Rough economy challenges Blu-ray?

[Anthony P]

Those two formats never went anywhere because there wasn't any music released on those formats that appealed to the general public.

not only that but like with BD/HD DVD labels and titles where split on the formats (so if you wanted X it would be on SACD and Y on DVD-A), not to mention most record labels waited for who would win, neither of them grew fast enough and soon most retailers gave up supporting them and they became even harder to get.

The SACD/DVD-A format war and lack of support killed them, not DL.

[Doc Ostrow]

Originally Posted by Gremal

Yeah, but most people don't care about quality. These same issues were in play after the launch of SACD and subsequent economic decline post 9/11/01. Look what happened. Downloadable music pretty much killed not just SACD but CD and took a huge chunk out of the record labels' business. That could happen to the studios, too.

It's true that CD sales have declined but SACD and DVD-A bombed. I'm not an expert on why everyone else avoided these formats but I know why I did. I don't listen to music like I watch movies. I normally only listen to the songs I like on a CD but I watch an entire movie on DVD or Blu-ray. Therefore, I need a music format that allows copying so I can make compilations. Both SACD and DVD-A were copy protected so they were dead on arrival as far as I was concerned. Add to that the decision to have a format war.

Concerning the decline of CD sales, I just find less music I'm interested in than in the past. The music industry can be blamed for part of the problem. At some point, the industry was taken over by bean counters who knew nothing about music. They tried to promote too many talent less groups, always searching for the next big sensation. The movie industry suffers from the same problem. Most producers want to bet on sequels or formula pictures. MTV is partly to blame for bad music because the focus was on the group's appearance and attitude rather than on the music.

Back in the 90's, I had a "three song rule" for CDs. I wouldn't buy a CD unless it had at least three songs I liked. The only exceptions were used CDs from Wherehouse (now defunct) that I bought at a low price. That meant that I wouldn't buy some CDs even though they had a song I liked. That is the reason I turned to Apple iTunes and Walmart. I could buy any single song for only $.99 ($.88 at Walmart). I presently own about 500 CDs and have downloaded 652 songs from Apple iTunes and 59 from Walmart. I wish the downloads had CD quality lossless compression but I don't think that will ever happen.

It's somewhat ironic that I started to download so many Franz Ferdinand songs that I realized I should have bought the CDs. I went to Best Buy and bought their first two CDs.

[blu2]

A poll related to this topic is running here...

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=68703

[Anthony P]

Downloadable music pretty much killed not just SACD but CD and took a huge chunk out of the record labels' business

CD still outsells DL even though DL has been out for more then 7 years (taking iTunes as the start even if there some before it that don't exist any more)

That is the problem with such bad analysis I am sure that at some point CD will be gone but we are still far from the death of CD. And let's face it DL movies still needs a few years to come to market (OK there are some joke systems out there, the same way there where before itunes) and then if it needs an other 7+ years to get to 50% we are easily talking(in a best case scenario for DL) an other 10 years before it is relevent. And as others have mentioned the infrastructure is no where near what is needed and won't be for most likely all those years.

[Bobby Henderson]

Originally Posted by Gremal

I said they watch “stuff”. Not necessarily movies, but the trend has already been established. Last year ABI research found a near-doubling of consumers who say they watch video streamed through a browser, from 32% to 63%.

Those studies are conveniently lumping in everything "viral video" oriented -much of which people view for free. I look at a lot of stuff on YouTube. But I'm sure not paying any money for it. The quality is crap. The video window is tiny. It doesn't lend itself to "home theater" use at all.

Originally Posted by Gremal

I thought the same thing about consumers’ listening habits when I predicted that SACD would succeed eight years ago.

From the start I predicted SACD and DVD Audio would fail, all due to how Sony and Time/Warner were treating the formats. Sony put a far better effort into the failed MiniDisc format.

Electronics companies didn't help matters either. The first couple generations of players were limited in capability. SACD players were limited to 2-channel capability. None of the early SACD or DVD-A players had digital outputs for the high resolution signal, even though some receivers were incorporating Firewire inputs for such a thing. That was a deal breaker for me.

Firewire and then later HDMI output only began to appear on SACD and DVD-A players when both formats were on life support.

DVD-A and SACD were badly mis-managed and poorly promoted audio formats. I consider it very unfair to pin the failure of those formats on what people believe was a disinterested general public. Let's face it, the product was crap and the public made the right decision about it.

Originally Posted by Gremal

Everyone USED TO listen to music around the radio or stereo system in the living room. That changed. Is your position that it can’t change for video?

My position is that zero sum style arguments are silly. We're not a bunch of mindless pod people doing everything exactly the same way. Even though iPods are all the rage, no one can truthfully claim that people never listen to music on large stereo systems anymore. Likewise, just because someone can watch a 2 hour movie on a Sony PSP that doesn't mean that everyone is going to do 100% of their movie viewing on a device like that. If there was any truth to that notion, HD quality video would never get off the ground.

The only thing that is happening is the general public is expanding its variety of choice on how they choose to be entertained. They're not totally abandoning one way to listen to music or watch movies to go entirely to another thing.

Folks thinking or wishing everything is going to go to low bit rate Internet downloads are fooling themselves. I'm not watching Lawrence of Arabia on a tiny video wrist watch or my phone either. I want to see it on the 52" HDTV sitting in my living room and have it accompanied with a 6-channel lossless audio track.

Originally Posted by Gremal

Agreed, but downloaded music sales are more than doubling every year and CD sales are declining. In that climate, it is flushing your investment down the toilet to pump a lot of money into SACD production.

Some of those downloads numbers are spun to maximum effect. You buy 1 song via iTunes, Apple spins the sale as if it is equal to someone spending $15-$20 at a retail store for a full blown music CD. We're seeing the same kind of phony nonsense in how they count TV show downloads versus Blu-ray sales of the same program. They'll count every episode as a separate sale and then only see the Blu-ray box set as just one unit sale as well.

Originally Posted by Gremal

With all due respect, if you were the executive at a record label and put the kind of resources into SACD that you insist Sony should have, you’d have sunk the label, created massive debt for the parent company, and been the laughing stock of the industry.

It doesn't cost a fortune to produce an album in SACD format. If it was as expensive as you seem to think there would be no obscure jazz titles and other limited interest niche market stuff of that sort being released onto SACD.

A major music act who headlines arenas and sells millions of albums could easily justify a SACD or DVD-A style release. The album just has to be recorded and mixed with the higher quality format in mind from the beginning, instead of being engineered in the usual (and very crappy) manner currently seen these days.

Originally Posted by Gremal

Anecdotal evidence and personal acquaintances aside, the percentage of consumers who invest in high end stereo gear is miniscule. Far more are investing in cheap surround sound systems and handheld devices. According to CEA, sales of digital-music players tripled in 2005 alone, with the value of shipments of digital-music players totaling $3.7 billion versus just $1.2 billion for traditional home stereos.

If the vast majority of people really don't care about high quality audio, why does Blu-ray even allow for lossless or uncompressed audio (or even high resolution 24/96 audio)? Why do we have so many people in this forum and elsewhere across the Internet constantly slinging mud at Warner Bros. for the lossy compressed Dolby Digital audio tracks they keep sticking on Blu-ray movies?

Honestly, no one can have it both ways on this. It doesn't make any sense for someone to suggest that severely compressed iTunes stuff is the only way people need to listen to music and then also have a position that lossless audio needs to be on every Blu-ray movie disc.

Lossy Dolby Digital is akin to iTunes music quality. Movie sound tracks, with their crude sound effects and sometimes badly recorded dialog, don't need as high a quality audio format as music. Music material is much more capable in revealing the flaws in any lossy compression system -so much so that we've seen music production deliberately shift into practices of severely overdriving the audio track so it clips all to hell that way the music CD doesn't sound any different than a crappy MP3 compressed to 1:20 the size of the original.

Originally Posted by Gremal

But was SACD ever targeted at the mass consumer? What are the listening habits of the average music fan? You can’t forget your target market.

Do you think everyone approaching middle age wants to buy the same album over and over and over again? As an analogy, most people I personally know who have Blu-ray players are buying very few of the movies they already own on DVD. Many are only buying stuff that is new.

I've got a big stack of vinyl records and have a lot of LPs that I never re-purchased on CD. I either didn't feel like spending the extra money or just never got around to making the purchase. People of all ages move on to other kinds of movies and music.

[Anthony P]

I hear ya, but the fact is that you are not an average consumer.

what does that have to do with what he said? Let me explain it simply my ISP has a max of 60GB a month for the service I have (and there are other lower services) and so if it is BD quality that means 1 movie a month (with some extra for other stuff, if it is HDE DVD quality then maybe 2 movies, if it is DVD quality then 5-6 movies. Is thius easy enough to understand. Most ISPs have limits now a days , some have hard limits (you are not allowed to go over it) and others have soft ones (you can go over but you are charged extra).

Even if the networks are upgraded by the telcos if DL movies (or other big stuff) does do well it will mean that ISPs will limit more (i.e. for this post I went back to my ISPs page to find out the limit, I could have sworn that last time I checked it was 90GB)

I thought the same thing about consumers’ listening habits when I predicted that SACD would succeed eight years ago. Everyone USED TO listen to music around the radio or stereo system in the living room.

so all that proves is that you are very bad at determining reality, ON the other hand I want to know if you are talking about the 50's or some time after CD came out. Boom boxes and Walkman and car stereos where much more the norm even before CD came. Normal people did not sit in the dark around their radio listening to music when DL started

It may unseat DVD, but the fact that lots of young people (who command the direction of these markets) seem content to watch stuff on their handheld device or laptop is very distressing, you have to admit.

not at all, even if true (which it is not) then stuff like UMD movies would have done well. The issue is that it would take a special type of retard to pay and buy something that only looks good on a 4" display when they can buy the version that looks good on all their displays and they can watch on the 4" screen. Which is also why UMD movies never sold. Why pay for the UMD when you could buy the DVD watch it on the TV and then put it on a USB and watch it on the PSP.

[Anthony P]

Agreed, but downloaded music sales are more than doubling every year and CD sales are declining

CD sales are declining, it is normal, it is a very mature technology (over 20 years old) and has reached its peak a long time ago. As for DL, you are wrong, they are not more then doubling, if they where they would have surpassed CD sales a long time ago.

[Truewitt]

Originally Posted by AintNoSin

The problem with SACD and DVD-A had nothing to do with selection (which was very similar to the early days of CD, primarily titles geared to appeal to audiophiles) and everything to do with their lack of portability. You couldn't play them in your car. There was never any portable player. You couldn't rip them to a portable device, either. We've always been willing to sacrifice quality for portability with our music, even going back to the days I was dubbing vinyl albums to cassettes so I could listen in my car.

SACD and DVD-A failed because they flew in the face of how regular people consumed music.

This is the most important factor here. The problem with thinking movie downloads will have any real impact for movie buying because music downloads are popular is that music is something you enjoy while doing other things. There is no way to enjoy a movie while doing other things.

[crazyBLUE]

+10 :d

[Gremal]

Originally Posted by Truewitt

This is the most important factor here. The problem with thinking movie downloads will have any real impact for movie buying because music downloads are popular is that music is something you enjoy while doing other things. There is no way to enjoy a movie while doing other things.

It's not just listening habits that are changing, but the entire approach to media, whether it's audio or video. It's becoming more "pausable" and more portable. People multitask and pause downloadable content and come back to finish it when they're ready. That's how it's being done, increasingly.

I'm not saying downloadable content will kill blu-ray right away, but it's sure not helping.

[Anthony P]

You are right, I keep hearing every day that ads should be longer and more often

and ye it is extremely hard to pause a disk.

As for portable, I have 300+ BDs right now, if I felt like it I can take any one or 10 or 20 or more with me if I felt like it (and I have done it in the past) when going away for a few days for a party. Can you tell me how I could bring them if I had DLed them to my home server?

[Bobby Henderson]

Portable movie viewing has been around for over 20 years now.

Back in the late 1980s my parents bought one of those Sony 8mm videotape portable movie players. It wasn't much bigger than a CD Walkman. And there was a somewhat decent selection of pre-recorded movies you could play on the thing. The device seemed cool for awhile. But the novelty of watching movies on a tiny screen wore off pretty fast. It ended up just taking up some shelf space in a closet.

Portable DVD players have been around for close to a decade. They've never turned into a real hit, even though many have had prices fall to very affordable levels. The only portable DVD player that's really worth a hoot at all is a notebook computer equipped with a DVD burner. Why? The screen usually isn't microscopic.

It is important for music to be portable. Music CD has persisted since it is easy to rip the tracks to a hard disc and convert them to MP3 or AAC format and then load them on a little flash-based player. This was a definite problem for SACD and DVD-A, due to all their anti-piracy issues. Features like BD-Live on Blu-ray could overcome such a thing.

Blu-ray's copy protection system could be used on the high resolution master grade tracks, but then BD Live could allow the disc's owner to freely download lossy MP3 or AAC versions to use on his portable music player. It shouldn't be too difficult to allow a Red Book CD image download as well -perhaps as a lossless compressed file. Blu-ray could deliver audio discs that satisfy any listening purpose. Unfortunately we may never see such a thing happen over the widespread belief that anyone who listens to music only does it via iTunes.

[jd213]

Originally Posted by Bobby Henderson

It is important for music to be portable. Music CD has persisted since it is easy to rip the tracks to a hard disc and convert them to MP3 or AAC format and then load them on a little flash-based player. This was a definite problem for SACD and DVD-A, due to all their anti-piracy issues.

Don't most SACDs come with a regular redbook audio CD layer?

[Septimus Prime]

I bought a portable DVD player once. It was garbage. The only reason I kept it for a while was so that I could have a DVD playing in my new room with no TV while my then-girlfriend and I did things other than watch the DVD.

That shit went right back to the store once I got my TV there.

[masoud90]

Isn't the 4th quarter when THE biggest titles will be coming to BD? The Hulk, Get Smart, Wall-E, Wanted, Kung Fu Panda, The Mummy 3, The Dark Knight, Hancock...these are just SOME of the many BIG titles that are coming out Q4...one would think with the sales going on for the holidays and black friday, these people would stop babbling when their editors tell them the newspaper has too much white space and need to pull an all nighter.

[fighthefutureofhd]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

CD still outsells DL even though DL has been out for more then 7 years (taking iTunes as the start even if there some before it that don't exist any more)

That is the problem with such bad analysis I am sure that at some point CD will be gone but we are still far from the death of CD. And let's face it DL movies still needs a few years to come to market (OK there are some joke systems out there, the same way there where before itunes) and then if it needs an other 7+ years to get to 50% we are easily talking(in a best case scenario for DL) an other 10 years before it is relevent. And as others have mentioned the infrastructure is no where near what is needed and won't be for most likely all those years.

i thought itunes started in 2003?

[MacHaggis]

Originally Posted by jd213

Don't most SACDs come with a regular redbook audio CD layer?

Probably most, but not all.

It would have to be a Hybrid SACD disc.

It will contain the SACD material AND the CD layer. The information on the CD layer can be used just like having a regular CD.

Note: My work laptop cannot make sense of the Hybrid SACD. It never does switch to the CD information.

- Bogdan

[mapledragon]

Roger Kay is(was?) a key person in Trusted Computer Group, even endpoint technologies is concerned with the business of secured streaming, drm, general download IPTV like issues.

It must be tough for Roger to see his client base drying up as the small startups (or preIPOs --- remember when that used to mean something?) in iptv run out of cash and go under in this climate. Nothing he says in this regard will make a difference with regards to drumming up interest for downloads.

Venture capitalists are short of cash, and even if you give away 75% of the company, it is still tough to raise cash.

He could try again in 3 years, but by then the key players in download IPTV will all be different.

[Terjyn]

Originally Posted by Gremal

I said they watch “stuff”. Not necessarily movies, but the trend has already been established. Last year ABI research found a near-doubling of consumers who say they watch video streamed through a browser, from 32% to 63%. “This increased adoption of online video can be attributed to a large-scale shift in the industry towards embracing the online channel as a legitimate and growing avenue for video entertainment,” according to ABI. Downloaded or streaming video, while not high quality, shows significant growth. Is your position that this trend isn’t carrying into movies?

I hate this type of statistics.

I'm part of the 63% who watch video streamed through a browser. Yet I'm still on a Blu-Ray forum. Why? Because one does not preclude the other!

How do you declare a shift based on a completely independent statistic?

[Bobby Henderson]

It's a zero sum style argument. It attempts to pass off the idea that anyone who watches a YouTube video does 100% of their movie viewing and video watching via YouTube. If they buy/rent anything video released from Apple, then they're doing 100% of their video viewing from the Apple portal. It's freaking retarded.

This is no different that the silly assumption that anyone who owns an iPod only listens to music on an iPod. Everyone I know who owns an iPod or other brand of MP3 player also listens to music in their cars, on their computer systems and (gasp) on their surround sound systems at home.