Ask questions to The Digital Bits team (Bill Hunt, Jeff Kleist et.al.)

[SpaceDog]

Originally Posted by atexp80

Interestingly here in Australia we are getting a 2-disc version of Robin Hood (the same as the UK). Disc one contains both cuts of the film as well as the Director's Notebook and Art of Nottingham feature whilst disc two has the deleted scenes, Rise and Rise Again and the marketing archive. Being that the material is housed on 2 discs as opposed to the one in the US it will be interesting to see whether the features are then presented in HD. It may also result in the film itself having a different bit rate or the free space being taken up by additional language tracks.

I think the film did a lot better overseas than it did in the US. Depending on the way distribution rights are granted, that may yield a better blu-ray edition.

[Jeff Kleist]

Universal owns the rights pretty much worldwide. It made double the domestic take overseas.

[MerrickG]

Here is what Ive said and will continue to say:

I don't care how well bluray is doing as long as its doing well enough to convince the studios to keep releasing films on the format.

BttF and Alien Anthology are absolutely HUGE for me. With Star Wars coming next year, I'd say the amount of titles on bluray is actually pretty damn good.

[MerrickG]

Originally Posted by SpaceDog

I think if studios were to meet these particular pricing expectations, they wouldn't have any incentive to make the blu-ray edition better. You'd get mediocre transfers and half-assed special features. You pay a premium for blu-ray because it's a PREMIUM product. If worse comes to worst, J6P will be dragged along by CE manufacturers discontinuing DVD players in favor of cheap Blu-ray players.
By that time Walmart and Best Buy will both have cheapie bins for blu-ray, and although day-and-date prices won't match, they'll still have a troll bin to work from.
Jeff's point is well made. When DVD came to popularity, VHS editions were most assuredly less expensive to buy. It didn't hurt DVD in the long run.

Not to be devils advocate but dvd also doesnt have the problem of quality degrading the way VHS did.

But if the studios want to push people to buy dvd, they really need to do something drastic the same way that warner did with the Matrix on dvd back in the day.

[Jeff Kleist]

Warner didn't do anything drastic with The Matrix. Rental windows were still firmly in place at the time, and Matrix actually had a short 3 month window, typically it was more like 6 before the priced for sale copies on VHS were available.

Like Iron Man and Dark Knight, it was a title that hit squarely in the demographic that owned or was willing to buy a DVD player

Which is another thing that made DVD so successful, day 1 availability at affordable prices. It was a new thing in 1997, where most movies took 6-8 months to hit video, and then another 4-6 months to be priced for sale (or like Hackers, 4-5 years to be released for sale, thank you previously viewed bin, I owned it on DVD before it dropped below $70 SRP). DVD killed the rental pricing model dead, much to studio chagrin because by the time they figured out what was happening, it was too late.

[Uxi]

Originally Posted by merrick97

BttF and Alien Anthology are absolutely HUGE for me. With Star Wars coming next year, I'd say the amount of titles on bluray is actually pretty damn good.

Yeah, I haven't bought any titles in quite a few months... I'll get Iron Man 2 next, most likely.

Still have a couple on my list I want to get, mostly Big Trouble in Little China

[Taffy]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

I understand the point he's making. I'm just trying to show him that this is hardly a new trend.

The discs in the $7.99 bin paid their way a long time ago, and authoring for DVD is dirt cheap nowadays. Disney is the one who's way out of line here, and they're going to have to start dropping their catalog prices again. $39.99 is ludicrous for a 5,10 year old disc. The MBAs don't see it this way though, they figure they'll hook the "gotta have it now" crowd first and then just sale price the crap out of them shortly after to what they should be charging, or offer the combo deals that Disney is fond of. The problem is that in between sales and deals, they sit on the shelf at Best Buy for $40. Better to have half the sales and 2/3 the price in my book, I bet the raw dollars on equally good titles will pretty much break even or maybe a little better



Yup, they're watching SD sources on their HDTV, and the onest that have heard of HDMI typically only know that the guy at Best Buy tried to get them to pay $70 for it. Personally I'm willing to bet that most players would come with HDMI in the box at this point if the retailers didn't make such a killing off the ones they manage to sucker and would be very upset with them. People don't read manuals, How many people show up who haven't updated their firmware even though your average Blu player has giant orange pieces of paper that say "YO! UPDATE FIRMWARE!" at the top of the box?

I fully expect Alien to be $60-ish many times during Christmas, and BTTF to hit as low as $35. $10 per movie seems to be a price most people are willing to pay, and given teh uber deluxeness of Alien $60 is pretty fair.



Yup, which is why people keep buying pieces of junk like Vizio. I hold my head in my hands at the people lining up to drop $3500 on a 72" Vizio TV with, when they could have 120" front projection, or a 60 inch Panasonic 3D plasma at those prices and actually have GOOD equipment. However $5 seems to be the magic price to where the people who actually care anything about HD are willing to bite ($10 on TV)

There's really nothing that can be done at this time about the $20-30 SRPs. many catalog titles will be $14.99 on the shelf this time next year. The big thing is to get what people see week to week, the first week sale prices into that sub $20 butter zone where the people who are interested and willing to do Blu-ray right now are willing to bite. Worry about the back 50% after we've captured the early and soon after adopter 30% of the population. Crawl before you walk.

Taffy, please go back to taping your stuff off TV and pirating, and leave this to people who actually buy discs. If you don't like it, why don't you go off and cry with Deadmeat, RDJam (wow, where'd they go when the paychecks dried up?), Lee Stewart and the other trolls? And don't play the innocence game, you've got a years long track record and most people are simply sick of you.

Well...well...well. Looks like someone hit a nerve.... the mask comes off to reveal perhaps your true nature....NOT a pleasant picture.

Anyway...just to clarify matters I do buy discs...not many, but there you have it.

I don't pirate...don't need to when I can legally record off Dish Network and archive virtually all movies in HD that I have an interest in. Why is this disturbing to you??? Why are you attacking me??? What is this "innocent" game your talking about???

[SpaceDog]

Originally Posted by Taffy

Well...well...well. Looks like someone hit a nerve.... the mask comes off to reveal perhaps your true nature....NOT a pleasant picture.

Anyway...just to clarify matters I do buy discs...not many, but there you have it.

I don't pirate...don't need to when I can legally record off Dish Network and archive virtually all movies in HD that I have an interest in. Why is this disturbing to you??? Why are you attacking me??? What is this "innocent" game your talking about???

Time shifting is legal in terms of fair use. Archiving is not.

[Rob71]

Originally Posted by Taffy

Well...well...well. Looks like someone hit a nerve.... the mask comes off to reveal perhaps your true nature....NOT a pleasant picture.

Anyway...just to clarify matters I do buy discs...not many, but there you have it.

I don't pirate...don't need to when I can legally record off Dish Network and archive virtually all movies in HD that I have an interest in. Why is this disturbing to you??? Why are you attacking me??? What is this "innocent" game your talking about???

Sorry to parachute in and start sniping, but you've been unmasked for quite a while now. Your games have been on display for anyone to see. You could have at least tried a new screen name like others have done. Of course you probably get a tingle running up your leg that would be lost if people didn't know who you were.

[Uxi]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

People don't read manuals, How many people show up who haven't updated their firmware even though your average Blu player has giant orange pieces of paper that say "YO! UPDATE FIRMWARE!" at the top of the box?

You'd almost wonder if it would be worthwhile for the CE's to get with the studios to start putting firmware updates on actual Blu-ray discs or at least in the special features disc with some trailers or something. Definitely don't want to sacrifice precious space for lossless audio or the best video encode, which is why the latter might be more desirable than the former.

[Jeff Kleist]

Even if the players could recognize it, there are too many players for this to be practical, and often updates are made after the disc

[Uxi]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Even if the players could recognize it, there are too many players for this to be practical, and often updates are made after the disc

Well even if it was an update up to the point of that disc, it would be progress. There are probably people running around with really old firmware wondering WTF is going on and how people can stomach BD. Or they get it figured out after alot of frustration...

Similarly, I wouldn't expect EVERY unit to be covered, but at least the most common players.

[neo_reloaded]

Originally Posted by Uxi

Well even if it was an update up to the point of that disc, it would be progress. There are probably people running around with really old firmware wondering WTF is going on and how people can stomach BD. Or they get it figured out after alot of frustration...

Similarly, I wouldn't expect EVERY unit to be covered, but at least the most common players.

The more popular Blu-ray gets (and even at the same popularity, the older the format gets), the more different players there will be out in the wild - and therefore the more infeasible this idea becomes. Also, studios most likely don't want to get anywhere near the firmware issues - they don't want to be handling technical service calls or getting complaints for firmware updates gone wrong. It's just a big recipe for disaster.

[Jeff Kleist]

Similarly, I wouldn't expect EVERY unit to be covered, but at least the most common players.

It still doesn't work, because the players would just try to patch the player every time you put it in. They're not designed for on the fly patching, nor is it practical with a solid state device like that.

[Uxi]

I was thinking it would just do a simple logic check first. Firmware => than version on disk, no update needed. I was thinking a particular companies software was probably still mostly similar to the previous generations, so only counting on a few dozen (at most) variations, at this point, but guess I could be way off on that.

How about through BD-J? I guess that presumes they're web connected to begin with, but maybe put in the disk and some BD-J code would look, phone home, and say that an update is available (or not).

[MerrickG]

Originally Posted by Uxi

I was thinking it would just do a simple logic check first. Firmware => than version on disk, no update needed. I was thinking a particular companies software was probably still mostly similar to the previous generations, so only counting on a few dozen (at most) variations, at this point, but guess I could be way off on that.

How about through BD-J? I guess that presumes they're web connected to begin with, but maybe put in the disk and some BD-J code would look, phone home, and say that an update is available (or not).

It will never happen, because it makes studios potentially liable if you end up bricking your player and they dont want to be responding all day to people who cant use their bluray player after using one of their discs.

[Jeff Kleist]

I was thinking it would just do a simple logic check first. Firmware => than version on disk, no update needed. I was thinking a particular companies software was probably still mostly similar to the previous generations, so only counting on a few dozen (at most) variations, at this point, but guess I could be way off on that.

How about through BD-J? I guess that presumes they're web connected to begin with, but maybe put in the disk and some BD-J code would look, phone home, and say that an update is available (or not).

It doesn't work.

Most players only update firmware when they see a disc with nothing on it but the update file. This sends the player into a mode where it can flash the memory. Newer PCs do have the ability to flash the BIOS in windows, but doing something like that requires a support structure that a specialized device like a Blu-ray player simply doesn't have.

And including the files on the discs is simply impractical in the first place due to space issues. All the firmwares are different for different models. While they may share the same base code, there's little bits and pieces that are different.

The CEs have done the best they can, if the player is connected to the internet it checks when you boot up and notifies you of new firmware, and auto installs it in a painless procedure after you click OK. I don't think they can make it any simpler than it already is. It's of course up to the end user to connect it to the net, but with Netflix becoming a very popular option for Blu players, I think that will be less of an issue as time goes on. The real key now is getting universal wireless N standard because so many people are allergic to wires.

[BillieCassin]

Originally Posted by merrick97

Here is another mistake you are making.

You are talking like those prices for BttF and the Alien Anthology prices right now are set in stone. Yes, they are $100 and $55 right now, but odds are VERY good those prices will drop by release date. Boxset prices have almost always dropped their prices on release week

I wouldn't be surprised if the Alien Anthology is being sold for $80 on release date, which would be about what the Quadrilogy cost on release week back in 2003.

BttF will probably cost $45 by then too which would AGAIN be inline with the price of the original dvd.

I don't think it's a "mistake" I am making, LOL.

As I explained earlier, I'm talking about WAL MART/Best Buy/Target prices.

You can certainly expect the online prices of these to go down. We all know here because we are informed about Blu because we come to sites such as this one.

However, have you ever looked at Box sets at Wal-mart/Best Buy/Target? They are usually at least $10-20 more than online. There is NO WAY the Alien set, if they do carry it, will be less than $90 with a MSRP of $140.

On one hand, you seem to be saying, "Oh, you can't compare DVD market to Blu..." but on the other, "See, that's what it was on DVD". You can't go both ways.

My simple point is this: When Joe Sixpack walks into Wal-mart when Aliens comes out on Blu, he's going to see two options for owning these four films. One, he can buy the Blu-ray set for $100, or two, he can purchase all four films on DVD for $14.

Do you and I know the difference there? Yup. Does he? No. And that's the type of thing that is going to continue to fuel the perception of the high cost of Blu-ray to the general public, and coupled with the fact that many of them say they cannot really see much difference, let alone a difference worth paying for, is why Blu-ray is still a niche in the home video market and very well may be for quite some time.

[Jeff Kleist]

Seriously, by the time the other 50% find out there's such a thing as Blu-ray, it's not going to be such a big deal.

Remember that you can't compete with free. You also can't compete with a $14 DVD set when it's costing Fox nearly that much in pressing, packaging, shipping etc to put that thing on the shelf. There is no way they could ever price down Alien first week to get even close to that. Whatever they do where there's any profit (and even avoiding loss) will not change the number of people who will pick it up by any signifigant amount. There will be plenty of sales on Alien, it's almost certainly priced artificially high so that they can heavily discount it. What looks better "On sale $59.99, reguarly $79.99" or HALF PRICE! $60 off!"

It's the same reason you can often buy the Planet of the Apes book for under $50 (that and they have a bunch of them left )

It's like the 3D deals. "Hmm, I can sell 5000 copies now and not break even, OR I can grab $250,000 from Panasonic (a made up number) and have a disc that I will sell 10,000 of next year that's all gravy. Option B!"

[MerrickG]

Originally Posted by BillieCassin

I don't think it's a "mistake" I am making, LOL.

As I explained earlier, I'm talking about WAL MART/Best Buy/Target prices.

You can certainly expect the online prices of these to go down. We all know here because we are informed about Blu because we come to sites such as this one.

However, have you ever looked at Box sets at Wal-mart/Best Buy/Target? They are usually at least $10-20 more than online. There is NO WAY the Alien set, if they do carry it, will be less than $90 with a MSRP of $140.

Where did I say I was referring to online only???!! Don't put words in my mouth. Best Buy and Walmart's release day prices are now pretty much on par with amazon release date prices. Sometimes even better. Amazon usually has better sales most of the time, but plenty of my best bluray bargains have come from Walmart and Best Buy.

Look, I get what your saying and Ive made those comments before myself, but I have always looked at bluray as a premium product that will command a higher price.

DVD spoiled the studios and I dont think anyone realistically expects bluray to have the same impact. It was the perfect product at the perfect time.