The future of Blu Ray (1 Viewer)

[Race Bannon]

I don't care about the format -- as long as the quality is the same, and the extra features are the same, and the price is the same.

But simply do not see why people think physical media will go away. There are just too many nooks and crannies out there where someone either doesn't have a good, solid high speed connection (or account to buy movies on), or rental markets like Redbox. So they sell into all these channels -- the streaming, the digital purchase, the physical media.

One of the main reasons I buy disks is because of the many bargains as stores slash prices to clear the inventory. That never happens with streaming.

And one main factor -- big box stores with large selections of catalog titles are a thing of the past, but outlets like Amazon ensure that disk marketed to a niche is available everywhere to that niche. That alone means we'll probably see a disk market for years and years to come.

 

[TJPC]

Please kindly excuse the following rant:

Whatever happened to copyrights that covered the U.S AND Canada, instead of leaving we Canucks in the cold, so to speak?

For instance, I'm so sick and tired of not being able to find any Region 1 based Hal Roach DVD titles that are solely U.S. based! Some months ago, U.S. based Walmarts had "The Little Rascals Complete Collection" Hal Roach Sound Film RHI 8 DVD sets going for $10! Meanwhile, our Walmarts can't even carry these sets, and amazon.ca charges a mint for them! Why? Because they bloody well can, since we Canadians have NO other option - Not even streaming or digital downloads!

Of course by extension, that's why streaming and physical media can't fully co-exist, in Canada at least!

End of rant....For now!

CHEERS!

How about looking through the TCM magazine, getting all excited about about a movie only to have it replaced by some lame thing you have seen 10 times before because the original is not copywriten for Canada??!

 

[Tony Bensley]

How about looking through the TCM magazine, getting all excited about about a movie only to have it replaced by some lame thing you have seen 10 times before because the original is not copywriten for Canada??!

Been there, done that!

Unfortunately, the only cable provider that we'll deal with these days can't get TCM because of what I suspect could be collusion between the big 3 Canadian providers! All I really know for sure is one of my sisters, who uses the same provider as us, was told by one of their associates that they can't get TCM, when she inquired about it awhile back! In my opinion, collusion among the other providers is the only explanation that makes any sense. Either that, or some dumb*ss obscure CRTC regulation!

I do recall one instance of the same Film (The actual title now escapes me!) being shown twice within about 4 hours, due to one of those "Not copyrighted for Canada" titles! You'd think whoever did the reprogramming could've planned it better than that, but no!

Anyway, to close this post on topic, it's stuff like this that gives me cause to state that Blu-ray as a continued viable option is even more vital to we Canucks, who have far fewer decent options than our American friends!

CHEERS!

 

[LouA]

I wonder if there are enough of us "physical product " collectors , to keep these formats alive ? Just wondering . Me , I love to buy physical media , and there are many old black and white TV shows that I have the entire series on DVD that I can't imagine being streamed .

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I suspect that we'll continue to see certain high profile releases still targeted at mass audience...the new Avengers movies, the new Star Wars, Bond, Disney, etc. Those are always good day one sellers and will probably stay that way for a while.

I think we'll see catalog titles continuing to go out to smaller labels that do the majority of their business online. Twilight Time and others have demonstrated that you can make a small profit selling 3000 or so copies of a title, and that that's the realistic potential for a lot of older titles. I think it's gonna be harder to make that work for retailers...stocking one copy of everything isn't necessarily practical. There's no way to turn a profit on one or two units over a lot of stores, not knowing when and where it'll sell and where it'll just be a return to the distributor. In addition to boutique labels, programs like Sony's new Blu-ray MOD program will probably bridge the gap.

Online services will almost completely conquer the rental market, if they haven't already.

For the longest time, ownership of movies wasn't the norm for most people. Most people had a VCR; not many regularly purchased VHS tapes. For a brief period, buying DVD was cheaper and easier than renting in a lot of circumstances, and I think that temporarily altered the landscape, but we're now returning to where we've always been...most people will pay for and be satisfied with a single one time viewing, while a smaller number will want to own titles. I think we're essentially in a correction period now, going back to where we've always been.

 

[jcroy]

I still buy CDs and since Vinyl had made a comback I am buying vinyl again.

(As an example of what I've been commenting on earlier).

When I was younger, I was buying vinyl records largely because most of the music I was listening to at the time, was simply not available on cd.

By the time cd was ubiquitous (sometime around 1990), I largely embraced it for all my music needs. At the time, I thought it was great that there was no more vinyl record noises/scratches, and no more tape hiss (on cassettes).


More recently with the revival of interest in vinyl records, I have not embraced it at all. This is probably just me, but I never understood the point of going back to vinyl records with all the record noises, scratches, clicks, static, 60Hz "hum", etc ... With cd, it never had any of these "noise" problems (unless a cd was mastered directly from a crappy vinyl rip, and not the original studio master tape).


Ironically, nowadays I mostly listen to music on youtube instead of search through my cd collection and playing the disc on my standalone stereo system.

Whether it is me just getting old and tired (ie. a calcifying mindset as one gets older), I find I still can't get over the record noise issue on vinyl records. So I strongly doubt that I can ever get back into vinyl records again, in spite of still having a large vinyl collection from when I was younger.

 

[PMF]

They've got Kindle; but I can't imagine that holding a real book within our hands will ever be totally lost to us, either.

 

[jcroy]

They've got Kindle; but I can't imagine that holding a real book within our hands will ever be totally lost to us, either.

The primary reason why I still read paper books, is that the ebook digital versions of stuff I'm interested in, is frequently around the same price as the paper book versions.

In many cases I have encountered so far, sometimes a new hardcover copy is even LESS expensive than the digital ebook version.

 

[jcroy]

For inexpensive books such as novels and some "mass market" titles, the price differences between the ebook and paper versions isn't drastic enough to give a damn about. In these cases, I suspect convenience may very well be the dominating factor in favor of ebooks.

It's a whole entirely different story for books which are normally over $50 (and especially over $100), such as specialized technical books. I'm not really inclined to buy the ebook version if it's only $10 or $20 cheaper than the paper version.

 

[LouA]

(As an example of what I've been commenting on earlier).

When I was younger, I was buying vinyl records largely because most of the music I was listening to at the time, was simply not available on cd.

By the time cd was ubiquitous (sometime around 1990), I largely embraced it for all my music needs. At the time, I thought it was great that there was no more vinyl record noises/scratches, and no more tape hiss (on cassettes).


More recently with the revival of interest in vinyl records, I have not embraced it at all. This is probably just me, but I never understood the point of going back to vinyl records with all the record noises, scratches, clicks, static, 60Hz "hum", etc ... With cd, it never had any of these "noise" problems (unless a cd was mastered directly from a crappy vinyl rip, and not the original studio master tape).


Ironically, nowadays I mostly listen to music on youtube instead of search through my cd collection and playing the disc on my standalone stereo system.

Whether it is me just getting old and tired (ie. a calcifying mindset as one gets older), I find I still can't get over the record noise issue on vinyl records. So I strongly doubt that I can ever get back into vinyl records again, in spite of still having a large vinyl collection from when I was younger.

I agree with you about vinyl. Compact Discs are just much more convenient to use and I believe the sound on a well mastered CD is under rated and just as good if not better . I got rid of much of my large vinyl collection and never play the remainder even though I have a good quality eliptical turntable . LP's DO have those nice covers though, and occasionally that "warmth" comes through in a way that digital fails to capture . Having said that , I'm in the process of buying a new Marantz CD player for my large collection of CDs!

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I love vinyl records. I try to collect my favorite albums on vinyl. They're great. The only downside is...you can listen to it on your turntable and that's it. (Although some newer records do include MP3 downloads too.)

CDs are great. You can play them at home, in the car, rip them to a computer or the cloud...very versatile. I'll do an occasional download on iTunes if I need something right away or just one song, but a CD is usually my first choice.

 

[TJPC]

My public library has thousands of books available to download for free. They often do not have an entire series however and I am forced (oh the horror!) to read one or two books in actual book form! After the ease of the e-books on my i-phone, these seem very awkward.

As far as the vinyl fad. I once had a huge collection which I played on my high end stereo. The overwhelming improvement of sound, noise reduction and ease of use of CDs made we ditch my record collection.

I would never go back to the hisses, clicks and pops of the old system.

 

[jcroy]

I agree with you about vinyl. Compact Discs are just much more convenient to use and I believe the sound on a well mastered CD is under rated and just as good if not better .

Back in the day for me, the issue of cd vs vinyl/cassette had more to do with how faithful the sound reproduction was, and very little to do with convenience. (For example, I keep the treble + bass level knobs at twelve o'clock flat and didn't use any additional eq).

I always thought cd was a more faithful sound reproduction than vinyl records with all the record noise issues.

(I'm sure if I looked hard enough, there might be some cds which sound worse than the original vinyl record version due to really crappy cd mastering).

LP's DO have those nice covers though, and occasionally that "warmth" comes through in a way that digital fails to capture .

I never quite understood what the "warmth" issue was exactly. I couldn't tell the difference between most of my old vinyl records and the cd versions, other than the absence of record noise in the cd versions.

On the other hand, I do understand the difference between the "warmth" on a vacuum tube guitar amplifier, and the absence of "warmth" on a transistor guitar amplifier. (I use to play guitar).

 

[David_B_K]

More recently with the revival of interest in vinyl records, I have not embraced it at all. This is probably just me, but I never understood the point of going back to vinyl records with all the record noises, scratches, clicks, static, 60Hz "hum", etc ... With cd, it never had any of these "noise" problems (unless a cd was mastered directly from a crappy vinyl rip, and not the original studio master tape).

---SNIP---

Whether it is me just getting old and tired (ie. a calcifying mindset as one gets older), I find I still can't get over the record noise issue on vinyl records. So I strongly doubt that I can ever get back into vinyl records again, in spite of still having a large vinyl collection from when I was younger.

I find the new vinyl craze amusing. I was at a Half Price Books store one day when a couple of young hipsters were going through the used vinyl and speaking quite loudly so that everybody could hear that they "won't listen to music unless it's vinyl". There are people that believe vinyl is inherently better than CD. I have never believed this. For the most part, vinyl was not capable of the dynamic range we get on CDs. I mainly listen to classical, and it was CDs that first reproduced real pianissimo and fortissimo sounds. Vinyl would usually amplify the soft passages so that you could hear them over the rumble of the needle on the LP, and the styli could not track well if the music was particularly loud and complex. A lot of hipsters who are buying into the new vinyl craze are using crappy ceramic cartridge turntables plugged into their PCs via USB.

That said, there are certainly LPs that sound better than CDs. But those cases, I believe it is the result of improper remastering to digital, such as too much noise reduction. I used to prefer playing gray label mono copies of Sinatra's Capitol albums for the original mastering. I have hung onto some LPs and I have my old Realistic direct-drive turntable hooked up to a TEAC receiver which is in turn jacked into my computer. About the only time I play them is when I am recording old LPs that are not available on CD to my computer.[/QUOTE]

 

[LouA]

Back in the day for me, the issue of cd vs vinyl/cassette had more to do with how faithful the sound reproduction was, and very little to do with convenience. (For example, I keep the treble + bass level knobs at twelve o'clock flat and didn't use any additional eq).

I always thought cd was a more faithful sound reproduction than vinyl records with all the record noise issues.

(I'm sure if I looked hard enough, there might be some cds which sounded worse than the original vinyl record version due to really crappy cd mastering).




I never quite understood what the "warmth" issue was exactly. I couldn't tell the difference between most of my old vinyl records and the cd versions, other than the absence of record noise in the cd versions.

On the other hand, I do understand the difference between the "warmth" on a vacuum tube guitar amplifier, and the absence of "warmth" on a transistor guitar amplifier. (I use to play guitar).

It quite possibly might be that "surface noise" so many of us got use to when we listened to LP's. I recall listening to some old fifties album pressings that had quite a bit of noise ,and being shocked at how quiet they were on CD.

 

[jcroy]

That said, there are certainly LPs that sound better than CDs. But those cases, I believe it is the result of improper remastering to digital, such as too much noise reduction.

The other extreme of crappy cd mastering is the "loudness war", where everything is loud for the sake of being loud. Basically defeating the purpose of the high dynamic range of cds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

Unfortunately for the few cds I have which are "loud", they were either never released on vinyl at all or the vinyl version is already out-of-print.

 

[jcroy]

It quite possibly might be that "surface noise" so many of us got use to when we listened to LP's. I recall listening to some old fifties album pressings that had quite a bit of noise ,and being shocked at how quiet they were on CD.

If that is the case, then all one has to do is add in some high frequency "white noise" to the background.

I don't know if anybody has ever tried this, to see whether it can replicate the "warmth".

 

[Brian Husar]

Certain new vinyl releases are very good pressings that are very quiet give CDs a better run. Check out the Sundazed reissues of Bob Dylan's mono catalogue

 

[Al.Anderson]

I still have my Discwasher. I keep it next to my receiver to remind me how much I rejoiced when CDs came out.

 

[jcroy]

Certain new vinyl releases are very good pressings that are very quiet give CDs a better run.

Back in the day I remember the few vinyl records I had from Japan. I got the impression that the record noise levels were somewhat lower than the equivalent pressings from america or europe (ie. UK or West Germany). (This was probably subjective).


(More generally)

This "vinyl vs. cd" issue reminds me a lot of the "dvd vs. bluray" issue. In spite of the semi-factual arguments of bluray and cd having a lot of "technological superiority" in their favor, there are still some folks who will argue vinyl or dvd is "better" whether by subjective or semi-objective arguments.

Over the years whenever I had offline discussions about "vinyl vs. cd" or "dvd vs. bluray" with various local friends, the arguments frequently end up with highly subjective replies like "In your opinion" or "I don't see/hear much difference", etc ...

So in the end, I figured people are entitled to believe whatever they want regardless of whether the arguments are highly subjective or factually incorrect. It's their time and money, and not mine. (Frequently these are the same folks who spend hundreds of $$$$ on expensive cables ALONE for their audio/video system, or buying $1000+ stereo equipment which does NOT have any treble and bass knobs on them, etc ...).

Everyone needs to have an expensive hobby.