Oh noes teh sky is falling!

[Cevolution]

Not only does paid digital have to contend with worldwide internet issues, but it also needs 2 whole generations of people to die before it will even come close to becoming the dominant format. My parents and grandparents would never covert to digital downloading and streaming (neither will I for that matter), and it's a fact that the majority of people in their age groups share the same mentality.

[KRW1]

Originally Posted by raygendreau

Blu-ray audio has been around for a while. Not so easy to find a retail outlet selling 45,78 and lp discs, let alone a turntable to play them on. I know people that prefer them though.

The point is, for videophiles the epitome of disc media is Blu-ray and there is no digital alternative that matches PQ. With 4K download, there is now a superior alternative and it is digital. Something has to give.

Given that a 100+ GB 4K movie download is stored at 38 GB on a media server, why is it taking so long for BDA to establish a spec?

No, the whole point of that link which passed you by, is that nothing has to give. So long as there is market to support it they will release the physical media. DVD, MP3, CD, vinyl, Bluray and streaming all co-exist nicely.

Also, predictions are futile. I know that bluray audio has had tiny releases over the last few years but I didn't think I'd be pre-ordering three from Amazon anytime soon.

I live within walking distance of no less than 5 shops that'll happily sell you a turntable. Things like this are made for bricks and mortar shops as if you're spending £2k on a turntable, you'll want to hear it first and have decent after sale support.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by raygendreau

So, given an increase of 15% that gets you to around $2.5 billion for BD compared to EST at $3 Billion with a 51% growth.

Do you know how to read?



This is what you quoted from the article

Overall digital revenue in the first half of the year was up more than 24% to more than $3 billion, with EST revenue up more than 50%

Can you see that it was not EST that was anywhere near 3B (I will get to it later) but “digital” that grew by 24% and became 3B how can they both be talking about the same thing if one grew by 24% and the other 50%?

Now why couldn’t EST be anywhere near 3B? because it grew by 50% and digital (the sum of all that ) only grew by 24% (less then half of the 50%). Even if the rest showed no growth (no new Netflix members Vudu did not have more rental ....) it would have been 25% growth for digital and the more you assume the other services grew the farther from that 1/2 point you need to be.

As for what is included with digital distribution by DEG, here is an old DEG sales report for the 2009 year end http://www.org.id.tue.nl/ifip-tc14/d...eport-2009.pdf if you go to the end of the first page you can clearly see that in 1999 “digital” was 0.6B$ why? Was there way to buy and DL movies? No, way to rent fiolms like Netfl;ix of Vudu? No. What there was in 1999 was payperview and other cable services that were counted and are still counted today in that 3B.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by raygendreau

Let me paint you a picture of the future. You are sitting in your rocking chair, looking over at your wall of BDs, then your view shifts to the dusty inoperative BD player next to your old 1080P HD TV. You have been to Best Buy and looked at Amazon listings for replacement players, but none of them play BDs or DVDs any more.Only media servers are available.

You still have your 1080P TV, but you had to go out and buy a converter so you could watch the broadcasts which are now all in 4K.

Hope is not lost. Someday, Best Buy will offer an upgrade and save, which will allow you to trade your Blu-ray collection in for a 4K Sony Media Server and a new 4K TV. Prices should be reasonable by then.

But how is that any different from the one beside it where we have Joe that decides “it is time too upgrade my 4K TV" and he runs out and buys the new (Sony) 4K TV, hooks it up to his old Sony 4k media player just to find out it is incompatible because the media player only worked with the old 4k TVs like the one he just replaced?

Or how about the one beside that one Joe sits on his rocking chair to watch the movie on his Sony 4K media server but nothing is playing, because Sony stopped the service (since there are only a handful of people that bought the server and now they are just supporting the standard format) and with out it he can’t access his films even though they are on his server?


Personally I have a PC, laptop, two PS3s (and soon a PS4) and a stand alone player, so so I cannot say I am too worried with your scenario at least one of those devices will continue to work for decades and most likely my lifetime, while the same can't be said about the scenarios I described (which are also a lot more likely). As for connecting the BD player to newer TVs can you tell me when and what connectors you foresee? the last time I looked everything new comes with HDMI and they just updated the HDMI specs while remaining backwards compatible. Also how will the Media server you buy today that is using HDMI be any better at becoming that new connection format?

Not so easy to find a retail outlet selling 45,78 and lp discs, let alone a turntable to play them on

Maybe if you close your eyes hard enough that might be true. I can think of at least 6 indie stores in the Montreal area that sell records. And I just checked Walmart.ca, Bestbuy.ca and futureshop.ca and all three have at least one record player that can be found in my local retailer (the minute I clicked on s model and it was available no need to look any more) and more that might only be available on-line (at Walmart it took three tries before I got one that showed as available locally), I also checked sears.ca and there were a few but they don’t show store availability on the site as far as I can see

(note. Just in case you decide to BS that they might still be easy to find in Canada but not the US, if you go to WM, BB or sears .com you can see a bunch of record players that are available on their website, but I wanted to see how easy it would be to find them at my local B&M)

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by Wendell R. Breland

IMO, it is time to see if the mods will boot the streaming trolls

agree

[Steedeel]

[QUOTE=Anthony P;8230375]Do you know how to read?



This is what you quoted from the article







Can you see that it was not EST that was anywhere near 3B (I will get to it later) but “digital” that grew by 24% and became 3B how can they both be talking about the same thing if one grew by 24% and the other 50%?

Now why couldn’t EST be anywhere near 3B? because it grew by 50% and digital (the some of all that ) only grew by 24% (less then half of the 50%). Even if the rest showed no growth (no new Netflix members Vudu did not have more rental ....) it would have been 25% growth for digital and the more you assume the other services grew the farther from that 1/2 point you need to be.

As for what is included with digital distribution by DEG, here is an old DEG sales report for the 2009 year end http://www.org.id.tue.nl/ifip-tc14/d...eport-2009.pdf if you go to the end of the first page you can clearly see that in 1999 “digital” was 0.6B$ why? Was there way to buy and DL movies? No, way to rent fiolms like Netfl;ix of Vudu? No. What there was in 1999 was payperview and other cable services that were counted and are still counted today in that 3B.[/

Great points, I also am getting ps4 and have a Slim ps3 and the new top loader so I should be good for decades also.

[raygendreau]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

Do you know how to read?



This is what you quoted from the article







Can you see that it was not EST that was anywhere near 3B (I will get to it later) but “digital” that grew by 24% and became 3B how can they both be talking about the same thing if one grew by 24% and the other 50%?

Now why couldn’t EST be anywhere near 3B? because it grew by 50% and digital (the sum of all that ) only grew by 24% (less then half of the 50%). Even if the rest showed no growth (no new Netflix members Vudu did not have more rental ....) it would have been 25% growth for digital and the more you assume the other services grew the farther from that 1/2 point you need to be.

As for what is included with digital distribution by DEG, here is an old DEG sales report for the 2009 year end http://www.org.id.tue.nl/ifip-tc14/d...eport-2009.pdf if you go to the end of the first page you can clearly see that in 1999 “digital” was 0.6B$ why? Was there way to buy and DL movies? No, way to rent fiolms like Netfl;ix of Vudu? No. What there was in 1999 was payperview and other cable services that were counted and are still counted today in that 3B.

Corrected. Thanks. In a prior post I did not have the 2011 $2 Billion figure for BD sales. The statement was correct in a prior post. I'm looking for a $ figure for EST for 2011 and 2012. It is probably around $1 Billion in 2012

A relevant comparison between physical disk and digital revenue from a critique of the DEG report:

http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/columns/...-the-story.php

* Overall DVD and Blu-ray disc sales fell 4.7% Y-Y to nearly $3.6 billion in the first half of 2013. * Overall rental revenue, including digital, fell more than 5.5% Y-Y to nearly $3.1 billion. * DVD/BD rentals from physical stores like Blockbuster fell 12.6% Y-Y to $522 million. * Subscription-based DVD/BD rental revenue declined nearly 21% Y-Y to $531 million. * Revenue from DVD/BD kiosks fell nearly 4% Y-Y to $955 million.

-on-demand services were up 6.9% Y-Y, earning nearly $1.1B. And subscription-based streaming (read: Netflix) saw a gain of 32% Y-Y, generating about $1.5B in cold hard cash for studios and media conglomerates. And total home entertainment spending in the USA hit $4.63B for the first six months of this year, up 3% -

DVD buyers are transitioning to digital rather than BD. It is more likely that they will see a sufficient quality difference between DVD and 4K download than they do between DVD and BD.

[cricepng]

Originally Posted by raygendreau

DVD buyers are transitioning to digital rather than BD. It is more likely that they will see a sufficient quality difference between DVD and 4K download than they do between DVD and BD.

Most DVD owners aren't as concerned about the quality difference and won't want to make the transition to 4K either.

[Wendell R. Breland]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

Can you see that it was not EST that was anywhere near 3B

Anthony, have you come across the total number of devices capable of streaming, downloading, PPV, etc.?

The devices include media players and streamers, pads, PCs, STBs, satellite receivers, etc. I would believe the number of devices would be in the hundreds of millions. That is why I think it is hilarious when folks point to “digital” and say “digital” revenue was xx$ and Blu-ray revenue was yy$. AFAIK, there is no separation of “digital” HD and SD revenue making a direct comparison to Blu-ray revenue impossible.

I would wager that digital revenue per device is a tiny fraction of the physical revenue per device.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by Wendell R. Breland

Anthony, have you come across the total number of devices capable of streaming, downloading, PPV, etc.?

The devices include media players and streamers, pads, PCs, STBs, satellite receivers, etc. I would believe the number of devices would be in the hundreds of millions. That is why I think it is hilarious when folks point to “digital” and say “digital” revenue was xx$ and Blu-ray revenue was yy$. AFAIK, there is no separation of “digital” HD and SD revenue making a direct comparison to Blu-ray revenue impossible.

I would wager that digital revenue per device is a tiny fraction of the physical revenue per device.

I suspect your correct.

[Trevorriley]

Blu-ray may be popular in some ares but it is still not widely used. Compared to DVD, it is a little more expensive and there are very few players to play it.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by Trevorriley

Blu-ray may be popular in some ares but it is still not widely used. Compared to DVD, it is a little more expensive and there are very few players to play it.

Yep, not many people have a playstation. Or a cheap bluray player. It's those pesky VHS recorders spoiling all the fun IMO

[Steedeel]

This is just another smack down in the offing. Getting silly now IMO

[Dynamo of Eternia]

Originally Posted by Trevorriley

Blu-ray may be popular in some ares but it is still not widely used. Compared to DVD, it is a little more expensive and there are very few players to play it.

This statement makes no sense. "Not popular in some areas"... "very few players that play it"

You act like Blu-Ray is this rare, hard to find treasure that only very few stores in very select locations have and carry, and people have to go out of their way to get it.

Pretty much all of the major manufacturers that made (and in many cases still make) DVD players make Blu-Ray players. You can walk into Walmart, Best Buy, Target, etc. and see a decent selection of available players, not to mention online ordering options from Amazon and even those same B&M retailer's sites. Decent players can now be purchased for at or under $100.

And of course there is that little game system called the PS3 that plays them as well (and the upcoming PS4 and Xbox One systems will also play them).



There seems to be this big misconception that just because Blu-Ray hasn't quite achieved the same level of success that DVD did when it's popularity peak, that it's this super niche format like Laserdisc was. Blu-Ray is doing just fine. It's not going anywhere anytime soon, and there are more casual people buying it than were early on.

The reason that you don't see the same level of success is probably because more casual buyers likely aren't replacing every DVD they ever bought with the Blu-Ray of the same movie. They'll probably upgrade a few favorites and otherwise reserve their BD purchases to films not already in their collections.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by Trevorriley

Blu-ray may be popular in some ares but it is still not widely used. Compared to DVD, it is a little more expensive and there are very few players to play it.

Just out of interest, do you have a home cinema set-up?

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by raygendreau

Corrected. Thanks. In a prior post I did not have the 2011 $2 Billion figure for BD sales. The statement was correct in a prior post. I'm looking for a $ figure for EST for 2011 and 2012. It is probably around $1 Billion in 2012

I am not sure what statement you are implying was true (or how it was true.)

As for what EST your guess is off. DEG changed their website and all the info was lost. But luckily (for old info) I had the good idea to Google search by file name and so I found them all archived at a different location

so here is what you asked for http://www.dvdinformation.com/pressr...inal%20Ext.pdf

for year end 2011 EST was 602.85M and in 2012 811.52M

and for what was discussed ( mid year with digital being 3M and growing 24% in the article you asked about)
first half of 2012 was 326.33M and 2013 490.62M with growth of 50.35%

A relevant comparison between physical disk and digital revenue from a critique of the DEG report:

http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/columns/...-the-story.php

You posted this before, and I stopped reading it at

The DEG’s original mission (and its predecessor’s, the Blu-ray Disc Association) was to push Blu-ray into every home as a replacement for the standard-definition red laser DVD.

why would anyone that has even the least amount of grasp of home entertainment continue past that point. It can't be nothing but the delusions of a nut case.

First of all the BDA was not the predecessor of DEG , they are two completely different entities. The Blu-ray founders was started in 2002 by some electronic companies so that they can work on a new format, in 2004 it was renamed to BDA as they started to add more top members (such as studios and tech companies that wanted their input) and this is their web site. http://www.blu-raydisc.com/en/ (and the BDA still exists which is also why in this and other 4k threads we are discussing them adding 4k to BD). On the other hand DEG existed from the late 90's and got started by the studios to collect info and study the evolution of the new home entertainemet choices (DVD, PPV, movie channels....) and this is their website http://www.degonline.org/


Also I never trust anyone that tells me "don't trust X because X has an agenda and then manipulates X's numbers to demonstrate their point.


As to the things you highlighted "that make sense". Let me just put it this way.

* Overall DVD and Blu-ray disc sales fell 4.7% Y-Y to nearly $3.6 billion in the first half of 2013. * Overall rental revenue, including digital, fell more than 5.5% Y-Y to nearly $3.1 billion. * DVD/BD rentals from physical stores like Blockbuster fell 12.6% Y-Y to $522 million. * Subscription-based DVD/BD rental revenue declined nearly 21% Y-Y to $531 million. * Revenue from DVD/BD kiosks fell nearly 4% Y-Y to $955 million.

DVD buyers are transitioning to digital rather than BD. It is more likely that they will see a sufficient quality difference between DVD and 4K download than they do between DVD and BD.

Why do digital fanboys always lump BD with DVD and then say "hey look it went down", the simple reality is that if they lumped digital with DVD it would have gone down even more (look at the DEG table). It takes all three together to get the 2.04% growth that was seen from the first half of 2013.

-on-demand services were up 6.9% Y-Y, earning nearly $1.1B. And subscription-based streaming (read: Netflix) saw a gain of 32% Y-Y, generating about $1.5B in cold hard cash for studios and media conglomerates. And total home entertainment spending in the USA hit $4.63B for the first six months of this year, up 3% -

I know where the two first ideas come from, and they match the DEG report but where does "And total home entertainment spending in the USA hit $4.63B for the first six months of this year, up 3% -" come from? is it a super important typo and meant 8.63B? or was it intentional? in the end it does not matter and if we use the 8.63B you can see how small the 1.5B, 1.1B and ESTs .5B or even digital where it is all combined to make 3B really are compared to the whole market.

[Wendell R. Breland]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

Just great, you made me spill my coffee because of the

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by Wendell R. Breland

Anthony, have you come across the total number of devices capable of streaming, downloading, PPV, etc.?

no

The devices include media players and streamers, pads, PCs, STBs, satellite receivers, etc. I would believe the number of devices would be in the hundreds of millions.

obviously it is, can't imagine anyone debating it. Let me put it this way, I believe there are between 250M and 300M only in consoles since the Wii, Wii U, PS3 and 360 can all play Netflix. A more interesting question would be is it in the Billions (after all there are 7B people in the world and even though some live "a primitive" lifestyle and a lot in extreme poverty, and those people might not have a device that would do the job there is still enough people in the first world where I would assume it would be more than the per capita)

I would wager that digital revenue per device is a tiny fraction of the physical revenue per device.

I never understood the attachment rate argument. It has always appeared to me that they are used to naively dismiss numbers that were not liked since they never change the facts (Oh look there are a lot of PS3's out there and BD revenue is not that much higher then HD-DVD so BD is not doing well, did Warner care about that? no, only how much $ was coming from each of them when they decided HD-DVD was not bringing in enough).

Think about it, if Bob watched Netflix streaming on his cell (when waiting at reception for a business meeting), tablet (when going to the doctors) ,laptop (at the airport because it has a 17" screen), console (in the LR ), smart TV(in the bed room) and BD player (in the HT) does it change how much he pays (Ok, I don't know how many devices Netflix allows so if I went over the max just forget some of them) does he pay more than Joe that only watches it on his laptop because he has no other device that he can use?

[Wendell R. Breland]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

I never understood the attachment rate argument.

Yes, I should have included a . It was meant to be sarcastic because it seems to me most streamer/downloader flag wavers were former red disc flag wavers. The attachment rate numbers used to be stuck in front of my face all the time in the early days Blu vs Red. That said I do think the revenue from non physical media would be much more than it is.

does he pay more than Joe that only watches it on his laptop because he has no other device that he can use?

No. It is a flat rate regardless of use. The TOS does change, the following from my account:

you can have six (6) devices registered to your account at any given time, and you may stream up to two (2) movies or TV shows at the same time by default. There is also an option to upgrade to four (4) streams at the same time from the Your Account page.

You may find this interesting, if you click play on ANY streaming title from Netflix it shows up in your account as viewed even if you only watched 10 seconds of said title. I’m sure titles watched data presented to the street makes them look good.

[raygendreau]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

I am (1) not sure what statement you are implying was true (or how it was true.)

(2)As for what EST your guess is off . DEG changed their website and all the info was lost. But luckily (for old info) I had the good idea to Google search by file name and so I found them all archived at a different location

so here is what you asked for http://www.dvdinformation.com/pressr...inal%20Ext.pdf

for year end 2011 EST was 602.85M and in 2012 811.52M

and for what was discussed ( mid year with digital being 3M (This should be 3 B) and growing 24% in the article you asked about)
first half of 2012 was 326.33M and 2013 490.62M with growth of 50.35%



You posted this before, and I stopped reading it at



why would anyone that has even the least amount of grasp of home entertainment continue past that point. It can't be nothing but the delusions of a nut case.

First of all the BDA was not the predecessor of DEG , they are two completely different entities. The Blu-ray founders was started in 2002 by some electronic companies so that they can work on a new format, in 2004 it was renamed to BDA as they started to add more top members (such as studios and tech companies that wanted their input) and this is their web site. http://www.blu-raydisc.com/en/ (and the BDA still exists which is also why in this and other 4k threads we are discussing them adding 4k to BD). On the other hand DEG existed from the late 90's and got started by the studios to collect info and study the evolution of the new home entertainemet choices (DVD, PPV, movie channels....) and this is their website http://www.degonline.org/


Also I never trust anyone that tells me "don't trust X because X has an agenda and then manipulates X's numbers to demonstrate their point.


As to the things you highlighted "that make sense". Let me just put it this way.


Why do digital fanboys always lump BD with DVD and then say "hey look it went down", the simple reality is that if they lumped digital with DVD it would have gone down even more (look at the DEG table). It takes all three together to get the 2.04% growth that was seen from the first half of 2013.


I know where the two first ideas come from, and they match the DEG report but where does "And total home entertainment spending in the USA hit $4.63B for the first six months of this year, up 3% -" come from? (3) is it a super important typo and meant 8.63B? or was it intentional? in the end it does not matter and if we use the 8.63B you can see how small the 1.5B, 1.1B and ESTs .5B or even digital where it is all combined to make 3B really are compared to the whole market.

(1) The post I was referring to is #282 “Overall digital revenue in the first half of the year was up more than 24% to more than $3 billion, with EST revenue up more than 50%, DEG reported, crediting the increase to convenient access to digital collections and greater availability of digital at retail."

(2)I said around 1 Billion, seems safe to say it would be over 1 B by now

(3)I said it was a critique, I did not say it was unbiased. The link was included to show the source. He effectively compared what is happening to physical disk revenue and digital revenue. I took the 4.63 to be the author's typo. Total home entertainment spending is of no interest to me, just physical (BD) vs EST.

My interest in following EST vs BD revenue going forward is that if the perception that the 4K Ultra HD download surpasses or just equals 2K BD quality, the number of people who insist on having physical media will decline and probably accelerate. Since Sony just introduced their Ultra HD service, the historical figures aren't going to reflect any impact. They are important, though, because they show how rapidly EST revenue has been growing.

If Sony has its way, those who prefer physical media will be served by ‘mastered in 4K BDs’, while the rest will be content with digital.

I have been interacting with owners of the Sony 4K Ultra HD TV’s and the Sony Media Server. The Sony 4K download service just started in early Sept. These owners are very enthusiastic about the quality of the True 4K downloads and rentals they are watching. I have tried to get them to provide a comparison of a True UHD 4K movie with a 2K BD. No one seems interested enough to bother buying a physical disk of the same movie to do this.
I may rent a BD of After Earth from Redbox and see if Best Buy will let me compare it to the Sony Ultra 4K demo, which has clips of After Earth. running on their 65" UHD

Over on AVS, the last time I looked, there were 87 pages on a thread for the 4K Ultra HD Sony TVs. They are more concerned about solving issues and providing feedback on set up for their Sony TVs and Media Servers than they are about what will or will not happen to physical media.

Something else to watch is the content on the Sony download service. You can bet the other studios are watching this very closely. Once the initial kinks are worked out, I expect to see Sony come to some agreement on opening up the download service to other studios for content provision. Or, perhaps they will all set up a hub, where all studios provide rental and downloadable Ultra HD content.

Sony is keeping tight control during this early adopter phase. The FMP-X1 media server is really not far removed from a prototype. A few people in foreign countries actually purchased them, only to find out the download service is not available and the media server will not work in their country. Sony plans to provide the service internationally in the future, but the Media Server will be a different model.

A hack of their content security would be a major blow to this rollout.