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This topic comprises 7 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
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Author
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Topic: New DVD and BluRay
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 06-20-2012 02:27 PM
quote: Bobby Henderson
The rental discs typically have no extras. They also have forced trailers and TV commercials that cannot by skipped by pressing the chapter button; the viewer must fast-forward through them instead. The fast forward button doesn't work on those damned FBI/Interpol logos. Some rental Blu-ray discs don't even have chapter stops.
I've come across a few of those courtesy of Lovefilm (British Netflix equivalent), too. Thankfully it's not a major problem for me, because I mainly like watching arthouse and archival re-release type stuff, for which the market is so small that they generally don't bother with a separate rental version - the mail rental outfits get the same version as the retail one. But I did get this with Red State, Amelia, Hugo, J. Edgar and The Conspirator in the last year or two. And what really puts the icing on the cake is that you can't just start the trailers running, then take a shower, feed the cat, phone a friend or kill time some other way for 15 minutes or so unless you're keeping an eye on the screen, because there's no menu at the end of the trailers: the feature starts automatically.
If I was cynical I'd speculate that this is yet another 'soft power' tactic the distributors are using to persuade us to start watching stuff over the internet and abandon offline media...
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 06-21-2012 04:44 AM
quote: Robert E. Allen
But I still think BlueRay is a ploy by the manufacturers to sell more equipment and discs.
Undoubtedly, but if we all took the line that new generations of technology were unnecessary, we'd still be listening to Edison Blue Amberol cylinders, watching dim and jerky silent films, refusing to drive "horseless carriages" like Tim Holt in The Magnificent Ambersons, etc. etc.
There will, I think, though, come a point at which the technology of home viewing will effectively have matured, and won't be able to do offer anything more that any consumer would regard as a material improvement. This has already happened in other consumer technologies. A fridge or a washing machine bought now, for example, does exactly the same job as one bought 20 years ago (except use slightly less electricity). Assume for argument's sake that in 5-10 years' time, another optical disc format comes out that offers 4K resolution. Subjectively, is anyone likely to notice any upgrade on the screen such that it'll convince them to buy yet another copy of Gone With the Wind to add to the VHS, DVD and BD copies they have already? They would have to have a very big screen, to start with.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 06-21-2012 02:51 PM
quote: Leo Enticknap
There will, I think, though, come a point at which the technology of home viewing will effectively have matured, and won't be able to do offer anything more that any consumer would regard as a material improvement.
I agree, as long as the fundamental paradigm of TV viewing doesn't change.
The thing is change can happen, and probably will happen since the makers of TV monitors, computer monitors and video playback equipment want to stay in business. A lot of electronics companies would go out of business if customers only bought a new product when the old one finally broke and could not be repaired. Electronics companies have the challenge of making a product with real "must have" features rather than a bland solution in search of a problem.
quote: Leo Enticknap
Assume for argument's sake that in 5-10 years' time, another optical disc format comes out that offers 4K resolution. Subjectively, is anyone likely to notice any upgrade on the screen such that it'll convince them to buy yet another copy of Gone With the Wind to add to the VHS, DVD and BD copies they have already? They would have to have a very big screen, to start with.
A really big screen would have to be the cornerstone of such a 4K format -that is unless Apple gets into the TV manufacturing business and squeezes 4K pixel counts into a vareity of modest to large flat panel display sizes, selling 4K as Retina Display™.
A 4K video format on disc could be plausible in the long term, but highly unlikely within the next 5 years or perhaps even 10 for that matter. Look at all the legal and corporate political hell Blu-ray had to conquer in order to be introduced to the market and win an HD disc format war. Who wants to go through all that crap again?
In order for a new optical disc storage format to succeed Blu-ray it would need to conquer a few challenges. Not many computers have Blu-ray disc writing capability. Blank DVD-R discs are cheap, but many people have shifted to using large capacity external hard disc drives for huge amounts of data and flash memory sticks and cards for smaller amounts. I have my entire CD collection duped in LPCM WAV format on just one 1TB hard disc. A new optical disc format would need capacity on the order of hundreds of gigabytes or even in the terabytes to have a chance. Not only that, the disc would need better I/O performance than Blu-ray.
Internet streaming would be the other alternative where 4K could be delivered. But the Internet in the United States on average is painfully slow. There are only scant few places where one can download video at speeds fast enough to sustain Blu-ray quality bandwidth. 4K video would quadruple that bandwidth load.
Blu-ray is here to stay for a long time. Those who haven't upgraded already will end up doing so when their old DVD player finally breaks. DVD-only movie disc players are disappearing from store shelves. They can keep playing old DVDs on those machines. But some new Blu-ray players arriving on store shelves are lacking the backward compatible outputs that would allow them to work on old standard definition TV sets.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 06-21-2012 05:10 PM
Agreed completely, and the common form factor is probably one of the things that'll sustain BD (i.e. that one player will play CDs, DVDs and BDs). The only thing that makes me wonder if a 4K optical disc format is coming down the pipe is that 4K now seems to be the standard the studios have settled on for digital studio origination, post production and scanning archival assets. So at the end of the production or restoration process, they're ending up with a 4K master digital element. So if a 4K consumer format did come out, they'd have an avalanche of content all ready to go.
And as you say, Internet bandwidth is strangling online delivery. I couldn't give you figures, but I strongly suspect that the vast majority of household broadband connections in the developed world offer 4-6mbps at most - barely enough for DVD equivalent to be streamed online. The only exceptions I know of are France and Japan, where they've spent an assload of taxpayers' cash fibre-opticing up pretty much the entire countries. But they're small countries with most of their populations concentrated in an even smaller area still: I can't see that happening in the US, Canada, Australia, Russia, India etc. anytime soon.
So the content providers can't force consumers to an online only distribution model without cutting off probably around 80% of their worldwide market, meaning that offline carriers (optical discs, in other words) are going to be around for some time yet.
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