Oh noes teh sky is falling!

[chip75]

Originally Posted by 42041

Somehow I doubt people that don't have internet access are a huge portion of the home video market.

Our internet connections and streaming services do occasionally go tits up. A few weeks back I was watching The Clone Wars and my router died - no connection. That was the end of the evenings viewing pleasure. A few days later I couldn't get certain episodes to play on my PS3. Now I know my players and discs can become unplayable, but I was cut off completely. With my players I have back ups and I have other physical movies or shows to watch.

[Professor Echo]

Chicken Littles are on one end of this debate, ostriches with their heads buried are on the other end. Personally, I would rather be the former and spend my time and resources building up my collection, instead of just taking it for granted that nothing is changing. To each his own, but during "Streamageddon" at Netflix two years ago my queue went from 280 titles to 75 overnight and that's the future. Meanwhile, plenty of DVDs and Blus are now OOP and commanding premium prices, something that will only continue. So I choose not to sit back and believe the glass is half-full and shall remain so. My advice? Continue to build your physical media collection NOW while it's still relatively available and affordable.

[ZoetMB]

Originally Posted by 42041

Always is a long time... That will only be true as long as internet speeds are significantly slower than commercially viable physical formats, and they need to improve by less than an order of magnitude (compared to, say, a normal 15mbps downstream connection) to stream 4K video in essentially perfect quality.

I have a 25Mbps connection and when I run DSL Test it's usually pretty close, certainly no lower than 19Mbps. And yet, I can't consistently stream without buffering issues. Now I can't tell with 100% certainty whether the problem is my ISP or whether it's the streaming service, but in the end, it's not as good an experience as it should be, it's definitely inferior to physical media and streaming 4K is definitely going to be tougher. And remember also that most people are running their devices over WiFi and that generally slows the whole network down.

Originally Posted by 42041

They can charge what they want - and consumers will pay what they want. Clearly, that's not been going in physical media's favor.

Well, it depends what you mean. Back catalog BDs are remarkably inexpensive already. Because consumers were stealing music, they forced prices down for CDs, especially for back catalog, which you can now buy for as little as $3.50 an album. But that helped kill the industry. Frontline BDs are relatively expensive*, but so are movies newly released for streaming.
*Actually nothing today is expensive compared to what movies cost when collectors bought used 16mm film prints, Laserdiscs or the first VHS titles that were available for sale. I've posted details about this before.

Originally Posted by 42041

Somehow I doubt people that don't have internet access are a huge portion of the home video market.

I think they're a very huge portion because what else do they have to do? These are the people who go to Walmart and stock up on $3 DVDs. For a family of four or five, a $3 DVD is probably the very cheapest entertainment anyone can find aside from watching TV or playing a video game one already owns.

Originally Posted by 42041

Only if the licensing agreements incentivize removing them. Look at petabytes of garbage YouTube keeps on their servers - nothing fundamental is stopping Netflix from doing the same. This is actually a disadvantage with physical media - no one wants to manufacture or inventory movies that don't sell.

YouTube and Netflix are very different businesses. YouTube consists mainly of consumer provided video and is advertising driven. Netflix makes specific licensing agreements for content and is subscription driven. I'm in the business of designing enterprise software to manage contractual rights for media companies and I can tell you that all of these licenses have time limitations. It's one thing when a cable network is buying an original series and paying the full development costs - in that case, the license may be in perpetuity. But in the case where the content already exists and Netflix is licensing it for a licensing fee, it would be unusual for them to have a license term longer than three years at most (with optional renewal clauses). So while the server costs may not be high, paying license fees for titles that don't add enough value to lead to subscription purchases doesn't do Netflix any good and I can assure you those titles will be dropped over time.

Another factor is that aside from the big hits, with all the competing streaming companies, most of whom seem to have exactly the same titles, there's going to have to be more differentiation in the future, otherwise some of these companies are going to go under because there's now too many players doing exactly the same thing.

The other thing that's going to happen is that as physical media declines, the studios are going to get greedier in terms of their revenue needs from the streaming companies and title or sub fees are going to go up, just as they have on cable TV where each of the cable networks demands more money per subscriber, especially the sports channels. The networks get this money regardless of how many people actually watch their channel - they get paid based on the number of subs to the cable system. So today we have "cord cutting" because cable TV fees are perceived to be too high. Five years from now, we'll have "streaming cutting" because those fees will be too high as well. And there's one other factor: just as the phone companies have pretty much gotten rid of unlimited usage data plans, if people start doing a lot of streaming (especially 4K), the ISPs will start clamping down as well. And if they start charging based upon data usage, I think you'll see a lot of people running back to physical media.

I'm not defending physical over streaming or vice-versa. As I posted a few posts back, "different strokes for different folks" and they're both going to exist for some time to come, although streaming is growing and physical media is in decline.

[eiknarf]

Originally Posted by ZoetMB

I have a 25Mbps connection and when I run DSL Test it's usually pretty close, certainly no lower than 19Mbps. And yet, I can't consistently stream without buffering issues. Now I can't tell with 100% certainty whether the problem is my ISP or whether it's the streaming service, but in the end, it's not as good an experience as it should be, it's definitely inferior to physical media and streaming 4K is definitely going to be tougher. And remember also that most people are running their devices over WiFi and that generally slows the whole network down.


Well, it depends what you mean. Back catalog BDs are remarkably inexpensive already. Because consumers were stealing music, they forced prices down for CDs, especially for back catalog, which you can now buy for as little as $3.50 an album. But that helped kill the industry. Frontline BDs are relatively expensive*, but so are movies newly released for streaming.
*Actually nothing today is expensive compared to what movies cost when collectors bought used 16mm film prints, Laserdiscs or the first VHS titles that were available for sale. I've posted details about this before.


I think they're a very huge portion because what else do they have to do? These are the people who go to Walmart and stock up on $3 DVDs. For a family of four or five, a $3 DVD is probably the very cheapest entertainment anyone can find aside from watching TV or playing a video game one already owns.


YouTube and Netflix are very different businesses. YouTube consists mainly of consumer provided video and is advertising driven. Netflix makes specific licensing agreements for content and is subscription driven. I'm in the business of designing enterprise software to manage contractual rights for media companies and I can tell you that all of these licenses have time limitations. It's one thing when a cable network is buying an original series and paying the full development costs - in that case, the license may be in perpetuity. But in the case where the content already exists and Netflix is licensing it for a licensing fee, it would be unusual for them to have a license term longer than three years at most (with optional renewal clauses). So while the server costs may not be high, paying license fees for titles that don't add enough value to lead to subscription purchases doesn't do Netflix any good and I can assure you those titles will be dropped over time.

Another factor is that aside from the big hits, with all the competing streaming companies, most of whom seem to have exactly the same titles, there's going to have to be more differentiation in the future, otherwise some of these companies are going to go under because there's now too many players doing exactly the same thing.

The other thing that's going to happen is that as physical media declines, the studios are going to get greedier in terms of their revenue needs from the streaming companies and title or sub fees are going to go up, just as they have on cable TV where each of the cable networks demands more money per subscriber, especially the sports channels. The networks get this money regardless of how many people actually watch their channel - they get paid based on the number of subs to the cable system. So today we have "cord cutting" because cable TV fees are perceived to be too high. Five years from now, we'll have "streaming cutting" because those fees will be too high as well. And there's one other factor: just as the phone companies have pretty much gotten rid of unlimited usage data plans, if people start doing a lot of streaming (especially 4K), the ISPs will start clamping down as well. And if they start charging based upon data usage, I think you'll see a lot of people running back to physical media.

I'm not defending physical over streaming or vice-versa. As I posted a few posts back, "different strokes for different folks" and they're both going to exist for some time to come, although streaming is growing and physical media is in decline.

All well said.
Zoet knows his shit. Damn.
I actually thank you - for i learned more about this stuff via your post

[42041]

Originally Posted by ZoetMB

YouTube and Netflix are very different businesses. YouTube consists mainly of consumer provided video and is advertising driven. Netflix makes specific licensing agreements for content and is subscription driven. I'm in the business of designing enterprise software to manage contractual rights for media companies and I can tell you that all of these licenses have time limitations. It's one thing when a cable network is buying an original series and paying the full development costs - in that case, the license may be in perpetuity. But in the case where the content already exists and Netflix is licensing it for a licensing fee, it would be unusual for them to have a license term longer than three years at most (with optional renewal clauses). So while the server costs may not be high, paying license fees for titles that don't add enough value to lead to subscription purchases doesn't do Netflix any good and I can assure you those titles will be dropped over time.

Another factor is that aside from the big hits, with all the competing streaming companies, most of whom seem to have exactly the same titles, there's going to have to be more differentiation in the future, otherwise some of these companies are going to go under because there's now too many players doing exactly the same thing.

The other thing that's going to happen is that as physical media declines, the studios are going to get greedier in terms of their revenue needs from the streaming companies and title or sub fees are going to go up, just as they have on cable TV where each of the cable networks demands more money per subscriber, especially the sports channels. The networks get this money regardless of how many people actually watch their channel - they get paid based on the number of subs to the cable system. So today we have "cord cutting" because cable TV fees are perceived to be too high. Five years from now, we'll have "streaming cutting" because those fees will be too high as well. And there's one other factor: just as the phone companies have pretty much gotten rid of unlimited usage data plans, if people start doing a lot of streaming (especially 4K), the ISPs will start clamping down as well. And if they start charging based upon data usage, I think you'll see a lot of people running back to physical media.

I'm not defending physical over streaming or vice-versa. As I posted a few posts back, "different strokes for different folks" and they're both going to exist for some time to come, although streaming is growing and physical media is in decline.

Thanks for the info. Personally I think it's too early to say how all of this will ultimately shake out, and it's certainly possible the studios will make digital distribution a fragmented, consumer-unfriendly experience, but music services like Spotify, Apple Music, etc, seem to have found ways of acquiring libraries of content that are enormous compared to the likes of Netflix. My point is, the reasons for meager libraries are due to how companies run their business, not fundamental constraints of digital distribution technology. You can't change the laws governing transistor physics, but business models can adapt - unfortunately, both for better and worse to the consumer.

Also, I think data caps for home internet are a reasonable thing. Bandwidth is a finite resource and to me it makes sense to let supply and demand distribute it appropriately - people who value the highest streaming quality may have to kick some extra cash to their ISP, others will be content with lower quality. What that means for streaming's economic viability, who knows.

[rickah88]

Originally Posted by Packerfan75

My DVD's, HD DVD's and Blu-ray's are co-existing just fine. Sometimes they have a disagreement or get into a little scuffle but once I step in to break it up, everything goes back to normal.

I though my collection was the only one that did that!

[42041]

Originally Posted by ZoetMB

I think they're a very huge portion because what else do they have to do? These are the people who go to Walmart and stock up on $3 DVDs. For a family of four or five, a $3 DVD is probably the very cheapest entertainment anyone can find aside from watching TV or playing a video game one already owns.

Interesting question... I honestly don't know a single person without internet access, so intuition fails me
Looking at census data, people without internet access in the US seem to be statistically most likely to be elderly and/or low-income. The same groups, predictably, also spend the least on whatever the census defines as audio-visual entertainment.

[Scarface32]

Originally Posted by ZoetMB

I have no idea what you're talking about. I've never had any problems with anything I've ever ordered from B&N. But you'll probably get your wish anyway, which will give Amazon even more power. As far as I'm concerned, Amazon is far more evil than B&N. How can they possibly "bait and switch"? Did they send you different product than you ordered? Did they tell you something was on sale and when you got it, they billed you full price?

When they had their Nook app for iPad (before they took it down and replaced it with a B&N app), it was advertised in the description that they would give you 5 free ebooks once you downloaded the app and signed up through it for a new B&N account. After doing that I only got 2 free ebooks. After calling up B&N they told me it was an old promo (which it didn't state anywhere in the description that it had an expiration date). To which I pointed out that if it's in the advertisement, they have to honor it. The guy told me he wouldn't. I asked to speak to a supervisor, he transferred me to one. The supervisor said the same thing, that he wouldn't honor it.

That's false advertising. Even if it's a mistake, if it's in the advertising they must honor it under the law. But they refused, because they are an evil "bait and switch" company.

The guy was like "It was a free app, you didn't lose anything" to which I replied "But I pay for the bandwidth that I used to download your app. Your download caused my bandwidth to go slightly up and that counts against my monthly limit" and he told me to just go away, and he wasn't going to honor the advertising. I told him I'd tell everyone B&N is dishonest, and he told me to do whatever I wanted because it wouldn't hurt them one bit. With a very snobbish tone in his voice.

[zeuspaul]

It took me awhile but I am just now getting into Blu-Ray in a significant way. The future seems clear. I was hesitant buying DVDs after investing in Laserdisc. Laserdisc won't play in a DVD player but DVD does play in my BDP. And my Blu-Rays and DVDs will play in the next gen 4k players. I see very little risk of losing my investment in movies like I did with my Laserdisc collection. Quality of Blu-Ray is good enough such that I won't have to upgrade to 4k for most of my now growing collection. It will be years before 4k takes hold in a big way and at bargain prices. The disc evolution is backward compatible.

Streaming will be for the masses and it will grow and likely take a little from Blu-Ray but the discs will be around for a long time. Discs can be had at bargain prices and streaming just adds some competition so it is likely bargains will stick around too.

[CharlieBarkin]

I just recently really got interested in blu-ray once I realized I was going to have cataract surgery and would really be able to notice the difference the format could offer. The stuff I really care about I'll upgrade to blu-ray or I'll simply purchase blu-ray when new things come out (e.g. Jurassic World). I'll never be able to afford to replace all my dvds into blu-ray, and some don't even have a blu-ray release. I cannot fathom how some can afford such a switch.

I have no wi-fi at my apartment so I don't do any streaming services, and having seen that Netflix could just remove stuff at will, I don't like the idea of having them dictate what I can and cannot watch when I want to. Physical media is the only real way to control what I want to watch.

[popcorntreect]

Originally Posted by evilive

I dunno dudes, the cheap-o "eco" cases, the awful generic photoshop cover art, the endless stickers on slips, and the inclusion of digital HD on all new releases? It all makes sense now.

I was sorely disappointed when blu-rays debuted and they had the same crappy cover art as their dvd counterparts. I remember being surprised that this was a new format that, at the time, was being hyped and advertised pretty significantly and yet the studios expressed no willingness to make their product standout from dvds. I still loathe the blue cases. At least slipcovers doing a convincing job of hiding their ugliness. Criterion was a godsend with their transparent cases but it's been disappointing that no studio other than Twilight Time (finally) ever mimicked them. I think the studios have done a poor job of distinguishing blu-ray from dvd. Packaging may be superficial but it adds to the whole product and I think the studios really dropped the ball.

OK, done ranting.

[Scarface32]

Originally Posted by popcorntreect

Criterion was a godsend with their transparent cases but it's been disappointing that no studio other than Twilight Time (finally) ever mimicked them. I think the studios have done a poor job of distinguishing blu-ray from dvd. Packaging may be superficial but it adds to the whole product and I think the studios really dropped the ball.

OK, done ranting.

Cohen has transparent cases too. But I hate the "C" but put on all the covers.

[popcorntreect]

Originally Posted by Scarface32

Cohen has transparent cases too. But I hate the "C" but put on all the covers.

Good call on Cohen. The C is hideous but the cases are nice.

[StingingVelvet]

Arrow obviously use the clear cases too.

What I really like is the thicker, more solid case. Even the early Viva Elite cases were so much thicker than current ones. Yens cases are thicker, but they have square tops that look weird. Nothing's perfect! Burn it all down!

[mikeyfridebuzz]

Without fail, every generation goes through trends where "vintage" items come back in style. One day many years from now, Blu Ray Players and Discs will be the hot item again just as we have witnessed these Retro Video Game Stores and Vinyl Records come back into vogue with the young generation.

I don't see the complete death of a physical format in my lifetime as I can't imagine Movie Companies turning their back on the still significant number of consumers who still don't even have the internet and/or don't have the ability to use computer or internet for even the most basic needs. There are still a large number of people that can barely google something, let alone purchase a movie and access the content through a site that requires them to remember a username and password.

The company I work for deals with licensing and they are pushing all renewals to be done online only. There are still a significant number of people who claim they don't have internet or simply refuse to make purchases online with their credit cards for fear of their Card information being stolen by "Internet Hackers". It's not just limited to the older segment of consumers either.

[Scarface32]

Originally Posted by tob

http://flavorwire.com/535883/the-pre...eping-it-alive

It's in the first post

[Dragun]

Streaming should be considered an alternative to renting (with titles moving in and out of availability), rather than an unlimited on-demand library that takes the place of purchasing movies.

If you want to watch a film or TV show repeatedly, purchasing a physical copy or a download (if the playback rights can't be taken from you) is the way to go.

[rdodolak]

Originally Posted by Dragun

Streaming should be considered an alternative to renting (with titles moving in and out of availability), rather than an unlimited on-demand library that takes the place of purchasing movies.

If you want to watch a film or TV show repeatedly, purchasing a physical copy or a download (if the playback rights can't be taken from you) is the way to go.

Absolutely, I also see streaming as a replacement for cable television. The only difference is streaming is on demand which is something that cable television hasn't been able to do, until recently, due to technical limitations. I can see the old cable television model eventually being replaced by the on demand streaming models as time passes.

[Scarface32]

Originally Posted by rdodolak

Absolutely, I also see streaming as a replacement for cable television. The only difference is streaming is on demand which is something that cable television hasn't been able to do, until recently, due to technical limitations. I can see the old cable television model eventually being replaced by the on demand streaming models as time passes.

It wasn't until 2008 that Netflix had an all streaming plan, separate from the DVDs. My cable company started OnDenand way before that.

[popcorntreect]

Originally Posted by Dragun

Streaming should be considered an alternative to renting (with titles moving in and out of availability), rather than an unlimited on-demand library that takes the place of purchasing movies.

If you want to watch a film or TV show repeatedly, purchasing a physical copy or a download (if the playback rights can't be taken from you) is the way to go.

Streaming should be an alternative to purchasing but there's too much division with Netflix vs Hulu vs Amazon vs whatever else. Consumers are losing out because of lack of a universal service but on the flip side it has extended blu-rays shelf life that much longer.