Studio People Don't or Rarely Read the Forums Anymore? - Page 2

Re: Studio People Don't or Rarely Read the Forums Anymore?

It's human nature to be more vocal, ie more motivated when you're unhappy. When was the last time you called a company to say "I just wanted you to know I have no complaints about my shopping experience with you recently"? You're MORE motivated when you want to complain. Why are you "puzzled" about this simple concept?

Re: Studio People Don't or Rarely Read the Forums Anymore?

It's a well established human behavior. And I'm really pissed that you don't get it.

Re: Studio People Don't or Rarely Read the Forums Anymore?

BTW, there's an interesting series of articles out on the topic of the studios and HD. Two have been posted, presumably the third comes in about a month:

Airing Classics in HD Creates Challenges, by James E. O'Neal
Old-Time Hollywood’s Journey to HD, by James E. O'Neal

They deal with both broadcast and disc.

Re: Studio People Don't or Rarely Read the Forums Anymore?

NO BELGIAN TRAILER = NO SALE!!! I'M NEVER BUYING ONE OF [studio]'S PRODUCTS AGAIN!

Re: Studio People Don't or Rarely Read the Forums Anymore?

Great post Ron!


This is truly disappointing as I always looked forward to these chats. Hopefully once cooler heads prevail we'll be able to hold them again.

Re: Studio People Don't or Rarely Read the Forums Anymore?

BTW, just to avoid any confusion, Warner is still interested in
a chat with us at some future date.

Re: Studio People Don't or Rarely Read the Forums Anymore?

I'm not denying the forums are negative just commenting on the irony and hypocrisy of studio folks blaming the format war for making it worse when they're the ones responsible for the format war in the first place.

Re: Studio People Don't or Rarely Read the Forums Anymore?

My original post wasn't just aimed at the format war and who is to blame. I was speaking more along the lines of what Ron got into deeper. I don't know any "major" people but I've known people at small companies for several years now and I can assure you that they feel the same way Ron does when someone starts a flame war because a Jess Franco film didn't get a 2-disc SE.

And I'll apologize right now if I'm wrong but I never hear ANYTHING about how people love this format. The only positive posts come when HD owners want to say how much better their format is to SD. If a studio releases a great disc then you might have a few posts saying so but this is all forgotten whenever someone mentions that the Turkey trailer isn't included. A wildfire breaks out and Hell is put on the company.

Again, maybe I'm wrong but it seems some people here are very unhappy, which is why I wonder if they just watch movies any more or if they simply want to complain about the video and audio quality. Perhaps it's naive as me but coming from someone with a HD player but haven't bought anything yet, it gets me a little worried about all these complaints. I often ask myself if the format is really that bad or is it just people throwing a fit over every little thing.

Re: Studio People Don't or Rarely Read the Forums Anymore?

This seems to be a bit of an exaggeration. Most of the complaints I have read about missing trailers are in regards to the studios not providing the original theatrical trailers for the movie being released. On the other hand they have no problem forcing a person to watch trailiers for films that a person has no interest in.


IMO, some (not all) of this is an after affect of the format war. The BDA massively hyped the capabilities of the Blu-ray format. There is now a large group of people that are determined to hold the BDA's feet to the fire when BD releases do not meet the standards that the BDA, themselves, promised. A lot of people seem to be expecting perfection on BD releases, even though the actual theatrical releases of films are, more often than not, imperfect.

AVS has running list of BD/HD DVD releases that people have found issues with. I only took a quick look, but it appeared to me that almost every BD/HD DVD release was listed as having one problem or another. For example, "The Fifth Element (remastered)", for which SONY got high praise in stepping up and correcting deficiencies, is on that list as having an incorrect reverse telecine plus other problems.

I have the disc and I thought it looked pretty damn good, but someone found a problem with it. Frankly, with the type of expectations demonstrated by that AVS list, I don't think studios will ever be able to meet the standards of a lot of those thread posters.

Re: Studio People Don't or Rarely Read the Forums Anymore?

That's the problem in a nutshell.

Everyone has a gripe and demands some sort of action.

Obvious problems aside, the studios can't seem to please anyone
so why should they try.

Quite frankly, I want to sit down and enjoy the benefits BD brings
me instead of having to dissect every single problem that may exist
with the transfer and demanding the studios make it right. Heck, we
can't even agree with each other on most of these issues.

Really, all of us should be picking and choosing our fights rather
than these constant attacks on the studios and each other.

Re: Studio People Don't or Rarely Read the Forums Anymore?

I love HD-DVD and Bd, but I simply got tired of all of the format war BS and don't post very much these days on the topic of HD media. It kills me that something that delivers such a splendid HT experience, and frankly re-invigorated my HT viewing, is nit-picked all of the time.

(And I especially love the critical comments from folks who don't own HD playback equipment and have to add their 2 cents to the discussion. But, I digress.)

Back to the topic at hand...

- Walter.

Re: Studio People Don't or Rarely Read the Forums Anymore?

Or their close relations, the folks who go wild over a disc they haven't actually viewed. At most they've seen some screen captures.

(And no, I don't think you're digressing. It's true that everyone's entitled to an opinion, but a lot of people in these discussions aren't entitled to have their opinions taken seriously.)

M.

Re: Studio People Don't or Rarely Read the Forums Anymore?

In my opinion there should also be a (linear) relation between the extent of an error in a released movie and the amount of fuss made about it.

When a rather general problem, say the application of too much DNR, or a wrong aspect ratio, affects a whole movie, I think harsh negative critique is warranted.
The studios should even be glad to get problems like that pointed out.

If however it's a minimal or rare error (we're all fallible) and only present in one or two scenes we're discussing: it's still an error, alright, but it should hardly or only casually be mentioned, let alone be made into a major glitch, covered by numerous posts and overshadowing any other discussion of the film.

I find it suspicious already if someone needs to post a screencap to demonstrate the problem to people who own the movie themselves, or has to give the exact location ("scene 56, at 73 mins, 20 secs, you clearly see the EE above the shoulder of the actor at the left, for three seconds, well two at least!") to make other viewers aware of it.
If it's a real and serious problem, you'd see it right away, I would think.


Cees

Re: Studio People Don't or Rarely Read the Forums Anymore?

Cees, I agree: most of the films that may or may not have problems that I have seen I usually didn't notice them until I read a post here or another site. Yes there are some obvious errors, but I get engrossed in a film I just don't notice them for the most part.
It's all about the movies! An escape from reality for a short time.
Enjoy!
Al

Re: Studio People Don't or Rarely Read the Forums Anymore?

There is a major difference between having an opinion versus having an informed opinion.




Crawdaddy

Re: Studio People Don't or Rarely Read the Forums Anymore?

Tact: Acute sensitivity to what is proper and appropriate in dealing with others, including the ability to speak or act without offending.

It's amazing how the way you choose to get your point across affects how it's actually taken.

Case in point: I frequent a keyboard forum that is specifically centered around a keyboard I recently purchased. One of the posters there started post after post complaining about every little thing that he couldn't figure out how to do, or how this sound isn't realistic, or how this board by brand "X" is so much better, etc., etc. He chose the "bitch bitch bitch, I'm an awesome producer, this board sucks" approach that turned everyone off of listening to him, or trying to explain away some of his complaints which a lot were user related. While a couple of his complaints are valid, his message was long lost.

Don't take my post as we shouldn't keep the studios in check, without it being brought up in the forums, I don't know if the framing error in the POTC: Curse of the Black Pearl BD release would have been corrected, or the Fifth Element would have been rereleased with a free exchange program. And hopefully, this excessive DNR/EE problem fades away in future HD releases because of it being pointed out constructively by us. If more of the vocal critics would use tact though, maybe it'd be easier for the studios to separate the constructive criticism from the crying and they wouldn't be so turned off from the message.

I don't want to see studios being turned off from listening to us or turning away offers to do an internet chat because they're being unfairly attacked. However, if they don't want to chat because it's not going to be a "No, those jeans don't make you look fat" kind of talk, then I'll stick to reading their press releases.

Re: Studio People Don't or Rarely Read the Forums Anymore?

I'm similar, but I do notice them to a certain degree while most of the time, they don't take me out of the film experience.




Crawdaddy

Re: Studio People Don't or Rarely Read the Forums Anymore?

I agree 100% with the bolded.

Re: Studio People Don't or Rarely Read the Forums Anymore?

I don't know what you mean by "love for this format", but when people are pleased with a given release, they have no problem saying so. I've seen a number of posts to that effect, and it has nothing to do with boosting "their" format (why are you still talking about the format war?).

Re: Studio People Don't or Rarely Read the Forums Anymore?

I'm guessing that CBS is not, and I wouldn't blame them. Which is a shame. I think CBS/Paramount is putting out some of the best TV on DVD releases out there and would love to see a chat with them.

Doug

Re: Studio People Don't or Rarely Read the Forums Anymore?

Read some of Robert Harris' "a few words about" threads. They are full of people praising some very high quality releases.

Doug

Re: Studio People Don't or Rarely Read the Forums Anymore?

Exactly. They could have God himself doing the V/A transfer and load the thing up with five discs worth of extras and then people would complain that they didn't use the original art work that was shown in their home theater to advertise the film.


I don't see many posts talking about great discs. Going down the first twenty posts in this very thread shows mostly complaints and people upset about one thing or another.

And I'm sorry but pausing a frame and then zooming in ten times to notice a problem is childish and I know for a fact that people within the "studios" feel the same way. You pause a film frame by frame and zoom in on it then you're always going to find something wrong. It seems people no longer watch the movie but just look for things to throw a fit about.

Re: Studio People Don't or Rarely Read the Forums Anymore?

I think there are people who really sit with their nose pressed to the screen, tape measure in hand, just looking for problems, rather than enjoying the movie.

Frankly sometimes I wish these companies hadn't put bit rate meters and codec identifiers on these players. Someone sees VC-1 and starts ranting about how the disc is inferior.

Crazy

Doug

Re: Studio People Don't or Rarely Read the Forums Anymore?

Hmm, before you said:

So it's gone from you "never hear anything" positive to "mostly" complaints (see my above post for why complaints dominate).

Re: Studio People Don't or Rarely Read the Forums Anymore?

One problem is that people get very brave behind a keyboard. They say things that they would NEVER say to someone in person.

You might return a movie to the store because there were problems, but you would never tell the nice lady behind the counter that she was an idiot or just trying to rip you off.

Doug

Re: Studio People Don't or Rarely Read the Forums Anymore?

Quite true.

Throughout the format war, and up until recently, when the DNR and EE issues started running at full volume...just about all we had was endless threads concerning "market penetration" and "price points". As I stated in a post a couple of months ago: I had to revisit the SD forum in order to hear actual discussion about movies.

Re: Studio People Don't or Rarely Read the Forums Anymore?

I don't post very much because of all the negativity and nitpicking of every release; however, I would like to interject that I absolutely love my blu ray collection.

I've had a player since 2006 (Samsung BD-P1000, now a PS3 as well), and have amassed a collection of around 100 discs.

In my opinion there has never been a home entertainment product with such outstanding and consistent quality.

There dose seem to be an large population of disgruntled high-def fans, and I don't understand why that is.

Back to lurking.

Re: Studio People Don't or Rarely Read the Forums Anymore?

And not the Movies forum?

That's a sad statement, on a number of levels.

M.

Re: Studio People Don't or Rarely Read the Forums Anymore?

That would be welcome.

By the way Ron, you're post #24 was well said, and should be read by all here on the forum.

Back to the general issue:

Do you think that a lot of the "bad air" that dominates the hi-def forums is a direct result of the format war, or have we by nature become non-stop spewers of complaint?

Maybe I'm just ignorant and silly, but it seems to me that some actual contact with responsible people from the studios would help to move us beyond some (or all) of this hostility. An actual confirmation that real people are involved, and responding, might help matters, instead of people feeling that they're shouting at some deaf ivory tower.

Perhaps the medium should be a live chat as in the past (SD forum), or some other as yet unconsidered method of contact. I'm just thinking out loud...but perhaps something on the order of the new Insiders section of the forum, with studio reps instead. This is probably the only internet forum where such a thing might be successful, given the disciplined moderation.

Re: Studio People Don't or Rarely Read the Forums Anymore?

Like the upcoming HTF Hollywood Meet?


Cees