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Blu-ray State of the Union. Are you switching to streaming media? (1 Viewer)

Mark Oates

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I have no doubt that eventually we'll all end up streaming or downloading movies, and paying through the nose for the DRM'ed privilege, because the Industry wants us to and shareholders are of course much more important than customers.
It'll take me a while to fall in with the herd. I've tried the Digital Copy thing (wasn't impressed) and I've tried downloading and streaming with similar results. It's not that the tech isn't up to scratch, I have a broadband connection of 50Mbps that's apparently going to be upgraded to 120Mbps.
It's just there's nothing I fancy watching.
I've already got most of the movies and tv shows I've loved, thanks to twelve years of disc collecting and freelancing as a reviewer. I can stick out a hand and retrieve whatever I want to watch, so things like downloading and streaming don't get a look in.
I'm at the point where I'm having the greatest difficulty justifying to myself upgrading my favourite movies from DVD to Blu-ray, and I'm much more receptive to doing that than buying new movies on DVD or Blu-ray as there's little interests me coming up. Most of my current pre-orders are catalogue titles upgrading from DVD to Blu, and only two or three titles are new ones.
The bread and butter of downloading and streaming for the Studios is bound to be whatever latest thing Tom Cruise is in, or what idiot superhero is flavour of the month, and I'm just not interested. So include me out.
 

Rick Thompson

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DaveF said:
Doesn't the decline of CD sales and increase of downloads suggest the future is digital data distributed by download rather than by individual physical media?
It might be a long time to wholly disappear, but I'd guess it will become ever more relegated to the smaller market of enthusiasts.
There is one big difference between movies and audio: file size. With patience, granted a LOT of patience, you can download mp3 files over a 56K modem. Even standard def pushes anything but FIOS and its ilk to the limit, never mind HD video. Since a big percentage of us will never get anything but wireless, for which even standard def is a laugh, it's hard to see how Blu and even DVD are going away during our lifetimes. The wireless bandwidth just isn't there, and until it is fuhgettaboutit.
 

Ejanss

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Rick Thompson said:
There is one big difference between movies and audio: file size. With patience, granted a LOT of patience, you can download mp3 files over a 56K modem. Even standard def pushes anything but FIOS and its ilk to the limit, never mind HD video. Since a big percentage of us will never get anything but wireless, for which even standard def is a laugh, it's hard to see how Blu and even DVD are going away during our lifetimes. The wireless bandwidth just isn't there, and until it is fuhgettaboutit.
I've got just a Standard Economy hookup, about 1.7-2.4mbps--good enough for YouTube and Netflix, but not for hardcore gaming--and on the PS3 Vudu app, the movies stream in without interruption at a better than average looking SD. HD means some catchup interruptions every four or five minutes or so, and HDX is pretty much not an option.
FWIW, HDX looks pretty darn near-Blu quality, though, so when I do catch a daily $.99 Rental of a New Release title, I use the PS3-app option of downloading the entire file before viewing, instead of streaming on the fly. At my speed, and with only casual online use (no all-nighters), downloading an approximately 6G file takes me about two days. DAYS.
(You can see why I only use it for New Release rentals, ie., "This is 'easier'?? :confused: " And even then, stretching out a movie over two or three nights on Netflix has spoiled me against watching it in one unbroken sitting, in keeping with the 24-Hour rentals imposed by most VOD sites, because they're afraid of piracy. If it's the four-hour version of Cleopatra, that's pretty much a no.)
 

Mark Oates

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Another "meh" for me about downloading and streaming is the same reason I don't rent physical media. I'm not a watch-once-and-never-come-back type. I've always said you watch a movie once for the story, then a second time to catch the stuff you missed the first time around. Admittedly it backfires when I don't enjoy a movie enough to watch it a second time, but I've never given up completely on a movie I didn't like - I hated Raiders the first time I saw it, but now it's one of my favourites. I appreciate that rentals cost less than a full purchase, but I'd rather stump up for something that's mine and can be watched any time than have to PPV for something. I know you can buy downloads permanently, but to me they don't feel as permanent as a physical copy and with a disc you have something on a shelf you can put a hand on rather than a filename on a hard drive that could suddenly become unwatchable if some distant DRM database had a conniption fit.
 

Everett S.

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Here in Wilmington Delaware we don't even have one tv station, but thanks to being near Philly there are about ten local broadcast channels including two that show classic (old) tv and movies. And two are new this year. But they do not show OAR films:confused: I still watch McHales Navy & The Outer Limits & more. Hey, btw what's up with TCM lately, showing P&S , (John Paul Jones) @ the WB Shop it's WS? VUDU sucks for older films. A Star Is Born 1956 starts out ok then goes P&S:(. The tech support just say's the movies are old that's why they look blurry etc.etc.etc..
 

Ryan-G

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I stream movie I'll only watch once, and buy movies I'll watch several times.
Richard Gallagher said:
I'm with you. I almost never go to a theater anymore. Between the admission and the cost of concessions (not to mention travel expense), it is more expensive than buying or renting physical media and you have to put up with cell phones going off, people gabbing away, etc.
I agree. I live in a pretty big city, and my nearest theater is 30 minutes away. Then the ticket, the popcorn, a drink, the rude people, it's all too much of a hassal for me. That's why I intend to build a home theater in the next few years, I'll get very close to the experience on my own terms, and probably end up saving money over the long term!
 

Persianimmortal

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Since Kevin mentioned working on the Azure cloud for Microsoft, I thought I'd point out that Azure recently had an outage that lasted for 2 hours and 24 minutes in western europe. I'm not posting this to bash Microsoft or Azure, simply to point out that even the most secure and heavily redundant, most touted cloud services by the biggest providers can and do experience issues to varying degrees. An outage of two hours is hardly catastrophic if it were for entertainment purposes, as we're not talking military grade use here. But by the same token I have a 0% failure rate with my physical blu-rays thus far.
Ultimately though, I still think it will come down to a rudimentary cost-benefit by the average person, who will weigh outages and potential security issues against the substantially lower cost and greater convenience of streaming vs. purchasing blu-rays, and opt for streaming. The good news is that 2012 has been a great year for catalog releases, so those who want to can snap up most of our favorite movies on blu for now.
 

WendyCR

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I am one who watches movies and TV by many means: Roku with Netflix/Amazon Video (Streaming), DVDs, and Blu-Rays.
While I will readily admit that streaming is very convenient, it is not without its pitfalls in that the content can be here today, gone tomorrow (looking at YOU, Netflix) and, in the case of some TV shows, you can't get all the bonus materials.
And that is an issue for me. While iTunes now does have bonus materials with select titles, it is not always the case. As an example, allow me to cite "Friends". It can now be streamed thanks to Amazon Video, but what is streamed is not the extended episodes found on the DVDs (and some scenes actually do fill in gaps) but the TV broadcast versions with none of the bonus content. To see that, one must opt for the physical DVDs, anyway, which kind of negates streaming to begin with.
And with the series coming to Blu-Ray, it was a letdown to discover the TV broadcast versions - not the longer DVD episodes - are the source material for the Blu-Ray release, but the hours of new extras eases that. Unfortunately, if one streams, you won't likely see it. Heck, I don't even think Netflix has truly made a dent in Blu-Ray, period, still heavily reliant on the DVD format, but I could be wrong.
So, basically, until some series can have bonus content streamed with episodes or some such, I will continue to prefer physical media. No chance of having it removed from streaming or missing out on content that way, even if I do also stream for convenience.
 

Adam Gregorich

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Having recently purchased an iPad I am now using it for entertainment when I travel. Instead of the portable BD player and a stack of discs, I now just bring the iPad loaded with digital copies (that came with the BDs). I can get through multiple movies on a plane, plus I can hook it up to timeshare/hotel TV with the HDMI dongle. At home everything is watched off the the DVR or DVD/Blu-ray. No streaming.
 

BBQMan

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The future of streaming vs physical media is clear. E-book sales have now surpassed print books in the United States. This has happened because the bandwidth necessary to download e-books now exists. Most bookstore chains have folded and Barnes and Noble hangs on only because of Nook. Digital music sales easily surpass cd sales. This does not take into account pirated music. I-tunes is growing while record stores have vanished.Physical video content sales sales still lead downloaded content. This happens because existing bandwidth does not provide the same quality as physical media.
This is changing. The US today has an average internet speed of 6.1 megabits per second while South Korea has an average internet speed of 17.5 megabits per second. That provides a significant difference in quality. The more important thing is that South Korea is introducing internet speeds of one gigabit per second in five cities this year and working to extend it nationwide. Other nations will follow suit and transmission speeds will soon increase by an order of magnitude. If this seems outlandish, remember that transmission speeds have increased by more than 500 orders of magnitude since the early nineties. At gigabit speeds, physical media will no longer have an advantage over digital media, but will clearly be inferior. Blu-rays are destined to follow record and book stores. There are people who prefer 'real' books to e-books for reasons of nostalgia. Similarly there are people who prefer 33.3 or 45 rpm records. In the not too distant future BD players will take their place next to VHS players. The change is inevitable.
 

lukejosephchung

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Originally Posted by BBQMan /t/322642/blu-ray-state-of-the-union-are-you-switching-to-streaming-media/60#post_3966441
The future of streaming vs physical media is clear. E-book sales have now surpassed print books in the United States. This has happened because the bandwidth necessary to download e-books now exists. Most bookstore chains have folded and Barnes and Noble hangs on only because of Nook. Digital music sales easily surpass cd sales. This does not take into account pirated music. I-tunes is growing while record stores have vanished.Physical video content sales sales still lead downloaded content. This happens because existing bandwidth does not provide the same quality as physical media.
This is changing. The US today has an average internet speed of 6.1 megabits per second while South Korea has an average internet speed of 17.5 megabits per second. That provides a significant difference in quality. The more important thing is that South Korea is introducing internet speeds of one gigabit per second in five cities this year and working to extend it nationwide. Other nations will follow suit and transmission speeds will soon increase by an order of magnitude. If this seems outlandish, remember that transmission speeds have increased by more than 500 orders of magnitude since the early nineties. At gigabit speeds, physical media will no longer have an advantage over digital media, but will clearly be inferior. Blu-rays are destined to follow record and book stores. There are people who prefer 'real' books to e-books for reasons of nostalgia. Similarly there are people who prefer 33.3 or 45 rpm records. In the not too distant future BD players will take their place next to VHS players. The change is inevitable.
You may be right about the LONG-TERM future of home theater, but for the time being, Internet streaming technology doesn't come anywhere near the quality control capabilities of physical media, namely BD...until then, I'm staying with my physical, not virtual, library...
 

Ejanss

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BBQMan said:
The future of streaming vs physical media is clear. E-book sales have now surpassed print books in the United States. This has happened because the bandwidth necessary to download e-books now exists. Most bookstore chains have folded and Barnes and Noble hangs on only because of Nook. Digital music sales easily surpass cd sales. This does not take into account pirated music. I-tunes is growing while record stores have vanished.Physical video content sales sales still lead downloaded content. This happens because existing bandwidth does not provide the same quality as physical media.The change is inevitable.
...Why, hello, new person in love with media articles he's read posting for the first time, who hasn't been following the discussion so far! :P
For the sake of analysis, let's use this example to take a good long look at the people who are trying to use the CD and E-reader fear-theories, and sweep the brush across the entire industry--
Yes, we take our music and our books with us on the commute, on vacation, and generally on the go....Show of hands, how many take their movie collection? How many have watched an Office rerun any place other than their living room or an airline seat?
We're crying about the supply, but I don't see the demand.
 

Ryan-G

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BBQMan said:
The future of streaming vs physical media is clear. E-book sales have now surpassed print books in the United States. This has happened because the bandwidth necessary to download e-books now exists. Most bookstore chains have folded and Barnes and Noble hangs on only because of Nook. Digital music sales easily surpass cd sales. This does not take into account pirated music. I-tunes is growing while record stores have vanished.Physical video content sales sales still lead downloaded content. This happens because existing bandwidth does not provide the same quality as physical media.
Actually, it's not yet clear. There's a key issue that makes movies quite a different animal.
An E-book, or a song track, are relatively small in storage space. A 32 gigabyte E-reader can hold a very comfortable number of books. A 1080p movie is gigabytes in size, especially with high quality multi-channel sound. A 2 Terra drive will hold what? Around 40 movies? Then there's TV Episodes, and a season of TV is around what? 200 Gigs? So 10 seasons of TV for a 2 Terra drive.
Space becomes an issue for the consumer. The alternative is pure streaming, with no local content. Which means no portability, because you're not getting sufficient speed to stream a decent quality over a wireless network.
With some of the TV Industry, including Sony who drives BluRay, starting to push for 4k TV sets, this could become an even bigger problem.
All depend on J6P and if he questions the quality of streamed video and expects to have local copies. Especially if there's a catastrophic failure of some company that sold "Lifetime" right to a movie or show in the next few years. If either Netflixs or Microsoft's Live service* fails, I'd expect the whole Cloud/Digital Property thing to suddenly meet alot of resistance.
*If the next generation of consoles were to fail, Live would effectively fail. Since the games market is contracting in large percentages month after month, it's a real possibility.
Edit: The Storage industry is having problems expanding the size of hard drives due to the magnetic fields getting wonky with such tiny sectors from what I've read. I wouldn't count on storage increasing significantly in the next few years.
 

Douglas Monce

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I cut the cord (got rid of my cable TV) about a year ago, so Netflix, along with Amazon prime, are my primary sources of casual TV watching. I probably watch 3 hours a night of either classic TV shows or movies via streaming. The picture quality is quite good, particularly if your device gets the 1080p feed from Netflix. In addition they have recently added lots of old B movies, some of which I had never heard before, and some of which are very good.
My blu-ray buying has dropped to around 4 or 5 films a year. With the economy the way it is, I really can't afford more than that, so I have to be VERY choosy about what I buy.
Doug
 

Douglas Monce

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Ryan-G said:
Actually, it's not yet clear. There's a key issue that makes movies quite a different animal.
An E-book, or a song track, are relatively small in storage space. A 32 gigabyte E-reader can hold a very comfortable number of books. A 1080p movie is gigabytes in size, especially with high quality multi-channel sound. A 2 Terra drive will hold what? Around 40 movies? Then there's TV Episodes, and a season of TV is around what? 200 Gigs? So 10 seasons of TV for a 2 Terra drive.
Space becomes an issue for the consumer. The alternative is pure streaming, with no local content. Which means no portability, because you're not getting sufficient speed to stream a decent quality over a wireless network.
With some of the TV Industry, including Sony who drives BluRay, starting to push for 4k TV sets, this could become an even bigger problem.
All depend on J6P and if he questions the quality of streamed video and expects to have local copies. Especially if there's a catastrophic failure of some company that sold "Lifetime" right to a movie or show in the next few years. If either Netflixs or Microsoft's Live service* fails, I'd expect the whole Cloud/Digital Property thing to suddenly meet alot of resistance.
*If the next generation of consoles were to fail, Live would effectively fail. Since the games market is contracting in large percentages month after month, it's a real possibility.
Edit: The Storage industry is having problems expanding the size of hard drives due to the magnetic fields getting wonky with such tiny sectors from what I've read. I wouldn't count on storage increasing significantly in the next few years.
I stream 1080p over my wireless network all the time.
Doug
 

Jason Charlton

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Originally Posted by BBQMan /t/322642/blu-ray-state-of-the-union-are-you-switching-to-streaming-media/60#post_3966441
E-book sales have now surpassed print books in the United States.

And finally, it must be noted that the above statement is NOT true (see here). 2012 saw the first time that e-book sales outpaced hardcover book sales, not ALL print books. Paperbacks still rule the roost (for now).
 

Ejanss

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Jason Charlton said:
And finally, it must be noted that the above statement is NOT true (see here).  2012 saw the first time that e-book sales outpaced hardcover book sales, not ALL print books.  Paperbacks still rule the roost (for now).
And though I have yet to own an e-reader, I can't remember the last time I ever bought a hardcover book, current or classic....Can you?
One other theory for why the panic might be that the studios that are worried about their movie/disk sales are the same studios that create television shows, and television has worked hard to make itself obsolete in the industry:
Broadcast network TV did everything to make itself a bulk commodity (no opening/endi credits, no space between shows, weekly scheduling tossed around like confetti), the audience treated it like one, and only DVR'ed their shows for late--And then were even told by the networks they didn't have to, since everything they needed was on the network website or Hulu, and didn't even have to sit down in their living room for it anymore.
All of a sudden--gasp!--they found that network TV was losing to online streaming, and--horrors!--what if it happened to movies next? :eek:
....Another wide, missed slop with the same big paintbrush.
 

Dick

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I use streaming on my laptop thru Netflix and Amazon Prime when I am away from my home theater. This is absolutely not a substitute for the high quality I get on my 1080p Blu-ray player and monitor. I will NEVER simply switch to streaming, unless (and I can't imagine this happening even with hugely-increased bandwidth on the part of my server) it can offer me PQ comparable to to Blu-ray playback at home. I realize a lot of consumers (we have referred to them as "Joe Six Pack," but really it is simply the ambivilent majority of those who watch movies at home) don't give a rat's ass about 1080p vs. 425 lines of resolution, but I love film and weep about the way its presentation has been diminished (or, with digital, simply disappeared) in cinemas these days. Blu-ray at its best is the only way anymore to be able to recreate a cinema-like experience, and streaming just can't (nor can I imagine it ever will) create a viable substitute for it.
 

Rick Thompson

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For those who feel that streaming, the cloud, iTunes and the like are so much superior to physical media, consider:
http://articles.marketwatch.com/2012-08-23/finance/33336852_1_digital-content-digital-files-apple-and-amazon
Note that you don't own anything. All you get is the right to play it. Want your kids to get the music or the books or the movies when you're gone? Fuhgettaboutit!
Think your son or daughter might likethe ebook you just finished? Feel free to buy another copy (actually a download code) because you can't lend yours unless you also lend the reader.
Ain't modern technology wonderful?
 

David Norman

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Ejanss said:
And though I have yet to own an e-reader, I can't remember the last time I ever bought a hardcover book, current or classic....Can you?
One other theory for why the panic might be that the studios that are worried about their movie/disk sales are the same studios that create television shows, and television has worked hard to make itself obsolete in the industry:
Broadcast network TV did everything to make itself a bulk commodity (no opening/endi credits, no space between shows, weekly scheduling tossed around like confetti), the audience treated it like one, and only DVR'ed their shows for late--And then were even told by the networks they didn't have to, since everything they needed was on the network website or Hulu, and didn't even have to sit down in their living room for it anymore.
All of a sudden--gasp!--they found that network TV was losing to online streaming, and--horrors!--what if it happened to movies next? :eek:
....Another wide, missed slop with the same big paintbrush.
Bought several hardcover books last month.
Actually am looking at one right now -- James Bond: 50 Years of Movie Posters.
I have never seen a streamed movie I could stand even on a 20 inch monitor. On a HT sized screen it would have to atrocious.
I just don't get this whole watch a movie on a 8 inch screen or 3 inch Iphone or 13 inch laptop. A news program OK, but if I'm watching a TV show or a movie
or a sporting event I want to actually see it.
I;ve tried Netflix 3 times and came away more disappointed each time -- scratched unplayable discs, aggravating technical problems, and poor video streams
Amazon isn't much better. Hulu is marginally better, but it just doesn't look good to my eyes. Even most Digital Copies I've put on Itunes are lackluster at best.
I like LP covers even if I don't play them very often, I like my LD covers more than my LD's, I love my Bluray video/audio, but miss the disc art that my Laserdiscs provided.
I'm technologically far more comfortable than most people remotely my age group (I am the real Geek Squad for most of the people who work at my office), but
I can't see me going to streaming over disc based media for a very long time.
Cloud based programs scare the bejeezus out of me -- who has my data. I have much of my 500+Gb Music collection on a Google and Amazon, but I'd never put my
documents or photographs there.
 

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