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This topic comprises 8 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
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Author
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Topic: ATMOS comes home...
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 07-21-2014 09:02 PM
quote: Mike Olpin
A few years later, and home 3D is widely available. Now 4k UHDTVs are starting to pop up. Of course any technology that makes a splash in theaters will find itself in home theaters eventually.
The problem with this of course is that the same thing that motivates studios to get woodies at the thought of shortening the theatrical window, unfortunately, also motivates Dolby -- make LOTS more money if you sell to the home theatre market...and as QUICKLY as possible. 3D took all of three years, Atmos even less. I bet the Dolby marketing hot-shots would love the equivalent of Day-and-Date, same as the studios.
quote: Mike Olpin
Instead, theatre owners should invest in technology for the reason that it improves the presentation or puts buts in seats.
Yah, that's good in theory, but unfortunately if you can't trust your "partner" (studios and equipment manufactures) to not put that technology into the consumers' hands (and home theatres) tomorrow, then those butts just get sucked right out of your seats along with their money.
I do remember thinking when I heard the first launch of the Panasonic 3DTV -- "Welp, I guess those guys who invested those hundreds of thousands to convert to 3D-enabled digital projection because, as you rightly pointed out, Mike, the studios SOLD digital to those exhibitors who were dragging their feet with the promise of a technology that could never, EVER be duplicated in the home! (Like Disney saying the would never EVER release FANTASIA to video...heh heh...my face laughs). How much you want to bet they knew all along that 3DTV and BluRay 3D were already in the works when those words were coming out of their forked-tongued mouths? But by then it was too late -- the digital projectors were already installed and mortgaged, and there was that poor exhibitor finally realizing that the studios were not even using any lubricant.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 09-14-2014 05:41 PM
Dolby may have bigger problems than the already huge challenge of getting consumers to upgrade out of existing 5.1 or 7.1 channel-based surround systems. The Blu-ray 4K format currently in development faces the same really serious problem. Blu-ray 3D has already been struggling, but the situation now seems dire for it.
Movie studios are increasingly taking a giant shit on physical media. And they're doing this in an arguably suicidal way -at least in terms of their home video sales figures.
I was reading about some of this stuff at other web sites (the Digital Bits being one of them). Apparently the movie studios have been gutting their home video departments, letting go a whole lot of staff in an aim to cut payroll and grow profit. The problem is they've fired off a lot of people who really knew how to author and market DVDs and Blu-ray discs. They've replaced those guys with others with little if any experience in retail channels.
Newer Blu-ray discs from major studios are more frequently using canned menu layouts, lacking unique features and often selling off content fans of a movie want as "exclusives" for retailers like Walmart and Target. They're even releasing some movies with glitches in the audio or video and not fixing it. They just don't appear to give much of a shit about physical media anymore since they don't see it generating an extreme level of profit for them in a extreme short term amount of time. The practice is turning off a lot of home theater customers, the same customers who were early adopters to get the DVD and Blu-ray formats off the ground. I've already been NOT buying a lot of movies on Blu-ray since so many have been so forgettable, much less worthy of repeat viewing.
Studios are increasingly giving more emphasis to online virtual movie sales, what they call "digital HD." They're releasing this less than Blu-ray quality content up to a month earlier than the Blu-ray release. They're doing so in the belief they'll generate more sales and profit.
I think movie studios are going to ultimately screw themselves with this strategy. Maybe I'm getting old or something, but I prefer the much higher quality of video as it is delivered on Blu-ray. I can't see myself buying any movie via download until both my Internet connection is running much much faster than it is now and the movie downloads are of much higher quality. Until then, if I miss a movie in theaters and don't buy/rent it on Blu-ray, I'm only going to watch it on TV channels like HBO or low cost streaming sites like Amazon Prime or Netflix. I will not blow $20-$30 on a virtual movie download, movie only and cable TV quality. Screw all that.
Online digital HD movie downloads and various movie streaming sites like Netflix don't even support current high end sound formats like Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio. At best, these sites give some cursory support to Dolby Digital Plus and lossy DTS-HD High Res (but not much at all). I don't see Dolby Atmos (or Auro for that matter) gaining any kind of foothold at all for a long time, not while American residential Internet infrastructure remains to be so pathetically slow.
I recently bought a new 65" 240Hz LED-based, 3D capable HDTV set. This monitor clearly shows the quality differences between all sorts of HD or would-be HD based content. At this size it's easy to tell the difference between 720p and 1080p content. The higher bit rate of OTA broadcast HD clearly makes "free" channels look better than the 1440x1080 "HD Lite" stuff from digital satellite TV. I'm going to need a much better Internet connection to make HD content from Amazon Prime look anywhere near as good as Blu-ray. If you have a really big TV screen nothing comes close to Blu-ray in terms of picture and sound quality.
Online movie streaming is ALL about cutting costs. My girlfriend got Netflix and a good amplified antenna and then got rid of cable. Most people I know who have Netflix aren't buying "digital HD" movies online. They're just waiting until the movies show up on Netflix, or they'll just rent the specific movie rather than buying it.
Anyway, getting back to consumer Dolby Atmos, this choice to move Atmos into the consumer space appears even more ill advised now than ever before. Judging by what I've seen on Dolby's theater installations map, they might have turned off the movie theater industry with this move. There has been little if any activity at all in terms of new Dolby Atmos installations over the past few months. I would have expected to see at least a few dozen more Atmos installations in North America in support of movies like Guardians of the Galaxy. Nothing is happening at all. It looks like any new Atmos installations are going into the theaters overseas. I don't even see a lot of Atmos mixed movies in the Fall line up of movie releases.
I'll put it like this: the movie industry can't expect to make just as much or even more money in the home video industry by not giving a shit about quality, and physical media in particular. If they're not going to give a shit about it why should I give a shit about it either? It's just as easy for me to binge watch some TV show on a streaming site for little to no money with the same flagrant, short sighted attitude. If the movie industry doesn't care about my interests as a paying customer then why should I care about the future of the movie industry? TV is actually more interesting lately anyway.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 09-14-2014 10:19 PM
My Playstation 3 automatically upgraded a couple things in it when it detected my new TV was capable of 3D.
A couple games I already owned, such as Super Stardust HD, could be played in 3D. Not all games are great in 3D though. Super Stardust HD looks great and plays very well in 3D. But Resistance III oddly looks like a view through a dirty fish tank.
Blu-ray 3D is struggling due to a few different reasons.
I think the biggest culprit for Blu-ray 3D's problems is the really high price premium of the movies. Most movies will fall in price quite a lot months after they're initially released on Blu-ray, going from more than $20 to less than $10 or even under $5. That's not the case with 3D movies. They'll often stay priced near or above $30 years after the movie was released. The only way a Blu-ray 3D movie is priced low is if the movie was a total flop, like I, Frankenstein. Our local Hastings store has that one on Blu-ray 3D for $10. But they probably couldn't give away that movie.
And then that brings up another problem: nothing to rent. None of the video stores still in business around here have much if any Blu-ray 3D discs to rent. And if they do it's shitty movies like I, Frankenstein. If you want to watch the 3D version of Gravity or some other hit in 3D you'll have to buy the disc (and buy it at a high price premium).
There's not much 3D content outside of the Blu-ray 3D platform. Netflix has a little bit of content, but hasn't done much to grow it. And considering the bandwidth limits of Internet streaming, why would Netflix do so? I think ESPN shut down its 3D sports channel. Not many games can be played in 3D.
Basically, I think the powers that be wanted to price gouge the shit out of anyone interested in home theater 3D, particularly on the movie end of things. They ended up not letting the format get anywhere and made a lot less money from it than they would have if they had priced it more fairly. And now movie theater customers are increasingly being turned off by the high price of watching 3D movies in the theater, opting more and more for the 2D versions. That in turn will put even more downward pressure on Blu-ray 3D releases.
There's nothing wrong with the technology as far as I can tell. I bought 2 movies in Blu-ray 3D a few days after buying this 65" TV set (Avatar and Gravity). This past week I bought the deluxe Blu-ray 3D package of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but only because Amazon had it priced at $19.99 -the same price as the 2D version. The TV set appears to do 3D every bit as well as 3D I've seen in theaters. The only thing I don't like about it is the active shutter glasses get only about 70 hours of life out of a CR-1620 battery.
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Scott Jentsch
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1061
From: New Berlin, WI, USA
Registered: Apr 2003
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posted 09-15-2014 05:56 PM
Bill Hunt's post about 4K Blu-rays and the state of home video in general doesn't paint a pretty picture, but I don't think we'll see the demise of Blu-ray just yet. I do think, however, that 3D has seen its peak in theaters, and it never took off in the home market.
While I have some movies in 3D, I admit to not watching movies in 3D when I have a preference. I have them in 3D in case I decide to see one of those in that format, but I've never been a huge fan, and it appears the market in general is of the same opinion.
That said, Atmos in the home has the potential to be a great leap forward for home theater enthusiasts. The initial first-hand reports from Dolby's presentations in LA, NY, and London back in August and from the CEDIA show last week are mixed. It seems the Dolby presentations were better, but trade show setups are pretty difficult to showcase audio quality.
Its primary challenge is that Dolby isn't the only player, even though it is the only one with consumer hardware available. All the hardware in the world doesn't do any good without movies to show, and right now, the only title that has been announced is Transformers 4 for the end of September. DTS and Auro were pretty silent on solid news at CEDIA, so one wonders if there are any consumer products on the horizon for them, but just the possibility raises the possibility of a format war and compatibility issues that scare everyone except the early adopters that are willing to swap out $2,000 receivers every time something new gets released.
Right now, few outside of the enthusiast community knows about Atmos in the home, but as more titles get released and more manufacturers have actual products in the hands of reviewers and consumers alike, the word will spread. Dolby has first-mover advantage, and time will tell if they take advantage of it.
Has their entry in the home market damaged Dolby's progress in the theatrical market? I don't know about that. I think the bigger problem is that theaters don't want to shell out the money it costs to equip an auditorium with a decent Atmos setup.
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Terry Lynn-Stevens
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1081
From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Dec 2012
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posted 09-15-2014 10:26 PM
quote: Scott Jentsch
Bill Hunt's post about 4K Blu-rays and the state of home video in general doesn't paint a pretty picture, but I don't think we'll see the demise of Blu-ray just yet.
I read his post about 4K Bluray and 4K in general. i think he is correct on the 4K blu ray but incorrect on 4K in general, 4K will be a game changer and streaming will allow it to happen. Netflix is already streaming some 4K content and eventually it will catch on. I have seen 4K and to me it is pretty damn impressive, its a game changer to me. I would adopt 4K at home far faster than I would put silly speakers on ceiling for Atmos. I won't be upgrading my large collection however I would adopt 4K streaming as well as future bluray purchases in 4K.
quote: Mike Blakesley
Can you blame them? They just spent "X" grand on digital and/or 3D equipment, and now are faced with a new sound format that (1) is super expensive and apparently is high-maintenance, (2) doesn't really get much promotional help, (3) is already being touted for the home at a mini-fraction of the price, (4) doesn't bring in enough "extra" dollars to justify its cost, and (5) you never know if it's going to endure into the future or be replaced in a couple of years by the next big incompatible thing.
I agree. I would pretty pissed off if I were a theater owner who just shelled out $100,000+ to install Atmos only to find out that Dolby is now pushing Atmos into the home.
quote: Scott Jentsch
to swap out $2,000 receivers every time something new gets released.
Atmos is going to be available in a home theater in a box super cheapo edition.
quote: Scott Jentsch
I think the bigger problem is that theaters don't want to shell out the money it costs to equip an auditorium with a decent Atmos setup.
How many theaters within a multiplex do you really want?
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