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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Author
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Topic: Apple In Talks To Collapse Video Release Window Down To Two Weeks
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Tyler Purcell
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 180
From: Van Nuys, CA
Registered: Dec 2015
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posted 12-29-2016 11:09 PM
The revenue streams are diminishing quickly. In 2016 alone, I've witnessed major chains like Best By, Target and Costco, slash BluRay and DVD inventory in half, even more at some locations. This is not simply because the retail business model is failing, it's mostly because people don't want to own anything anymore. People want to watch content on ALL devices without a stupid disk to playback.
The final hold out for all of this is Walmart, they have single handedly kept DVD's alive somehow. I bet the moment they give up, the whole disk industry folds and the only disks available will be limited runs of new content. Even Criterion are doing online streaming because they've had difficulty selling disks. Unfortunately ease of use is more important then the content itself in a lot of ways. The industry is realizing people will watch stuff they normally wouldn't watch, if it's inexpensive and instantly available.
Now, back to your earlier comments Bobby. The studio's could care less about theaters that aren't doing well, it's not their business to care. They only make product and big chains like AMC distribute it. This is why big studios, don't make "indy" films that aren't going to sell well at AMC. The indy industry is it's own world and we as filmmakers, are struggling to survive without these massive theatrical deals the studio's and theaters have worked out.
There are literally a thousand feature films released every year world wide and only a very small percentage is at theaters and only a small fraction of those are at main stream theaters. So "home video" is doing very well right now, if you account for all viewing of content at home. This is why the studio's are trying to capitalize on it, more then ever before.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 12-30-2016 03:46 PM
quote: Tyler Purcell
The revenue streams are diminishing quickly. In 2016 alone, I've witnessed major chains like Best By, Target and Costco, slash BluRay and DVD inventory in half, even more at some locations. This is not simply because the retail business model is failing, it's mostly because people don't want to own anything anymore. People want to watch content on ALL devices without a stupid disk to playback.
I don't agree with that. First of all, I haven't really seen the amount of shelf space for DVD and Blu-ray shrink at stores like Target and Best Buy. It looks about the same to me. But stores that specialize in selling movie and music discs have been dying off rapidly. I'm still pissed about Hastings going out of business. These failures have nothing to do with people not liking discs. They got put out of business by online merchants like Amazon that don't charge sales tax. Those specialty stores couldn't discount their movie and music discs much. Mall-based stores like Sam Goody's and fye were often charging full MSRP; gotta pay that high mall rent. Video rental stores got put on death row by Redbox kiosks and then executed by Netflix. Again, this was about VERY LOW PRICE, not convenience.
For watching movies at home, I still very much prefer using Blu-ray discs and watching on a huge TV screen. The audio-video quality is far better than cable or streaming options. That still holds true even with my Internet service upgraded to a 25 megabit connection. The thing killing off my movie buying habits is all about the quality of the movies themselves, not how they're viewed. I couldn't care less about watching a movie on my smart phone via "the cloud." I'll use my portable device to watch short videos like Fail Army on YouTube.
quote: Tyler Purcell
Now, back to your earlier comments Bobby. The studio's could care less about theaters that aren't doing well, it's not their business to care. They only make product and big chains like AMC distribute it. This is why big studios, don't make "indy" films that aren't going to sell well at AMC. The indy industry is it's own world and we as filmmakers, are struggling to survive without these massive theatrical deals the studio's and theaters have worked out.
It isn't just "little guy" theaters being hurt by this nonsense of shrinking theatrical windows. All of the big theater chains aren't operating on big profit margins. They try to incorporate new things like stadium seating and nearly go broke doing so. AMC went bankrupt in 1999. The chain we know as Regal Entertainment Group was built on other bankrupt or struggling chains (Act III, Edwards, Cobb, RC, United Artists). Even Regal itself filed Chapter 11 in 2001 due to being badly over-extended. Philip Anschutz bought up everything in 2002. Carmike Cinemas went bankrupt in 2000 and exited bankruptcy in 2002.
The conversion to digital would have bankrupted these big chains if not for the profit-sharing programs the studios implemented for several years to help subsidize equipment purchases. The studios aren't doing that anymore. Yet new, expensive trends are already rolling through movie theaters: dine-in movies, big recliners, laser-based projectors, next-gen surround sound.
quote: Tyler Purcell
There are literally a thousand feature films released every year world wide and only a very small percentage is at theaters and only a small fraction of those are at main stream theaters. So "home video" is doing very well right now, if you account for all viewing of content at home. This is why the studio's are trying to capitalize on it, more then ever before.
I define doing well as making more money and selling more product. That is not happening on home video. The home market is only doing well in terms of content choices for viewers. There is a glut of content available to watch on TV, and far from just movies either. If anything it looks like Hollywood movies are taking a back seat to original TV series. That's certainly the case on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and HBO GO. Binge watching is a household term, but you don't binge watch a movie.
With the glut of content available to watch some premium service of high priced $50 movie rentals is going to get lost in the crowd pretty easily, especially when there's so much other good stuff to watch for next to nothing.
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Martin Brooks
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 900
From: Forest Hills, NY, USA
Registered: May 2002
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posted 01-15-2017 09:47 PM
quote:
This brings up another sore spot with Blu-ray. The movie studios are not putting in nearly as much work on new disc releases as they did in the past. On average new Blu-ray releases have fewer (if any) extras and bare bones packaging. Pull out some old 2-disc special edition DVD, such as Fight Club, and it will look like a labor of love compared to this bare bones crap. Blu-ray discs rarely contain the movie's trailers, TV spots and other marketing stuff (unlike DVDs of 10-15 years ago).
I predicted this a long time ago when Blu-ray didn't grow as fast as it should have. Blu-ray was actually down in 2015 as compared to 2014. It grew very slightly in 2016 (+2.28% in revenue and +2.63% in units), but there was an extra selling week. Blu-ray (in the U.S.) had only a 37.1% physical market dollar share and a 24% unit share. It's incredible after all this time that DVD still does 76% of the units. Only about 8 titles a week sell more Blu units than DVD units. Because of that, I knew that the studios would reduce investment in Blu when it came to deluxe packaging, extras, restorations, etc.
The fact is that the masses don't give a crap about quality. Yes, they buy their big screen 4K TV's, but they keep them in store blast mode and watch DVDs on them. I probably posted this before, but I help people out in my apartment building with their installations. Up until the cable companies started auto switching to the HD channel, most were watching the SD channel. We have Time-Warner and RCN in the building and RCN doesn't auto-switch or even put up a message stating that there's an HD channel. I proudly show people the HD version of a channel and say, "see what it's supposed to look like?" and most don't give a crap. I then use a calibration disk to visually set color, contrast, etc., and they hate it. They're too used to the over-bright, over-contrasty and over-saturated image of store blast mode.
I do agree with Bobby on most other points. If you reduce windows, you kill the theaters. Oh sure, a few will survive just like most cities still have one or two legitimate theatres. Those will play the comic book movies and Star Wars. Once you kill the theaters, everything becomes "made for TV", as Bobby says. Want to see what's that like? Look at what's available on Netflix or Hulu.
The execs want day and date because it improves cash flow and they think it reduces marketing costs. They think it will up the stock price, which ups their bonus. But it will kill their businesses in the long run. They don't care because no movie exec expects to have their job for very long. But their Boards should be recognizing that this will really hurt them in the long run. And if the theaters permit this (and they could stop it easily by first not showing any film that has a short or no window and later by not showing any film from a studio that has any film that does this) they're completely nuts, although many are doing so badly, they might not care.
Think media businesses can't be killed? The U.S. record business (including downloading and streaming) is now less than one third its former peak size, adjusted for inflation. And in spite of the hype of streaming and vinyl, it's still declining.
In the first quarter of 2016, AMC had a record quarter. How did they do? The net earnings per location per day was $808 (up from $176 in Q1 2015). They only sold an average of 105 tickets per screen per day (up from 91 Q1 2015). That seems disastrous to me. No wonder they're putting lounge seating in so many theaters. No one is showing up anyway.
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Evans A Criswell
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1579
From: Huntsville, AL, USA
Registered: Mar 2000
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posted 02-17-2017 08:27 PM
To chime in -- I've changed quite a bit in what I watch and where I watch it. I saw hundreds of movies in theatres from summer 1997 to spring 2006 and loved the large high resolution image that I could not get at home. My first HDTV in 2002 was one of those 57 inch rear projection sets that operated at 1080i and is now considered to be large and clunky (I had to give it away to get rid of it!). In spring 2010 I got a 55 inch Samsung 8000 flat panel and it, within a month, totally changed how I used the TV and how I watched things. I no longer wanted to mess with discs and just wanted to make everything into a file to be placed on the computer hooked to the screen so I could just click a file to play without dealing with inserting and removing discs, waiting for annoying menus, etc., especially for TV show episodes and music videos. After my movie watching slowdown of 2006, the main thing I collected on DVD were TV shows of interest and many music video compilations. As for Blu-Ray, I never invested in it as I did DVD because I did not want to suddenly have the urge to buy all my best-loved movies yet again on another type of media, especially since in 2006, my brain was becoming a bit "untuned" to watching movies. I have only bought 3 Blu-Ray discs that have never been played (Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, and Velvet Goldmine). I bought a Blu-Ray drive for a computer back in 2012 and I've never even bothered to put it in a machine yet. That's how high it is on my priority list. Most of the stuff I watch at home on my TV and computer screens are music videos (I have a random player script that will play them randomly, which is great for background since the collection is large) and TV shows that I liked as a kid and young adult: The Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy, tons of classic cartoons, Monty Python's Flying Circus, and some others. The TV doesn't get used that much and I'd say it spends 80 or 90 percent of the time playing music videos from the 80s and 90s which aren't even HD (they are all converted to 480p or 576p25 as appropriate).
As for people being ignorant about technical things, I think it's even worse than it was in the 1990s when I saw stretched video everywhere on widescreen sets. More often now, I see vertically squished video (16 by 9 squished to approximately scope ratio with black at the top and bottom with everything looking fat). Why? I see this in restaurants and bars everywhere. How do you even do this and why don't they notice it and fix it?
I hate the default settings on TVs. I calibrated the inputs on my set that I used and a couple of months ago, used the 4th HDMI input that I'd never used before, and was watching a Three Stooges episode and something just seemed very off about it. A zoom in or out was unbelievably smooth but it hesitated along the way. The epidode was inverse 2:3 detelecined to 24 fps for encoding into H.264. I checked the menu and sure enough, everything was set to default and I had to quickly adjust everything to be like the other inputs. That smooth zooming and panning gets my attention in a very bad way (the 120 Hz mode that Brad mentioned earlier). I never want any of that crap turned on, but all of the fake smoothness and flesh tone correction and crap is on by default.
I really have no idea how movie resolution and appearance in the theatres compare to home because I've only seen 3 digital presentations that I'm aware of: Borat, Penelope, and Tron Legacy (3D). With Penelope, I could see the pixels if I tried because the screen was large and I was about 1 height away. With the other movies I was farther back. On my home set (1080), I cannot see the pixels unless I get really close. The grading scheme I had for theatres on my web site is pretty much irrelevant for digital and I never plan to evaluate theatres again that way.
YouTube is another competing source of videos. Hours can be spent watching videos on so many different topics. They tend to be short, which matches the attention spans of most people nowadays. There is something to be said for that, and I believe many people these days just don't want to commit to watching a 90 minute to 2 hour movie in the days of availability of tons of 1 to 15 minute videos to watch. It's a different world and the younger generation seems to have little time to commit to anything that takes a long time to watch.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 02-18-2017 05:37 PM
quote: Evans A Criswell
As for people being ignorant about technical things, I think it's even worse than it was in the 1990s when I saw stretched video everywhere on widescreen sets. More often now, I see vertically squished video (16 by 9 squished to approximately scope ratio with black at the top and bottom with everything looking fat). Why? I see this in restaurants and bars everywhere. How do you even do this and why don't they notice it and fix it?
That would be one of the worst examples of "Stretch-O-Vision." I agree it is pretty common. The ingredients: the chosen TV signal is 4:3 SDTV, but it down-sampled from a 16:9 HD source. The TV station chooses to letterbox the down-sampled result. Shown normally this image would be window-boxed, a 4:3 letter-boxed image bracketed by black pillars. But the end user just applies whatever stretch setting is available, and voila! You have what sort of looks like a 'scope ratio image, but one that is stupid looking stretched and very soft. It pains me to see people accepting that kind of crap as "normal" for TV viewing.
I personally think we're at the point where SD TV signals just need to be eliminated. There's no need for them anymore. They're a complete waste of bandwidth.
I also hate the default settings on HDTV sets. They usually have all the 120Hz motion-flow crap turned on at full blast. The color, contrast and brightness settings are often set at "torch" mode. I've had to fart around with settings on all the inputs for every HDTV set I've owned. Here's an idea. Since these devices are intended to be sort of disposable (investors want us buying a new one every couple or so years) maybe we could create a user profile in "the cloud" storing the settings we prefer and instantly apply them to a new "smart" TV set. It would be similar to signing into one's Google account.
Smart phones have really dumbed down the public in how video is treated. Most people just suck at it. They shoot vertical video and then don't understand why it won't fill their computer screens or TV screens. And then they have the audacity to blame the problem on the phone manufacturer when the problem is 100% their own damned fault! YouTube isn't helping this. I think social media apps are making matters worse. I've never tried using the Facebook Live feature, but I was told you can't shoot horizontal video with it. That just makes the feature a piece of shit.
quote: Evans A Criswell
I really have no idea how movie resolution and appearance in the theatres compare to home because I've only seen 3 digital presentations that I'm aware of: Borat, Penelope, and Tron Legacy (3D). With Penelope, I could see the pixels if I tried because the screen was large and I was about 1 height away. With the other movies I was farther back. On my home set (1080), I cannot see the pixels unless I get really close. The grading scheme I had for theatres on my web site is pretty much irrelevant for digital and I never plan to evaluate theatres again that way.
My frequent complaint is way too many theaters have SOFT focus. The specs for d-cinema may be superior to Blu-ray disc. But if the picture is knocked a little out of focus it kills the extra color depth and contrast. When I watch a movie via Blu-ray disc on my 65" TV set it usually looks great. I can see lots of fine, very sharp detail. 4K is even better, provided you can actually get some real 4K material to play.
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