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

[sapiendut]

Originally Posted by alchav21

Now do you also prefer being Hard Wired? I'm Hard Wired to my Sony going on 2 years with no problems, and the Android Apps are updated consistently and run solid. When I used my Panasonic BD Player for Streaming that was Hard Wired too, and it ran solid. I guess the Roku's are better now, but I feel the Sticks are not that reliable. The Chips and Processors are better in High End TV's and Players for reliable Streaming.

I hardwire whenever I can. In 20+ years, literally only one ethernet connection ever failed on me.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by The_Donster

When did you have time to get scratchers big spender

Time I got; luck not so much.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

Have a pound bet with yourself that you will watch Fire Walk With Me before the weekend?

But then I would have to charge myself a currency conversion fee.

[The_Donster]

Originally Posted by stonesfan129

Keep buying discs. Better quality. I mean is it really that inconvenient to take out the disc and put it in the player? I don't think a lot of these 4K remasters are worth it but Blu-ray definitely is.

[ZoetMB]

Originally Posted by Vilya

As someone who buys a lot of physical media on a recurring basis, I have not seen any reduction in the number of new or catalog releases on disc and I monitor release announcements with a passion. My collection grows every month as does my wishlist as so much gets released that I often have to pick and choose what I can buy now and what must wait until my wallet recovers.

As for this unsubstantiated fear of reduced releases in the future, I laugh in the face of it. I still have no trouble finding the music that I want to buy on compact disc and that format was declared dead and buried long before people even began to murmur about the fate of blu-ray et al.

So many of us think that we can predict the future of oh so many markets, yet I would wager that almost none of us have ever invested in an IPO that became a huge success despite all of our imagined expertise and intuition. Just a bunch of doomsayers ready to pronounce the demise of any and everything, but none capable of predicting the next big success and profiting from that insight at the same time. What good is the gift of so much market foresight when those so blessed seldom, if ever, make a cent from having it?

The numbers (and history) speak for themselves. As a former executive at three different large media companies (and a consultant at others), I can tell you that especially in public companies, everything is about ROI and shareholder value. So you make choices about what you want to invest in and you invest in what you think will have the biggest growth. If you don't, you get fired.

The reality is this: in 2018 in North America, the physical music business was only 12.1% of industry revenue. Streaming was 77.1%. How long do you think the record labels are going to keep issuing everything in physical form? There comes a point where it's not worth putting out a CD when it's only going to sell a few hundred copies. Sure, they'll still be CD's issued for the top acts, but not for most else.

Over a billion albums were sold each year from 1998 to 2000. In 2018, it was only 120 million including digital album downloads. If your salary (or your IPO investment) dropped by 88%, would you continue down that path? If you were an executive, is that where you'd place your money?

In 2019, streaming will probably reach 85% of the business. If CD drops in 2019 as much as it did from 2017 to 2018 (41% in units), 2019 will have CD sales of under 30 million units. That's really nothing. (It was 942.5 million in 2000).

The DVD/Blu-ray business was almost $11 billion in North America in 2009. It was $4.1 billion in 2018. So far this year, DVD is down 24% and Blu is down 16% (in dollars). Again, the big films will still get released (for the time being), but once you get past the top 100 titles in any given year, the numbers are very small. The top 100 titles in 2018 garnered 51% of all units and 64% of dollars.

If you think everything is going to be as it was when these businesses were growing, you're really living in denial. It doesn't mean that it disappears completely (LP's always sold 1 to 2.3 million copies per year), but it becomes completely irrelevant.

And it's happened before: when CD's began to dominate and Tower Records were selling fewer LP's then was worth it for the floor space they were taking up (retail success is based upon profit per square foot), they dumped LP sales in a matter of weeks and the labels stopped issuing them. Same for VHS.

[ZoetMB]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

To be fair, you have been claiming the death of Blu-Ray for 9 years. Are you really that different?

The difference is that I base my claims on facts, not paranoia - the reported economics of the industry, but I've not been claiming the death of Blu-ray for 9 years. I've evaluated the decline of Blu-ray since it stopped growing which happened after 2013.

As I've posted elsewhere, in North America, DVD/Blu-ray was an $11 billion business in 2009 and it was a $4.1 billion business in 2018. Blu-ray peaked at $2.3 billion in 2013 and was $1.86 billion in 2018. What part of that decline do you not understand? Have you not noticed that a number of manufacturers have gotten out of the player business? So far this year, Blu is down 16% (in dollars).

I have never said that Blu was going away completely. I've said that there will be fewer boxed sets, restorations, special packaging, extras, etc. and that's already happened.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by ZoetMB

[Show spoiler]The numbers (and history) speak for themselves. As a former executive at three different large media companies (and a consultant at others), I can tell you that especially in public companies, everything is about ROI and shareholder value. So you make choices about what you want to invest in and you invest in what you think will have the biggest growth. If you don't, you get fired.

The reality is this: in 2018 in North America, the physical music business was only 12.1% of industry revenue. Streaming was 77.1%. How long do you think the record labels are going to keep issuing everything in physical form? There comes a point where it's not worth putting out a CD when it's only going to sell a few hundred copies. Sure, they'll still be CD's issued for the top acts, but not for most else.

Over a billion albums were sold each year from 1998 to 2000. In 2018, it was only 120 million including digital album downloads. If your salary (or your IPO investment) dropped by 88%, would you continue down that path? If you were an executive, is that where you'd place your money?

In 2019, streaming will probably reach 85% of the business. If CD drops in 2019 as much as it did from 2017 to 2018 (41% in units), 2019 will have CD sales of under 30 million units. That's really nothing. (It was 942.5 million in 2000).

The DVD/Blu-ray business was almost $11 billion in North America in 2009. It was $4.1 billion in 2018. So far this year, DVD is down 24% and Blu is down 16% (in dollars). Again, the big films will still get released (for the time being), but once you get past the top 100 titles in any given year, the numbers are very small. The top 100 titles in 2018 garnered 51% of all units and 64% of dollars.

If you think everything is going to be as it was when these businesses were growing, you're really living in denial. It doesn't mean that it disappears completely (LP's always sold 1 to 2.3 million copies per year), but it becomes completely irrelevant.

And it's happened before: when CD's began to dominate and Tower Records were selling fewer LP's then was worth it for the floor space they were taking up (retail success is based upon profit per square foot), they dumped LP sales in a matter of weeks and the labels stopped issuing them. Same for VHS.

We are all aware that disc sales are declining, but that has not adversely impacted the selection of titles being offered. As has been pointed out by PenguinInfinity, more titles are getting released, not less. Also, most of that sales decline, by far, is due to sharp declines in dvd sales. Blu-ray sales have only seen modest declines in comparison, something around 8% since 2013 if my memory serves. It is late and I'm too tired to look up the exact figure, but bruceames provided it in the Home Video sales thread and I posted it here awhile back.

Disc sales remain the dominate purchase method; subscription streaming is a rental method. Digital purchases have momentum and may well overtake physical media sales, but that is not anything that keeps me up at night. Disc sales only have to do well enough to make them a worthwhile endeavor for the studios to keep releasing them and as they released more titles in 2018 than they did in 2017 the studios must still consider the disc market one worth serving.

Only Oppo, Cambridge, and Samsung have stopped making disc players and Cambridge used Oppo components, so that was to be expected. Cambridge can't build a disc player when their key parts supplier ceased manufacturing. Essentially, only 2 companies, Oppo and Samsung, ceased production of disc players. Sony, Panasonic, LG, Pioneer, and Philips/Magnavox all continue to make them. The Xbox One also offers a 4K disc drive. Stand alone DVD players are still sold at Walmart even; they cost $29.99. Your suggestion that disc players are likely to disappear is ridiculous.

I buy discs. I buy a lot of them. I buy them almost every week. The number of new releases continues unabated and catalog releases, including really deep and obscure titles, keep coming with a vengeance. The release announcements are listed on the home page of this very website and there are as many such announcements as ever month after month after month. I know because I read each and every one of them.

Many disc releases continue to have extensive extra features, also. If you actually bought them with any frequency, you would have noticed.

Movies are being restored for disc releases, digital purchases, and streaming as frequently as ever if not even more often. Restoring a movie benefits all of these content delivery methods, not just physical media. Plenty of limited and special editions keep getting released, too. The upcoming Alita: Battle Angel is one of the most recent to get a special limited edition release and it currently commands a price of $199- someone clearly sees a market for it.

https://www.amazon.com/Alita-Battle-...=ATVPDKIKX0DER

Many niche markets exist, and not only do they exist, they actually thrive and if that is where discs find themselves, I can easily live with it. So long as I can still buy them and choose from among a great selection of titles, that is all that matters to me. I do not care what most people do; I do not have a herd mentality. I want the best quality possible and actual ownership of what I purchase and only physical media meets those requirements.

Say what you will about the resilient 36 year-old compact disc, but I can still find what I want on CD, so even that market appears to be one still worth serving. For how many years have we had to listen to self-impressed "experts" and all-knowing amateurs alike predict the imminent death of the CD? CDs are still here, period, and the "smarter than the average bear" experts just move their vaguely estimated date of death ever forward the same as they do with all other types of physical media. Each year I'm told that physical media is dying, and very soon to be dead, and each year I'm still here buying it as often and as easily as I could ever hope for.

[Wendell R. Breland]

For those that have predicted Best Buy would exit the physical movie business, why do they keep releasing these Steelbook editions (some here)? Never purchased a steelbook edition myself but there must be enough copies sold to make it worthwhile to Best Buy.

For executives, past and present, physical purchase ≠ SVOD (Pay TV or Pay Music). Physical purchase = EST. So if you want to compare physical sales vs streaming then you need to list the EST sales.

In math: ≠ means not equal to, = means equal or same.

As noted before, EST sales are pretty pathetic when one considers the number of devices capable of accessing EST. Now subtract out that 60%* that Apple does for EST and the story looks even worse for the other retail EST vendors. There is a good reason why EST vendors and UltraViolet is closing/have closed up shop.

*The last figures that I saw, if you have more recent data then provide a link.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by Wendell R. Breland

For those that have predicted Best Buy would exit the physical movie business, why do they keep releasing these Steelbook editions (some here)? Never purchased a steelbook edition myself but there must be enough copies sold to make it worthwhile to Best Buy.

For executives, past and present, physical purchase ≠ SVOD (Pay TV or Pay Music). Physical purchase = EST. So if you want to compare physical sales vs streaming then you need to list the EST sales.

In math: ≠ means not equal to, = means equal or same.

As noted before, EST sales are pretty pathetic when one considers the number of devices capable of accessing EST. Now subtract out that 60%* that Apple does for EST and the story looks even worse for the other retail EST vendors. There is a good reason why EST vendors and UltraViolet is closing/have closed up shop.

*The last figures that I saw, if you have more recent data then provide a link.

It’s obvious Digital HD hasn’t got legs. Ownership is on its way out. . I have stated as much from the start. The format will just fizzle out.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

It’s obvious Digital HD hasn’t got legs. Ownership is on its way out. . I have stated as much from the start. The format will just fizzle out.

Ownership means buying discs to me as a digital purchase is nothing more than a long term lease at best. I do not consider physical media as being "on its way out." A decline in disc sales is all that is happening; they are not being discontinued nor is their production being curtailed.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by Vilya

Ownership means buying discs to me as a digital purchase is nothing more than a long term lease at best. I do not consider physical media as being "on its way out." A decline in disc sales is all that is happening; they are not being discontinued nor is their production being curtailed.

Yes, but a model that is decreasing in popularity isn’t going to help Digital HD is it? At least Blu-ray has been around for a long time.

Like you say, I just don’t see the value in an inferior product. Yes, it’s convenient but I am not that lazy that I can’t stand up and pop a disc in.

If I wanted to, I could easily have a few hundred Digital copies by tonight. The codes are still in the cases (the ones not used for toilet paper and I could easily watch them through my tv or projector via YouTube because Google Play redemptions also work in YouTube and are better quality than Google Play imo.

I know this because I gave a code to a lady friend of mine and she was over the moon that she could watch it on her Console in 1080p. She will now get all my codes, not because I suddenly think there is value in the format but because I quite like her!

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

I know this because I gave a code to a lady friend of mine and she was over the moon that she could watch it on her Console in 1080p. She will now get all my codes, not because I suddenly think there is value in the format but because I quite like her!

Are you really trying to win the affections of this woman with your unwanted digital codes? I seem to remember you saying that giving away digital codes for free was harmful to physical media sales and the film industry in general.

But all's fair in love and war, eh?

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by Vilya

Are you really trying to win the affections of this woman with your unwanted digital codes? I seem to remember you saying that giving away digital codes for free was harmful to physical media sales and the film industry in general.

But all's fair in love and war, eh?

I’m actually told I’m quite a kind person at times believe it or not. She works hard and doesn’t seem to have much to show for it. She loves films so it seemed like the decent thing to do. Sometimes you have to take one for the team in the battlefield.

My personal investment in the format is increasing. I have at least 20 more 4K purchases in my sights, and I will be upping my regular Blu-Ray purchases to 80 this year. So many boutique label’s titles I want.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

I’m actually told I’m quite a kind person at times believe it or not. She works hard and doesn’t seem to have much to show for it. She loves films so it seemed like the decent thing to do. Sometimes you have to take one for the team in the battlefield.

My personal investment in the format is increasing. I have at least 20 more 4K purchases in my sights, and I will be upping my regular Blu-Ray purchases to 80 this year. So many boutique label’s titles I want.

I certainly do not doubt that you are routinely capable of showing kindness.

I do not really care what you do with your digital codes, but giving them to someone that you care about is a far better use for them than what you have claimed to use them for in the past, namely as toilet paper.

I can only applaud your plan to buy more movies on disc. Great decision!

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by Vilya

I certainly do not doubt that you are routinely capable of showing kindness.

I do not really care what you do with your digital codes, but giving them to someone that you care about is a far better use for them than what you have claimed to use them for in the past, namely as toilet paper.

I can only applaud your plan to buy more movies on disc. Great decision!

There is a stupid amount of obscure gems coming out this year.

[Wendell R. Breland]

Originally Posted by PenguinInfinity

DVD release numbers are listed on page 13. Blu-ray release numbers are listed on page 34.

Thanks, that site had slipped off my radar. Do you have a list of sites that you visit?

I read Media Play News, High-def Digest and The Digital Bits almost every day. Some of my other reference sites:

HOLLYWOOD IN HI-DEF

high def disc news

Hollywood b i t ch slap - "http://www.hollywoodbi*chslap.com/" [Censored link ]

ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD

The Numbers

[The_Donster]

Regardless of what format you support, it is a fear of loss that seems to be a great motivator to some. Tech is ever evolving and the market will evolve with it. So enjoy it and stop worrying about an uncertain future.

[Vilya]

For quick reference here are the total number of titles released on blu-ray by year; this comes from the link provided by PenguinInfinity.

BlurayReleaseTotalsFromYear1.jpg

http://www.dvdandblurayreleasereport.com/pdf/28.pdf

^See page 34.

The number of titles released has gone UP every year since 2016. This year is on track to beat 2018 as well.

Those who insist that physical media is in deep trouble ALWAYS ignore the fact that we are getting more titles each year, not less. Seems peculiar to see more releases on physical media each year if the market for physical media is in freefall like they insist.

[The_Donster]

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by The_Donster

[Show spoiler]

Just some chum for thought.