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

[stonesfan129]

I decided to stream Lords of Dogtown in HDX today on my PC. I'm sold. The picture quality wasn't Blu-ray but I thought it looked pretty good. I notice barely any difference betwen lossy DD and lossless sound so that's not a huge loss for me. I am tired of waiting on discs to ship to me also. I might just go VUDU from now on. I'm just worried that if they ever go under, I've lost hundreds of dollars worth of movies. Then again, couldn't studios lock people out of playing discs too?

[ThatOneGuy]

Originally Posted by stonesfan129

I decided to stream Lords of Dogtown in HDX today on my PC. I'm sold. The picture quality wasn't Blu-ray but I thought it looked pretty good. I notice barely any difference betwen lossy DD and lossless sound so that's not a huge loss for me. I am tired of waiting on discs to ship to me also. I might just go VUDU from now on. I'm just worried that if they ever go under, I've lost hundreds of dollars worth of movies. Then again, couldn't studios lock people out of playing discs too?

Nope. As long as Blu-Ray players or disks don't require internet connection to play, they can't do anything of the sort.

[Allerion]

The thing I don't understand is why pay $20-25 dollars for a digital copy when in most cases you can get a bluray, DVD, and the digital copy all in one for the same price. The only advantage to buying solely digital I can see is getting a movie 2-3 weeks early but is that really worth it?

[twobelowpar]

Originally Posted by Allerion

The only advantage to buying solely digital I can see is getting a movie 2-3 weeks early but is that really worth it?

Absolutely not. It doesn't take long for these new releases to go on a 9.99 sale anyway.



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[PCFan]

Originally Posted by stonesfan129

I decided to stream Lords of Dogtown in HDX today on my PC. I'm sold. The picture quality wasn't Blu-ray but I thought it looked pretty good. I notice barely any difference betwen lossy DD and lossless sound so that's not a huge loss for me. I am tired of waiting on discs to ship to me also. I might just go VUDU from now on. I'm just worried that if they ever go under, I've lost hundreds of dollars worth of movies. Then again, couldn't studios lock people out of playing discs too?

Well you can lose $100's or even $1,000's worth of blu-rays if you have a huge blu-ray collection and later resell your whole blu-ray collection. For example, someone spends $4,000 on brand new blu-rays over a period of 3 years and then later resells his whole collection for $500. He lost $3500 after reselling his whole blu-ray collection to the 2nd hand movie store. Now if a digital provider goes out of business and he lost access to his purchased digital movies and he spent the same amount over time on digital movies instead of blu-rays he would lose $4000 instead of $3500. This is just a hypothetical situation I'm mentioning. No one gives much for physical media trade-ins these days. In fact one of the 2nd hand media stores near me, does not buy CD's anymore.

[Texan26]

Originally Posted by Allerion

The thing I don't understand is why pay $20-25 dollars for a digital copy when in most cases you can get a bluray, DVD, and the digital copy all in one for the same price. The only advantage to buying solely digital I can see is getting a movie 2-3 weeks early but is that really worth it?

I ordered the digital movies of Wonder Woman and Captain Underpants today from Vudu and getting the blu-rays shipped postage free to me when they come out. I've been doing this for many movies in the past. So I get to watch them early and get the blu-ray later.

[Allerion]

Originally Posted by Texan26

I ordered the digital movies of Wonder Woman and Captain Underpants today from Vudu and getting the blu-rays shipped postage free to me when they come out. I've been doing this for many movies in the past. So I get to watch them early and get the blu-ray later.

Now that's a deal that makes sense to me. I saw they were offering it with Wonder Woman and I was considering it but I think the blu version they are sending out is the one with the tiara and I don't really want that edition lol. But I think this is a great system, I did it one time back when the first Hobbit movie came out.

[Texan26]

Originally Posted by Allerion

Now that's a deal that makes sense to me. I saw they were offering it with Wonder Woman and I was considering it but I think the blu version they are sending out is the one with the tiara and I don't really want that edition lol. But I think this is a great system, I did it one time back when the first Hobbit movie came out.

Yeah, it's for the Walmart exclusive. They always seem to offer the Walmart exclusive when there is one for a higher price. I wish they would give you an option of the getting the regular version for $5 less. I got the exclusives for Alien Covenant and Lego Batman Movie recently through Vudu when I preordered them.

[alchav21]

Originally Posted by Allerion

The thing I don't understand is why pay $20-25 dollars for a digital copy when in most cases you can get a bluray, DVD, and the digital copy all in one for the same price. The only advantage to buying solely digital I can see is getting a movie 2-3 weeks early but is that really worth it?

Originally Posted by twobelowpar

Absolutely not. It doesn't take long for these new releases to go on a 9.99 sale anyway.

It takes a few months to go $9.99, but it all has to do with your priorities. I think it's well worth it to pay to watch the Movie early, but with UV there are good price options. You don't have to pay full price, you can shop for a lower price. I'm sure going forward the Studios want to change this, and you will pay full price or more for Early Release. The asking price from the Studios is $50, but I think this is way too much. All I know is that Early Release will be a Hot Commodity.

[twobelowpar]

Originally Posted by alchav21

It takes a few months to go $9.99, but it all has to do with your priorities. I think it's well worth it to pay to watch the Movie early, but with UV there are good price options. You don't have to pay full price, you can shop for a lower price.

How do you shop for a lower price with UV? Because you have two providers instead of one? Let's get real. That's not competition.


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[flyry]

Originally Posted by twobelowpar

How do you shop for a lower price with UV? Because you have two providers instead of one? Let's get real. That's not competition.


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You can also obtain Vudu credits if you're savvy

[randian]

Originally Posted by twobelowpar

How do you shop for a lower price with UV? Because you have two providers instead of one? Let's get real. That's not competition.

Don't the studios control pricing, not the providers? There's no real competition between iTunes and UV either if none of them control their pricing.

[jhrobinson]

Originally Posted by randian

Don't the studios control pricing, not the providers? There's no real competition between iTunes and UV either if none of them control their pricing.

I believe you're right that the studios control pricing (or at least have a HUGE influence over it). That's also why Apple is reportedly fighting with the studios over pricing of 4K iTunes content.

[Greyman]

Originally Posted by flyry

You can also obtain Vudu credits if you're savvy

That market has dried up compared to what it used to be.

[flyry]

Originally Posted by Greyman

That market has dried up compared to what it used to be.

True, I have to rely mainly on tmobile Tuesdays now. And they don't let you stack those

Fandangonow does sales all the time though. I've gotten a few 50% off from them

[Dynamo of Eternia]

Originally Posted by jhrobinson

Good point. However, considering that box office attendance has been declining for several years (in the USA, at least) and we just had the worst summer in several years, content providers (the studios) might want to make their stuff available on home video sooner. Declines at the box office seem to be inevitable.

I think the decline in ticket sales has more to do with the quality of the content than people just not wanting to go to the theater.

While some good movies still come out, there's a lot of redundant crap coming out. People finally seem to be waking up to the Transformers movies all basically being the same plotless crap, ridden with explosions and action sequences that move so fast you can't tell what the hell is going on, and the latest had by a huge margin, had the worst opening weekend of any of them (Frankly I think it should have happened at least two movies ago, but better late than never).

For the movies that under performed this summer, most of them weren't much of a surprise IMO. There's a serious void of good, quality content that doesn't feel like a complete rehash of something else.

Don't get me wrong, I very much enjoyed Guardians 2, Spider-Man Homecoming, and Wonder Woman (an actual good movie from the DC combined universe), but even those weren't wholly original, and most everything else that came out was so redundant that I didn't bother going.

If they make good movies and market them correctly, people will go. But when everything is a mindless sequel, reboot, or the like, and the newest installment doesn't offer anything really new over the previous ones, it's no wonder that people lose interest.


And then by shortening the window to some form of home availability, they are just giving people more incentive not to go to the theater. Sure, buying a digital copy may cost more than a single movie ticket in most cases, but once you get to two or more movie tickets, unless you are going to the cheapest matinee shows or something like that, you are hitting or surpassing that same price point. So if a group of people who would all go out to the theater and each buy a ticket, or if they wait a few weeks for the digital release, and then all go to the house of the person who buys it to watch it, that's not good for the studio's bottom line.

[alchav21]

Originally Posted by alchav21

It takes a few months to go $9.99, but it all has to do with your priorities. I think it's well worth it to pay to watch the Movie early, but with UV there are good price options. You don't have to pay full price, you can shop for a lower price.

Originally Posted by twobelowpar

How do you shop for a lower price with UV? Because you have two providers instead of one? Let's get real. That's not competition.

I was talking about the UV Stores, they get the Codes for Early Release and sell them at different prices. You can easily hit that $9.99 point with an Early Release UV Code.

http://ultravioletcinema.com/getuv.php?q=HD

I shop around for the best price, and that has to do with UHD too. The Combo Packs with Digital are good, but then it's hard now to sell the Disc because that Market has gone sour.

[flyry]

Originally Posted by Dynamo of Eternia

I think the decline in ticket sales has more to do with the quality of the content than people just not wanting to go to the theater.

While some good movies still come out, there's a lot of redundant crap coming out. People finally seem to be waking up to the Transformers movies all basically being the same plotless crap, ridden with explosions and action sequences that move so fast you can't tell what the hell is going on, and the latest had by a huge margin, had the worst opening weekend of any of them (Frankly I think it should have happened at least two movies ago, but better late than never).

.

There were also quite a few critically acclaimed smaller releases this summer as well. But for these non franchise releases coming out you to put in a lot more leg work to find them.

But I don't think studios are doing themselves any favors with the platform style release strategy of opening in NY/LA for a few weeks and going wide weeks later. It can make even confusing as to when a movie is coming out even for someone like me who follows this stuff closely.

They may as well just do them day and date with digital IMO since I'm not sure audiences would gravitate towards them in theaters either way.

[alchav21]

Originally Posted by Dynamo of Eternia

I think the decline in ticket sales has more to do with the quality of the content than people just not wanting to go to the theater.

While some good movies still come out, there's a lot of redundant crap coming out. People finally seem to be waking up to the Transformers movies all basically being the same plotless crap, ridden with explosions and action sequences that move so fast you can't tell what the hell is going on, and the latest had by a huge margin, had the worst opening weekend of any of them (Frankly I think it should have happened at least two movies ago, but better late than never).

Originally Posted by flyry

There were also quite a few critically acclaimed smaller releases this summer as well. But for these non franchise releases coming out you to put in a lot more leg work to find them.

But I don't think studios are doing themselves any favors with the platform style release strategy of opening in NY/LA for a few weeks and going wide weeks later. It can make even confusing as to when a movie is coming out even for someone like me who follows this stuff closely.

They may as well just do them day and date with digital IMO since I'm not sure audiences would gravitate towards them in theaters either way.

Even though the Movies might not be the best, I think the decline has to do with my Generation, The Baby Boomers. Anybody I talk to doesn't go to the Theater, and they don't buy Disc either. Now they do Amazon or Netflix, so Steedeel is partly right....Subscription. The Studios just want to make money, to pay for the Movies they make. Streaming Video is all the rage now, and everybody wants to jump on that Bandwagon!

[jhrobinson]

Originally Posted by Allerion

The thing I don't understand is why pay $20-25 dollars for a digital copy when in most cases you can get a bluray, DVD, and the digital copy all in one for the same price. The only advantage to buying solely digital I can see is getting a movie 2-3 weeks early but is that really worth it?

Amen!

That's why I went from digital only to Blu-Ray w/digital copy.