we need to be good consumers, if we want good products (1 Viewer)

[Professor Echo]

I agree with everything Rob posted. The move to Blu for me was an obvious one given that my old SD player was on its way out, especially with regards to playing DVD-Rs, which make up a substantial part of my collection. I needed a new player that had a reputation of playing near everything and while I considered some SD players, I decided that would be going backwards.

Now I'm not necessarily optimistic about any format that involves a disc instead of a hard drive, but for only about $40 more than I would have paid for a decent SD player, I bought a very highly rated Blu player, which is known for being accessible to all sorts of recorded discs.

No matter the future of SD or BD, nor even my inherent reticence to build a collection of what may prove to be a dead format before long, I couldn't justify ignoring the progress of the technology. Right now there are perhaps only 15 or so Blu Ray titles I would like to have, which isn't much, and I'm afraid the obvious and consistent wooing of a younger demographic may never produce the bulk of titles I want. But the upconversion of SD on this player is also supposed to be fantastic, so rather than see any of it as some kind of competition, for me it represents the best of all worlds and, finally, at a price where I could comfortably make the leap. Once that last point was achieved, it allayed all fears and hesitations over it ultimately becoming a niche or stopgap format.

As the saying goes, when life gives you lemons, which in my case was a really bad Philips SD player, you just have learn how to make lemonade.

 

[Gary OS]

Walker makes an important point. Blu-ray players are backwards compatible so I don't have any problem with them and am sure at some point in the near future I'll own a BR player. And if (and it's a big "if" as far as I can tell) vintage series start showing up in the BR format and it's not just about double-dipping and it's not curtailing current classic releases on SDVD then great! I'm not against the format and hope my comments aren't construed as such. But I do worry that what's going to happen is that studios just aren't going to see the benefit of releasing older material on BR, and at the same time the format will phase standard dvds out of existence. If those two things are what the future holds, then I'd have to say I'm not cheerleading for Blu-ray to take off. It's purely about the material to me, not the technology. They are both physical discs so there's nothing inherently wrong or bad with BR as far as I'm concerned. Again, it's only about what the advent of BR might do to classic TV that concerns me. If and when the studios show me I have nothing to fear then I'll be glad to climb on board.

Oh, and I definitely feel the same way Jeff does about owning the material myself. I have no desire to have to stream everything I want. It's much better if I can handle the property myself. If downloading offers me the option of burning then I'd reluctantly accept (although I still think pressed dvds are better than home-made dvd-rs). But if it's all about material being kept on some other site and only accessible through the internet every time I want to watch - forget about it.


Gary "hope that made sense" O.

 

[Professor Echo]

Gary, I don't necessarily think at this point Blu-Ray has to be the enemy and, as such, the possible or potential catalyst for this gradual slowing of any titles beyond those of recent vintage, whether it's in films or television. But a case can definitely be made for it if only because of the typically short sighted view of the manufacturers and studios. Ironically, the situation of not just waning classics on DVD, but titles from all eras, started developing even before Blu Ray came about and in fact was one of the causing factors in the quest to introduce HD and Blu.

The consensus was that the market for standard DVDs had become so saturated and had gone through such drastic price wars over a short period of time, that the profits were rapidly diminishing. So just as the auto makers have lived and died all these years by doing whatever they can to convince you that you need the new yearly model, so came Blu and HD, which did genuinely offer an improvement of sorts, but also gave both the hardware and software manufacturers the opportunity to once more establish a healthy profit margin. But in so doing it left them with an inherent conundrum: How best to sell someone on what is purely a step or two above what they have, but not a whole staircase as VHS to DVD was? The answer, as it is with most electronic toys none of us really need, but instead really want, was to sell the notion of MODERN technology above all else. How best to do this?

Well, with the internet generation now becoming what demographics people see as the next big market, of course the method was to focus all your efforts on them. Which once more brings into play that same old same old Madison Avenue myth of time and time again falsely believing, and no doubt have ass filled studies to prove it, that only young people are capable of changing their buying habits. So as it stands now the common held gospel is that the only way of exploiting said market is to promote the glossy new and improved until they bite. Then once they have made the leap, not only give them what they know and are most comfortable with, but reassure them that their predilections are the right ones and they need look no further for any other ones. Does Pepsi ever think it will outsell Coke? Probably not, so why spend all that money on advertising? Simple, to reassure the people who are already drinking Pepsi that they are making the right choice and should continue doing so.

So now the rest of us, say 30 years and older, find ourselves having to survive the second hand media nature of narrowcasting and in so doing come to the sad realization why a sure fire crowd pleasing classic film like THE GREAT ESCAPE is nowhere to be seen in Blu, but new dreck like LEATHERHEADS is. The PS3 crowds apparently do not do classic film or so the sales gurus and marketing pundits would have you believe. I am not expert enough nor knowledgeable nor prescient enough to prove them wrong, but I do know that somewhere along the line, the quick, vast glut of DVDs overwhelmed the marketplace and the fastest fix was to up the bells and whistles. Then target those who would seemingly be the most easily impressed by it: the stereotypical pulse of the youth that always beats for the next new shiny THING.

I don't think they have a clue who lives in the real world beyond all their charts and graphs and bottom lines. And I do sincerely believe they are missing a real opportunity to reinvigorate the idea of DVDs, both SD and BD, by focusing all their efforts on the potentially fickle desires and demands of too few, too much.

 

[Jeff Willis]

I'd like to post a correction from my earlier post #39 regarding DirecTV's HD movies and DVD-R recording: I heard from a friend that has sucessfully recorded movies from DTV's HD channels to Std DVD-R's and they are not copy-protected as had some of the Bd members on a Satt forum had stated. Apologies for my error. I don't know is this is true when recording to an HD DVD disc though.

My understanding is that the PPV movies are encoded with that "24-hr" clock feature.

I've held off on getting a DVD Recorder since most of my collection does not include DVD-R's and I've never gotten into the home DVD-recording thing but have been considering it lately since I have several movies on the DTV hard drive box that aren't available in anamorphic format in stores.