Oh noes teh sky is falling!

[mjbethancourt]

Originally Posted by Petra_Kalbrain

Seriously.... modern weapons of mass destruction can't be stopped with those nowadays. Why would anyone be hiding in a bomb shelter? Honestly!

A bit of friendly advice, Petra: when you don't get a joke, don't go announcing that to everyone else. It just makes you look slow.

Originally Posted by Anthony P

it happens every few months I think he just goes off his meds

You're hardly any different, Anthony. I distinctly remember when you spent the better part of a month raving and exhaustively berating me as stupid and crazy, because I wouldn't agree with your prediction that DVD would cease to exist in 2010, (it's 2013 and they still make DVDs... am I still stupid and crazy?) Your argument then, was hardly any different from his now: you both jump to the unsubstantiated conclusion that the success of one product means the immediate extinction of another.

(Also, dropping six posts in a row doesn't exactly proclaim "mental stability", either.)

Originally Posted by Steedeel

No basis in fact? So teens have not adopted a 4 inch screen as their main viewing tool? You sure?

TV sales are not falling rapidly?

Social media sites are more important to youths than film and tv?

None of that constitutes any factual evidence that physical media and the big TV are doomed. Teens bought up the Sony Walkman when I was a kid, but that didn't kill home audio. Tetris on the Gameboy was the most popular thing in the world when I was twelve. Did that spell doom for game consoles? Teens bought into mass-pirating of MP3s, and it hasn't had the tiniest effect on my ability to collect CDs. Social media? Come on, man! When I was a kid, we spent a lot of our time passing notes, that's "social media" ... and it had absolutely zero connection to any of our home-electronics purchases, and bore no meaning on how we felt about films and TV, that's just a complete non-sequitur.

It shouldn't be hard to understand: teens have always had different consumer priorities than their parents, the real consumers. Kids like small and portable. So kids can do things with their phones that we couldn't do with our desktop PCs 30 years ago. So what? Millions and millions of people have smartphones: how many of those people do you think actually prefer to watch their movies on those, instead of on a real TV? Very few, I'd bet.

That's where you are misintreping these consumer trends. The real truth is that more parents are willing to buy their child a phone, than they are to buy their child their own home theater. That does not mean that people prefer to watch movies on their phones, that's an irrational conclusion to draw. They haven't "adopted" the 4 inch screen as a preference, it's what is being bought for them.

Movie tickets, big TVs, blu-ray, and even DVD are multibillion-dollar industries in the U.S., nobody is going to walk away from all that money just to predictively cater to teenage fads.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by mjbethancourt

You're hardly any different, Anthony. I distinctly remember when you spent the better part of a month raving and exhaustively berating me as stupid and crazy, because I wouldn't agree with your prediction that DVD would cease to exist in 2010,

quote?

[mredman]

calm down steedeel - proof for you to calm down is in this article

A new forecast published by industry analysts IHS indicates that Germany is set to become Europe's biggest Blu-ray market. IHS predicts that more than 32.2 million Blu-ray discs will be sold in Germany this year. In contrast, IHS forecasts that in the UK, until recently Europe's largest Blu-ray market, sales will reach 18.7 million units by the end of the year.

Consumer spending on Blu-ray Discs and DVDs in Germany is also expected to increase 6.4 percent to $2.2 billion in 2013.

According to IHR analyst Tania Loeffler, the impressive sales in Germany are to be credited to strong promotional efforts by large vendors such as Media Markt, Saturn, and Amazon.de.

Loeffler also forecasts that by 2017 more than 36 million Blu-ray discs will be sold annually in Germany. In the UK, sales are expected to reach 19 million units annually during the same period.


https://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=12452


like many already said here any knucklehead can see that studios earn way more on blu ray sales than streaming or digital downloads. furthermore if there was only streaming or digital the studios would go under because people would just get their copies ILLEGALLY on the net if you can't buy them physically anymore they certainly are not gonna buy it on the net if they can get them illegally the same way.

bluy rays is here to stay and so is physical media

[vargo]

http://www.dvd-and-beyond.com/displa...p?article=1990

Marking Germany as the exception in Europe, consumer spending on Blu-ray Discs and DVDs combined will increase 6.4% to €1.6 billion this year, says TANIA LOEFLER, Video Analyst at IHS Electronics & Media.

So you ignore all the countries in Europe where physical media revenue has declined. You pick the one country where it is doing well, and use that to 'prove' your point.

This is confirmation bias.

The article you linked to even states that Netflix has not launched in Germany and they are behind the rest of Europe in other VOD services and PVR penetration. So of course physical media is doing well.

What do you think will happen when Germany finally gets Netflix and other services? The same thing that happened everywhere else, physical media revenue will begin to decline.

[mredman]

What are you even doing on a blu ray forum streaming troll ?

[mredman]

Originally Posted by nolfoc

studios make to much profit on physical media.. they aren't going to shy away from that anytime soon if ever

This!

[bruceames]

I believe packaged media is doing so well in Germany mainly because people there just love collecting deluxe packaged media more. I think just about every major release is available as a steelbook, no?

Competition from streaming does affect sales of catalog media to some degree, but not so on new releases, which are most of the sales. So streaming doesn't have as much an overall effect on optical media sales as some may think.

[vargo]

Originally Posted by mredman

What are you even doing on a blu ray forum streaming troll ?

What are you doing on a discussion forum if you don't want to discuss things? You linked to an article to 'prove a point' and I simply made a counter-point using quotes from the same article.

You can be the biggest fan of physical media in the world and still acknowledge that it is on the decline year on year. It's not mutually exclusive. There is nothing to be gained by burying your head in the sand.

[retablo]

Originally Posted by mredman

This!

Wrong. Just like the conversion to HDTV, or studios conversion to digital projection, there will be risks taken. Physical media is on its way out, regardless of what the numbers say. Of course they are up, because the other options aren't widely available yet. But when the studios force people to take it or leave it, and give them one option only, customers will embrace it, just like they were forced to upgrade to HDTV.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by mjbethancourt

A bit of friendly advice, Petra: when you don't get a joke, don't go announcing that to everyone else. It just makes you look slow.




You're hardly any different, Anthony. I distinctly remember when you spent the better part of a month raving and exhaustively berating me as stupid and crazy, because I wouldn't agree with your prediction that DVD would cease to exist in 2010, (it's 2013 and they still make DVDs... am I still stupid and crazy?) Your argument then, was hardly any different from his now: you both jump to the unsubstantiated conclusion that the success of one product means the immediate extinction of another.

(Also, dropping six posts in a row doesn't exactly proclaim "mental stability", either.)



None of that constitutes any factual evidence that physical media and the big TV are doomed. Teens bought up the Sony Walkman when I was a kid, but that didn't kill home audio. Tetris on the Gameboy was the most popular thing in the world when I was twelve. Did that spell doom for game consoles? Teens bought into mass-pirating of MP3s, and it hasn't had the tiniest effect on my ability to collect CDs. Social media? Come on, man! When I was a kid, we spent a lot of our time passing notes, that's "social media" ... and it had absolutely zero connection to any of our home-electronics purchases, and bore no meaning on how we felt about films and TV, that's just a complete non-sequitur.

It shouldn't be hard to understand: teens have always had different consumer priorities than their parents, the real consumers. Kids like small and portable. So kids can do things with their phones that we couldn't do with our desktop PCs 30 years ago. So what? Millions and millions of people have smartphones: how many of those people do you think actually prefer to watch their movies on those, instead of on a real TV? Very few, I'd bet.

That's where you are misintreping these consumer trends. The real truth is that more parents are willing to buy their child a phone, than they are to buy their child their own home theater. That does not mean that people prefer to watch movies on their phones, that's an irrational conclusion to draw. They haven't "adopted" the 4 inch screen as a preference, it's what is being bought for them.

Movie tickets, big TVs, blu-ray, and even DVD are multibillion-dollar industries in the U.S., nobody is going to walk away from all that money just to predictively cater to teenage fads.

I am also referring to the 16-24 year old spectrum. A lot of studies are now claiming that smartphones are the first screen for those people.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by vargo

http://www.dvd-and-beyond.com/displa...p?article=1990



So you ignore all the countries in Europe where physical media revenue has declined. You pick the one country where it is doing well, and use that to 'prove' your point.
.

your point does not make any sense what so ever. Let's go to an extreme and pretend that a different article said disk sales in the UK (and some other EU countries) are so low that the studios are abandoning physical media in them and the only country in Europe that will continue selling them is Germany because they are doing OK there, what would that mean? If someone was interested in disks and not Netflix couldn't he just order them on Amazon.De and get them?

The war can't be lost until it is gone from absolutely everywhere so doing well, even if it is just in one place, is enough to counter the point of losing the war.

[Wendell R. Breland]

IIRC, DVD sales were in decline before streaming became popular. Folks had bought most titles they were interested in (market saturation), the studios had pretty much emptied their vaults, etc. so the switch was made to TV. The last figures that I saw for Netflix streaming was 80% TV and 20% movies.

I see the same happening for Blu-ray only it will saturate sooner because there is not much to be gained from putting 4x3 SD material on Blu-ray.

As stated before, as long as there is big dollars to be made in the sales of physical media then someone will make them available. Not sure why this is so hard to understand.

For me: No First Sale Doctrine protection = No Sale

[mredman]

fact is the studios know that if there would only be digital or streaming and no physical media. Illegal downloading would be unstoppable. The majority of the people would just get their movies illegally noway are they gonna pay 10-20$ for a download or streaming when they can get the same content illegally for free.

Studios are not gonna say goodbye to physical media when its the one the studios earn the most from. How can those streaming trolls here not see that

[Wendell R. Breland]

Just curious, why are the streaming enthusiast here trying to convince people they should switch to streaming and it is the way of the future.

Just so you know, I have been a Netflix streamer since day one, except for a switch to Blockbuster for a period of time, have Amazon Prime streaming, VUDU, etc. but it is, well, just streaming, no BFD .

[mjbethancourt]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

I am also referring to the 16-24 year old spectrum. A lot of studies are now claiming that smartphones are the first screen for those people.

So what? I went to high school all the way back in the 90s, and I had a pager and a cellphone and even a PC before I had my own TV. Who cares what a person's first screen is? We grow up, get homes, and get big TVs. The fact that young people put communications/connectivity technology ahead of home theaters is meaningless, because it is not a new trend, it has always been true. For at least 30 years now, kids have been more interested in video games than films and TV... by your reasoning, that preference for video games should have long-since culminated in the death of all other media. What happened? All those kids grew up, got homes, and got HD TVs.

And I'd bet my bottom dollar that twenty years from now, the iTunes and smartphone kids will be middle-aged, have homes, and be buying TVs that are bigger and better than the ones we have now, not smaller and worse... and I'd bet that a lot of them will still be collecting physical media, too.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by mjbethancourt

So what? I went to high school all the way back in the 90s, and I had a pager and a cellphone and even a PC before I had my own TV. Who cares what a person's first screen is? We grow up, get homes, and get big TVs. The fact that young people put communications/connectivity technology ahead of home theaters is meaningless, because it is not a new trend, it has always been true. For at least 30 years now, kids have been more interested in video games than films and TV... by your reasoning, that preference for video games should have long-since culminated in the death of all other media. What happened? All those kids grew up, got homes, and got HD TVs.

And I'd bet my bottom dollar that twenty years from now, the iTunes and smartphone kids will be middle-aged, have homes, and be buying TVs that are bigger and better than the ones we have now, not smaller and worse... and I'd bet that a lot of them will still be collecting physical media, too.

Well I hope so. I read this on a forum years ago and it just stuck. Maybe this is the source of my worries

The guy said something like " young people are watching low res, low bit rate on their cellphones or whatever they get their hands on. The young generation always dictate what the future holds. That has just stuck And worried me. I love my home cinema too much I think. I am a bit obsessive like, sorry everyone.

[MechaGodzilla]

I've seen the concern be raised that movies are becoming an increasingly more disposable thing to the youth of today. I could be wrong, but I'm not so sure I agree that is necessarily the case. I think, thanks to home video formats becoming commonplace the last 30 years or so, movies have an extended shelf life beyond what was possible in earlier times when the cinema was the only way to watch films and the technology wasn't there to restore, remaster and preserve films in as effective a way. Add to that the internet and the easy access you get to researching and acquiring movies, discovering titles you'd maybe never have heard of if things were still the same as 60 years ago.

So, I think things aren't worse in that regard than they've been in the past. Sure, a lot of kids, probably the majority, mostly just care about the latest and most popular films, moving on after they've seen them once, but I'd argue that's probably how it's always been. The majority has a casual interest in things like this, and young people especially only care about contemporary entertainment. If you went back in time to the '80s, '60s or '40s or whenever, the kids of that era would probably be more into the recent stuff, whether films, music or other pop culture, than their parent generations'. That's just how it is, and no reason to worry that films are becoming a more disposable product. Maybe I'm just an optimist, but that's my two cents.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

Well I hope so. I read this on a forum years ago and it just stuck. Maybe this is the source of my worries

The guy said something like " young people are watching low res, low bit rate on their cellphones or whatever they get their hands on. The young generation always dictate what the future holds. That has just stuck And worried me. I love my home cinema too much I think. I am a bit obsessive like, sorry everyone.

First the young don't dictate anything. I don't know young people with walkers or even anyone my age but they still exist, there are many industries catering to the old just as there are many to the young or any other age group. Second the problem with statements like that are that they are not based on reality but false causality. For example, last Christmas holydays I went back with my sister to Ottawa (got a lift from her on her way back) my nephew was watching something on his portable device. Is it really a choice on low res low bit rate or just the kid thinking "hey it is better to watch something so I don't have to talk to these people".

[Steedeel]

Ok guys, thanks for that. I am leaving it there. Positive thinking lol. Thanks for contributions.

[pentatonic]

I'm not here to add fuel, but I do have a few observations.

First, why the need to be so vindictive defending your opinion on the "right" side. Why so threatened?

Secondly, we can't stop technology and all know that hardcopies are going out, the real question is when, and that ain't tomorrow. But for the collectors, which was and always will be a niche market as I don't see many people in general with 1000s of discs. As long as they make money, they won't stop. But I don't see many people on horseback in the city and never hear of someone going for a business trip in London by boat. And as much as we'd like to think we have an influence in that happening, we don't. The upcoming market likes ease of access that the cloud and itunes gives them. Like anything it takes a while for people to adapt to change, but it happens.

I also believe that cinema has obviously already changed and won't stop. We are lucky as we grew up hearing about the masters and seeing the evolution of cinema and SFX in particular. But for my 19 yo daughter, older cinema just looks cheesy, she was raised on PIXAR and for her SFX are the norm. So seeing Cleopatra is nice, but she can't readily appreciate it for that art form is gone. I mean anything pre-T2 for her is corny. They now come out so often that the multitude brings the level of cinema as an art down. But for them cinema is that, easy fast consumption of much crap for an occasional masterpiece. Lost is the waiting period for a new great flic.

But we are lucky as we get to witness the evolution. And in the end, we are all here because we enjoy the best HT experience possible, then, if so, as long as my HT experience gets better, I don't really care which "format" wins as we all win.

I know all that is highly debatable, just my thoughts.