Physical & Digital EST: The Future of Home Video Discussion Thread

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by veritas

The costs for digital though appear to me to be just as massive if not more massive then the costs for physical unless they don't plan to maintain peoples rights forever.

What "rights" are those? If you take a moment to read the EULAs that govern digital downloads, you will find that the consumer has precious few "rights." Typical EULAs guarantee exactly nothing while reserving the right to change and even delete content at their sole discretion with no recompense to customers.

Consumers agree to these things blindly, assuming that the providers would never risk their collective wrath by doing anything to their disliking- they rely on faith. The language allowing the provider to do pretty much as they please is not included accidentally- they put it there for their benefit and their benefit alone.

[The_Donster]

Originally Posted by Vilya

I base that on two casual observations.

One is that Netflix emails me every month with what they have added, although that could just be limited to what they think I am interested in.

The second is that I usually receive a news story emailed to me that lists Netlfix's additions each month.

Edit: I did a search for Netflix additions in March; there were 116. In February, there were just 80. There are 87 scheduled for this month. That is an average of 94.33 new Netflix titles per month over the last three months.

If disc new releases averages about 65 per week and there are 4.33 weeks per month, that would equal about 281.67 new titles per month. Netflix's average of 94.33 titles per month is 33.5% of disc's 281.67 titles per month. That's pretty close to a third as many releases per month, Netflix compared to disc.

I'm thinking you are a bit more analytical than I am. I get the same email/text reminders, but I also sit and scroll through on the app when I'm trying to find something to watch. Of course my que is filled with movies, stand up and tv shows/documentaries and all I'm doing is adding to my que

Originally Posted by Groot

To chime in on the digital code purchasing debate, I've paid full price on VUDU for recent releases like The Last Jedi & Thor:Ragnarok. I'll pay $20 for a full code with all the goodies on digital and get the perk of watching it a few weeks earlier.

You (and anyone else here) do what works for you. I've got friends who do the same thing. That's not my problem in the thread. It is when someone tries to ram their preferences down everyone's throat that I go a little sideways.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by Groot

To chime in on the digital code purchasing debate, I've paid full price on VUDU for recent releases like The Last Jedi & Thor:Ragnarok. I'll pay $20 for a full code with all the goodies on digital and get the perk of watching it a few weeks earlier.

I'd rather pay the $20 and have both the discs and the code, even though I have no use for the code, generally.

Movies like the two you name were seen by many of us at the theater, so I see no urgency to have a second viewing a little earlier than I would by waiting for the disc.

We are both paying the same amount of money here, but the disc gives me better long term value. Once both disc and digital are available, the ability to have had that second viewing early just won't matter. The improved performance and reliability of the disc is a perk that will last.

[Groot]

Originally Posted by The_Donster

You (and anyone else here) do what works for you. I've got friends who do the same thing. That's not my problem in the thread. It is when someone tries to ram their preferences down everyone's throat that I go a little sideways.

That's understandable. I have thousands of discs, still buy collector ones, but I find a shift to digital has significantly slowed my purchases down in general as most movies are typically a one and done now. I don't care what anyone buys or does, I just don't see either side as right or wrong so I'm fine with you on that. Just like other topics as long as a view isn't forced on me I'm fine.

Originally Posted by Vilya

I'd rather pay the $20 and have both the discs and code, even though I have no use for them generally.

Movies like the two you name were seen by many of us at the theater, so I see no urgency to have a second viewing a little earlier than I would by waiting for the disc.

We are both paying the same amount of money here, but the disc gives me better long term value. Once both are disc and digital are available, the ability to have had that second viewing early just won't matter. The improved performance and reliability of the disc is a perk that will last.

That works for some people. I like getting a movie 2-3 weeks early of something I loved and would end up watching multiple times before discs even come out. I used to look at the long term, but I find the convenience of it works better for me now. Yes, I could wait and buy the disc and get the code...and have more useless clutter...or just buy the digital version and watch the film in my office, or work area, or living room, home theater or bedroom instantly.

I took over 7000 films out of their cases, put them in cd sleeves and cataloged the discs as I am bored of them. Some of those discs I haven't touched in a decade. Digital, hey, if it disappears and I actually want to revisit a title I can live with buying it again. Just like DVD to Blu, to 4K to Digital to whatever else may come.

[alchav21]

Originally Posted by alchav21

Sorry I wasn't trying to be funny or make light of Cancer, I was just trying to go along with the Analogy. If you don't take Streaming seriously you will be left behind, because Technology waits for no one!

Originally Posted by gotmule

If technology (no capital T needed) waits for no one, and you are at the forefront of streaming (no capital S needed), how is it that you have allowed all of the innovations within audio pass you by? Even though I appreciate vintage equipment, I am pretty sure technology has made a few advancements in the world of audio over the last few decades. Or have you been left behind because you are content and comfortable within older technology you own, some 50 odd years later?

Yes I see you have a real nice set up, but I guess I have gone more for Headphones. I use to use Sennheiser, I switched to Sony Optical. my Old Sansui Amp and Speakers worked just fine with my Mitsubishi DLP HDTV. My Beautiful Wife doesn't like or appreciate the Loud Sound Systems. So I am perfectly happy with the Headphones, I could even use them into the wee hours of the morning.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by Groot

That works for some people. I like getting a movie 2-3 weeks early of something I loved and would end up watching multiple times before discs even come out. I used to look at the long term, but I find the convenience of it works better for me now. Yes, I could wait and buy the disc and get the code...and have more useless clutter...or just buy the digital version and watch the film in my office, or work area, or living room, home theater or bedroom instantly.

I took over 7000 films out of their cases, put them in cd sleeves and cataloged the discs as I am bored of them. Some of those discs I haven't touched in a decade. Digital, hey, if it disappears and I actually want to revisit a title I can live with buying it again. Just like DVD to Blu, to 4K to Digital to whatever else may come.

I understand the satisfaction that comes from instant gratification, but even if I had no interest in owning the disc, I would still buy the disc combo pack when the prices were equal.

I would then gift the discs to a friend, donate them to a library or a hospital, or simply sell them. There are even people on this website that will pay you $5 for the slipcover alone. It's just another way of getting the most bang for your buck.

[Groot]

Originally Posted by Vilya

I understand the satisfaction that comes from instant gratification, but even if I had no interest in owning the disc, I would still buy the disc combo pack when the prices were equal.

I would then gift the discs to a friend, donate them to a library or a hospital, or simply sell them. There are even people on this website that will pay you $5 for the slipcover alone. It's just another way of getting the most bang for your buck.

Awe. That last bit requires effort I just don't have in me to give.

I feel I get my monies worth buying on VUDU, watching my film instantly at midnight on release, getting to burn myself out a couple weeks earlier on a film I enjoyed and having it at my finger tips without needing to take the time to discard a disc. Those are all great suggestions and anyone who wants to do that that's awesome.

I even buy most of my video games digital now, all my music except vinyls I get for display and collections are too. I've adapted after years of swearing off digital. I gave most of my codes away to people on here, hundreds of them in fact, now I've built up a library of almost a 1000 digital movies in a year. I stream Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, Acorn, BritBox, etc daily.

[Groot]

Originally Posted by PenguinInfinity

If a title disappears from your digital collection the purchase option will likely disappear as well. If a title is digital-only and no longer officially supported no one will be able to watch it or buy it.

I can live with that. Nothing lasts forever, not dwelling on it. If an album gets it's tracks removed from Apple Music I don't run to spotify or whatever exclusive service they have to listen to it. I just listen to something else. I don't care enough to get bent out of shape over it.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by Groot

Awe. That last bit requires effort I just don't have in me to give.

I feel I get my monies worth buying on VUDU, watching my film instantly at midnight on release, getting to burn myself out a couple weeks earlier on a film I enjoyed and having it at my finger tips without needing to take the time to discard a disc. Those are all great suggestions and anyone who wants to do that that's awesome.

I even buy most of my video games digital now, all my music except vinyls I get for display and collections are too. I've adapted after years of swearing off digital. I gave most of my codes away to people on here, hundreds of them in fact, now I've built up a library of almost a 1000 digital movies in a year. I stream Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, Acorn, BritBox, etc daily.

Five streaming services and you use them all daily? And I thought I had a lot of free time.

All I have is Amazon Prime and Netflix, but I rarely use the former and I am still experimenting with the latter. Netflix is so damn cheap, I am inclined to keep it just for their original content and the occasional "never heard of it" movie.

As a disc collector who has found himself upgrading with each new format, I have to say that one of the things I enjoy the most about doing it is giving away my duplicate discs to friends, family, or to charity. It is always appreciated and it gives me that priceless, warm, fuzzy feeling.

[Groot]

Originally Posted by Vilya

Five streaming services and you use them all daily? And I thought I had a lot of free time.

All I have is Amazon Prime and Netflix, but I rarely use the former and I am still experimenting with the latter. Netflix is so damn cheap, I am inclined to keep it just for their original content and the occasional "never heard of it" movie.

As a disc collector who has found himself upgrading with each new format, I have to say that one of the things I enjoy the most about doing it is giving away my duplicate discs to friends, family, or to charity. It is always appreciated and it gives me that priceless, warm, fuzzy feeling.

I was just naming the ones I have/subscribe to. That said, I may in fact use all of them at any given time of the day as I own my own business, work from home, ship product from my workshop and am awake 18 hours on average.

That's good man. If all but my parents weren't dead I'm sure I could gift out my disc to loved ones, but sadly they don't exist.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by alchav21

Yes I see you have a real nice set up, but I guess I have gone more for Headphones. I use to use Sennheiser, I switched to Sony Optical. my Old Sansui Amp and Speakers worked just fine my Mitsubishi DLP HDTV. My Beautiful Wife doesn't like or appreciate the Loud Sound Systems. So I am perfectly happy with the Headphones, I could even use them into the wee hours of the morning.

Sansui amp? Mitsubishi DLP TV? Are you a museum curator?

Today's amps and receivers are light years ahead of that old Sansui. I haven't seen a Sansui in use since the mid 1980s and it was an old beastie even then. It had so many lights on its front display that you could read by it. It ran hot as hell, too.

I had a Mitsubishi DLP TV from 2006; it was still working when I gave it away. I got tired of feeding it $150 light bulbs every three years. Today's TVs are orders of magnitude better than those DLP behemoths.

I get that you are happy with your antiques and that's just fine, but running a half-century old Sansui as the audio center of your home theater pretty much disqualifies you from discussing the latest audio codecs used with today's multi-channel AVRs.

Headphones just don't cut it for an immersive surround sound soundscape, but I also understand that you have a wife who dislikes loud sound systems and that you must keep the peace.

[The_Donster]

C'mon Vilya, lighten up and stop being a snob about his set up. Mine isn't state of the art either, but it suits my needs and has nothing to do with physical or digital discussion

Back on point, where do some of you get this "If a title disappears" none sense from? Outside of extra from X-Men: First Class and a couple of movies that were on CinemaNow my collection is still where I originally redeemed and linked to other accounts thanks to MA.

[Groot]

Originally Posted by The_Donster

C'mon Vilya, lighten up and stop being a snob about his set up. Mine isn't state of the art either, but it suits my needs and has nothing to do with physical or digital discussion

Back on point, where do some of you get this "If a title disappears" none sense from? Outside of extra from X-Men: First Class and a couple of movies that were on CinemaNow my collection is still where I originally redeemed and linked to other accounts thanks to MA.

I wonder that too. When flixster and others closed it migrated the titles elsewhere. Disney every-so-often has a glitch that blacks out a title but it's fixed within hours (sometimes not that long) and I honestly haven't noticed it when going through my account until it's pointed out by someone that it's missing from their titles.

Plus, if it's out on digital right now there's copies of it all over the internet so it isn't going away.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by The_Donster

C'mon Vilya, lighten up and stop being a snob about his set up. Mine isn't state of the art either, but it suits my needs and has nothing to do with physical or digital discussion

He has said on many occasions that streaming performance equals that of disc and part of that equation concerns audio codecs. He does not even have the gear to experience those codecs, so of course he would not discern the differences. Audio is germane to this discussion as it is a central pillar of the home video experience, whether sourced from disc or streaming.

My gear is not state of the art, either, and I was not trying to be a snob about it, but if I post multiple times about audio standards only to reveal that my sound system dates back 50+ years, then perhaps I am not in a position to speak on the subject?

I do not comment about OLED TVs, because I do not own one. If I did not even own a modern AVR, I certainly would not say everything sounds the same-especially when the equipment being used for comparison is a half century old and predates all AVR gear. He is talking about surround sound codecs while listening through headphones attached to an ancient rig. It is like telling me what a blu-ray, and streaming, looks like on an old CRT TV and then concluding it all looks the same; you can't evaluate tech that you do not own.

[alchav21]

Originally Posted by The_Donster

C'mon Vilya, lighten up and stop being a snob about his set up.

Originally Posted by Vilya

He has said on many occasions that streaming performance equals that of disc and part of that equation concerns audio codecs. He does not even have the gear to experience those codecs, so of course he would not discern the differences. Audio is germane to this discussion as it is a central pillar of the home video experience, whether sourced from disc or streaming.

My gear is not state of the art, either, and I was not trying to be a snob about it, but if I post multiple times about audio standards only to reveal that my sound system dates back 50+ years, then perhaps I am not in a position to speak on the subject?

I do not comment about OLED TVs, because I do not own one. If I did not even own a modern AVR, I certainly would not say everything sounds the same-especially when the equipment being used for comparison is a half century old and predates all AVR gear. He is talking about surround sound codecs while listening through headphones attached to an ancient rig. It is like telling me what a blu-ray, and streaming, looks like on an old CRT TV and then concluding it all looks the same; you can't evaluate tech that you do not own.

C'mon Vilya catch up, that was with my Old System now I have my 65" Sony UHD TV with my Sony Optical Headphones. For my needs the Sound is Fantastic. That Old Sound System is not hooked up, but I bet the Speakers still would put out some serious sounds. Like I said you can drop a pretty good coin on some of these Systems, so we all have to compromise according to our budgets.

[Groot]

Originally Posted by PenguinInfinity

I've said it before, there are two possible scenarios:

A) Every studio will support every digital title they've ever released forever.

B) Some digital titles will disappear.

I don't understand how anyone can think scenario A is more likely. As veritas previously pointed out digital copies have plenty of ongoing costs to the studios and digital providers:



Additionally there have already been thousands of digital titles that have been removed from sale but are currently still available in people's collections. Anyone who missed their chance to buy them won't have another opportunity. They can't just buy a used copy from an existing owner like they can with out-of-print physical copies.

What are some of these thousand of titles?

Server cost is a helluva lot cheaper than making discs and distributing them. By the same accord, the internet is gonna have stuff disappear when we metaphorically run out of space despite larger drives getting smaller and smaller? Yeah, no. There’s more data floating around on Snapchat and Facebook right now than a decades worth of digital movies, and then some.

[veritas]

Originally Posted by Groot

What are some of these thousand of titles?

Server cost is a helluva lot cheaper than making discs and distributing them. By the same accord, the internet is gonna have stuff disappear when we metaphorically run out of space despite larger drives getting smaller and smaller? Yeah, no. There’s more data floating around on Snapchat and Facebook right now than a decades worth of digital movies, and then some.

but running call centers and doing tech support isn't cheap which is probably why most of these companies suck at fixing problems. Making discs are relativly cheap they cost probably under a dollar at this point if they have a problem you give them anouther one which again costs under a dollar. If I have a digital problem it can be from a title they havent seen a profit from for years and they end up having to pay hourly wages attempting to fix it (and 1000s of hours talking to people on the phone since everybody loses something normally not just one person).

The main difference between the cost of digital and physical is that physicals cost is upfront while digital is a constant future expenses. They have to continue to update to newer software versions and they have to maintain a large number of servers. Forcing digital was never about saving money it was about removing the used market to gain further control.


Anyway I was just thinking about my collection I have about 300 digital movies and of those I have had to make about 10 hours worth of calls to get problems fixed (honestly I don't like calling it would be higher if I did not wait for most problems to fix themselves) which means they spent about 100 just fielding calls from me (not fixing the problem just telling 1000s of people we know of the problem go blame this other link in the chain). That means digital has cost them 33 cents a movie just to answer the phone and deal with digital problems over 3 years. Over the course of 10 years counting the data servers internet fees and power output to do digital I'm sure digital actually costs them more then the cost of doing a physical print run for consumers.

[Groot]

That isn’t how copyright or licensing works....at all. The only time that has come up is when contracts didn’t have home video licenses in general in the contracts and some had to be retooled. Nothing is gonna make them remove a track for a film on a purchased digital copy.

Your examples are mostly garbage cancelled tv shows and Kardashian crap? Yeahhhh.

Also, the cost of accessing the servers isn’t anymore than what’s already storing the copies and running other things. These are cloud based setups. They are not breaking the bank. Plus they make money off of related marketing and other tie ins, like DMA does.

[Groot]

Originally Posted by veritas

but running call centers and doing tech support isn't cheap which is probably why most of these companies suck at fixing problems. Making discs are relativly cheap they cost probably under a dollar at this point if they have a problem you give them anouther one which again costs under a dollar. If I have a digital problem it can be from a title they havent seen a profit from for years and they end up having to pay hourly wages attempting to fix it (and 1000s of hours talking to people on the phone since everybody loses something normally not just one person).

The main difference between the cost of digital and physical is that physicals cost is upfront while digital is a constant future expenses. They have to continue to update to newer software versions and they have to maintain a large number of servers. Forcing digital was never about saving money it was about removing the used market to gain further control.


Anyway I was just thinking about my collection I have about 300 digital movies and of those I have had to make about 10 hours worth of calls to get problems fixed (honestly i don't like calling it would be higher if I did not wait for most problems to fix themselves) which means they spent about 100 just fielding calls from me. That means digital has cost them 33 cents a movie just to answer the phone and deal with digital problems over 3 years. Over the course of 10 years counting the data servers internet fees and power output to do digital I'm sure digital actually costs them more then the cost of doing a physical print run for consumers.

What on Gods green earth did you need to make 10 hours worth of calls for?

You guys aren’t getting that the servers are already there for other things. This isn’t some special network just for the studios. It’s all a cloud based system and it’s not costing them a fortune.

[veritas]

Originally Posted by Groot

What on Gods green earth did you need to make 10 hours worth of calls for?

You guys aren’t getting that the servers are already there for other things. This isn’t some special network just for the studios. It’s all a cloud based system and it’s not costing them a fortune.

10 minutes a month for 3 or so years is 6 hours plus a few hours dealing with one or 2 catastrophic failures on their part. Its like counting all of the money you spent on coffee over 3 years it adds up.

Most of the servers are not their for other things. You need a stupid number more servers to stream movies to 100 million people then you do for a studio to maintain a few backups. Just replacing the hard drives as they burn out would not be negligible at the scale required for streaming to work. Its like saying a company having a 100 square foot building or a 100000 square foot building is all the same because they both are paying for the building. Streaming requires a massive number more servers then a company would normally need they didn't already have servers they had to build them and maintain them for streaming.