Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: More HBO TV Blu Ray announced

This is topic More HBO TV Blu Ray announced in forum The Afterlife at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 03-05-2009, 06:09 PM:

The Digital File announced the upcoming release of two very popular HBO mini series in June in Blu Ray. JOHN ADAMS will be coming out on June 6th and GENERATION KILL will be out two weeks later on the 16th. Both will cost over seventy dollars and expensive. It is unfortunate I already have both of them on DVD and have no plans to double dip because of the cost.

-Claude

Posted by Joe Tommassello (Member # 4632) on 03-13-2009, 12:36 PM:

Claude - I am double-dipping on John Adams because it was so awesome. I wanted to make sure, however, that you are aware of Amazon's Pre-order Price Guarantee.

In each item page it will indicate if that item qualifies. Most DVD and Blu-ray pre-orders are eligible. I pre-ordered Star Trek Season One on Blu-ray at $90.00. They later lowered the price to 77.99 so my price dropped. If they lower it again they will automatically lower my price again. If they raise the price my order stays at the lowest price. Once you place the order you are guaranteed the lowest price between then and the release date. I think they will even credit you if they lower it after yours is shipped but before the "official" release. The sooner you place your order the better in the event they run a limited-time special to compete with a competitor's pricing.

Right now John Adams is $57.99 on BR but I'll bet I pay under $50 before they actually ship it. Just FYI since I know you buy a lot of discs and it's an easy way to get a good deal.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 03-13-2009, 01:19 PM:

Amazon will offer box sets like these for aggressively low prices from time to time. For example, they had the HBO mini-series Band of Brothers priced at $39.95 recently. It's regularly offered for close to $60.

I'm not sure if I'll get a copy of John Adams on Blu-ray. It depends on the reviews about the image/sound quality as well as what sorts of extra features may be included on the discs. I currently have all the episodes of that mini-series in HD on my DVR.

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 03-13-2009, 04:12 PM:

Bobby,

It is a very convenient to have favorite shows on television kept on a DVR, but I would not count on the device to permanently store favorite TV shows and movies. Let me tell you what had happened to me. I loved all of the old TARZAN films when I was a kid and was delighted when AMC played most of the major TARZAN films on television including all of the ones Johnny Weismueller, Lex Barker and Gordon Scott had made and they were all presented without commercials and uncut to the best of my knowledge. They were all recordered on my DVR as well as on Super VHS tapes. My tape player 'died' almost two years ago and I never bothered to get it repaired. I did not care about not being able to play the tapes anymore because I still had the movies stored on my DVR along with many other stuff I recorded from Turner Movie Classic and Public Television. Guess what happened next? Yes, you are right, my DVR also crashed and had to be replaced by my cable company and everything on it was lost [Frown]

This is the reason, I collect movies on DVD and Blu Ray because I know they will be around at least to the end of my life. Like I said, I doubt I will pick up all of the HBO shows I already have on DVD but will buy future shows I like on Bly Ray.

Joe,

I have bought from Amazon before but only stuff the local stores here like Best Buy, Target, Borders and the now defunct Circuit City did not carry. I have to agree about Amazon's prices. They are great but I did not want to wait a couple of days after their original street date release.

-Claude

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 03-13-2009, 10:34 PM:

Well, yeah, tapes degrade and hard drives can eventually die.

I'm not exactly expecting to archive anything on my DVR permanently. On the slightly bright side I can attach external hard discs to my Dish Network DVR/receiver and offload the content. The downside is you have to pay a $50 fee to enable the feature and the recordings you back up are tied to your account. They won't work if you take the external drive to a friend's house and hook it up to the same kind of receiver.

I like Blu-ray well enough for the superior video and audio quality, not to mention some of the value-added extras. HD via satellite TV isn't bad. OTA broadcast is actually better (and I can record that to my Dish DVR via the off air antenna input), but only D-cinema and original film or HD master sources beat Blu-ray.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 03-13-2009, 11:36 PM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
tapes degrade

How long will tapes last generally? I have video tapes that are at least 15 years old or more that still play. When Johnny Carson died, for nostalgia I watched some tapes I'd made of his last couple of weeks on the air in 1992...they still played fine. (I have tons of audio cassettes that I'm sure would still be fine too, if I had a cassette player!) I suppose it's just as much to do with tape quality and proper storage as anything else.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 03-14-2009, 12:46 AM:

Proper storage is really the key. The goal is avoiding "tape sweat" and other issues that plague magnetic tape formats. Since you live in Montana, where relative humidity levels are fairly low, magnetic tapes will have a significantly longer shelf life.

Speaking of outdated formats, I really need to consider buying some sort of vinyl record turntable for the stack of 12" records I have. I saw one model at Best Buy last weekend that could literally play the vinyl LPs and dub them over into digital formats simultaneously.

Posted by Mike Schindler (Member # 1309) on 03-14-2009, 10:54 AM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
On the slightly bright side I can attach external hard discs to my Dish Network DVR/receiver and offload the content. The downside is you have to pay a $50 fee to enable the feature and the recordings you back up are tied to your account.

I've done this, but I'm starting to run out of room on my external hard drive. Do you know if it's possible to swap out the external hard drives at will, or will I have to pay another $50 to use another hard drive?

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 03-14-2009, 02:22 PM:

Once the feature is enabled on the receiver you can swap drives. The only limit is the DVR content on those external drives will only play attached to that specific receiver.

Posted by Mike Schindler (Member # 1309) on 03-14-2009, 09:12 PM:

Thanks for the info.