A Few Words About A few words about...™ Walt Disney's Alice in Wonderland -- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[cafink]

Originally Posted by Johnny Angell

If the studios figure out a way to make more money from their movies, they'll do it. It doesn't have to coincide with what the public would prefer.

If the public is willing to spend more money on a given model, doesn't that mean they prefer it, by definition?

 

[Douglas Monce]

I have to say that I agree completely with Brian's assessment of the future of home entertainment. I’m sorry but this IS the direction everything is heading towards. The fact is most people just don’t care all that much about owning more than a few of their favorite movies. And frankly the quality of HD streaming from Netflix and other services is pretty darn good. Is it blu-ray quality? No. But most people won’t notice or care about that. It just looks much better than TV they are used to.


5 years ago I watched my first movie via Netflix streaming. The quality wasn’t even DVD quality at the time, but you could see where it was going. I commented on it at the time in this forum, and what I got back was pretty much denial. It will be gone in a few months. No one wants to watch that. There isn’t enough bandwidth. Etc….etc…… Well its 5 years later and Netflix expects streaming to be more than half of its business by next year.


THIS IS THE FUTURE FOLKS.


The only thing we can do is try and make sure that it’s as good as it can possibly be.


Doug


Edit: I've just been informed that as an Amazon Prime member, I now have free access to over 5000 movies for instant view.

 

[Douglas Monce]

Originally Posted by TravisR Has there ever been a product where the manufacturer can decide to take it away from you when they want to?

Sure. Movies before home video.


Doug

 

[TravisR]

Originally Posted by cafink

Amazon famously removed copies of 1984 from their customer's Kindles a while ago.

That's not the same situation though. Amazon did that because they didn't have the rights to sell the book (or it was a bootleg of some kind, etc.) rather than arbitrarily deciding that you weren't allowed to have it anymore. That doesn't make it right and like you said, it was famous instance and how many people did it effect? I don't know sales numbers on digital copies of 1984 but I imagine that it's a fairly small number.

 

[Todd Mattraw]

The same thing was said in regards to the music industry, and yet nearly every new recording is being released on vinyl these days (and many many older titles as well). I think if we maintain a market for Blu-Ray discs, if we continue to clamor for them and continue to buy a reasonable number, then some manufacturers will continue to produce them for this niche market.


And to bring this back to "Alice", if the manufacturers mess with color schemes and add pop-ups to the end credits, then they may well kill this niche market beforehand by killing the enthusiasm of those who would normally support their industry through good and bad times: I decided not to buy "Alice" specifically because of what I read here at the HTF, and I went in really wanting to buy it.


Todd

 

[cafink]

Originally Posted by TravisR


That's not the same situation though. Amazon did that because they didn't have the rights to sell the book (or it was a bootleg of some kind, etc.) rather than arbitrarily deciding that you weren't allowed to have it anymore. That doesn't make it right and like you said, it was famous instance and how many people did it effect? I don't know sales numbers on digital copies of 1984 but I imagine that it's a fairly small number.

You're moving the goalposts. You asked, "Has there ever been a product where the manufacturer can decide to take it away from you when they want to?" And indeed, there is such a product: electronic books purchased for the Amazon Kindle. They've only actually done so once so far, but Amazon can decide to take them away from you whenever they want to, and yet the product remains rather popular and successful.

 

[TravisR]

Originally Posted by cafink

You're moving the goalposts.

I suppose you're correct. Next time, I'll cover any nitpicking by saying "Has there ever been a product where the manufacturer can decide to take it away from you when they want to excluding any examples where the company was never allowed to sell the product in the first place?"


If Amazon just started pulling books because they felt like it rather than because they didn't have the rights to sell it, do you think it would affect the Kindle's popularity?

 

[cafink]

Originally Posted by TravisR

I suppose you're correct. Next time, I'll cover any nitpicking by saying "Has there ever been a product where the manufacturer can decide to take it away from you when they want to excluding any examples where the company was never allowed to sell the product in the first place?"

I don't think you understand the situation; Amazon can remove books from their customers' Kindles for any reason at all. It just so happens the one time they've exercised it so far was because of rights issues. Your original question suggested that even having the ability to do so would deter customers, but that clearly isn't the case. Besides, why should the reason matter to the customer? It's Amazon's responsibility to make sure they have the rights to the books they sell. I don't want them to punish me for their mistake by taking away an item I've already purchased, any more than I'd want them to sneak into my house and take the book off my shelf if it were a physical product.

 

[Aaron Silverman]

Anyone remember DiVX?

Originally Posted by Todd Mattraw

nearly every new recording is being released on vinyl these days (and many many older titles as well)

That sounds like a pretty big exaggeration. There are not a lot of people buying vinyl.

 

[Johnny Angell]

Originally Posted by cafink



If the public is willing to spend more money on a given model, doesn't that mean they prefer it, by definition?

I don't think so. The supermarket industry (and maybe the beverage makers) decided they didn't want to sell 6 packs. It's really hard to find beverages in 6 packs anymore. Did we ask for that? I don't think so. When you aren't given a choice you go along or you drop out.

 

[TravisR]

Originally Posted by cafink

I don't think you understand the situation; Amazon can remove books from their customers' Kindles for any reason at all.

I completely understand that. Just because they can do something doesn't mean that they will do it. Not because they're nice or want to treat their customers right but only because they know that it would hurt them in the end especially when the internet has plenty of piracy options where you'll be able to have the product forever.

 

[Douglas Monce]

Another example is Coca-Cola. They introduced New Coke and said that’s, it this is the new Coke, hope you enjoy it. Well there was a public out cry and 4 months later they were forced to bring back old Coke.


Now the major difference here is that they didn't slowly introduce new Coke, and new Coke didn't take over the market from the old product. The public never had the chance to either accept or reject the new product. Unlike with home video where a competing product is being introduced, i.e. streaming movies, and seems to be taking over the market because people find it more appealing that what was available before.


I don't know if streaming will completely replace physical media, I suspect it probably won't, but it seems clear that it will be come the primary way that people watch movies, and probably TV shows in their home.


Doug

 

[Carlo_M]

For those who feel that streaming is the future, keep in mind that ISPs have been trying, and are gaining some traction, in implementing tiered pricing based on usage, and/or throttle their highest bandwidth users.


There are a lot of factors [other than public preferences] that are up in the air right now that will have an impact on whether or not high speed, high quality streaming will take over for physical ownership of material.

 

[cafink]

Originally Posted by Johnny Angell

I don't think so. The supermarket industry (and maybe the beverage makers) decided they didn't want to sell 6 packs. It's really hard to find beverages in 6 packs anymore. Did we ask for that? I don't think so. When you aren't given a choice you go along or you drop out.

What makes you think customers didn't want that?

 

[Craig Beam]

If it sells, it stays. If six-packs vanished, it's because they weren't generating enough of a profit. Why would any company arbitrarily decide to stop selling something that was making money for them?


It's business. If the studios stop making money with blu-ray, they'll abandon it and focus exclusively on streaming. I think it'll be a gradual process (if it happens at all), but money undoubtedly talks... especially in a down economy.

 

[Johnny Angell]

I admit I don't have any market research to backup my opinion, but I see more and more, only one option to buy a product. That option is"more" of the product. I interpret this to be the merchant making the choice for me.

 

[cafink]

Originally Posted by Johnny Angell

I admit I don't have any market research to backup my opinion, but I see more and more, only one option to buy a product. That option is"more" of the product. I interpret this to be the merchant making the choice for me.

On what do you base this interpretation? How do you know that consumers aren't the ones who wanted to buy more? Ostensibly, the beveragemakers are making more money than they were before by selling "more" of the product (otherwise, why would they have switched?). And if consumers are willing to spending more money on the new product than they were on the old, then what could that mean except that they like it more?

 

[Johnny Angell]

Let's just agree to disagree on this.

 

I enjoyed this blu-ray. On a side note, I ordered a copy of Pinocchio on blu-ray from Amazon and received it yesterday. The audio that was missing was corrected on my new version.

 

[Charles Smith]

Oh shit, I still need to do that. Wasn't Disney doing trades for the corrected disc? I've forgotten what the conclusion was in the other thread where this was discussed extensively.