Europe's lack of Blu-ray titles?

[Enda]

I'm just wondering if anyone can break this situation down for me?

I myself am just buying into the whole HD thing (bought a Hi Def tv a month ago, along with PS3). I just bought 3 or 4 films, but am still puzzled as to the reasons why the US has a much much wider selection of films while us Europeans are stuck at mainly mainstream movies at ridiculous infalted prices?

I'm guessing Hi Def has just caught on more in the US perhaps? Or is there another reason for this?

[actionhank]

Maybe its because americans just have more money.. lol I am just kidding

Truth is I don't know. Maybe its because most of the movie studios that support blu-ray are in America or Japan (Sony).

[Anthony P]

I think there are several reasons and most likely a combination of the following

1) I think in most European countries movies have been traditionally more expensive

2) some studios got conned by Toshiba into assuming HD DVD would be cheaper and more easily adopted

3) The PS3 came out much later, The issue is that people in Europe knew it was coming and wit6h the more expensive BD players there and in limited numbers BD was not all that exciting. Now with the PS3 and BD's outselling HD DVD I am sure things will change

4) BD has region coding and Europe is in a different RC then US and Japan. A studio could have decided "I made the movie, let's distribute it there as well, but they need different masters, so my guess many waited to have a large enough demand to make replication worth it.

[MarekM]

Originally Posted by Enda

I'm just wondering if anyone can break this situation down for me?

I myself am just buying into the whole HD thing (bought a Hi Def tv a month ago, along with PS3). I just bought 3 or 4 films, but am still puzzled as to the reasons why the US has a much much wider selection of films while us Europeans are stuck at mainly mainstream movies at ridiculous infalted prices?

I'm guessing Hi Def has just caught on more in the US perhaps? Or is there another reason for this?

well, first of all I am checking if the movie is region coded or not, and all paramount and warner movies are not, catalog titles of diesny and sony are also not coded (most of them), so there are few titles (region coded)for wich I have to wait for european release....

from time to time there are very good prices on sendit.com or hmv.co.uk, or even on amazon.co.uk, check now Spiderman3 and Spiderman trilogy, it's much cheaper compare to US release, and 2 weeks earlier...

there are up to 150 movies you can order, but yes I did not counted how many of them you can buy today..

and yes, if BD will get into more homes in Europe we will see more and more titles day and date with US titles...

Marek

[Maximus]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

I think there are several reasons and most likely a combination of the following

1) I think in most European countries movies have been traditionally more expensive

2) some studios got conned by Toshiba into assuming HD DVD would be cheaper and more easily adopted

3) The PS3 came out much later, The issue is that people in Europe knew it was coming and wit6h the more expensive BD players there and in limited numbers BD was not all that exciting. Now with the PS3 and BD's outselling HD DVD I am sure things will change

4) BD has region coding and Europe is in a different RC then US and Japan. A studio could have decided "I made the movie, let's distribute it there as well, but they need different masters, so my guess many waited to have a large enough demand to make replication worth it.

Myth busting time!

1) Very true.

2) Not so much, the movie scene in Europe is much the same as it is in the US, Hollywood rules!

3) PS3, yes, Blu-ray no. The Samsung BD-P1000 was out here way earlier than the Toshiba HD-E1.

4) Different region coding shouldn't require a whole new master unless it needs to be edited to suit different regulations in different countries.

[Anthony P]

2) agree, my point was more on the distribution side. For example LGF released Terminator 2 in the US on BD while Studio Canal released it in France on HD DVD. It is a Hollywood movie but distributed in France by SC and SC was the one conned.

3) agree, that is why I said PS3 and not BD. The Samsung was introduced earlier then the HD DVD but not by much (Nov if I am not mistaken) it's price was extremely high in Europe(1000 pounds in the UK if I am not mistaken). At that time three important things were know n that made it's adoption hard a) that it was not a good player b) that it is extremely expensive c) that a much cheaper much better machine was coming out in the not too distant future (less then 1/2 a year)


4) it does not require a different video encoding (well it might, but not necessarily) but it does require a different replication master. The master disk has the RC built in. If you are making 30k copies and you ship 1k to Europe (assuming no RC) then shipping that 1k is not that big a deal, but if you must replicate only 1k then the cost of doing it is a lot higher then the profits you will have.

[NutsAboutPS3]

Originally Posted by Maxpower1987

4) Different region coding shouldn't require a whole new master unless it needs to be edited to suit different regulations in different countries.

I think there probably is generally an issue with discs having to be separately replicated for each market, e.g. in the UK all movies must be BBFC certified, so the disc and package artwork must reflect that. Then the disc content needs to also be slightly different, e.g. FBI warning replaced by the relevant UK copyright notices. The UK is probably a reasonable sized market already, but for smaller European countries I can see that the studios might not see it as worthwhile yet to produce specific versions of large numbers of titles.

[HD-Greek]

Originally Posted by NutsAboutPS3

The UK is probably a reasonable sized market already, but for smaller European countries I can see that the studios might not see it as worthwhile yet to produce specific versions of large numbers of titles.

Right......Warner, Buena Vista, Paramount and other studios only launch their titles in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain.......smaller markets as Greece, Benelux, Poland and others are still waiting........however Sony Pictures launched their titles from the beginning in most of the european countries.............here in Greece for example we have all the Sony blu-ray titles from the day that the format launched in Europe(October 2006).