I should be studying, but...

[trinityvixen]

After yesterday's aggravating discovery, the news that Blu Ray sales are disappointing BRINGS JOY TO MY HEART. I am a small and petty person. Sue me.

It's clear which way the wind blows on the issue of physical media, whatever its "definition": high or low-res, digital copies are going to take over. I don't have to like it--point of fact, I don't, overly--it's a fact. Movies lagged behind music in this respect because of numerous factors, such as the late arrival of a practical disc version of movies (versus the longer history of the CD), the fact that movies were more expensive, etc. etc. High Definition, like 3D in the movie theater, is only a setback on an overall irrevocable march towards a very obvious future. In this respect, the few months/years it took to resolve HD-DVD vs Blu Ray eliminated the maybe 5-year lead Blu Ray could have had to really take off before digital took over.

Well, digital has taken over, whether we know it (and/or use it) or not. Digital streaming, digital downloads not only come in high definition--the last refuge of physical media--high def has become de rigeur. Don't get me wrong, digital still has all the hiccups of media delivery systems that preceded it, the fight over DRM not least among them. Here's hoping for a future with more Netflix-like flexibility about where we absorb our media and less "Sorry, but your Digital Download is expired" dogmatic insistence on the customer conforming to the studios instead of the other way around.

Comments

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

I do not see myself switching to buying video exclusively in digital. (Though I finally have started doing that for music, so it may be inevitable.) I still feel like there are too many format/DRM hurdles for me to want to sink money in. But! I am all for the prevalence of paid streaming services like Netflix for as much media as possible. I'd love it if they got more current TV shows on there. They had a deal for a little while, but I think it's expired. And yes, there's Hulu, but Hulu takes eps down after two weeks. On Netflix, you could catch up whenever you wanted. I was in favor of that.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

It's a fair point about the benefits of renting versus buying. Right now, the cost-to-benefit ratio heavily favors renting. That will change, I'm absolutely certain. The studios gravely underestimated the attraction of services like Hulu and Netflix and undervalued what their content was worth to those services. They WILL jack up their prices for those services as soon as current contracts expire. To some degree, Netflix's business plan can absorb some of that, but renting expenses will go up. Consumers will then re-enter the endless cycle of rent-buy debate again. Which is precisely what the studios, who, no matter what they charge Netflix to rent, are guaranteed to make more on purchases, want.

So the option of renting doesn't really make the issues with digital downloads less important. It only delays the decision on things like DRM and format, which is invariably bad for the consumer. Delaying the choice of HD format meant consumers scrambled to figure out HD DVD versus Blu Ray, and lots of people ended up with expensive paper weights if they went the wrong way. In fact, given how quickly Blu Ray is being overtaken by digital, I'd say anyone who bought into either high def format is a loser here. If we don't figure out a good solution going forward on digital before digital is the main route through which we get our movies, we're in for a lot of nasty shit.

[saturn-shumba.livejournal.com]

This sounds stupid, but I just don't get Bluray movies. Everyone always goes on and on about the superior sound and picture but to be totally honest...I don't really notice THAT big of a difference. The thing I love most about my BluRay player is the fact that it streams shit. Maybe I just haven't found my BluRay epiphany movie yet.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

This is why I compared Blu Ray to 3D: it's a gimmick. There are definitely individual titles that will take advantage of the medium to the utmost and almost make believers of the cynics. And then there are the 4000x more movies that won't and won't make a lick of difference whether they're in HD or standard. It won't seem worth it, no matter how cool The Matrix looks.

It's also a bullshit incrementalist approach. Digital was, as I mentioned, already fully in charge of music downloads when we introduced HD/Blu Ray discs. It was obvious where things were going, but we have to do a stop-over on the way. Purely to make money. I'm absolutely certain that's what it is.

[equustel.livejournal.com]

When you have the right TV (and the right speakers), it can make a big difference. If you don't, sticking with DVD/digital is definitely the more cost-efficient option.

At this point, a lot of old DVDs I own look bad whenever I put them on because our screen resolution is so high. And my husband is obsessed with sound - the type of guy that gets tetchy if a movie doesn't come with a particular compression option - so for him, it's all Very Important.

Personally, I enjoy the format because some ANCIENT movies get masterful restorations that are a joy to own. For example, the recent Blu-ray release of Beauty and the Beast makes the movie look like it was made today, and I am absolutely beside myself waiting for the Blu-ray of Ben Hur to come out. Studios spend a LOT of time and money making certain releases look better than they ever have before, and that's fun. Giving the ol' catalog some love, you know?

[ecmyers.livejournal.com]

Do you have an upconverting DVD player? That can improve the quality of standard definition DVDs to near-HD quality, depending on how good the quality of the source is.

[sols-light.livejournal.com]

Given the US is the only country which really has digital distribution like NetFlix sorted out, it's going to be some time before the death of the physical disc. Downloading movies in Australia with our woeful internet speeds and deals is a bit of a challenge (50GB/50GB ADSL2+ is still about $50 a month here, plus another $30 for the line)

Also, like the argument I saw for ebooks vs. books recently, there is an irreplaceable sense of physical decoration for having artefacts of your culture in your home for some people. There's also a problem of not always remembering to pick up a half-read e-book or watching a movie you don't recall putting in a queue.

I also have issues with storage space, especially since our PS3 HDD just ran out. Not everyone wants to delete movies once they've watched them and most streaming devices don't have the ability to burn to disc. This may be what the Film companies want, but it's not ideal for the user.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

The argument about ebooks vs books doesn't really challenge my statement. What you'll have is physical media becoming something for collectors, people who, as you say, like the physical decoration of books/DVDs. They will be more rare, is the thing.

Storage space is an issue only so long as storage media is not cheap, and storage media gets cheaper by the day. With improved internet connections, too, you can get cloud-based storage that not only backs up your collection but makes it accessible from anywhere. Granted, that depends on internet speeds improving, which might take longer than sorting out the DRM issues with cloud-storage ownership, but it's the way we're going.

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

You do not own anything in the cloud. You merely think you do. It's so far from being trustworthy in any remotely reasonable sense . . .

Otherwise, though, I agree with you. Digital media is/will be king. The problem is that digital video has been king for at least eight years -- via the best content delivery platform yet devised, internet piracy. For now that's kind of quieted down, since they've found ways to track and threaten bittorrent users, but really that's just a few anonymizing technical breakthroughs away . . .

[six-demon-bag.livejournal.com]

All of this while I continue to buy CD's. I know it's coming, but I still intend to buy the CD's of the albums I want until it's no longer an option.

I stress a little over the idea of a complete digital media takeover because, even though I have a big enough external hard drive to hold some movies, we have no computer connected to a TV and I much prefer watching movies in the comfort of the living room. Oh, we have a PS3 and WII, both of which support Netflix, but there's some technical issue that has kept us from being able to go online with either machine. I'd like to do something about it, but they belong to the roommates, both of whom are too lazy to be bothered with actually trying to correct something they're paying money for. /rant

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I bought CDs for a while. It eventually became entirely about price and DRM for me. What was the cheapest way to get DRM-free media? Digital downloads, for music, are varied in offering enough that they're both cheap and either completely DRM-free or managably so. I back up my stuff regularly, so I'm not worried about losing things, which was the other big reason to stick with CDs.

As for movies, yes, you'll need a computer connected to a TV or a media device that you connect to the TV. That's just going to be a given in the future. The thing is, for even that much, you need DRM-free movies, something which just is not possible in a way that is cheap, or, if it is cheap, it's not available in a way that is legal.

The best way to put digital downloads on TV that are legal is probably a combination of iTunes and AppleTV. That's expensive--you have to spend another $100 for a device that just does the digital. Or you can pirate stuff, put it on a USB key, and stick it into a newer, but existing and does-other-stuff device like an XBOX or a Blu Ray player, and watch it that way. There are a few exceptions--you can download/rent movies through the XBOX, but I'm not sure you can buy those, so they're not really yours the way digital download music files are. While there is an issue over that, digital will be stalled, but Netflix is so entrenched and so voluminous in its library, very few people have any problem not owning a lot of movies. The ones they care about, they'll figure solutions for, whether that's physical media or not.