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

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by WOODMO

Then I must either a) not realize how little new content people watch in comparison to myself and/or b) not realize how much time people spend watching movies and TV shows.

I watch a lot of films and TV shows, more than most of my friends, but with all the new stuff on TV and hitting shelves, I just can't re-watch many things I truly enjoyed the first time.

But again, the most important take away is just because you and many others find the time to rewatch vast collections, does not mean the person who can own say 40 movies and watch the rest via streaming is any less of a film fan, it just means you have different habits.

I watch mostly new films but I can get through half a dozen older films in a holiday quite easily. Or I can be in the mood for let's say, Leon or American History X one night and watch that.
I have just been getting through some vintage 3D films also. I mix it up. I watch a brand new movie every weekend.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by Dustin44

I agree, I see this with people in my social circle too.

It seems for them movies have become a one and done. Watch it once and that is it. They don't feel the need to own it on physical OR digital.

So if they really love a film, they won't ever want to see it again? That says to me they were just very casual film fans in the first place.

These posts are depressing. I'm done here.

[WOODMO]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

I watch mostly new films but I can get through half a dozen older films in a holiday quite easily. Or I can be in the mood for let's say, Leon or American History X one night and watch that.

I have just been getting through some vintage 3D films also. I mix it up. I watch a brand new movie every weekend.

That makes sense. But with streaming apps and Kodi people can typically find any movie they want without owning it.

Myself personally, I like owning what I like digitally but kodi and Netflix spare me blind or impulse buys. Everything is purchased because I really want it and I'm patient enough to wait for my price to be met.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Groot]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

Won't be yours anymore if you do that. You will be at the mercy of forced ads, or whatever scheme they bring in to try to squeeze some money out of you. Only with disc do you truly have free access to that title.

Outside of selling and watching your disc, you have no rights to anything else with. You can't copy it, you can't legally "back it up" on your computer. You simply have viewing rights and first sale doctrine resale of the disc rights. Just like digital, which is viewing or sharing rights.

And some discs, especially older discs, have un-skippable ads so that other point is silly too.

[Groot]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

The debate is Bluray versus Digital HD. Let's get real here.

Besides, if anyone posts links, they should check the facts before doing so.

Not at the time it wasn't so your rant about what was posted doesn't work. You can have discussions within a discussion about related topics. Scary stuff, I know, but that's what went on last night so your post is just attacking for no reason. VHS, Rentals and others were brought up too. Either stick with the context of what was being debated or move on.

[flyry]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

So if they really love a film, they won't ever want to see it again? That says to me they were just very casual film fans in the first place.

These posts are depressing. I'm done here.

To be fair there has never been more content out there then there is now. There's more scripted TV shows than ever before (Peak tv), more music and more movies coming out. Plus sports and being in a relationship

It's all a bit much to keep up with. Just this month 5 critically acclaimed shows are starting that I will be watching.


I rarely watch my own blu-rays,but I like owning them

[Dustin44]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

So if they really love a film, they won't ever want to see it again? That says to me they were just very casual film fans in the first place.

These posts are depressing. I'm done here.

It could be that people are just busy with other things. Or they are trying to keep up with all the other new movies/TV shows that are coming out. (or a combination of both) They just don't have the time to re-watch.

Edit: pretty much what Flyry said above.

[zodwriter]

Originally Posted by Dustin44

I agree, I see this with people in my social circle too.

It seems for them movies have become a one and done. Watch it once and that is it. They don't feel the need to own it on physical OR digital.

I think a lot of people underestimate the fact that the vast majority of movies that are released these days are less than stellar and are simply not worth the cost of owning in the traditional sense. Amassing a huge physical collection has many drawbacks and isn't appealing to most people who are dealing with more real world priorities. If a person collects Criterion discs it's because they enjoy classic quality films from different eras and the streaming service Filmstruck is making streaming a reality for a once previously exclusive disc market. Supporting disc over digital rather than keeping a healthy balance between both formats is a mistake. Everything has it's place. Personally I am a film lover, not a format lover so I am going to get the films I want regardless of being disc or digital.

My big gripe with the disc only supporters is that they tend to flip flop facts based on whatever argument they are making at the time ignoring that the industry is big enough for both flawed formats. Not only that this doom and gloom attitude asserting that suddenly film preservation is going to die and studios will delete all your collections randomly is just fear mongering. I pointed out how I tested 3 old Blu Ray players that could not play current dual layer disc releases. The reason these players could not play the discs is because each of them required an internet connection for an update. Some people on here have said that they have Blu Ray players that play all their discs flawlessly without an internet connection. I call BS and believe that maybe after an initial out of the box update they can, but without updating at least once, older players will not play newer discs!

[alchav21]

Originally Posted by darkknightman

Has anyone also considered the possibility that many people don't feel the need to own movies at all anymore? That is the trend I am seeing in my social circle. People watch a movie once and that is it.

Originally Posted by Dustin44

I agree, I see this with people in my social circle too.

It seems for them movies have become a one and done. Watch it once and that is it. They don't feel the need to own it on physical OR digital.

Originally Posted by zodwriter

My big gripe with the disc only supporters is that they tend to flip flop facts based on whatever argument they are making at the time ignoring that the industry is big enough for both flawed formats. Not only that this doom and gloom attitude asserting that suddenly film preservation is going to die and studios will delete all your collections randomly is just fear mongering. I pointed out how I tested 3 old Blu Ray players that could not play current dual layer disc releases. The reason these players could not play the discs is because each of them required an internet connection for an update. Some people on here have said that they have Blu Ray players that play all their discs flawlessly without an internet connection. I call BS and believe that maybe after an initial out of the box update they can, but without updating at least once, older players will not play newer discs!

Even here on the Blu-ray Site Collecting Discs is coming to an end. My biggest gripe with Disc Supporters, was them putting down Digital HD as inferior. Like predicted the Quality has been going up, and I think soon it will match and surpass Disc. Everything is moving to Cloud Services, or Server Based. It only makes sense in a Connected World that Networks will take over, if they haven't already. All Media is Digital, so it's only logical to put it all on Servers for easy access. The Future is tomorrow, and Streaming Video is here to stay!

[PenguinMaster]

Originally Posted by Groot

Outside of selling and watching your disc, you have no rights to anything else with. You can't copy it, you can't legally "back it up" on your computer. You simply have viewing rights and first sale doctrine resale of the disc rights. Just like digital, which is viewing or sharing rights.

The digital providers have the legal right and ability to remove access to your movies. They probably won't with the vast majority of the titles you care about, but any one of them can disappear. No one has the legal right or ability to take any physical discs away. Short of literally breaking into everyone's house who owns a disc it would be impossible to remove any title from anyone's collection or the marketplace.

Originally Posted by zodwriter

I pointed out how I tested 3 old Blu Ray players that could not play current dual layer disc releases. The reason these players could not play the discs is because each of them required an internet connection for an update.

How old are these players? It's certainly possible that the earliest batch of Blu-ray players couldn't play certain discs until they were updated. But every Blu-ray player manufactured after 2009 can play everything out of the box without any updates. Since that is still hundreds of millions of players I'm not the least bit worried that I won't be able to play certain discs in the future.

[Dynamo of Eternia]

Originally Posted by zodwriter

Hahaha! You can't have it both ways. For endless pages in this thread you and others have gone on and on about how Blu Ray is the dominant format and that digital is on the decline. Yet you say here that digital is to blame for these smaller titles not getting a Blu Ray release? Which is it? If streaming is just a small fish in the pond it should be the other way around.

Neither his argument nor that of most others with similar view points have not been nearly as "black and white" as you are making them out to be here.

His point has mainly been that physical media as a whole still sells better than digital sell through (not talking about streaming services like Netflix here).

Blu-Ray is in kind of this weird place overall in part due to changing consumption habits, but also just because of general misconceptions of the general public at large regarding the Blu-Ray format and HD in general, the latter of which have existed for many years now.

There's still this general perception on the part of the non-enthusiast public at large that the only types of content that really "benefit" from HD are things like big, flashy Hollywood blockbuster movies and the like.

This is why Rogue One, for example, recently sold the vast majority of it's sell-through units on Blu-Ray (at 83%).

By contrast, when a non-special-effects-heavy comedy movie, for example, comes out after it's theatrical run, Blu-Ray accounts for a lower percentage of the sales on average compared to something like Rogue One.

Then you have things like TV season sets which can be hit and miss depending on the genre. For the most part sitcoms don't sell nearly as well as other shows that fall more under a sci-fi/drama/action type of category (and even some of those have varied from show to show). The Big Bang Theory is really the only sitcom that I can think of offhand that has had consistent Blu-Ray releases since WB started putting it out on the format, and that's probably because the show is so extremely popular compared to most others that enough people are buying it on Blu-Ray to warrant each subsequent season to still be released on the format.

But after the first few seasons of Modern Family were released on Blu-Ray, Fox apparently decided that they weren't happy enough with the sales on the format and now only release it on DVD on the physical side of things. Likewise, some other shows have had one-off Blu-Ray releases only for no further seasons to come out (How I Met Your Mother Season 4 and Mike & Molly Season 1 being a couple of offhand examples).

Meanwhile, shows like all of the DC comics related shows from the CW network, Once Upon a Time, Game of Thrones, etc. all sell well enough to continue releasing them on Blu-Ray.



Now, yes, a big part of this problem exists separate from digital. But digital distribution simply further splits the market, making it even more difficult for any content that is already "on the fence" in terms of whether or not the studios will release it on Blu-Ray to get such a release if digital takes even just enough sales away to offset things.


There is more nuance to all of this than you are recognizing here, and you are over simplifying the points that people like Penguin Master have been making.

[Dynamo of Eternia]

Originally Posted by PenguinMaster

How old are these players? It's certainly possible that the earliest batch of Blu-ray players couldn't play certain discs until they were updated. But every Blu-ray player manufactured after 2009 can play everything out of the box without any updates. Since that is still hundreds of millions of players I'm not the least bit worried that I won't be able to play certain discs in the future.

I'm wondering the same thing. Unless these are VERY early models, I don't see this being an issue.

I'm not sure how their absolute most recent players hold up, but I know that for quite some time (even after most other brands no longer had major compatibility issues), Samsung was often very slow with firmware upgrades and often had compatibility problems. I experienced that first hand, unfortunately. I haven't had a similar problem with any other player that I've dealt with since.

[Groot]

Originally Posted by PenguinMaster

The digital providers have the legal right and ability to remove access to your movies. They probably won't with the vast majority of the titles you care about, but any one of them can disappear. No one has the legal right or ability to take any physical discs away. Short of literally breaking into everyone's house who owns a disc it would be impossible to remove any title from anyone's collection or the marketplace.

Do you really think people will buy the digital rights to films and just allow them to pull them away without legal ramifications? Amazon pulled a stunt removing 1984 from it's Kindles. They had to issue refunds and were threatened with a lawsuit because of it. Just like the DMCA was created because of the internet, legislation regarding digital rights (such as to provide guidance with death/inheritance, first sale doctrine etc) will get done given the boom of digital media of all types - including music, movies and video games.

[rpvee]

Originally Posted by PenguinMaster

The digital providers have the legal right and ability to remove access to your movies. They probably won't with the vast majority of the titles you care about, but any one of them can disappear. No one has the legal right or ability to take any physical discs away. Short of literally breaking into everyone's house who owns a disc it would be impossible to remove any title from anyone's collection or the marketplace.

Even though that scenario is unlikely, that's why I download a movie to my external hard drive every time I purchase one. No way I'm just keeping my collection in the provider's cloud.

[squatting hen]

Originally Posted by PenguinMaster

The digital providers have the legal right and ability to remove access to your movies. They probably won't with the vast majority of the titles you care about, but any one of them can disappear. No one has the legal right or ability to take any physical discs away. Short of literally breaking into everyone's house who owns a disc it would be impossible to remove any title from anyone's collection or the marketplace.



How old are these players? It's certainly possible that the earliest batch of Blu-ray players couldn't play certain discs until they were updated. But every Blu-ray player manufactured after 2009 can play everything out of the box without any updates. Since that is still hundreds of millions of players I'm not the least bit worried that I won't be able to play certain discs in the future.

Because this same thing has been mentioned over and over again, can we all agree to this:

Nobody can take physical discs away except for and not limited to the following; a burglar, disaster such as a fire or flood, disc rot, accidental damage, player not ejecting, kid scratching or breaking it, family or friend scratching/breaking/losing/disappearing, or just misplacement.* With digital the studio could potentially, one day, if the studio wanted to, remove the viewing rights.

*I am sure there are many other ways for a disc to be damaged/lost.

Seriously though. I think everyone understands this point. With physical, you get to hold, touch, caress, do whatever you like to it and it is yours forever. It is a physical item. Even it blu ray players are obsolete in 50 years you can still have that same disc. It might not work anymore, but you will always have it.

[PenguinMaster]

Originally Posted by Groot

Do you really think people will buy the digital rights to films and just allow them to pull them away without legal ramifications? Amazon pulled a stunt removing 1984 from it's Kindles. They had to issue refunds and were threatened with a lawsuit because of it. Just like the DMCA was created because of the internet, legislation regarding digital rights (such as to provide guidance with death/inheritance, first sale doctrine etc) will get done given the boom of digital media of all types - including music, movies and video games.

Since you brought up video games I'll again point out that lots of video games have been removed from digital providers.

You're saying that every digital provider should be required by law to continue providing every title they have ever offered forever? That's absurd. No company should have to continue providing support for their products forever. I just won't buy any products that require continued support to function.

[veritas]

Originally Posted by Groot

Outside of selling and watching your disc, you have no rights to anything else with. You can't copy it, you can't legally "back it up" on your computer. You simply have viewing rights and first sale doctrine resale of the disc rights. Just like digital, which is viewing or sharing rights.

And some discs, especially older discs, have un-skippable ads so that other point is silly too.

You have the right to back it up but not to break the encryption which has made almost all the laws in this area a cluster **** as we have conflicting precedence. in that same vane you have the right to copy it once to make that back up but again the anti hacking laws conflict. in similar vanes you have some rights to make clips as long as they would fall under fair use but again breaking encryption would not be allowed.


On the digital side however its just as gray to for example selling digital codes. That isn't exactly legal as its breaking the license agreement and various laws also frown on unbundling and reselling pieces of a set.

It also completely depends on what country you are in as for example for a while it was not illegal to video tape a film in a theater in the uk as long as it was for personal use. The laws then went in the other direction in the uk and it became a crime to make a back up of even a cd in the uk. The music companys in the uk said well it will be ok to make copies for personal use but you then have to pay use a percentage for every computer with a cd player thats sold in the uk.

The truth is a lot of these things are in a very legally gray area because the courts have not ruled on them to set a clear precedent. Studio lawyers say one thing and some precedent and civil liberties lawyers say another. The studios know they might lose if this stuff went to court so I doubt the laws in this area will ever be very clear.

[PenguinMaster]

Originally Posted by squatting hen

Because this same thing has been mentioned over and over again, can we all agree to this:

Nobody can take physical discs away except for and not limited to the following; a burglar, disaster such as a fire or flood, disc rot, accidental damage, player not ejecting, kid scratching or breaking it, family or friend scratching/breaking/losing/disappearing, or just misplacement.* With digital the studio could potentially, one day, if the studio wanted to, remove the viewing rights.

*I am sure there are many other ways for a disc to be damaged/lost.

If anything happens to any of my discs I can replace them. I can just buy another copy from one of the thousands of people who still owns a working copy.

If a digital movie is removed than there is no way to replace it. That movie is lost to everyone.

Originally Posted by squatting hen

Even it blu ray players are obsolete in 50 years you can still have that same disc. It might not work anymore, but you will always have it.

Obsolete does not mean non-functional. I think we can all agree that LaserDisc players and VCRs are obsolete, but it remains extremely easy to find working ones. With hundreds of millions of Blu-ray players in circulation it will never be difficult to find a working one.

[Groot]

Originally Posted by PenguinMaster

Since you brought up video games I'll again point out that lots of video games have been removed from digital providers.

You're saying that every digital provider should be required by law to continue providing every title they have ever offered forever? That's absurd. No company should have to continue providing support for their products forever. I just won't buy any products that require continued support to function.

Yeah. Bringing up legislation and lawsuits for physically removing it from your device is the same as saying that every thing ever should be online.

And that last bit is well and good. I assume you don't buy games like Destiny and Overwatch that are dependent on online servers to play because oh noes in 5 years those servers won't exist so the game is physically worthless in this hypothetical hoarder scenario.

[zodwriter]

Originally Posted by Dynamo of Eternia

Neither his argument nor that of most others with similar view points have not been nearly as "black and white" as you are making them out to be here.

His point has mainly been that physical media as a whole still sells better than digital sell through (not talking about streaming services like Netflix here).

Blu-Ray is in kind of this weird place overall in part due to changing consumption habits, but also just because of general misconceptions of the general public at large regarding the Blu-Ray format and HD in general, the latter of which have existed for many years now.

There's still this general perception on the part of the non-enthusiast public at large that the only types of content that really "benefit" from HD are things like big, flashy Hollywood blockbuster movies and the like.

This is why Rogue One, for example, recently sold the vast majority of it's sell-through units on Blu-Ray (at 83%).

By contrast, when a non-special-effects-heavy comedy movie, for example, comes out after it's theatrical run, Blu-Ray accounts for a lower percentage of the sales on average compared to something like Rogue One.

Then you have things like TV season sets which can be hit and miss depending on the genre. For the most part sitcoms don't sell nearly as well as other shows that fall more under a sci-fi/drama/action type of category (and even some of those have varied from show to show). The Big Bang Theory is really the only sitcom that I can think of offhand that has had consistent Blu-Ray releases since WB started putting it out on the format, and that's probably because the show is so extremely popular compared to most others that enough people are buying it on Blu-Ray to warrant each subsequent season to still be released on the format.

But after the first few seasons of Modern Family were released on Blu-Ray, Fox apparently decided that they weren't happy enough with the sales on the format and now only release it on DVD on the physical side of things. Likewise, some other shows have had one-off Blu-Ray releases only for no further seasons to come out (How I Met Your Mother Season 4 and Mike & Molly Season 1 being a couple of offhand examples).

Meanwhile, shows like all of the DC comics related shows from the CW network, Once Upon a Time, Game of Thrones, etc. all sell well enough to continue releasing them on Blu-Ray.



Now, yes, a big part of this problem exists separate from digital. But digital distribution simply further splits the market, making it even more difficult for any content that is already "on the fence" in terms of whether or not the studios will release it on Blu-Ray to get such a release if digital takes even just enough sales away to offset things.


There is more nuance to all of this than you are recognizing here, and you are over simplifying the points that people like Penguin Master have been making.

I'm not oversimplifying anything! It's a fact that Penguin Master and many others who only support discs overlook all the short comings of Blu Rays and attack digital as though it's going to be the end of film forever. The fact of the matter is Blu Ray is not a perfect format and the discs are not guaranteed to be playable forever in all players. Studios control Blu Ray just like they control Digital. All 3 of the players I tested required an online firmware update to be able to properly play current Blu Ray discs. Rogue One was the main disc used in the experiment.