that if their upcoming foray into having brand new, original programming premiere on Netflix instead of a regular network proves to be successful, at some point they'll have to start charging more.

The only way that I could ever see a streaming service take over physical media is if they manage to hammer out deals with the studios in which once a movie or TV show is added to their service, it is NEVER removed. That way people who subscribe to the service would always have access to those movies/shows. (and as we know, they don't strike deals in that manner, and things are taken down from Netflix all of the time, so I don't see that changing). People who are concerned about having access to their favorite movies whenever they want to are going to have to actually purchase it. Physical media is the best option for that.

[crazyBLUE]

Originally Posted by pagemaster

Excuse me? Apple TV has just been offering 1080p. Before that it was just 720p up until 2012. Ultraviolet has 10 million registered customers. The threat is very real and right now streaming gets about 38 percent of the market. You are out of touch with the real world.

You do know you have dug a hole that is so deep that you can't get out

Now at this point you only respond to the posts that you think you can. You have pushed so hard in so many ways that your agenda for pushing streaming is going nowhere.

[Tok]

Originally Posted by pagemaster

Excuse me? Apple TV has just been offering 1080p. Before that it was just 720p up until 2012. Ultraviolet has 10 million registered customers. The threat is very real and right now streaming gets about 38 percent of the market. You are out of touch with the real world.

And how many of those UV users registered only because of a BD/DVD purchase? I know I am one of them. And I bet a vast majority of others were because of disc sales. I have no intention of using UV exclusively. The studios were using discs to kickstart it, but the reality is why would those users rely on that method when they already have a disc. I just did it to see how the system works. UV still has issues that need to be resolved.

[wormraper]

Originally Posted by crazyBLUE

You do know you have dug a hole that is so deep that you can't get out

Now at this point you only respond to the posts that you think you can. You have pushed so hard in so many ways that your agenda for pushing streaming is going nowhere.

+1, it's gotten embarrassing now

[Tok]

Originally Posted by Towergrove

Lets not forget that Netflix at its introductory price will not always be that cheap ( the section 8 of home video?) all you can eat buffet. In the past when talk about raising the pricing happened people including the customers and stockholders start abandoning ship like rats on a sinking ship. People love a cheap netflix but raise the price a few dollars and .

Totally agree. I see a future where Netflix is a tiered title system where if you want unlimited access to A-list content you will be paying closer to $30. $7.99 will get you all the old TV and Bollywood titles you can watch.

[Cevolution]

Originally Posted by crazyBLUE

You do know you have dug a hole that is so deep that you can't get out

Now at this point you only respond to the posts that you think you can. You have pushed so hard in so many ways that your agenda for pushing streaming is going nowhere.

Even though Pagemaster and his BS is often extremely annoying, at the same time he has been offering some fantastic free entertainment and comedy relief for weeks now . If it wasn't for that I'm sure for all his nonsense and consistent trolling he would have been permanently banned by now

[Tok]

Right I don't know why I even bother with him. If he dislikes BD so much why is he here.... reminds me of the HD DVD zealots that latched onto anything that would compete against BD. Does anyone remember how Toshiba's SuperUpConversion algorithm was going to make standard DVD look like native HD content... it sure did SUC.

[wormraper]

Originally Posted by pagemaster

How do you know that they are part of the disc? Maybe they factored them out ? But u don't know?

I need another beer...oi vai

[Russhole]

Drink a beer every time you see the words "Apple TV or iTunes. It will make for a good time.

[Petra_Kalbrain]

Originally Posted by mjbethancourt

100% correct.

How is it that ANYBODY fails to understand this?

Streaming, renting, and cable TV have been rapidly merging for some years now, they are becoming one and the same. Renting and cable TV never threatened physical sales in the past, basing it out of a server-farm and putting the Apple trademark on it is not a magic, silver-bullet, game-changer that will kill BD. To someone like me who was around for the 1980s, Pagemaster sounds ridiculous, his argument is the equivalent of going back to 1985 and saying "HBO is going to kill the VHS industry". Manic Apple fanboyism is bad for your health.


I don't have time to stream and rent a plethora of movies, I hardly have the time to watch all the BDs that I buy.

In the adult world, we have jobs and kids and don't have the time to enjoy the benefits of an endless buffet of low-quality streaming movies. I believe I am far from alone, in that my movie-watching is not constrained by my budget, but rather by time. Why would I switch to an inferior format, just so I can afford "MORE" of something that I already don't have the time to consume? I've already got TV for that, and TV is free. That would be like ordering a 30-pound bag of dogfood for dinner instead of my nice plate of baked salmon, just because I can "get MORE for the same price!"... doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I can already afford a few high-quality BDs every week, I don't need to cheap-out just to increase my volume. How many people bought thousands of MP3s in the last decade, and probably only had the time to enjoy about 10% of them? I know a lot of people who did, who now care so little about their iTunes library that they haven't even looked at it in months... so in the long run, they got no benefit from being able to buy so many cheap songs. People will come (and to an extent, already are coming) to see the same thing happening with digital-file movies. Hell, I already went through that in the last decade with duplicated DVDs and CDs... "woo hoo! I've got a ton of illegally copied movies and albums, and they all look and sound like crap!" And they all found their way into the garbage, while my commercial-grade originals remain. A long time ago, cassettes knocked off vinyl, but 35 years later, who still exists? These cheap, inferior, high-volume alternatives never last. Like any fad, those who get caught-up in it believe that some day soon the Whole World will be part of the fad, but fads always hit their high-water mark, and disappear fast.

Some of the comments here comparing the differences between the VHS era and DVD era are excellent. Many factors constrained VHS purchases, and those constraints were lifted when DVDs hit, and buyers vs renters became pretty well established, since people could finally afford to do whichever of the two they wanted, in whatever balance they wanted, according to their own tastes. At this point, a cost-nudge is not going to turn buyers into renters, or renters into buyers. Rental does not kill purchase, and no amount of tinkering with prices is going to make it happen. We made it through the VHS era, where renting was vastly more affordable and practical than purchasing, and people still bought plenty of VHS tapes. Similarly, a hard drive may be much smaller than a bookcase, but that insignificant convenience of storage is not going to supercede the simplicity of a $100 dollar player and a pile of $15 discs, versus the technical headache and up-front expense of setting yourself up with a top-end media server just so you can have $5 movies and a smaller storage-medium.

And as for the 'round-and-'round of the last few pages...

seriously, stop indulging the troll.

Apple TV has been around long enough to show that it is a dud. A pure brand-loyalty product. It is a joke, nobody uses it, other streaming services are better and more popular, and those aren't even any good. Every 6-12 months, a new streaming service becomes the new flavor of the month, based mostly on who has the best promotional deal going on, and most people bail on it once the promotion is over. Makes me laugh when I visit friends who were in love with NetFlix 6 months ago, who are just plain sick of it now and can't find anything they want to watch. Ditto for Hulu, Vudu, OnDemand, etc.

Apple TV is not a threat to BD, that's just utterly absurd.

We all know that Pagemaster is saying things that are illogical and untrue, consistent only to shilling for iFruit, and he knows it too. He knows exactly what he is doing, he is a bored Apple fanboy heckling BD people as a projection of his own frustration with the fact that Apple totally miscalculated on skipping blu-ray, and this is how he chooses to act out. Every single one of his so-called "points" has been conclusively refuted, and he knows it, and he persists anyway because

1: some people would rather burn themselves to death than admit that they are wrong about something or that their opinion is just an opinion, and

2: some people have nothing better to do than spend a week of their free time trying to piss other people off.

Let him address his neglected-child issues on his own dime and a therapists time, stop providing him with a free therapeutic outlet at your expense.

GREAT post!

Originally Posted by Russhole

Drink a beer every time you see the words "Apple TV or iTunes. It will make for a good time.

Has the situation really become that bad in this thread that it can be turned into an honest to god VIABLE drinking game?!?!?!

[pagemaster]

Originally Posted by Dynamo of Eternia

While the prices of Blu-Rays have come down as tends to be the case as a once new technology ages, the point is that over the course of time the general average price on consumer goods and services tends to go up for various reasons, a bit one being inflation.



Things like cable and satellite TV continue to gradually increase in price year after year. My Comcast bill went up a few bucks after the start of this year.

At some point the price for Netflix streaming will have to increase. In part because of inflation, but also when/if they ever want to actually expand their selection. It's a decent service if you want to watch a lot of old TV shows... for movies it's kind of hit and miss. If they ever want to actually expand their movie offers so they have many solid, recent films in addition to older ones to offer at any given time, they'll probably have to shell out more money to the studios, which means having to raise the price on customers to accommodate it. I also anticipate that if their upcoming foray into having brand new, original programming premiere on Netflix instead of a regular network proves to be successful, at some point they'll have to start charging more.

The only way that I could ever see a streaming service take over physical media is if they manage to hammer out deals with the studios in which once a movie or TV show is added to their service, it is NEVER removed. That way people who subscribe to the service would always have access to those movies/shows. (and as we know, they don't strike deals in that manner, and things are taken down from Netflix all of the time, so I don't see that changing). People who are concerned about having access to their favorite movies whenever they want to are going to have to actually purchase it. Physical media is the best option for that.

Some interesting ideas, however, most of the popular does not care if they ever see the movie again. Having access to physical media is not much of a selling point or feature if someone just wants to rent. Also, most people do not care about audio, for picture they do and current streaming is a very good alternative to blu ray, maybe not as good as blu ray, but the difference is not enough to make a difference.

Originally Posted by CraigW

Totally agree. I see a future where Netflix is a tiered title system where if you want unlimited access to A-list content you will be paying closer to $30. $7.99 will get you all the old TV and Bollywood titles you can watch.

Netflix will eventually start offering day and date rental downloads on their site. All other movies will be on the subscription. A tiered system is a really silly idea.

[Petra_Kalbrain]

Originally Posted by pagemaster

Netflix will eventually start offering day and date rental downloads on their site. All other movies will be on the subscription. A tiered system is a really silly idea.

From a business standpoint it is both a silly idea AND the only idea that will work! They will only have 3 choices.

#1. $7.99/month full database access -> One of two things will happen. Either they go out of business because the studios will ravage their revenue to allow for the expanded selection of newer premium content, or they will start losing customers like crazy due to the lack of modern selection.

#2. $25/month full database access -> Expanding their offerings with "day and date" titles will be easy and they'll get to actually keep some revenue... if the customers stick around for such a ridiculous price.

#3. A tiered system -> Giving customers the option to pick how much they want to pay for the content which most appeals to them.

The way I see it? In the end, nobody will come out happy in any of these scenarios and one of (if not both of) the two factions involved in this business model (customer and/or content provider) will feel as though the other is abandoning them regarding their responsibilities in the relationship. And, whether the customer feels like they aren't getting their money worth or the business feels like they aren't getting enough revenue and decide to scale back their services (ie. content), the customer will always take their money elsewhere.

It's a failed business model in long-term viability.

[pagemaster]

Originally Posted by Petra_Kalbrain

From a business standpoint it is both a silly idea AND the only idea that will work! They will only have 3 choices.

#1. $7.99/month full database access -> One of two things will happen. Either they go out of business because the studios will ravage their revenue to allow for the expanded selection of newer premium content, or they will start losing customers like crazy due to the lack of modern selection.

#2. $25/month full database access -> Expanding their offerings with "day and date" titles will be easy and they'll get to actually keep some revenue... if the customers stick around for such a ridiculous price.

#3. A tiered system -> Giving customers the option to pick how much they want to pay for the content which most appeals to them.

The way I see it? In the end, nobody will come out happy in any of these scenarios and one of (if not both of) the two factions involved in this business model (customer and/or content provider) will feel as though the other is abandoning them regarding their responsibilities in the relationship. And, whether the customer feels like they aren't getting their money worth or the business feels like they aren't getting enough revenue and decide to scale back their services (ie. content), the customer will always take their money elsewhere.

It's a failed business model in long-term viability.

The studios will not allow the steaming idea of day and date titles. The studios will allow instant streaming of new release movies if it is a rental but no way for unlimited streaming as part of subscription . Netflix also just said they will offer 4k streaming within two years so it should be interesting what the future holds.