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

[Astro Zombie]

Originally Posted by nagysaudio

DVDs are still around for one reason and one reason only. The world is full of cheap people. Just take a look around here. Thread after thread, post after post filled with stories of how someone called Amazon's customer service and demanded to price match Wal Mart in order to save 4 pennies. What do you expect?

Not once has that happened.

I like having the DVD come with the Blu-ray. I never use them, but they're there Besides, it's not like they take up any extra space.

[GamerBoy14]

Originally Posted by AnamorphicWidescreen

And, though I believe that 4K Blus themselves aren't that much more expensive that regular Blus, they don't always have the special features that Blus have; i.e., based on what I understand the 4K Blu Taxi Driver looks slighly better (maybe, depending on your set) than the regular Blu TD, but the 4K has no special features, unlike the regular Blu...Just my .02...

I just wanna clear that up for you. There is no real 4K Blu-ray yet. What you're referring to is normal 1080p Blu-rays sourced from a 4K master.

[bluearth]

Originally Posted by buzzwoody

The difference between DVD and VHS is HUGE. There is very little reason to change from DVD to Blu-ray.

Maybe I dont want my eyes to bleed watching such a muddy DVD picture when compared to bluray?

Originally Posted by buzzwoody

The next logical move for the market is to change to digital and skip blu-ray altogether.

The market? Studios want digital so they have more control over their content. Digital is not and wont be for a very long time the best way for studios to deliver the highest quality content to the consumer. Of course all of that doesnt matter if you're use to settling for the 2nd or 3rd best.

[buzzwoody]

Originally Posted by bluearth

Maybe I dont want my eyes to bleed watching such a muddy DVD picture when compared to bluray?

The market? Studios want digital so they have more control over their content. Digital is not and wont be for a very long time the best way for studios to deliver the highest quality content to the consumer. Of course all of that doesnt matter if you're use to settling for the 2nd or 3rd best.

You clearly belong to a very small portion of the physical media buying population. So while your points are valid, you're bringing them to a thread discussing why DVDs are still incredibly relevant.

[wormraper]

Originally Posted by buzzwoody

The difference between DVD and VHS is HUGE. There is very little reason to change from DVD to Blu-ray. The next logical move for the market is to change to digital and skip blu-ray altogether.

are you kidding? the quality difference between blu and dvd is ENORMOUS. dvd's are almost unwatchable now

[Infernal King]

Originally Posted by wormraper

are you kidding? the quality difference between blu and dvd is ENORMOUS. dvd's are almost unwatchable now

Either this is not true for most people or they simply don't care. Probably both.

[wormraper]

Originally Posted by Infernal King

Either this is not true for most people or they simply don't care. Probably both.

I'm going for the latter at the very least. although my local BB and walmart has people raiding the blu-ray racks like crazy and only the $5 dump bins for DVDs ever get any love

[Infernal King]

Originally Posted by wormraper

I'm going for the latter at the very least. although my local BB and walmart has people raiding the blu-ray racks like crazy and only the $5 dump bins for DVDs ever get any love

I admit I'm mostly basing my observations off of people I know, including my parents.

[jlk5844]

I would have to agree the difference between DVD and Blu-ray is huge for me now. I can't even watch my DVDs unless I have to (don't have the Blu-ray yet or the Blu-ray doesn't exist at the moment). I'm more motivated to watch a lesser movie on Blu-ray than a better movie on DVD, usually anyway.

Originally Posted by Astro Zombie

Not once has that happened.

I like having the DVD come with the Blu-ray. I never use them, but they're there Besides, it's not like they take up any extra space.

For most releases, yes. But with some sets, like Criterions now, HBO TV season sets, and Crystal Lake Memories for instance, it does take up more space.

[Jett Rink]

Originally Posted by wormraper

are you kidding? the quality difference between blu and dvd is ENORMOUS. dvd's are almost unwatchable now

I have to agree with you on this. Most DVD's have such huge pixels that I just turn it off in anger and do something else. Streaming has better PQ than DVD, and I am not a huge fan of streaming.

[Race Bannon]

I have found in my discussions with people that most regular folks just didn't understand they could get a blu-ray player and still play DVD's. For one reason or another, people viewed it as an "all or nothing" switch.

Over the years, I tried to get people on board with the idea that they could buy one blu-ray player, play all their DVD's, still buy DVD's if they wanted, still get Netflix DVD's if they wanted, but start getting some blu-rays, too.

It didn't stick. People tended to process the world as "Am I now a blu-ray person, or a DVD person?" Thinking they would have to convert their entire collection. And so some people have just stayed DVD.

It's not until someone gets a high quality home theater set up that they start really thinking about the picture quality upgrade that 1080p offers.

[buzzwoody]

Originally Posted by wormraper

are you kidding? the quality difference between blu and dvd is ENORMOUS. dvd's are almost unwatchable now

For you. The bump in video quality is the only driving factor for Blu-ray right now and most people simply don't care. It won't seem that way on a blu-ray forum, obviously, but there's a reason DVDs are still being stocked alongside blus.

Think about 15 years ago when DVDs were were still very new:
-You don't have to rewind every time you watch a movie (especially painful when renting or with impatient young children)
-There are now chapter selections and you can skip from one part of the movie to the next in seconds instead of guessing how long you should FF
-They take up less than half the space of a VHS tape and are considerably lighter
-Tapes are much more susceptible to breaking and getting caught in the machine whereas a DVD will still play with scratches
-Bonus features, unrated versions, bloopers, behind the scenes, etc didn't exist on home media before

Those alone completely changed everything. To us, sure, we can't ever go back to something in SD, it bugs me too. But we are a small group of film technology fans that probably have the latest devices anyways. Is the reason you don't have a flip phone because they have a smaller screen and button pad or because it's simply the latest and greatest?

edit: The bottom line is only so many care, even when they know the difference. The difference between VHS and DVD was very clear for people back then. Now, even without the misconceptions, DVD or blu-ray doesn't make a difference to a lot of buyers.

[wormraper]

Originally Posted by buzzwoody

For you. The bump in video quality is the only driving factor for Blu-ray right now and most people simply don't care. It won't seem that way on a blu-ray forum, obviously, but there's a reason DVDs are still being stocked alongside blus.

Think about 15 years ago when DVDs were were still very new:
-You don't have to rewind every time you watch a movie (especially painful when renting or with impatient young children)
-There are now chapter selections and you can skip from one part of the movie to the next in seconds instead of guessing how long you should FF
-They take up less than half the space of a VHS tape and are considerably lighter
-Tapes are much more susceptible to breaking and getting caught in the machine whereas a DVD will still play with scratches
-Bonus features, unrated versions, bloopers, behind the scenes, etc didn't exist on home media before

Those alone completely changed everything. To us, sure, we can't ever go back to something in SD, it bugs me too. But we are a small group of film technology fans that probably have the latest devices anyways. Is the reason you don't have a flip phone because they have a smaller screen and button pad or because it's simply the latest and greatest?

edit: The bottom line is only so many care, even when they know the difference. The difference between VHS and DVD was very clear for people back then. Now, even without the misconceptions, DVD or blu-ray doesn't make a difference to a lot of buyers.

True. Sometimes I forget that 99% of the world are complete morons ( and not just in this arena).

[Patienceofkaori]

Quick question. How is the upconversion on dvds in a bluray player pretty good looking or not worth it because there are a few dvds that i want that probably wont see the light of day in blu ray format like buffy and charmed.

[Blu-21]

Originally Posted by buzzwoody

Think about 15 years ago when DVDs were were still very new:
-You don't have to rewind every time you watch a movie (especially painful when renting or with impatient young children)
-There are now chapter selections and you can skip from one part of the movie to the next in seconds instead of guessing how long you should FF
-They take up less than half the space of a VHS tape and are considerably lighter
-Tapes are much more susceptible to breaking and getting caught in the machine whereas a DVD will still play with scratches
-Bonus features, unrated versions, bloopers, behind the scenes, etc didn't exist on home media before

Laserdisc had chapter stops, bonus features, multiple audio tracks including commentaries and 5.1 AC3 and DTS, durability with playback, smooth rewind/fast-forward, unrated versions etc well before DVD came out.

[Patienceofkaori]

and if i do remember correctly Home video did also have directors cuts on some films as well released i don't know if it was before laserdisc though not that familiar

[honeylatte]

To me it feels like they put that extra stuff in there to inflate the price. Instead of selling a $10 blu-ray, they want to sell a $30 combo pack.

They do sell plain DVD editions for cheaper, so we should get a barebones blu-ray release too. But of course they don't want to give us that.

I end up throwing all those DVDs away or give them to family members.

[iank]

I don't think they're a bad idea for people who want to future-proof their collections. A couple of years ago I noticed a few Blu-ray/DVD combos. They were never really for any films I wanted, but if they had been I would have paid a bit more for both. As it was, Blu-ray was no use to me at the time so I bought the DVD and as a result, if it's something I really like, I now have to buy it again.

[I KEEL YOU]

Originally Posted by scorpiontail60

Once you've watched some native 4K video on a 4K display you'll start looking at Blu-ray in the same way we all look at DVD right now.

4K video is impressive. It is 24x the resolution of DVD, after all. Blu-ray is only 6x the resolution of DVD.

What a stupid and misleading comparison.

You should compare 4K to HD, and HD to SD..... NOT 4K to SD to make it even more impressive and inflate numbers further.

HD has 6 times as many pixels as SD/DVD.
4K has 4 times as many pixels as HD.

Now, if SD DVDs are still around 8 years after blu rays birth to bother you enough into making this thread, then what does that tell you about a 4K format's potential "success" among ordinary, non-videophile folk vs HD?

And even IF 4K had 6 times as many pixels as HD (as many times as HD has pixels over SD), or even more than 6, it still wouldn't be as noticeable as the difference between HD and SD. It's called diminishing returns, I've posted about this in the other thread.



Difference in numbers is NOT the same as difference in visual experience. I'm not an idiot. I know that there is a visible difference between 4K and 1080p. I know that there would also be a visible difference between 4K and 8K if you were sitting close enough to a 120'+ TV and were picky enough. But you can't just keep adding "K"s and spew out ridiculous statements that the upgrade would be AS impressive as the upgrade between the previous generation like you said about 4K compared to 1080P, because even if it was technically true (which in this case isn't even so because HD is 6 times the resoultion of SD compared to 4 times the resoultion 4K has over HD), it wouldn't be true visually. Do you honestly think that the difference between 512K (hypothetically) and 8K would be as visually impressive as the difference between blu ray/HD and VHS??? 512K would have OVER 100 TIMES the resolution of 8K, whereas blu ray/HD only has, what, 15-20 times the resolution of VHS.

Then there are also other factors, such as the availability of 4K masters. Studios are constantly creating more 4K scans, but the amount still isn't near as big as the availability of 2K masters for the blu ray format when it came out (they pretty much had 2K masters by default).

I said it before and I'll say it again: It doesn't make sense to hype up 4K this much when less than 10% of blu rays out there utilize the technology of the blu ray format to the fullest. I consider myself a videophile, but not a video extremist. And 8 years into blu ray's lifespan, the blu ray format still manages to if not blow me away, then certainly impress me. The apex of me being blown away by blu ray was the first time I watched Taxi Driver. I haven't been quite AS impressed with anything on blu ray since, but The Terminator re-release, Lawrence of Arabia and most recently Criterion's Thief have certainly impressed me enough not to care about 4K if all blu rays were done as well as these.

How about instead of blabbering about 4K, we demand that Universal upgrade their outdated masters and Warner release their HD DVD/early blu ray releases in the AVC codec and 30 mbps bit rates?

[bhampton]

The way I saw it DVD was the first home video format that didn't suck.

Then after a while... EVERYTHING could be found on DVD any and every thing.

Now, Blu is only better but dvd was a real big deal. It's kind of good that it was SOOO popular... that part is kind of good for blu I think.