Oh noes teh sky is falling!

[krazeyeyez]

Originally Posted by Rob71

*cough* Highlander *cough*

To name one. That first DVD was God awful

LMAO well played sir....well played

[DaleDark]

Originally Posted by octagon

While Netflix streaming and the like are lucky to approach upscaled DVD quality (and upscaled is often a reach) I'm not sure you can dismiss all digital streaming.

Comcast OnDemand HD, for example, can be awfully good. Not BD good - 1080i, 5.1 (and not a particularly aggressive 5.1), at times noticably compressed - but awfully good nevertheless.

But thats not quite an "apples-to-apples" comparison either.

[octagon]

Originally Posted by DaleDark

But thats not quite an "apples-to-apples" comparison either.

How so? It's legal digital streaming. Aside from not sucking what separates it from the rest of the barrel?

[DaleDark]

Originally Posted by octagon

How so? It's legal digital streaming. Aside from not sucking what separates it from the rest of the barrel?

Digital streaming (i.e. cable on demand services) are not the same as digital downloads.

P.S.: noticeable compression artifacts and lossy 5.1 is hardly what I'd call "awfully good". You can get that quality w/ a good upscaling DVD player.

[hardcorefrokid]

People who say Blu-ray looks no different from DVD are probably those who buy an HDTV and don't fiddle with the settings. Granted, a lot of HDTV's look great out of the box, but most have to be calibrated to achieve a great looking picture.

As for the digital downloads or physical media debate, physical media is here to stay. Sure digital downloads and streaming services will become more popular but it won't phase out physical media. Plus, like others have said, Internet speeds (average) aren't up to par to match Blu-ray's quality, yet. People like to own things and show them off. I mean look at this forum, people take pictures of their home theaters and Blu-ray collections and post them on the Internet. Just about everyone is like that. A wall full of Blu-rays is far more impressive than a hard drive full of movies and shows.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by P@t_Mtl

Don't come to Canada, you will not be buying a lot of them

pat, you really need to look around more. We (Quebecers) are kind of getting screwed. But almost all Disney movies come with a rebate coupon that you can get on line and is usually linked to in the Canadian deals section. For new releases, they apply here as well, but the Disney rewards upgrade coupons usually don't.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by Jacob6875

The thing is though DVD took over because it was in every way better than VHS was. Better picture, more durable, cheaper (think about trying to buy a tv show season like 13 VHS tapes) and even more portable.


Now blu-ray offers no advantages except better picture and having a coating that is supposed to prevent scratches. It is more expensive than DVD (usually a lot more), requires a better TV to see any advantage, and can't be played in any portable player. I am going on on a trip this weekend for easter...... and since portable blu-ray players don't exist I am forced to take DVDs.

Until blu-rays can do everything a DVD can just as well for the same price a lot of people are simply not going to upgrade to it.

not at all, if I want to record how is a media that only plays better? (OK now there are PVRs and DVD recorders but in 1998 there where none and there where none for a few years after DVD. If I want to stop my DVD, take it out and bring it to the bedroom to continue to watch on that DVD player you need to search for where you stopped but if it was VHS, the tape will be stopped where you left out.


On the ether hand BD has better video but it also has better sound, it is also more durable and it fits a lot more content so more portable (right, if I replace 6-7 DVDs with one BD then that is convenient, right?

[DetroitSportsFan]

Please get the thread back on topic.

[AaronSCH]

Bill Hunt made his usual thinly veiled attack on Fox in his hilarious "My Two Cents." I think he was more upset that they didn't include him in the piece. This guy's got an ego that eclipses his readership. It's just one analyst's opinion and I agree with some of what was stated in that article—as does Hunt, oddly, in his "Bits" editorial.

Most of the people I know don't currently own a Blu-ray player and don't really see much of a difference over DVD. And when looking at some recent "high definition" releases, I'm afraid that is true for me as well . But collecting Blu-ray discs is a hobby for me. Unfortunately, most people have no desire to build a movie library let alone re-buy movies they already own on DVD. It doesn't take a tech savvy guy with an online website hobby to realize that the studios are packaging DVDs with the Blu-rays for a reason. Truth is, if Blu-ray had truly "taken off," there would be no reason to bundle both formats together. You didn't see studios piggy-backing VHS tapes with DVDs.

It's three years after the launch of Blu-ray and I see my own behavior evolving. I look at the shelves lined with movies and I realize that eventually there will be no need to own so many dust collectors. There are 52 weeks in a year and hardly any time to do the things I need to do let alone the things I want to do. If I watch two Blu-ray movies a week, I can get through about one-fifth of my collection. Any adult with a healthy working and social life would be hard-pressed to find enough time to watch movies at home more than once or twice a week.

I am coming to the realization that there are maybe a couple of hundred movies that are truly worth owning because many of them are unlikely to have subsequent viewings. So why do I refuse to part with that copy of "Speed Racer?"

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by threefiftyrocket

Saying digital downloads are trash is rubbish, a BD disc is nothing but digital encoding, and given the proper speeds and equipment, you could download an exact copy of what is available on physical media. It's absolutely insane to expect that with download speeds the way they are, but to call a digital download trash because the ones that you have seen may have been, is just uneducated.

I agree with you BD or digital in theory there is no difference, but the rest is rubish. The encoding is all the matter and for DL to match BD it would need to be a DL of a file that is BD size. No one offers that. So the guy is right in saying DL is crap. If and when that changes then you will have avalid point. But for someone that obviously realizes DVD is no where near as good as BD and have an issue with people saying BD is no better then BD I can't see how you can justify that DL is not worst themn BD and crap when that is the only thing offered.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by threefiftyrocket

I didn't say it wasn't a BD Rip, but the fella is trying to say that all digital downloads are crap, which is wrong. Was it legal? Probably not, but it looked and sounded great, which is the point that I was making, refuting his claim.

How did it look great, you said yourself it was not as good as the BD you have.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by krazeyeyez

If bootleggers in china or their moms basement can get great quality over the internet, why can't actual companies? The only bootlegs i have ever seen are pretty awful... but if it can be done illegally, why on earth can't it be done legally. That makes no sense to me.

simple

1) most people that pirate are not demanding (it is free after all) so even if it looks like crap theyu say it looks great

2) studios don't want easily copiable top quality transfers going around

3) an illegal site does not have customers. They don't care if the guy has issues with the ISP or anything like that, the guy will go back no matter what happens, with a legal site it is the opposite. The simplest real highspead account from Bell here comes with 25GB after that it is extra $, Netflix decided to make the Canadian default .3GB/h so that people can watch a few movies in a month instead of the 2GB/h which after you add e-mail and surfing and youtube and stuff might be limiting the customer to a handful of movies at best.

4) Most legal is streaming while anything that is close to BD quality and illegal is probably DL with "watch the movie a few hours later"

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by krazeyeyez

I fully enjoyed watching the HD restored version of star trek OS on the web (CBS i think is the company that has them up). They definitely blew away my dvd sets, sound sucked granted but for free could not be beat. Don't understand dismissing downloads by so many on here, not to mention dvd lol. Seems there must have been a ton of people sitting around watching movies for the past 10 years thinking to themselves "man this quality sucks".

when I was a poor student ramen noodles where a staple of my diet because they where dirt cheap and it beat being hungry. Because I had to make due with them at that point in time does not mean I want them now or make them haute cuisine.

DVD was what I had to make due then, so it filled the hunger of watching movies in the best way possible at the time. Now they look like crap because I don't have to limit lmyself to such crappy presentation. Now I am making due with BD and I hope one day I can say BD is unacceptable crap because something much better is in existence.

[ZoetMB]

Originally Posted by AcidRain

i'm waiting for the "my upconverted vhs looks and sound as good as a blu-ray"

Well, not VHS, but S-VHS....

(only kidding)

[ZoetMB]

Originally Posted by mywhitenoise

CDs are around, but that format is dead. Vinyls are still produced, but that's a niche market.

Originally Posted by Rob71

Before making comments like this, please do some research.

You want the research? Here it is (US numbers from RIAA):
In 2009, 3.2 million vinyl LPs and EPs were sold and 300,000 vinyl singles. That's nothing. Vinyl LPs and EPs have a 0.17% unit share counting all formats and a 0.79% unit share counting just "long form" formats. So in spite of all the hype about vinyl, it's nothing more than a rounding error. (And I'm a vinyl fan and still have 500 albums in my living room.) 2010 numbers haven't been released yet and they probably are higher, but even if they doubled (which they didn't), it's still nothing.

In 2009, 292.9 million CDs were sold. That sounds like a lot, but that's down from 942.5 million units in 2000. The big labels are part of publicly traded businesses. Publicly traded companies don't keep divisions that decline 20% per year with no sign of turnaround.

The problem is that digital sales are not making up for the loss of physical sales, mainly because the market has returned to being a singles market. In 2009 vs. 2008, digital units grew only 2.7%, but physical units declined almost 20%.

The total size of the record business in the U.S. (at list prices) in 2009 was $7.778 billion. The peak was in 1999 at $14.585 billion, so the market is now 53% of its peak (and it should be even smaller for 2010 and even less than that for 2011.) So not only are CD's dying, but the business is dying overall.

That's why both Warner Music and EMI are for sale. (They'll probably eventually merge, which they were stopped from doing by the EU some years ago, but the business has gotten so bad, they'll probably be permitted to do so now.) And anyone who buys it is not buying it for the records business, they're buying it for the music publishing business, which is still a pretty good business.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by ZoetMB

So not only are CD's dying, but the business is dying overall.

The issue is that if someone starts with that (i.e. the business is dying overall.) and that is enough then so i dl music and anything music related. For me if someone says CD is dying, that means that there will be a time (probably not to distant) when one can buy music but not CDs. The same way VHS died and DVD is dying. market % wise CD has not really lost any raw ground and has not been in a long time.

[krazeyeyez]

Maybe you didn't read my comment as i was asking about BLU QUALITY (as in better then what is offered by legal streaming and labeled as HD) illegal downloads, not the ones that suck. I personally have never seen them, but i keep hearing about them, maybe they are like sasquatch. I just don't understand how a group of people illegally can produce and distribute better quality over the net then companies and studios with the means and finances to do so.

As for the ramen noodles, your missing out, they still hit the spot time to time.

[frogmort]

Originally Posted by Underworld54

Most people are still content with dvd and there is no way blu-ray will ever be as popular as the dvd format. Keeping mind, the jump in quality from vhs to dvd is far and away higher than the jump from dvd to blu-ray.

"The top selling Blu-ray was Tron: Legacy which managed to garner a massive 68% of sales on the format outselling the DVD at a 2:1 ratio."

"Total revenue hit $47.95m representing year on year growth of around 20% which is the polar opposite of DVD which was down this week 44.6%."

https://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=6221

[Steedeel]

Yes, good news. also we have Starwars, Lion king and Harry Potter which should boost the industry even further. I think Disney will help Bluray sales simply because loads of parents want their children to have physical copies of the classics to revisit many times.

Factor into that titles like the Jurassic Park Trilogy and i can see Bluray remaining strong for at least the next ten years (people will still be collecting well after that!)

No doubt the download brigade will be up in arms at this post but that's what i believe.
I try to inform family, friends and workmates of the benefits of bluray and will continue to do so. Personally i have seen a shift towards HD with people buying televisions and Blurays. I think the Olympic games and Euro 2012 will boost awareness of Hd further and that can only be a good thing for the Blu!

[threefiftyrocket]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

I agree with you BD or digital in theory there is no difference, but the rest is rubish. The encoding is all the matter and for DL to match BD it would need to be a DL of a file that is BD size. No one offers that. So the guy is right in saying DL is crap. If and when that changes then you will have avalid point. But for someone that obviously realizes DVD is no where near as good as BD and have an issue with people saying BD is no better then BD I can't see how you can justify that DL is not worst themn BD and crap when that is the only thing offered.

Okay, I'm just going to say that I prefer BD because I think it is the best quality possible right now, and I have an affinity for physical media. Hell I still buy all of my music on CD's b/c I want to have the physical media. I agree with your statement and I agree that the digital downloads that I have (digital copies) are nowhere near the quality of a BD.

The point that I was trying to make, and it seemed like someone bit my head off is that a friend of mine has Blade Runner on his computer. I asked him about it and found out it was from an HD broadcast apparently. And was downloaded via torrent. It was a digital version of the film, and it was a download thus fitting the description of a "digital download" It was not rubbish... it looked very very good.

I completely agree that physical media is here to stay, but just to say something is rubbish b/c what is readily available is not as good as what you prefer is a false statement, because there are those that are available that are pretty good.

LONG LIVE THE BLU!!!

Originally Posted by Anthony P

How did it look great, you said yourself it was not as good as the BD you have.

Just because something isn't blu ray doesn't mean it can't look great. I've seen HD broadcasts that looked great.

Especially when it comes to Blade Runner, saying the download of that isn't as good as the BD of the same film is like saying a Sirloin Steak isn't as good as a Filet Mignon... they're both delicious!