Katzenberg: HD is a Niche (1 Viewer)

[DaViD Boulet]

Paul,

that's exactly what I do with my collection. After the HD bug bit me I started pulling DVDs off my shelf saying "The next time I'll watch that will be in high-def" or "I'd rather watch another movie in HD than this one in SD"... those titles went in my Amazon.com marketplace pile.

In the last 4 months I've earned about $700.00 towards my growing high-def collection.

 

[bigluigi]

The art of film and the superior technical presentation of film to me are two separate subjective topics.
My wife considers herself a "film enthusiast" but was quite content to watch this film on our 13" TV set up in our hobby room even after I suggested viewing this in our HT or at least on the 56" HDTV. Now I would never be so bold as to suggest to my wife that because she chooses to watch this film on SD DVD that she lacks insight into the art of film. Oh, no...it's just that tech stuff simply does not matter to her. BTW, she thoroughly enjoyed this film.

 

[Robert Crawford]

What you do with your money is your own business. All that I'm saying is that my BD disc of "No Country for Old Men" will look and sound better than a SD DVD of the same title. As far as being an elitist, I'll leave the labeling of people to others to do.

 

[Robert Crawford]

By the way David, how big is your HDM library?

 

[Douglas Monce]

I haven't sold off any of my SD collection. I never know when I might want to watch a film at someone else's house and would need it on SD. I actually don't anticipate selling any of my SD library.


Doug

 

[Paul.S]

$700 is a nice sum, David. You must be selling quite a few discs to get to that amount given the low amounts I'm seeing offered for used SD DVDs these days.

My HD DVDs have moved briskly and gold CDs fetch some nice coin. But with SD DVD and standard CD I often resort to selling to Wherehouse.com for peanuts just to be done with it given the waiting for a buyer and relatively low values--generally speaking--on Marketplace.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

I think I just passed 50 HD discs (and growing rapidly). I need to do an exact count when I get home. Can't wait to enjoy No Country for Old Men on BD tonight...

 

[DaViD Boulet]

I used to have thousands of DVDs... but not since I started to try to pay down my debt and prepare for HDM (a nice dual-purpose goal to sell off lots of discs I never watch or won't watch again in SD). I think I've sold between 200 and 300 titles in the last few months. Many of those titles were still shrink-wrapped in their original packaging (you know how that is... buy it and then put it on the shelf and realize a year later it's never been watched). So those sealed copies got slightly higher prices since they could be listed for sale as "new".

 

[Douglas Monce]

David your statement makes me think of only one thing, a quote from Hardware Wars.

"Relax kid, It's only a movie."

Doug

 

[Don Solosan]

Paul S, where are you in SoCal? I recently took a bag of DVDs to Laserblazer in West LA and was offered $90 in trade. So I took them over to Amoeba in Hollywood and they offered $256 in trade. Their prices on CDs are great too.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

David,

You're going from "thousands of DVDs" down to just about 50 BDs?? You must not have hit any of the BD sales then. I only jumped in late Dec, and I probably already have more BDs than you.

But seriously, I'm glad for you that you're paying down your debt -- and maybe learning to get a grip on the film collecting addict... I mean habit. I'm still trying to figure out how to manage that habit myself as I make this transition from DVD to BD. Well, like most(?), DVD will probably still continue to be a significant part of my collection for various reasons that others have already mentioned though I don't expect to buy too many more DVDs going forward.

And oh, I'll probably just have my wife and the kids put out batches of DVDs (we no longer want) for sale on their next spring cleaning stoop sale. Maybe they'll fetch anywhere from $3-5 each that way...

_Man_

 

[FrankT]

Good post.

 

[Lee Scoggins]

"I agree with him, and I don't really think it's a bad thing. LD was a niche market, and it did alright. I have no problem with HD/BD being the next LD."

I agree.

 

[Lee Scoggins]

"It's not that HDM is "technically superior" to DVD."

Actually I think that is true from purely a resolution standpoint.

 

[bigluigi]

Now this....I understand and I tried to explain to my wife that by watching No Country... in SD DVD she was betraying the Director's intent of everyone watching this film in Blu-ray thereby preserving the films integrity. She thinks I'm nuts.

 

[Paul.S]

Yeah Don I'm familiar with and have shopped at both of those places, moreso Blazer. I do waaay more online shopping now versus when I first discovered those stores many years ago. Haven't sold anything at Blazer but your anecdote doesn't sound like much of an endorsement of their trade-in pricing (?).

I tend to get a few (as in, not a bag of) titles in a short stack for sale and want to get on with it . . . before I can obsess over my sales decisions even more. So I like the relative immediacy of packaging up the goodies with the sales slip and dropping them off at the work post office, as opposed to accumulating enough to make a (dedicated) trip to a b & m feel "worthwhile."

 

[DaViD Boulet]

If it's "only a movie" to you, then why do you spend any time at a place like HTF?

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Last night we watched No Country For Old Men in 1080p (BD obviously) on my friend's new 40" 1080p Plasma from about 10 feet away. We were definitely farther away than the "sweet spot" viewing angle.

Even so, the image clarity and purity of the landscapes was astonishing... and it transported the viewing from a facsimile to that of an *experience*. Constantly througout the movie me and my two friends would gasp in awe of the astonishing clarity and emotional impact of *the visuals* along side the story itself... which was clearly what the director wanted since such care had been taken to photograph the cinematography in just this way.

My friend had the DVD copy so we popped that in briefly after the BD was over. No contest. The DVD was just a muddy, murky, "digitally filtered" mess compared to the high-resolution image. It completely negated the impact of those sweeping vistas and undercut the integrity of the film's artistic strength. It was not the same movie.

 

[Douglas Monce]

All I'm saying is that sometimes you seem to be wound up pretty tight. I realize you're passionate about it, but man you need to loosen up a little. It's not brain surgery, its just a hobby.

Doug

 

[Don Solosan]

"Haven't sold anything at Blazer but your anecdote doesn't sound like much of an endorsement of their trade-in pricing (?)."

No, it isn't -- that's why I walked out the door with my bag of goodies. But I think it illustrates that if you think used DVDs don't have any value, you might be going to the wrong place. To be fair, Laserblazer has lower prices on used DVDs than Amoeba.