Oh noes teh sky is falling!

[Tok]

The vast majority of ISPs in the US won't be able to handle high viewing times if the primary delivery is streaming. That is why even Netflix's SuperHD is still under 10Mbps and few have access to it and not all titles support it. When ISPs can reach 30Mbps consistently to users at high demand times and the quality exceeds BD I might try it for rental but I still have my doubts of having an online digital locker.

[octagon]

Originally Posted by pentatonic

Why is everyone assuming we'll never get better than BD if something replaces BD. Who said the quality will be crap. Oh, I guess since you don't understand my idea of technical advancement, you don't get that either.

Speaking only for myself, I'm skeptical of downloading and streaming as completely transparent replacements for physical media because I believe for at least the forseeable future network technology and more importantly infrastructures will not be able to keep pace with bandwidth demands.

Or maybe more accurately, improvements in physical media technology will - again, for the forseeable future - be better able to keep pace.

Will network technologies and infrastructures always and forever be lagging behind the ability of physical media to cheaply and conveniently deliver large amounts of data? Maybe not.

But if I had to bet I'd say physical media will likely have a significant edge for the next ten or more years.

But who really knows. We're all basically guessing.

[bluearth]

optical media losing the war?

I believe there is enough of the pie for everyone. Streaming etc may make physical media a niche market, but there will still be a market.

You cant just overlook basic human traits. People like to have or see things in a physical form. Is photoshop ever going to replace a pencil and a paper? No. As long as something has upside people will like it, and there will be a market for it.

What Im worried about is studios and companies pushing streaming and stamping out physical media even if it is profitable, with a final goal of allowing us to only 'rent' content through streaming instead of ever really owning it.

[mredman]

Noway the studios can be that dumb when they make billions on physical media now and this thread alone says it would be a gigantic mistake if they still wanna earn billions on their movies.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by pentatonic

Ok, so my answer is in my previous post and I do wish all goodnight

Funny thing though, a quick glimpse seems to reveal that I'm one with the biggest collections in the posters in this thread

Your words not mine.

So are you stating that people with fewer discs are not entitled to defend optical media?

By the way, why are you getting so annoyed? There wasn't one single thing in my post that was having a go at you, yet you call me stupid or arrogant.

My question was very simple. What advancement? Waiting five years into the future to get the quality we already have with Blu-ray Disc? Same with 4k bluray. Streaming will just keep trying to play catch up.

Finally, you have replied several times but you have still not stated how my comments were a low blow to you personally. Maybe you invented video compression?

[Wendell R. Breland]

Some of you may find this interesting:

A total of 73% of 1,000 respondents in the 2013 survey said they are not interested in buying a smart TV that includes Internet functionality and related apps.

Several years ago we set up two monitors in the video production control room and asked several staff members to critique a short clip for its content (not technical) value. We had a small professional grade monitor (Tektronix) and large consumer grade monitor (Sony XBR) for the viewers to use as they wished. We deliberately degraded the video feeding feeding the large monitor. It was interesting to note almost everyone focused in on the large monitor even tho the video looked much worse.

In many cases, SIZE matters .

[Dynamo of Eternia]

Originally Posted by pentatonic

If owning said disk makes you feel like you own the movie, great, but like with any intellectual property, you only have a legal copy for your own viewings. The laws on intellectual properties are very strict, it's the studios and musicians etc. that are not.

No one is saying that we own the "intellectual property," with all of the rights that go with owning said intellectual property (i.e. having the right to profiting from the sale and distribution of that movie, etc.). What we are saying is that we own that particular copy to do with what we want within reason (i.e. watch it at home, lend it out to friends and family, sell it if we no longer want it, etc.) with no restrictions within those parameters.

Sure, bootlegging and selling copies is illegal.

But the same can be of women's designer purses, for example. Someone who buys a legit purse can use it as they wish, lend it, sell it, etc. It doesn't give them the right to make knocks off of it and sell them, as some people illegally do.

There are also bootleg action figures, for another example, out there for copyrighted characters and lines. That is also technically illegal. Someone who buys a legit figure doesn't own the intellectual property, but they do own that particular figure, in and of itself, with the right to keep it, lend it, sell it, etc.

This really isn't a complicated concept to grasp.

[mrr1]

Originally Posted by pentatonic

First of all, the vinyl example that comes up all the time is not a valid one. While the final product delivers the same music, the means are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Vinyl being an analog device, the whole experience is different. But for a BD, 0s and 1s are 0s and 1s.

But people like vinyl records for the packaging, the artwork, how it looks on the shelf, how they can take it out and play it when they have guests over. It's much like owning a physical copy of a movie.

Collecting physical products is not all about quality.

Audiophiles who collect vinyl records are like videophiles who collect slipcovers and limited edition box sets. As long as has value, it will be made.

[Tok]

If the industry forces us into a system where I can't sell my discs if I decide I no longer want a title then I won't spend the same $15-$20 per newly released title I want. At most I would spend $10 and most likely I won't spend over $5 for most things. Go ahead Studios... Piss off your core customers.

[mrr1]

Originally Posted by octagon

The environment????

Please tell me you're joking.

No kidding.

As if all the vast amounts of electrical power needed to operate, transmit, and store data for all these electronic devices is more environmentally-friendly than producing and shipping physical plastic and aluminum discs. That's not even counting all the toxic batteries, rare earth metals, and shipping from Asia needed to make more tablets, hard drives, and cell phones (each of these devices only having a lifespan of a few years).

There's no environmental high road here.

[mrr1]

Originally Posted by bluearth

What Im worried about is studios and companies pushing streaming and stamping out physical media even if it is profitable, with a final goal of allowing us to only 'rent' content through streaming instead of ever really owning it.

This.

It's not out of the realm of possibility that some major studio out there will one day try to set this precedent by only releasing a DRM-stamped streaming digital edition of one of their big movies and not produce physical discs for it at all.

[blonde_devil]

Originally Posted by bluearth

optical media losing the war?

I believe there is enough of the pie for everyone. Streaming etc may make physical media a niche market, but there will still be a market.

you know, I would like to believe that too but that doesn't seem to be the case with movies. there is lots of competition out there - want a phone but hate Apple? no problem, you have options. don't like google? use yahoo or bing. don't like cable? get a dish. it seems for most things out there you have options but when it comes to home video, they want 1 format at a time. sure there is some overlap but when the studios decide time's up, one of them dies. we couldn't have vhs and beta - we needed 1 format. vhs and dvd overlapped for a while but it wasn't that long before vhs production stopped and dvd was the one despite there still being a market for vhs. when it came time for something better, we had HD and bluray fight it out. frankly, I am surprised that dvd is still around but in the end, it is more so they can charge you more for a 2 disk combo pack than for anything else. they seem to want 1 format only so when/if they decide digital is the way they want to go, it will happen no matter what people think.

using vinyl as a comparison is a bit off. yes vinyl is back but you need to look at a couple things. first, the records being made today are of better physical and material quality than the ones of the past as is the equipment. it isn't that 1970's records and stereos are making a comeback, it is modern versions of them that are enhanced by modern technology. as well, it isn't being done by the music industry as a whole but more by indy artists trying to do something different to be noticed and for promotion of very specific artists/albums. it is a very limited market. and usually with that, you get access to digital versions of the songs as well. I bought a cd not that long ago that also had a link to I could download an mp3 version of it. it is a very small market and you pay for that. with physical media like blurays, the collectability factor can be found other places. you buy that record as you can't find other Pink Floyd stuff but you can buy Batman, Superman, Star Wars, Star Trek, ... statues and collectibles. when they decide to go digital, these will still be around to fill that void where as with music, there is nothing else. and for most people, that isn't even a concern.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by blonde_devil

you know, I would like to believe that too but that doesn't seem to be the case with movies. there is lots of competition out there - want a phone but hate Apple? no problem, you have options. don't like google? use yahoo or bing. don't like cable? get a dish. it seems for most things out there you have options but when it comes to home video, they want 1 format at a time. sure there is some overlap but when the studios decide time's up, one of them dies. we couldn't have vhs and beta - we needed 1 format. vhs and dvd overlapped for a while but it wasn't that long before vhs production stopped and dvd was the one despite there still being a market for vhs. when it came time for something better, we had HD and bluray fight it out. frankly, I am surprised that dvd is still around but in the end, it is more so they can charge you more for a 2 disk combo pack than for anything else. they seem to want 1 format only so when/if they decide digital is the way they want to go, it will happen no matter what people think.

using vinyl as a comparison is a bit off. yes vinyl is back but you need to look at a couple things. first, the records being made today are of better physical and material quality than the ones of the past as is the equipment. it isn't that 1970's records and stereos are making a comeback, it is modern versions of them that are enhanced by modern technology. as well, it isn't being done by the music industry as a whole but more by indy artists trying to do something different to be noticed and for promotion of very specific artists/albums. it is a very limited market. and usually with that, you get access to digital versions of the songs as well. I bought a cd not that long ago that also had a link to I could download an mp3 version of it. it is a very small market and you pay for that. with physical media like blurays, the collectability factor can be found other places. you buy that record as you can't find other Pink Floyd stuff but you can buy Batman, Superman, Star Wars, Star Trek, ... statues and collectibles. when they decide to go digital, these will still be around to fill that void where as with music, there is nothing else. and for most people, that isn't even a concern.

That's how I feel. Pick a side and get off the fence people. ( that's how I feel)

[mredman]

Originally Posted by mrr1

This.

It's not out of the realm of possibility that some major studio out there will one day try to set this precedent by only releasing a DRM-stamped streaming digital edition of one of their big movies and not produce physical discs for it at all.

that will not happen since they earn billions on physical media next to streaming and downloads.

Blu ray and DVD is by FAR their number 1 cashcow and they know it.

[KRW1]

Originally Posted by pentatonic

You know what Mr dancing pixels, and I don't care if I'm banned, but you are either the stupidest member here, or the most arrogant. I don't care for either!

Did I say I had the biggest, I said I was one of them, as many who protest have so little it's laughable.
Goodnight

Hey, I've not had the time nor inclination to put more than a fraction of mine on here. I'm too modest to say how many.

It leads to another problem though. To go on milking the cash cow at my end, they need to convince me to rebuy most of the stuff I've already bought which I'm not going to do.

[arrow61095]

Streaming is fine for rental, but will never replace physical media for owning movies.

While there are some people that may not have a problem with the quality, the quality is not up to BD standards. Like cable, with HD you get mostly 1080i or 720p not 1080p like blu-ray (doesn't matter on small sets). The main culprit tends to be the audio, as with streaming you usually get Stereo or Dolby Digital or another lossy format, while with BD you get lossless audio like Uncompressed PCM and Dolby True HD. Not a big deal to your average person, but if someone is an audiophile or has a home theater system, they won't like the downgrade. Streaming companies will likely never offer lossless sound as it would balloon their storage and bandwidth problems, and they would make the argument that the rise in costs would hurt the library of content they could secure.

For me, the deal-braker of streaming and digital downloads comes to not "owning" a copy of the movie. It is fine for renting. But if you had all your movies downloaded on a hard drive and the hard drive crashed, you would lose all your movies. Movie studios would use formats and write protection to prevent you from backing up your hard drive of movies, since they are so paranoid about piracy. While some companies may allow you to re-download movies (in the case of a hard drive crash) from a "cloud" storage system, they may make you pay for it + how long before they rotate a movie out of their library and then you can't re-download it. Personally, when I buy a copy of a movie, I want to own a copy of it.

[James Freeman]

Optical media losing the war?

No.

Optical media is a big part of the movie total gross.
Ultra-violet/Streaming is not.

No executive corporate shark in their right mind will let streaming replace optical media.
If the'll see their little graphs incline towards the Streaming and losing in the optical region,
they will simply eliminate streaming altogether in a blink of an eye.

Money Money Money.

[Steedeel]

http://homemediamagazine.com/eriks-s...pyrrhic-savior

Backs up a lot of people's arguments.

[KRW1]

Interesting article. Weirdly, I see streaming as an eventual threat to theatres more than home media. While I wouldn't pay anything to download and keep an older film, I've happily paid up to £10 to stream theatrical films at home on those occasions where they've been available. Then I've bought the disc when released.

£10 to watch a current theatrical release, at home on the big screen, makes way more sense than £5 to download and keep something older. To me, anyhoo.

If the disc was available at a premium, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by KRW1

Interesting article. Weirdly, I see streaming as an eventual threat to theatres more than home media. While I wouldn't pay anything to download and keep an older film, I've happily paid up to £10 to stream theatrical films at home on those occasions where they've been available. Then I've bought the disc when released.

£10 to watch a current theatrical release, at home on the big screen, makes way more sense than £5 to download and keep something older. To me, anyhoo.

If the disc was available at a premium, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

Agreed.