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Jul. 3rd, 2006
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Interesting tidbit from the DVD wars
Jul. 3rd, 2006 02:24 pmRegion encoding a thing of the past?
It's just a tiny sentence in yet another rehash about the Blu-ray versus HD DVD debacle. Really, you'd have thought they'd have figure this out by now. The sales for HD DVD, far as I've heard, are tepid at best. The Blu-Ray, being nearly twice as expensive, won't fare any better. By virtue of price, I could see HD DVD winning, especially as 90% of computers are running Windows and Microsoft has thrown itself behind HD DVD (not that it matters, really, what the hardware does versus the software, but are you telling me Microsoft won't "influence" that a bit? come on...). On the other hand, Blu-Ray's held sway in Japan for three years now, and it doesn't look to be going away.
What I find interesting is the idea of region encoding being done away with. This could not have been a better idea--it's the only good thing to come out of this stupid format war so far, though this article does say it's only the case to date (meaning they might change that, and soon). I know that people moving from region to region are relatively few in number, so one DVD-phile having to replace his or her collection isn't that huge or likely to make enough fuss to get attention drawn to this antiquated system, but I would hope they don't try to impose region encoding again. It's a pointless irritation that is circumvented by most saavy DVD buyers anyway with multiregion or region-less players. Just to make a few extra bucks when someone moves and needs to buy another copy of Citizen Kane? Come on.
Why'd they even come up with region encoding? I'm going to take a wild stab of a guess and say it was due to anti-piracy issues. Well, hello, you can get around that without even blinking, too. Sheesh. That's not even hard for a digital pirate to get around. Your average computer geek could do it in less time than it takes to program a VCR. Please.
It's just a tiny sentence in yet another rehash about the Blu-ray versus HD DVD debacle. Really, you'd have thought they'd have figure this out by now. The sales for HD DVD, far as I've heard, are tepid at best. The Blu-Ray, being nearly twice as expensive, won't fare any better. By virtue of price, I could see HD DVD winning, especially as 90% of computers are running Windows and Microsoft has thrown itself behind HD DVD (not that it matters, really, what the hardware does versus the software, but are you telling me Microsoft won't "influence" that a bit? come on...). On the other hand, Blu-Ray's held sway in Japan for three years now, and it doesn't look to be going away.
What I find interesting is the idea of region encoding being done away with. This could not have been a better idea--it's the only good thing to come out of this stupid format war so far, though this article does say it's only the case to date (meaning they might change that, and soon). I know that people moving from region to region are relatively few in number, so one DVD-phile having to replace his or her collection isn't that huge or likely to make enough fuss to get attention drawn to this antiquated system, but I would hope they don't try to impose region encoding again. It's a pointless irritation that is circumvented by most saavy DVD buyers anyway with multiregion or region-less players. Just to make a few extra bucks when someone moves and needs to buy another copy of Citizen Kane? Come on.
Why'd they even come up with region encoding? I'm going to take a wild stab of a guess and say it was due to anti-piracy issues. Well, hello, you can get around that without even blinking, too. Sheesh. That's not even hard for a digital pirate to get around. Your average computer geek could do it in less time than it takes to program a VCR. Please.
What's one more rant on the day?
Jul. 3rd, 2006 05:33 pmCheck out the graphic attached to this article about the summer box office. I'm going, "What the F? The summer box office just started," and rolling my eyes because we've got two, technically three more months of summer left to make or break the Hollywood piggy bank with our viewing habits.
That graphic, though, that is just depressing. Look at the weekends where the 2006 monies were greater than 2005. What were the films? 2006's Ice Age: the Meltdown, Inside Man, and something called ATL took in more money than 2005's Sin City, Beauty Shop, and Guess Who. That's a little depressing, seeing as there are exactly two films in that list that were any good (Sin City and Inside Man, if you must know).
It gets worse as you go along, too. In race to the crap-off, I'd still put X-Men: the Last Stand as severely more shitty than Episode 3, even with the ridiculousness that was the canon-raping culmination of the Star Wars prequels. But look at the second to last weekend in June if you really want to weep. Click, Cars, and Nacho Libre are pulling in more money than Batman Begins, Bewitched, and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. I grant you that Bewitched was an abomination, but so, too, is Click. And of the remaining two that weekend? Give me Brangelina over Black, and the Bat over Pixar. Yes, I actually just said that. By my reckoning, even a great Pixar movie would be hardpressed to be better than Batman Begins, and Cars isn't being mentioned in the same sentence as "great." Nacho Libre versus Mr. and Mrs. Smith is more a tale of what kind of comedy you prefer, but there's almost nothing about the trailers or ads for the former that suggests it is possessed of any of the zip and spunk and hilarity of the latter.
What's interesting would be to see this graphic done, oh, you know, like when the summer was actually over? I can't remember release dates, and if I can't, I bet the frequency of occurence of people who do is slim indeed. I can vaguely recall Fantastic Four being released on the July 4th weekend last year, but that's only because of the cutesy-cute, four-and-four thing. Will Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest match Fantastic Four's (perhaps undeserved but definitely) blockbuster first weekend? Probably, I mean, hell, I've already got tentative plans to see it twice, and I never saw Fantastic Four until it came out on DVD.
So, are the studios right? Am I going out more, or are my friends going out to more movies this year than last? No, not really. If anything, I'd say that blockbuster-itis is almost set in for the year, and I'm already looking forward to next summer with more enthusiasm than I am the rest of this one, as far as movies are concerned. Next summer brings me Spider-Man 3, the probably terrible yet fated-to-be-seen-by-me Transformers movie, another Pirates of the Caribbean movie (which my excitement for will probably remain independant of the quality or reception of Dead Man's Chest).
And when are they going to get around to pinning down all the talent from Batman Begins to make a sequel to that, damn it!?
That graphic, though, that is just depressing. Look at the weekends where the 2006 monies were greater than 2005. What were the films? 2006's Ice Age: the Meltdown, Inside Man, and something called ATL took in more money than 2005's Sin City, Beauty Shop, and Guess Who. That's a little depressing, seeing as there are exactly two films in that list that were any good (Sin City and Inside Man, if you must know).
It gets worse as you go along, too. In race to the crap-off, I'd still put X-Men: the Last Stand as severely more shitty than Episode 3, even with the ridiculousness that was the canon-raping culmination of the Star Wars prequels. But look at the second to last weekend in June if you really want to weep. Click, Cars, and Nacho Libre are pulling in more money than Batman Begins, Bewitched, and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. I grant you that Bewitched was an abomination, but so, too, is Click. And of the remaining two that weekend? Give me Brangelina over Black, and the Bat over Pixar. Yes, I actually just said that. By my reckoning, even a great Pixar movie would be hardpressed to be better than Batman Begins, and Cars isn't being mentioned in the same sentence as "great." Nacho Libre versus Mr. and Mrs. Smith is more a tale of what kind of comedy you prefer, but there's almost nothing about the trailers or ads for the former that suggests it is possessed of any of the zip and spunk and hilarity of the latter.
What's interesting would be to see this graphic done, oh, you know, like when the summer was actually over? I can't remember release dates, and if I can't, I bet the frequency of occurence of people who do is slim indeed. I can vaguely recall Fantastic Four being released on the July 4th weekend last year, but that's only because of the cutesy-cute, four-and-four thing. Will Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest match Fantastic Four's (perhaps undeserved but definitely) blockbuster first weekend? Probably, I mean, hell, I've already got tentative plans to see it twice, and I never saw Fantastic Four until it came out on DVD.
So, are the studios right? Am I going out more, or are my friends going out to more movies this year than last? No, not really. If anything, I'd say that blockbuster-itis is almost set in for the year, and I'm already looking forward to next summer with more enthusiasm than I am the rest of this one, as far as movies are concerned. Next summer brings me Spider-Man 3, the probably terrible yet fated-to-be-seen-by-me Transformers movie, another Pirates of the Caribbean movie (which my excitement for will probably remain independant of the quality or reception of Dead Man's Chest).
And when are they going to get around to pinning down all the talent from Batman Begins to make a sequel to that, damn it!?