European BD sales...

[beechcroft]

In an ideal world you will only pay for a movie once.
As it is, if you happen to own a movie on VHS, laserdisc, DVD and bluray, then you've paid 4 times for it, in addition to any theater viewings you might have paid for. That's hardy reassuring for bluray adopters.
There are a number of different solutions to this, none of which will happen, cause the studios will be losing money (as in: not ripping off money) in any scenario alleviating the problem. In the simplest case you just pay a small upgrade fee if you own the movie in another format.

[Rob71]

Originally Posted by beechcroft

In an ideal world you will only pay for a movie once.
As it is, if you happen to own a movie on VHS, laserdisc, DVD and bluray, then you've paid 4 times for it, in addition to any theater viewings you might have paid for. That's hardy reassuring for bluray adopters.
There are a number of different solutions to this, none of which will happen, cause the studios will be losing money (as in: not ripping off money) in any scenario alleviating the problem. In the simplest case you just pay a small upgrade fee if you own the movie in another format.

Not that I would mind, but why would they do that? They are incurring cost transferring that film to the new medium and storing them until purchased by retail. Hollywood is not run by artists, it is run by businessmen who are in it for the money.

[Blaumann]

Originally Posted by blacklion

No one in the world ever had to update FW on a BD player just in order to play a disc?

That is not an inconvenience to Joe Sixpack and Soccer Mom?

DRM has ever stopped people from ripping BDs?

DRM has stopped studio employees from selling pre-release master copies of BDs to bootleggers?

Sigh...I just don't understand how any sane person can possibly imagine that there is a technical solution to piracy that will not involve inconvenience to consumers.

The consumer should endure FW updates and HDCP handshake problems because studios are worried about piracy?

This is why BD will fail.

Just a FYI: Soccer Mom's kids will do the updates for her.

Also my over 70 y.o. parents are doing updates on their computers just fine, although my mom still has problems using the Windows Explorer to find pictures from her digital camera. And even though there have been setbacks with handling this kind of new tech, they are using it just fine. And they accept, that there are inconveniences. It would only be a small step for them to learn, how to update a Blu-ray player (which of course i do for them for the time being).

Where there is a will, there is a way. The flawed update argument always assumes, there is no will in certain parts of society.

As it is often the case, J6P and Soccer Mom are greatly underestimated. So are the social connections they can rely on to help them with these kinds of problems (which are e.g. kids, friends, relatives).

Gladly the amount of updates that have to be done is actually only very small. Since the birth of Blu-ray, there have been arguments that players will fail in huge numbers when "BD+" gets updated. The fact, that many players (probably the vast majority) didn't even need an update for Avatar should show you, that it is not a problem with BD+ per se, but it's the implementation of the DRM in some players that didn't work correctly. If some players work just fine, but others don't, then i guess someone didn't do his homework properly.

I used to start with a htpc to get into Blu-ray. It was a p.i.t.a. all the way, mostly because of the incompetence of the software programmers. Since i started using hardware players (PS3, Sony S550 and OPPO BDP80), i never once had a problem with a Blu-ray disc again (except for one disc, that has gone bad and can't be played any more on any player.)

This was the only time i've had real problems with DRM (and thus needed a tool, that solved the "DRM problem"). But i always thought of this more as incompetent software programmers, rather than a bad sceme of an evil corporation.

[beechcroft]

Originally Posted by Rob71

Not that I would mind, but why would they do that? They are incurring cost transferring that film to the new medium and storing them until purchased by retail. Hollywood is not run by artists, it is run by businessmen who are in it for the money.

If the users know that a possible future format will only cost them the upgrade fee they will be more inclined to invest in an existing format. As it stands I am fully justified to skip a generation if I expect a new format coming.

Also, the purpose of the upgrade fee is to cover the costs you mention + a small profit.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by richieb1971

My mother just wants to watch the movie.. If she bought a double disc blu/dvd combo and the blu ray produced a black screen she couldn't pass, she would just put the DVD in instead. That would be her workaround.. Blu ray fail!

I've met 3 people in my life who have -

a) watched blu rays using composite cables even though they have HDTV and blu ray player

b) had bought a disc where on their equipment it looked pretty much like the DVD because the equipment used didn't really warrant 1080p to look good.

c) The movie didn't come out on blu ray at all.


A was fixed by me

B) was down to 32" HDTV

C) was down to studio not releasing the movie. Which was worse when HD DVD was out due to exclusive contracts.

Luckily most blu ray players default to 1080/24.. Trying to explain that to my mother is like speaking English to an alien.

Just because someone on this forum is all techie and has graduated through nerd school doesn't mean that others will want to even learn it at all.

BD live, something which uses f/w to operate is completely useless on most discs. Most discs have irrelevant content to the material your watching. I also would say its a waste having 3 or 4 discs in a pack when you just want the movie in HD. But thats my personal choice. If you want the extra discs you should apply for them via bd live lol.

I don't get your point. There where two things mentioned before, price of BD disks and DRM/piracy, what does someone that is using composite or a 32"TV or movies that are not yet out on BD have anything to do with any of the topics going on? was this posted in the wrong thread (has happened to me before) or is it just an off the cuff rant?

PS I am not dismissing it, just don’t understand if I missed something.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by beechcroft

In an ideal world you will only pay for a movie once.
As it is, if you happen to own a movie on VHS, laserdisc, DVD and bluray, then you've paid 4 times for it, in addition to any theater viewings you might have paid for. That's hardy reassuring for bluray adopters.
There are a number of different solutions to this, none of which will happen, cause the studios will be losing money (as in: not ripping off money) in any scenario alleviating the problem. In the simplest case you just pay a small upgrade fee if you own the movie in another format.

sometimes you do (a few movies have 10$ rebates or so). But I think they should do it with everything, that would be cool with cars, youi buy a car, a few years later the new model comes out and you like it better, pay a small upgrade fee and you have the new one

[tvine2000]

The main reason for the fall of bd sales.1. studios are spending to much money on bdlive and blu phone,instead of spending that money on new hd masters.2. studios are using these old hd master scrubing the hell out of them applying dnr and they think thats ok.
Anyone that has hung around this forum since blu-ray launched can spot a bad or sub par transfer a mile away.
preorders of blu-ray titles are down because we no longer trust the studios with pq and so we wait for reviews before buying.The only people buying blu-ray discs are people who love movies.the recession has something to do with it, rentals of dvds are up.

For more on this subject Please read BILL HUNTS 2 CENTS AT THE DIGITAL BITS TODAY6/7/2010! If you care about blu-ray[and i know you do]this is must reading.

[Rob71]

Originally Posted by tvine2000

The main reason for the fall of bd sales.

Sales are down?

[doctorsteve]

Originally Posted by Rob71

Sales are down?

Yes. And the Sky is falling. And God Hates Haiti. And it was the One Armed Man.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by doctorsteve

Yes. And the Sky is falling. And God Hates Haiti. And it was the One Armed Man.

lol

[Rob71]

I can get behind his crusade, really. I just hope it was a typo and he doesn't believe that.

[doctorsteve]

Originally Posted by tvine2000

The main reason for the fall of bd sales.1. studios are spending to much money on bdlive and blu phone,instead of spending that money on new hd masters.2. studios are using these old hd master scrubing the hell out of them applying dnr and they think thats ok.
Anyone that has hung around this forum since blu-ray launched can spot a bad or sub par transfer a mile away.

A) And how much money IS that, by the way. Any info to back up that claim? (Nevermind, I'm going to assume that you're only using the info you got from Bill's rant at TDB) To be honest, I'm not seeing BD-Live being utilized heavily anyways. Regardless of whether special features are on the disc, or on some computer hard drive somewhere - special features costs are part of the business of releasing materials (ie. movies).

B) (Really? I think the examples of your second point are fortunately few and far between. You make it sound like a widespread problem... Can you back this up?) Studios have become aware of a backlash against poor transfers. Several issues have highlighted the need for quality (See: Gladiator, The Fifth Element). Sure J6P will often gobble up releases without caring about bad transfers in many cases, but as issues have arisen, I'm hopeful that more attention is being paid to getting it right the first time, rather than issuing fixes. (and truly costing the studios the money you alluded to). My sense is that the lack of care being discussed is being taken with the mountain of catalog titles (that it still surprises me to see released anyways) from companies that are basically putting out archived product because they know they'll make a few bucks.

Since Bill doesn't point out specific titles, I'd like to ask you what titles do YOU feel were totally screwed up. What is this plethora of crappy-looking titles you seem to be agreeing with... Just curious. Out of the 120+ titles I own, I can't really think of any stinkers in terms of PQ (With the exception of maybe Gremlins, but I can honestly say it STILL looks better than the theater).

Were I a studio exec, I'd be more ticked off about poor sales because of bad product (and then having to remaster the product to make up for sales, or fixing a sound issue - Saving Private Ryan, eg.) than the cost of a high-quality product that sells well. But I suspect the PQ stinkers (as I said) are catalog titles whose sales won't suffer from reports of 'bad transfers' because the J6P's that buy them don't 'care' (as many of us here do) about high-quality releases. (Whereas Bill's tasked with keeping watch over the entire field of releases, and takes issue with a generalized behavior within the Gestalt.)

Cheers,

Doc

[quantumphoeniix]

So empire have put out an article confirming that blu rays arent selling well.think this means bad things for the future of blu rays.what could be the reason for this? is it peopld dont want to pay the slightlyhigher cost or they just dont see enough difference between blu and dvd.i dont think some studios are helping by releasing bare bones blus like the avatar release basically asking us to double dip later on.please state your thoughts on this

[Batman1980]

I thought blu-rays cost less in the UK than in the US.

[kpkelley]

Empire is full of {insert favorite curse word here}.

Western Europe: Blu-ray Sales Double in Q1, Drive Overall Growth
Blu-ray Sales, April 19-25: Avatar Is Out of This World (Update)
Blu-ray Drives Home Entertainment Growth in the UK (Update)
DEG: Blu-ray Disc Sales Increases by 74%, Players 125%

[XXXsdesdeXXX]

Way too many places have the prices jacked up to nearly $30.00 which is ridiculous. If prices were in the $7.99-$19.99 range, at all stores, than blu-ray wouldn't have as much trouble selling. Doesn't help when retailers are egregiously trying to rip us off.

[quantumphoeniix]

Originally Posted by kpkelley

Empire is full of {insert favorite curse word here}.

Western Europe: Blu-ray Sales Double in Q1, Drive Overall Growth
Blu-ray Sales, April 19-25: Avatar Is Out of This World (Update)
Blu-ray Drives Home Entertainment Growth in the UK (Update)
DEG: Blu-ray Disc Sales Increases by 74%, Players 125%

hope so

[My_Two_Cents]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Stormcrow

I thought blu-rays cost less in the UK than in the US.

No. Because the British Pound has tanked versus the dollar, it only seems like BDs are cheaper in the UK.

[quantumphoeniix]

Originally Posted by XXXsdesdeXXX

Way too many places have the prices jacked up to nearly $30.00 which is ridiculous. If prices were in the $7.99-$19.99 range, at all stores, than blu-ray wouldn't have as much trouble selling. Doesn't help when retailers are egregiously trying to rip us off.

well in hmv theyre sellin wall-ee for £35 certainly doesnt convince people to convert.

[pro-bassoonist]

Originally Posted by quantumphoeniix

So empire have put out an article confirming that blu rays arent selling well.

It would be great if you posted the article so that we see where the "confirmation" is coming from and how it is justified.

Let's have facts, not speculations.

Pro-B