Is Manufacture on Demand the future of TV on DVD? (1 Viewer)

[westumulka]

Dan's comments and purchasing habits listed above are very close to mine over the past year as well. I am hopeful that TCM do release more.

 

[Neil Brock]

Originally Posted by Traveling Matt

I checked with people who actually do know about such things as opposed to people who just claim to know about them and basically was told that website has more crackpot posts and misinformation than a UFO alien contact site.

 

[Neil Brock]

Originally Posted by smithb




I use my children's DVD-R's as a perfect example. Kids watch titles over and over and over again. Over the years I have noticed some of the DVD-R's going bad while no pressed DVD's have under the same circumstances. I use only Sony DVD-R's and my children do not have direct access to the disks. So I conclude either age or heat from extended use as the cause.


Now under normal use with proper storage and care I think DVD-R's could last a long time. But they are always going to be a bit suspect when compared to a pressed disk.

Right, its age or heat or extended use. It couldn't be because your kids scratched them, mishandled them or tossed them around like frisbees. Because I'm sure kids always handle the discs with the utmost care.

 

[Gary OS]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neil Brock " O.

 

[smithb]

Originally Posted by Neil Brock
Right, its age or heat or extended use. It couldn't be because your kids scratched them, mishandled them or tossed them around like frisbees. Because I'm sure kids always handle the discs with the utmost care.

If you actually read what you quoted you would have seen that I stated clearly "my children do not have direct access to the disks". My wife or I put all disks in the player for them. In fact, the disks are on the top shelf and the DVD player over the TV. Neither of the children can reach either.


I have no agenda based on my response. I'm just stating my personal experiences that has created concern on my part regarding DVD-R's. I have also stated that their use is an accelerated view based on a lot of repeat viewing that would require most adults many years to duplicate.

 

[tvgreats]

Totally agree with you Brad. I have classic sporting events from the 70's transferred to dvd-rs and some of them on cheaper brands will not play any longer. They were only handled by me. But they were on cheaper brands. Of course now, I back up everything to Verbatim and Taiyo Yuden. I have never had a problem with Verbatim or TY's. The point is, cheap dvd-rs can and have failed even under normal conditions. As someone pointed out, its in the dye makeup used by cheaper manufacturers. Top quality brands should be fine, but cheaper brands have failed.

Having said all that, I will still get MOD if its the only way to get my favorite classic shows. I like classic tv way too much to quit now.

 

[Gary OS]

As I was talking to a friend today he reminded me of something that I'm going to throw up in this discussion about MOD vs standard releases on pressed discs.


I've bought many, and I do mean many, TV dvds that were just so-so in terms of importance to me. Why did I do this? Mainly because the price was right. Now here comes the rub. Would I buy the same amount of TV sets if they were offered in MOD? Gotta say emphatically - NO WAY! And the main reason will be the price point. Unless these MOD sets are going to be able to hit the $20 - $25 mark I'm gonna being taking a pass on things I'd otherwise have bought when pressed discs were the mainstay just a year or so ago.

As one example: It was nothing for me to pick up the 2 seasons of "F Troop" when I could pick them up for around $20 a piece on sale. If that same series had been released in MOD, with a pricetag closer to $50 or more, I can say emphatically I'd never buy it. And there are literally dozens upon dozens of series in my personal library that I can say the same thing about. With MOD I'm only going to be buying the TV shows that are really near and dear to my heart. There will be no room for many blind buys, or secondary shows that I'd buy after they went on sale.

I wonder how many other folks will find themselves in the same situation.



Gary "I'll be much more careful about what I buy via any MOD program - it will have to be very important to me to spend MOD money on it" O.

 

[Neil Brock]

Originally Posted by Gary OS

As I was talking to a friend today he reminded me of something that I'm going to throw up in this discussion about MOD vs standard releases on pressed discs.


I've bought many, and I do mean many, TV dvds that were just so-so in terms of importance to me. Why did I do this? Mainly because the price was right. Now here comes the rub. Would I buy the same amount of TV sets if they were offered in MOD? Gotta say emphatically - NO WAY! And the main reason will be the price point. Unless these MOD sets are going to be able to hit the $20 - $25 mark I'm gonna being taking a pass on things I'd otherwise have bought when pressed discs were the mainstay just a year or so ago.

As one example: It was nothing for me to pick up the 2 seasons of "F Troop" when I could pick them up for around $20 a piece on sale. If that same series had been released in MOD, with a pricetag closer to $50 or more, I can say emphatically I'd never buy it. And there are literally dozens upon dozens of series in my personal library that I can say the same thing about. With MOD I'm only going to be buying the TV shows that are really near and dear to my heart. There will be no room for many blind buys, or secondary shows that I'd buy after they went on sale.

I wonder how many other folks will find themselves in the same situation.



Gary "I'll be much more careful about what I buy via any MOD program - it will have to be very important to me to spend MOD money on it" O.

Very good point. So it comes down to how badly you want the show. I agree with you that if a show comes out which I already have from off-air and in good quality, I'm not going to drop a huge amount for it if its not that important a show for me. I'll live with what I have. However, there really isn't a lot left in the vaults that the studios haven't put out yet that is going to sell any kind of big numbers. Its like anything else, supply and demand rules. You want a show that only appeals to a small audience and is only going to sell in the low thousands, then you may have to pay more for it than a show that will sell in the tens of thousands. But realistically, other than say Batman, how many shows can you think of that have not come out which would be blockbusters? Even something like Dobie Gillis, while its a great show, I don't think would do huge numbers. Nick and Nite and CBN were over 20 years ago so there's a whole audience which has never even had a chance to see a lot of older shows. But, yes, what type of discs they use is a concern but again, as I said before and everyone conveniently ignored it, so what. How hard is it to buy the DVDs and just put them in your computer and burn them onto a high quality disc?

 

[smithb]

Originally Posted by Gary OS
as I said before and everyone conveniently ignored it, so what. How hard is it to buy the DVDs and just put them in your computer and burn them onto a high quality disc?

I didn't ignore it, but for me I wouldn't go another set of DVD-R's, I would just store to an alternative device, a hard drive. Now in the long run, hard drives are mechanical devices that would probably fail way before a disk. But, it is a device I will access periodically, know the health of, and upgrade from time to time to increase storage capacity. In comparison to picking a DVD-R disk out of my collection after many years to find out it no longer works. More them likely we will end up with media servers where the hard drive is our primary way of getting at content quickly to view. I currently have a little over 2TB's worth of captured content from the past two years. Being fairly new to capturing and very active in it, I already have storage and time constraints for what content to capture, process, and store. So unless a must have comes to MOD, the concept just isn't a priority to adopt at this time, at least for me.

 

[Nebiroth]

Originally Posted by Neil Brock




How hard is it to buy the DVDs and just put them in your computer and burn them onto a high quality disc?

Not at all, but it's still illegal. Even in the US, where copyright laws are somewhat less stringent than they are in the UK (ours have to be seen to be believed!).



In the UK the position is even more parlous, since our laws don;t even have provision for backup copies. If, say, your software installation disc fails you're supposed to send it to the manufacturer and get a new one.


The US does make provision for people to make backup copies, but NOT if this involves circumventing and anti-copying or encryption system to do so.


And the MOD discs are just like all commercial DVD's in that respect.

 

[Jeff Willis]

Originally Posted by Gary OS
As I was talking to a friend today he reminded me of something that I'm going to throw up in this discussion about MOD vs standard releases on pressed discs.


I've bought many, and I do mean many, TV dvds that were just so-so in terms of importance to me. Why did I do this? Mainly because the price was right. Now here comes the rub. Would I buy the same amount of TV sets if they were offered in MOD? Gotta say emphatically - NO WAY! And the main reason will be the price point. Unless these MOD sets are going to be able to hit the $20 - $25 mark I'm gonna being taking a pass on things I'd otherwise have bought when pressed discs were the mainstay just a year or so ago.

As one example: It was nothing for me to pick up the 2 seasons of "F Troop" when I could pick them up for around $20 a piece on sale. If that same series had been released in MOD, with a pricetag closer to $50 or more, I can say emphatically I'd never buy it. And there are literally dozens upon dozens of series in my personal library that I can say the same thing about. With MOD I'm only going to be buying the TV shows that are really near and dear to my heart. There will be no room for many blind buys, or secondary shows that I'd buy after they went on sale.

I wonder how many other folks will find themselves in the same situation.



Gary "I'll be much more careful about what I buy via any MOD program - it will have to be very important to me to spend MOD money on it" O.

Same here. I have not bought any MOD TV/DVD sets as yet. I have bought 3 MOD movies, if I count "1" as the Barker Tarzan bundle set, and 2 other movies that have been on my wait list for many years.


Those movies were on a very short list of my "must-haves" in MOD.


As for TV/DVD MOD, I'm the same...the price points are too high for me to join the TV/DVD side of the MOD mkt.


Which makes me think about what MOD shows would be on a must-have list for a series. My list would be short at the 1st pass of thinking about it, maybe 4-5 series. Most of them would be to complete the shows that have been abandoned on pressed discs.

 

[BobO'Link]

Originally Posted by Gary OS

As I was talking to a friend today he reminded me of something that I'm going to throw up in this discussion about MOD vs standard releases on pressed discs.


I've bought many, and I do mean many, TV dvds that were just so-so in terms of importance to me. Why did I do this? Mainly because the price was right. Now here comes the rub. Would I buy the same amount of TV sets if they were offered in MOD? Gotta say emphatically - NO WAY! And the main reason will be the price point. Unless these MOD sets are going to be able to hit the $20 - $25 mark I'm gonna being taking a pass on things I'd otherwise have bought when pressed discs were the mainstay just a year or so ago.

As one example: It was nothing for me to pick up the 2 seasons of "F Troop" when I could pick them up for around $20 a piece on sale. If that same series had been released in MOD, with a pricetag closer to $50 or more, I can say emphatically I'd never buy it. And there are literally dozens upon dozens of series in my personal library that I can say the same thing about. With MOD I'm only going to be buying the TV shows that are really near and dear to my heart. There will be no room for many blind buys, or secondary shows that I'd buy after they went on sale.

I wonder how many other folks will find themselves in the same situation.



Gary "I'll be much more careful about what I buy via any MOD program - it will have to be very important to me to spend MOD money on it" O.

I'm with you, Gary!


I have many series I discovered due to buzz and a low enough price along with many secondary shows I would not have purchased unless the price was low enough. There are many others of which I had vague recollections (pseudo blind-buy) but the price was right so I went ahead with the purchase. None of the titles in these groups would have been purchased if they had been only available as MOD with the current MOD prices. My blind-buy price threshold is somewhat low and MOD is above my limits for even highly desired titles (TV *or* film), much less blind/secondary buys. It'll take a "Batman" type release before I consider a purchase. Even then I'll have to do some serious soul-searching and wait for a "sale" and/or coupon. MOD prices are typically on the high side of what I'd expect the MSRP of a pressed release to be.

 

[Gary OS]

Wow! Great, great comments from each of you (Neil, Brad, Richard, Jeff & Howie). All of you have made spot on remarks. There is one point from Brad that I wanted to quote, because it's like he's reading my mind on this whole subject:

Originally Posted by smithb

The same goes for me. If it is a must buy and that is the only way to get it then I will buy it on MOD. But due to price and the use of DVD-R's it removes the blind and casual buys. At a guess I would say that something like 20% of my collection were thought of as must buys at the time, where as the rest were casual and blind buys. Now after purchasing, many of those casual or blind buys have become must have's. That is part of what makes this hobby great. But they didn't start out that way. So it is not that I will stop purchasing all together the more MOD may take over, but it is just that I will be more selective, which unfortunately takes us into a negative spiral of less purchases means more MODS, which could lead to less purchases, etc.


Which is another reason I would prefer tp throw more support at this time to the TMG's and Shout's that continue to throw out more obscure titles still on pressed disks then support the MOD programs. If they can release "Johnny Staccato", "Soldiers of Fortune", and "The Deputy" in the 4th quarter on pressed disks, I want to support it. I realize MOD and downloads are probably the future, but before having to accept that, I want support the production of pressed disks as much as possible to continue that approach for as long as possible. If/When that dries up for titles I am looking for then I will look closer at MOD.

I feel exactly the same way. My ratio of "must haves" to "kinda want" and "blind buy" is probably close to your ratio, Brad. I'd say my collection right now is composed of about 25% of "Must Have" dvds and the rest are things I'd not have purchased on MODs that cost around $50 or more. It's those blind buys that are going to suffer. The sad fact is I'll probably suffer as well because I'll end up missing out on something that may have really struck my fancy had I been able to purchase it. But I just won't take those chances with $50+ price tags, especially on DVD-Rs. And like Brad, I'm also aware of the downward spiral this type of purchasing philosophy will create, but money is money and I just can't justify those higher MOD prices for anything other than "must buy" TV shows I know I'll absolutely love.


Brad's point about supporting Shout and Timeless is big for me as well. I want to support pressed discs as much as I can until the last classic series is released in that format.


And yes, Neil, I agree that there probably isn't much left in the 50's/60's market (other than Batman) that would be a sure fire, big-time seller. That's the sad part about how everything has shaken out in the last 2 years. We were able to see lesser known titles released on pressed disc for most of this decade, but that time is drawing to a close. I just hate to see it for the reasons Brad outlined above, primarily that I'll not be able to take chances on blind buys, or even shows I just kind of want, like I used to and possibly miss out on a few hidden gems.



Gary "really great points by everyone" O.

 

[younger1968]

We are missing many 1980s shows, like the following


1. Family ties S6/S7

2. Growing Pains S2-S7

3. The Ropers

4. Three's a Crowd

5. Too Close for Comfort S3-S6

6. Hooperman

7. Spencer for hire

 

[ChrisALM]

Originally Posted by Gary OS

As I was talking to a friend today he reminded me of something that I'm going to throw up in this discussion about MOD vs standard releases on pressed discs.


I've bought many, and I do mean many, TV dvds that were just so-so in terms of importance to me. Why did I do this? Mainly because the price was right. Now here comes the rub. Would I buy the same amount of TV sets if they were offered in MOD? Gotta say emphatically - NO WAY! And the main reason will be the price point. Unless these MOD sets are going to be able to hit the $20 - $25 mark I'm gonna being taking a pass on things I'd otherwise have bought when pressed discs were the mainstay just a year or so ago.

As one example: It was nothing for me to pick up the 2 seasons of "F Troop" when I could pick them up for around $20 a piece on sale. If that same series had been released in MOD, with a pricetag closer to $50 or more, I can say emphatically I'd never buy it. And there are literally dozens upon dozens of series in my personal library that I can say the same thing about. With MOD I'm only going to be buying the TV shows that are really near and dear to my heart. There will be no room for many blind buys, or secondary shows that I'd buy after they went on sale.

I wonder how many other folks will find themselves in the same situation.



Gary "I'll be much more careful about what I buy via any MOD program - it will have to be very important to me to spend MOD money on it" O.

It's the same with me. When TV DVD sets were on sale, I would look for a so-so set in which I had limited interest or even a blind buy and purchase it. I was / am willing to accept some quality reduction also. But, with MOD pricing, there is no way these same rules apply for me. I am going to have to really want the show, or see a significant reduction in price in the MOD title, or I am going to be purchasing less TV DVD's.

 

[Gary OS]

I also just noticed something else I've been wondering about concerning MOD sets. I have no interest in the show at all, but looking at the Falcon Crest S2 release from Warners the following things jump out to me:


1) The price is steep. $49.95 at their normal price.

2) They've crammed 4 hour long episodes on most of the discs. That's too much data for a regular DVD-R and I've got to believe there would be compression issues.


3) To top it off, one reviewer at WBShop said they used syndicated episodes for the set. Imagine if they had tried cramming 4 uncut episodes on each disc?!!


It's the hour long TV shows I'm really intrigued in as far as the MOD format is concerned. How will the studios generally deal with them? Will they do the right thing and limit the discs to only 2 episodes per? Doubtful. Three might be OK, but I'm not even sure about that. Four is certainly too many unless they are using dual-layered DVD-Rs. And of course, the price point will be the biggie. What happens if you have an older show that had 36 or more episodes per season? I just don't see MOD working with that type of situation. Until I see it happen, I'll be very skeptical.


Gary "we'd probably see split season releases with those type of shows - an even bigger downside as far as I'm concerned" O.

 

[BobO'Link]

Originally Posted by smithb


Brad's point about supporting Shout and Timeless is big for me as well. I want to support pressed discs as much as I can until the last classic series is released in that format.


Gary "really great points by everyone" O.

Agree 100% While I'd rather not pay the higher direct prices it's much better than paying the same or likely higher for MOD. I fully intend to purchase some of the sets they offer only on their sites just as soon as I've caught up with a few others. These guys, far more than *any* of the majors moving to MOD, deserve and have earned our support with both products and quality.

 

[Professor Echo]

Gary, I'll take those F TROOP sets off your hands and why not throw in another classic buyer's remorse show, RAMAR OF THE JUNGLE. I promise I'll get you something real nice in return. Maybe treat you to a piece of pie, or a cup of coffee, but not both. Your choice. Thanks.

 

[Gary OS]

LOL, Walker. I don't hate the series (F TROOP, that is). I'm glad I've got them, I just know I would not have spent $50 a season on them like I'd probably pay if MOD was the format they were released on. I'm ashamed to say this, but the RAMAR dvds are long gone. I had to clean out some space on my dvd shelves and those went bye-bye. But I'll take the piece of pie anyhow if it's blueberry.


Gary "take care, buddy" O.

 

[nostalgic TV guy]

Originally Posted by Neil Brock

. How hard is it to buy the DVDs and just put them in your computer and burn them onto a high quality disc?

Harder than you might think. I have the DVD-R MOD set of "Highway Patrol". The discs play fine in my set top DVD player. If I put the disks in a computer DVD-RW drive, the computer cannot even "see" the disc loaded in the drive, much less play it. The disc spins in the drive for about 10 seconds with the light blinking as the drive searches for the DVD. Then the drive light goes out and the disc is no longer spinning. If I click on the drive in Windows Explorer, I get the error message "Please insert a disk in th drive". Nothing I do can make the DVD-RW drive see the disc.This drive plays all my home recorded DVD's without a hiccup. If I put the MOD DVD in a DVD-ROM (play only) computer drive, the computer sees the disc fine and I can watch it on the computer.