Is the Classic-Film Blu-ray Market Drawing to a Close? (1 Viewer)

[mdnitoil]

I think it's pretty obvious that studios will continue to dump classic material out on Blu. I took the article to mean more that the studios would be spending less and less on total HD restorations. They'll simply be taking the existing transfers and throwing them out there at a higher resolution, which seems to supply more ammunition to the "it just looks slightly better" crowd. The studios aren't going to put themselves in a position to not take your money, they're just going to do it with as little expense as possible.

 

[Adam_S]

I would have happily spent $60 on the version of the Ten Commandments that included the silent film. But there was no way in hell I was going to buy that worthless box of junk. I have no shelf space or room for such absurd BS. I bought the regular edition and lament the fact I can't see the silent version in HD. I was very happy I was eventually able to buy the full editions of Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind without the box of crap. I just did without buying the blasted things when they were only available in giant worthless crap-o-box editions.


it reminds me of how with DVD the awesome Paul Muni Scarface was only available if you bought an absurd Giant box of Crap scarface dedicated to the mediocre Al Pacino movie.

 

[dana martin]

damn this thread is on fire today,


as for The ten Commandments, if it would have been availabe in a three disc set i would have gotten it that way, as is i have taken the tablets out and only they sit in the shelf at the momentwith everthing else, would have been nice if the would have made it two seperate tablets that seperate as they are roughly the same size as a blu ray case,

 

[Paul Penna]

Originally Posted by Ethan Riley

ah, the America public, and what lies ahead

Good thing she didn't live in the 50's when she would have to get up to change the channel on her black and white TV set (which was still bigger than her iPod)

Laugh we may, but we generally underestimate, by far, the influence convenience has on technological change. Except for the relatively small (and statistically pretty insignificant) technophile population, quality considerations play a small part. People didn't switch from 78s to LPs because they sounded better, but because they were easier to deal with. Same with LPs to cassette tapes and then to CDs. DVDs were much simpler than video tapes. Streaming is much, much easier than dealing with physical media. Of course the vast majority of people are going to prefer it. It's inevitable. All in all, I'd say that convenience is the overwhelming factor that drives the choices the mass market makes. We keep forgetting that we are not the mass market.

 

[GMpasqua]

But how lazy are we going to get?


Is the American public that bad? Are children fat for a reason?

Is the human race doomed to sitting around while technology and machines do all the work.


Are we that spoiled? Ten years from now we will work out of our homes and never leave our bed (bed pans will be back in vogue) while our food is delivered to our doorstep. The only human contact we will have is when some one you picked up on-line comes by for sex

 

I love Blu-Ray but I would buy more titles if the prices came down. I can't afford many of the new releases because they are too expensive, and months later the prices are still high. Now there are budget minded blu-rays that I have happily picked up, but my collection would be more vast if I could afford it.

 

[cineMANIAC]

There is a trend I'm seeing more of lately in which studios are charging what seems like exorbitant prices for Blu-rays (or DVDs) that have cost them a lot of money to produce and/or include "souvenirs" like press releases and lobby cards. Personally, I like box sets and the stuff they come with but I'd like to have a choice between spending good money for a fancy set with souvenirs and just getting the movie. The major difference with this strategy today is that the gap between a movie and extras-only release and one with all the bells and whistles is getting wider. Paramount did this last year with The African Queen. The fancy box set had the extras and trinkets and was $50 and the alternative was a movie-only package but was still relatively "pricey" at $25 (for a bare-bones release). This is, I believe, a practice we'll see more of whenever an expensive restoration is needed and extra stuff is thrown in. Many people could do without the trinkets but would like to see a making-of doc. It looks like they're really going to make us pay a lot more for the premium version from now on

 

[WinstonCely]

Originally Posted by Cinescott

Also, one pet peeve of mine is that studios refuse to take advantage of the SD advantages of Blu-ray as a simple space-saving measure. How about classic TV seasons or miniseries in SD transfered to ONE disc? That would be a huge buying incentive for me! There isn't much of a benefit to upgrade shows shot in SD to HD, so why not put them on Blu-ray in SD? I have a couple of TV series on DVD that take up huge amounts of shelf space. I'd gladly re-buy this content for the space savings Blu-ray could bring. One of the advantages DVD had over VHS was that it is compact. BR is more compact than DVD, but most don't even know it! A BD has 50 GB of space, use it! I know the arguments about putting SD on a hi-def format causing confusion, etc. Just put a freaking sticker on the thing in bold that says this disc contains SD content!

Yes! Shows from the 80's on (until they started shooting HD video) would be great to have on just one or two Blu-rays. Example, The Golden Girls; Holy crap it takes up a lot of space on my shelf!


I know there are a lot that were shot on film from other decades, but honestly, if they just gave me the best SD picture possible for a TV show, I'd be happy if they were still in SD but on one Blu-ray disc.

 

[WinstonCely]

Originally Posted by GMpasqua

What if your computer crashes are they backed up?

This is a really good point that rarely ever gets brought up. It's a fact that all hard drives will fail eventually. Sometime sooner rather than later, and there are other times when you upgrade the drive before it does, but they will fail. The problem with this is that most average consumers do not backup their drives. They take for granted that what they put there will always be there. So say you've saved all this money by LEGALLY downloading your movies, you have tons of shelf space for fun objects instead of movie cases, and you can pull up whatever movie you want to watch super quick. That's great, but when that drive fails, and you haven't backed anything up, how easy is it to re-download the film? Is that even an option now? What if you don't even have the money to re-buy the title?


If you are going to go for the completely digital rout, you've got to add the costs of getting backup drives, and a more or less steady cycle of buying new drives to replace the old drives, replacing the backup drives, etc. This will almost certainly be more expensive in the long run, as opposed to buying a hard copy of a movie.

 

[Ethan Riley]

Originally Posted by DellaStMedia


Yes! Shows from the 80's on (until they started shooting HD video) would be great to have on just one or two Blu-rays. Example, The Golden Girls; Holy crap it takes up a lot of space on my shelf!


I know there are a lot that were shot on film from other decades, but honestly, if they just gave me the best SD picture possible for a TV show, I'd be happy if they were still in SD but on one Blu-ray disc.

If you could cram an entire season, say, of a half-hour sitcom onto one disc, people might get confused and think it's a hi-def transfer simply because it is on a blu-ray disc.
People think that blu-ray means better picture quality, not more disc space. Videotaped sitcoms are never going to look better than they already do on dvd, and we don't know if a blu-ray disc would even be that reliable if it was used as a large-storage media device.


I wish more that recent tv shows were getting the blu-ray treatment. Really, only a handful of current tv shows are going onto blu--mostly sci-fi and effects shows, and not even all of those. I'm pretty certain that by now all current tv shows are being broadcast in hi-def, but you wouldn't know it from watching them solely on dvd. Seems a pity, really, that we're not getting the best out of some current shows on home video.

 

[Ethan Riley]

Originally Posted by Adam Gregorich


I think the reason GWtW and WoO didn't do as well was because when they were being advertised they were only sold in the "box of junk" version. If they had released it day and date with a "regular" version I bet it would have sold much better. If it wasn't profitable to release classic films on BD, Kino and Criterion wouldn't be doing it.

Well I'd already purchased Wizard of Oz with a big box of junk about four years ago when the big ugly restored version came to dvd. And the junk in the blu-ray box was just more junk. But I did get the stripped-down blu-ray for about $20, and now I see that there's a bare-bones version laying around Target. My GWTW disc has nothing in the way of extras; I must have gotten the cheap-cheap version. And I already have a big box of junk GWTW on vhs which I bought about 20 years ago. That box is so huge it looks like that block of marble the monkeys were throwing things at in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

 

[MatthewA]

Originally Posted by Ethan Riley

And I already have a big box of junk GWTW on vhs which I bought about 20 years ago. That box is so huge it looks like that block of marble the monkeys were throwing things at in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I remember that. For years GWTW was only available on VHS in that clunky box that wouldn't fit with any other tapes, and at a huge price. Ironically, the laserdisc was cheaper!

 

And to think that I had some great, original ideas for WB for the 75th Anniversary of Oz. Guess I should hold off!

 

[Adam_S]

Originally Posted by Ethan Riley




If you could cram an entire season, say, of a half-hour sitcom onto one disc, people might get confused and think it's a hi-def transfer simply because it is on a blu-ray disc.
People think that blu-ray means better picture quality, not more disc space. Videotaped sitcoms are never going to look better than they already do on dvd, and we don't know if a blu-ray disc would even be that reliable if it was used as a large-storage media device.

MOD bluray discs for SD TV series should be a viable option. Speaking from a television professional standpoint, even shows shot on tape can look better than dvd.

1", 3/4", and Digibeta masters definitely look better than the compression heavy SD dvds of those shows. There is room for improvement just in using the compression that bluray uses, which is far superior to the DVD compression scheme, and would probably consume less disc space than the DVD version.

 

[Professor Echo]

FYI: I started a related thread about the future of Home Theater, which touches upon similar topics brought up in this thread, but also includes discussion of other aspects affecting the hobby, both here and now and where it might be heading:


http://www.hometheaterforum.com/forum/thread/310937/future-shock-where-is-home-theater-headed

 

[MatthewA]

Originally Posted by Adam_S



MOD bluray discs for SD TV series should be a viable option. Speaking from a television professional standpoint, even shows shot on tape can look better than dvd.

1", 3/4", and Digibeta masters definitely look better than the compression heavy SD dvds of those shows. There is room for improvement just in using the compression that bluray uses, which is far superior to the DVD compression scheme, and would probably consume less disc space than the DVD version.

I have been advocating this for years. But it's going to take a lot to make people who invested huge sums of money in single season sets want to upgrade. Sure, The Twilight Zone and Star Trek get major upgrades from their DVD counterparts, but would fans of All in the Family or The Golden Girls want to plunk down any more cash than they have already? I would, but only if they correct the problems with the DVDs and add extras of substance. If they don't dump the same MPEG-2 encodes onto Blu-Ray disc and go back to the 2", 1", or Betacam originals (someone on Steve Hoffman's forums said The Golden Girls was shot on Betacam, so finding a working deck shouldn't be hard), they should be superior in that respect. All in the Family had problematic source material to begin with and the compression on the DVDs made it worse. The last disc of the first season even tried to cram five episodes on a single-layer disc! Ron Epstein himself called it one of the worst-looking DVDs he had seen. It will probably need major restoration work just to look passable, never mind good.


But I'm not The Average Consumer. Will T.A. Consumer spend another $30 just to save a foot of shelf space?

 

[Professor Echo]

As has been mentioned, putting out a TV series onto Blu Ray just to take advantage of the extended space and not offering an upgrade in transfer, would give the studios a huge headache trying to explain to Mr. Wal Mart what they were doing when he complained that the quality looked no different than the ones he already owns. At this point, unless some smaller company like Mill Creek was allowed access to studio vaults and could handle the public relations confusion, I don't see any major studio going this route. The one thing that people in general seem to understand about Blu Ray is that it offers a better viewing experience. Take that away while trying to explain it is now something else would prove to be nothing but trouble for the studios.

 

[Richard M S]

I disagree with the whole premise of the article; since the vast majority of the classic Blu-rays being released are of films the average consumer has purchased just a few years ago. I am sure more than a few consumers said to themselves why should I purchase Gone With The Wind or The Wizard of Oz again when I never really re-watched the "fully restored" DVD sets I purchased just a few years ago?


On the other hand a classic such as Sweet Smell of Success is a big hit (IMO) because it lacked a similar "deluxe" edition. Since the film was mentioned in the first paragraph of almost every recent Tony Curtis obituary, people were eager to see it. So if the studios release special editions of films not previously over-released, such as From Here To Eternity, people will indeed buy those classic film Blu-rays.

 

[JoHud]

Originally Posted by Professor Echo

As has been mentioned, putting out a TV series onto Blu Ray just to take advantage of the extended space and not offering an upgrade in transfer, would give the studios a huge headache trying to explain to Mr. Wal Mart what they were doing when he complained that the quality looked no different than the ones he already owns. At this point, unless some smaller company like Mill Creek was allowed access to studio vaults and could handle the public relations confusion, I don't see any major studio going this route. The one thing that people in general seem to understand about Blu Ray is that it offers a better viewing experience. Take that away while trying to explain it is now something else would prove to be nothing but trouble for the studios.

Not to mention there is the general assumption that made-for-TV programming that wasn't originally shot for hi-def won't have as much of a visual upgrade as a series that was. Programs such as The Simpsons, were in production between the HD-TV conversion, tend to stay with DVDs and only release Blu-rays for the hi-def episodes. The remastered Twilight Zone and Star Trek blus do well in debunking that fallacy

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I think the original article is a little too "the sky is falling" for my taste. I think it ignores or doesn't take into account a few important things:


- The general transition from VHS to DVD was huge in terms of consumer benefit. It used to be, you had bulky tapes, panned-and-scanned for a lot of releases, lower resolution to the point where clarity was definitely an issue (especially on larger TVs), and no interactivity (old fashioned fast forwarding and rewinding). The majority of videos had no special features whatsoever, and most videos were priced for rental only. The jump to DVD was a huge upgrade in terms of overall functionality and value. DVDs were always priced to own rather than rent, many offered bonus features, the chapter stops were a lot more convenient than rewinding and fast forwarding, they were usually in their original aspect ratio, and the picture and sound quality was a lot better. Blu-ray is a great format; I love Blu-ray! But with that said, in terms of overall user experience, Blu-ray is more of a minor upgrade in comparison to the switch from VHS to DVD. Blu-ray undoubtedly has superior sound and picture quality, but I don't think the difference in overall user experience is nearly as drastic as it was upgrading from VHS. Most DVDs look pretty good even on a larger HDTV or projection screen. I think for the general audience, there's a "good enough" factor coming in to play here.


- Because VHS tapes were both bulky and expensive, I don't think most people dedicated themselves to having large collections. On the other hand, DVDs from the start were relatively inexpensive, available for sale in many different kinds of stores besides the traditional video store, and took up less shelf space at home. Between those factors and the advantages the format had over VHS, I think a lot of the huge sales numbers over the years came from people who might not have had much of an interest in collecting VHS deciding to give DVD buying a try. Spending $15 on a new DVD release in many ways is a more attractive option than spending $5 to rent a VHS, so the idea of owning something vs. renting (or purchasing the DVD instead of seeing it in a theater) became much more attractive to the mainstream consumer.


- Economically speaking, it's a much harder time now than it was at the dawn of DVD. There are always going to be certain titles that sell well, especially with titles that have huge fanbases, but I think people are being more selective about what they're buying, period. Even if Blu-ray hadn't been invented, I think that would still be true of the DVD market today.


- With DVD being "good enough" for a lot of people, I don't think the urge to upgrade to Blu-ray for each title is as strong as it would have been when people were buying DVDs of videos they once owned, or videos they had only been able to rent. It's one thing to be able to buy inexpensive DVDs of titles you always liked but never owned before - it's another thing to spend money to buy a second copy of something you already had. This isn't a perfect analogy, but for a lot of people, the thought of buying a Blu-ray of a DVD they already own sounds as redundant as buying a paperback edition of a book you already own the hardcover edition of -- even though the cover or format is different, it's still the same story being told inside.


- Part of the sales pitch being used to drive Blu-ray sales is how awesome HD quality is with the latest and greatest, so there's a perception among many casual consumers that a Blu-ray disc is a worthwhile improvement for big blockbuster films, but that there's not the same benefit for older, "smaller" films. I don't agree with that perception, but depending on what you want out of your home theater, I can understand how some people feel that way. And, of course, some people are simply misinformed that only newer films are really HD or worth viewing in HD.


- I think that the mega-super-deluxe boxes have been deterrents to some people; I wanted The Wizard Of Oz on Blu-ray, but I wasn't going to spend two or three times the price of what it should have been because the only option was to get it in a box filled with a whole bunch of toys and stuff that I had no interest in. I'm sure I'm not the only one deterred from picking up a title because of that. And even though studios are getting a little better about not doing that, or releasing both versions at once, one has to look no further than the recent Ten Commandments release to still feel that same dilemma: I'd love all of the disc-based content in the deluxe set without the toys, and while there's a movie-only version, I don't want to buy that and lose out on the disc-based extras that are in the big set. So instead of choosing one version to buy, I ended up getting neither - instead, it'll probably be a rental until they put out a version with all the discs and none of the toys.


- And finally, Blu-ray, especially for catalog/classic titles, was always going to be a smaller market than the new release market. To think otherwise would be to have unrealistic expectations in my opinion. So while some studios may feel sales numbers are disappointing, and while in some cases titles might have sold less than what someone might have expected, they may have been hoping for too much in the first place. Anytime you're setting up a business model that's dependent on people rebuying something they already own that still works pretty well, there's going to be resistance. New releases aren't a problem as much, because if you're buying the new Harry Potter movie and you already own a PS3 or Blu-ray player, might as well buy the highest quality edition you can get. But asking all consumers to go back and rebuy their entirely library, that's a big ask. (Especially when you consider that while lots of people have gotten rid of their VCRs or didn't replace a broken one because they already had DVD, people still have DVD players that work fine, and they're cheaper than ever -- so not being able to play your existing collection isn't a big motivating factor here.)


From my own point of view, it's a combination of a lot of these factors that's led me to be slower in buying Blu-rays than I was in buying DVDs. After more than ten years of collecting DVDs, I can look at my shelf and see how many of those discs I've only watched once, never watched at all, or never explored the bonus discs on, and in my last couple years before Blu-ray, I was tending to be way more selective about what I'd get anyway. If I could wave a magic wand and turn all of my classic DVDs into Blu-rays for free, obviously I'd do it. But whereas ten years ago, the choice about buying something on DVD might have been "I can buy the DVD, or not watch the film at all", with Blu-ray, it's more of a question of, "Should I spend $30 to upgrade to a higher quality, or can I make due with what I've got?" I might have been drawn to buy DVDs of classic films on their street date because it might have been my first opportunity to see that film or the first chance in a long time; with my DVD collection already in existence, I can already watch the movie when I want. So I've noticed even with classic titles that I do buy, there's not the same urge to get them on Day 1 - I can just grab it later on when I feel like watching it, which obviously can have the effect of messing with initial sales numbers. If I had unlimited resources, I'd upgrade to Blu-ray next time I feel like watching The Maltese Falcon, but since I already have the DVD - if the urge strikes me to watch that one night, I'll probably just throw in the DVD, find it to be good enough to watch that night, and then not even think about getting the Blu-ray because I've just gotten my yearly viewing already. I bet the newish "A Star Is Born" Blu-ray looks amazing, but given that I haven't even watched my DVD of it more than once, does it make sense to buy it again if it's just not going to be viewed all that often?


I don't think the market is disappearing or drawing to a close -- I think it's normalizing and coming back down to a level that's more reasonable for most people in most situations. Blu-ray is more of a niche product compared to DVD, and classics are usually a niche within that niche anyway. I think for a lot of people, the question isn't, is the Blu-ray better? I think the question is, given that I already own this movie and can watch it in pretty good quality, is it absolutely necessary to buy it again? And for a lot of people, the answer is no -- or at least, not right now. I think what I'm trying to say is that, overall, I'm a lot less impulsive buyer than I once was, and was headed in that direction before Blu-ray even came out; I probably couldn't have really afforded to have been as impulsive as I was then in the first place (both in terms of cost and also the "do I really need to own this" factor), so while this newfound selectivity isn't the result of Blu-ray's existence, it is having an effect on my decisions which happen to include Blu-ray. (The cynic in me also wouldn't be surprised that some people might be wary of rebuying something they've already got thinking, "maybe there will be something even newer and greater in five years, so why bother?")


I think in general, that Blu-ray being a niche market, and that for a lot of people, buying a classic on Blu-ray isn't the a matter of buying that title for the first time but a matter of rebuying something they already have, are the bigger factors at play here. Any studio forecasting model dependent on people replacing everything they own probably was never realistic to begin with.