10 Ways Blu-ray Is Letting Movie Lovers Down

Damn straight. I can never understand these folks that have got themselves into such a terrible state 'mentally' that they cannot watch a movie unless its in 1080p on a 60"+ screen with full DTS 7:1 sound etc. etc. We are not really impressed by the fact you have spent $15000 on Home Theatre, trust me. We are just trying not to hurt your feelings by going "Oh wow!" We just want to watch the flick okay!

I find most home surround setups distracting. I really only feel it works in cinemas but its a nice to have. I can watch a movie just fine in mono if I have to. I don't have to 'feel' a movie in my guts to enjoy it. Thanks goodness.

You've never seen a good setup, and most people aren't douchebags about it like you. Why do you care if someone wants a good TV and surround sound? Do you want us to start slamming your hobbies?
 
BD disc are more expensive to produce, more expensive to ship now and have increased licensing costs which are passed on to the consumer. That and few B&M stores have any incentive to lower the price on them because they rely more on the mark ups from smaller purchases like DVDs and video games compared to big screen tvs.
Well a quick search shows this place http://www.sfvideo.com/ will sell fully packaged mastered blu-rays for $2.29 per disk in quantities of 1000 vs 99 cents for DVD. I am sure the big players like Sony making thousands/millions of disks, the costs are much lower. So why exactly is there a $15 markup at retail?
 
1. Too expensive
2. No content worth purchasing
3. Locked previews
4. Inability to "easily" watch on portable devices
5. Redbox, Netflix or Blockbuster

I have no problems purchasing movies that are worth collecting, but I'm not gonna' pay ~$25 for a BR version of Duce Bigalow 2.

1. You can find them pretty cheap on release or soon after.

2. There are a lot of good movies out there, but a lot of them aren't what I'd call "blu-ray worthy" meaning the high-def doesn't really add anything to them.

3. Yes god yes. I don't mind previews, but not years down the road and not after I've seen them once already.

4. Indeed.

5. I've got a Redbox within easy walking distance, I just wish they didn't sign those fucking deals with studios to delay releases.
 
Well a quick search shows this place http://www.sfvideo.com/ will sell fully packaged mastered blu-rays for $2.29 per disk in quantities of 1000 vs 99 cents for DVD. I am sure the big players like Sony making thousands/millions of disks, the costs are much lower. So why exactly is there a $15 markup at retail?

A lot of studios already don't like the fact that we now expect such high quality from our consumer versions of movies that they rival the HD masters the studios have. Also, they simply think their products are worth that. They are wrong in most cases, but who ever claimed that the movie industry was in touch with reality? I think we all know that they are not and pretty much never have been.
 
I agree with most of their points.. retail prices are too high for Blu-ray discs..

I always wait for sales unless it is a movie I truly want to collect.. and first week prices are usually a bit cheaper than they are after that.. $20 for a Blu-ray + dvd combo pack is not a horrible price, imo.

I love the quality of the video and audio too much to go digital content for everything.
 
Damn straight. I can never understand these folks that have got themselves into such a terrible state 'mentally' that they cannot watch a movie unless its in 1080p on a 60"+ screen with full DTS 7:1 sound etc. etc. We are not really impressed by the fact you have spent $15000 on Home Theatre, trust me. We are just trying not to hurt your feelings by going "Oh wow!" We just want to watch the flick okay!

I find most home surround setups distracting. I really only feel it works in cinemas but its a nice to have. I can watch a movie just fine in mono if I have to. I don't have to 'feel' a movie in my guts to enjoy it. Thanks goodness.

You do realize that most of our home theater setups consist of nothing more than a computer, a television and maybe a receiver with surround sound speakers that are out of the way and automatically adaptable to movies that are turned on?

Not sure where you're getting $15,000 and distracting from. I used my old rig, an Athlon 64 x2. The only thing I needed to pay for on it was a Lite-On Blu-ray drive, a Geforce 210, and an nMedia 2000 home theater case. A whopping $150 for these extra items. I already had a 46" LG television and a Yamaha receiver with a 5.1 speaker set up mounted high on the walls (about $800 and $400 respectively).

We enjoy maintaining a home theater. Allow a person their hobby.

You do have hobbies of your own, right?
 
I have no problems purchasing movies that are worth collecting, but I'm not gonna' pay ~$25 for a BR version of Duce Bigalow 2.

I also have an issue with how many movies are actually worth the full HD treatment.

Sure by nature of the product you get to see any movie in HD at the theatre but do you go to watch the latest Adam Sandler (you poor bastard) or Jennifer Anniston to see the wonderful cinematography and pore definition on their faces? No not really.

So why buy the BD version for £15-£20 when you can buy the bog standard DVD copy for £3. Or better still rent it for £2 or stream it.
 
I'll watch a BD movie from Redbox or Netflix before I'd ever stream it. If a BD isn't available then I'll resort to streaming.
 
There are people out there that don't see a huge difference from chopped steak to sirloin to filet mignon. I may shake my head but I leave them to their ignorance.

My parents have a 55" 120Hz LED but they watch non-HD channels on it when there are HD version of the channels that they watch. It drives me up the wall when I am over there, but hey, they are perfectly fine watching those non-HD channels on there.

I think the same applies here: Netflix quality cannot come close to a Blu-Ray, but some people do not really care. Personally, I do, which is why I do not use Netflix because the quality is never consistant or that great, even on a close to 30Mbit connection.
 
Well a quick search shows this place http://www.sfvideo.com/ will sell fully packaged mastered blu-rays for $2.29 per disk in quantities of 1000 vs 99 cents for DVD. I am sure the big players like Sony making thousands/millions of disks, the costs are much lower. So why exactly is there a $15 markup at retail?

Mark up. B&M stores rely on the mark up. They have to do it otherwise they probably wouldn't waste their money carrying the product. Only the dying niche market is buying BluRays and those movies could be about 30 dollars. People who are buying BluRays will probably pay a 10-15 dollar mark up.

Every else who bought DVDs? They are probably the first to replace their collections. The quality can only improve as we keep moving forward. If anything places like Amazon and Apple have a strong desire to sell you movies over their app stores, so they can take 30 percent.
 
Way to justify piracy.

Here's something else to try: pay for the movie and use DVDFab and rip a backup yourself.

Why do that, when the Bay already has it done for you. He makes a valid point. No one is justifying anything, merely giving a reason why it happens.
 
Number 1 on the list should be the DRM system that blu-ray has which requires constant firmware updates to players for the latest encryption key. If the blu-ray players manufacture stops supporting the device with updates you won't be able to watch the latest releases.

QFT !!!
 
[UPS] Sorce;1038567823 said:
And then the guy complains about there being too many copies of a movie available, so that drives down prices in the used market.

Is it me, or does something not add up?

I believe the guy is talking about this, which has happened a lot with Blu-ray discs since it came out. The disc is released, but is badly encoded or something is off that will piss the enthusiast off about the product. Then a few months later, they release a repack that fixes that. But by that time there's another version that's six months away with more features. And when that comes out, that version breaks something else, or it's included only in a box set.

No one wants the old versions because there's something screwed up about them, or they ar missing something, so your choice is to go with multiple copies, or like most people are starting to do, none of them. People are starting to get tired of the George Lucasing of films, yet if you ask someone in the industry they think the reduced sales is due to piracy, or cheap rentals, when it's just that people are tired of buying the same thing over and over.
 
My parents have a 55" 120Hz LED but they watch non-HD channels on it when there are HD version of the channels that they watch. It drives me up the wall when I am over there, but hey, they are perfectly fine watching those non-HD channels on there..

Solution (should you care enough): Logitech Harmony remote with the channels that they use programmed. You can add the channel logos so all you need to do is select the button next to the logo, or scroll through the pages if necessary to find it, depending on how many you add.

I've got a great uncle (as in my mom's uncle) that has had issues with controlling his setup with a remote. I formerly set him up with a Sony universal remote that I programmed to change his devices based on holding that device icon down (e.g. hold down cable and it switches both the TV and the receiver to the cable input). He wasn't very good at managing to do that (I think the remote was a bit flaky anyway), and his wife didn't understand it at all. But I set them up with a Harmony remote recently and programmed the channels (HD versions) they watch in, and they are now both able to use it and are happy with it. (There are still numbers they can use to change channels should they want to)
 
Why do that, when the Bay already has it done for you. He makes a valid point. No one is justifying anything, merely giving a reason why it happens.

Because when you download a movie, you're not paying for it? :rolleyes:

If he's saying that he buys movies, but download a backup from TPB, then yeah ok I can see the justifications, but not if you have no intention of buying the movie.

It takes 30 minutes to rip a Blu-ray media. Another 10-15 minutes to copy it to a NAS.
 
There are people out there that don't see a huge difference from chopped steak to sirloin to filet mignon. I may shake my head but I leave them to their ignorance.

.

Well it's just the fact that folks put different levels of importance on different things.

What's important to you is barely trivial to others.

I must admit I'm far more fussy about my steak and beer than I am about watching a movie.:D
 
There are people out there that don't see a huge difference from chopped steak to sirloin to filet mignon. I may shake my head but I leave them to their ignorance.

My parents have a 55" 120Hz LED but they watch non-HD channels on it when there are HD version of the channels that they watch. It drives me up the wall when I am over there, but hey, they are perfectly fine watching those non-HD channels on there.

I think the same applies here: Netflix quality cannot come close to a Blu-Ray, but some people do not really care. Personally, I do, which is why I do not use Netflix because the quality is never consistant or that great, even on a close to 30Mbit connection.

The problem has nothing to do with their ignorance. Like you said with food. Audio/Video - Movies - Food are completely subjective.

No one sits at a store fucking with all the settings on the TV using their calibration discs to compare color. You can go to any audio store only to be told this sounds good or that sounds good, but it may sound completely different in your set up.

People are consolidating or moving due to the economy. I know plenty of people who went from 20x30 rooms to half that as they had to move for jobs or sell their house in a terrible housing market.

Sound thing with speakers. I can go to the store and listen to a number of different speakers and frankly all sound good to be honest.

I have some of the shitty Sony speakers I grew up that still worked like a charm. I had parents buy Paradigm, myself buy klipsch only to have the speakers fall apart. That must count for something, but at the end of the day the number of speaker brands out there and human's inability to process sound and visual differences are the biggest reason for the gap.
 
Well it's just the fact that folks put different levels of importance on different things.

What's important to you is barely trivial to others.

I must admit I'm far more fussy about my steak and beer than I am about watching a movie.:D

You guys are missing the point. If you watch movies alone or have your spouse than yea go all out whatever floats your boat. However most TV watching is a social experience. I can not remember the last time I watched a movie by myself and I used to spend hours fucking with audio settings looking at color settings in scenes only for my girlfriend at the time to be like "stop fucking with it and just watch the movie"

Most people are like this as well. Sure they may want to watch movies at your place and they think your set up is awesome but at the end of the day you are there to watch the movie and whether you have Bose speakers for Martin Logan most people probably won't care enough to tell you anything other than "cool story bro"
 
Damn straight. I can never understand these folks that have got themselves into such a terrible state 'mentally' that they cannot watch a movie unless its in 1080p on a 60"+ screen with full DTS 7:1 sound etc. etc. We are not really impressed by the fact you have spent $15000 on Home Theatre, trust me. We are just trying not to hurt your feelings by going "Oh wow!" We just want to watch the flick okay!

I find most home surround setups distracting. I really only feel it works in cinemas but its a nice to have. I can watch a movie just fine in mono if I have to. I don't have to 'feel' a movie in my guts to enjoy it. Thanks goodness.

I'm sorry you can't afford a better setup. I bet you feel sorry for people who buy Audi's and BMW's.... after all a Camry will get you there just fine. Some of us can afford to enjoy the finer things in life.
 
Solution (should you care enough): Logitech Harmony remote with the channels that they use programmed. You can add the channel logos so all you need to do is select the button next to the logo, or scroll through the pages if necessary to find it, depending on how many you add.
Eh, Verizon makes it easy by just pushing the yellow C button on the remote for the HD version of the channel, should they have it available. They just never do it. :p
 
You guys are missing the point. If you watch movies alone or have your spouse than yea go all out whatever floats your boat. However most TV watching is a social experience. I can not remember the last time I watched a movie by myself and I used to spend hours fucking with audio settings looking at color settings in scenes only for my girlfriend at the time to be like "stop fucking with it and just watch the movie"

Most people are like this as well. Sure they may want to watch movies at your place and they think your set up is awesome but at the end of the day you are there to watch the movie and whether you have Bose speakers for Martin Logan most people probably won't care enough to tell you anything other than "cool story bro"

I dispute even what you say, but at least you're not being a douche about your opinion. daglesj is the only person who not only doesn't care about a good setup, but finds good setups distracting (LOL... what?!) and actually thinks negatively of people for wanting to have a good setup as if his hobbies were better than theirs.

Some of my friends care about quality, and some much less so. All of them like my setup a lot. Some of them would like my setup a lot even if it weren't good enough for me to like. But I can 100% guarantee you that not a single one of them thinks negatively of me for having a good setup.
 
The problem has nothing to do with their ignorance. Like you said with food. Audio/Video - Movies - Food are completely subjective.
Don't tell me I am wrong and then right in the same sentence.

And yes, it has everything to do with ignorance. If you cannot see the difference in chopped steak and filet mignon, then there is something very wrong with you. I am NOT referring to preference, which you seemed to miss the point on.

If someone cannot see a major difference between composite or S-video and component or HDMI, then I usually tell them to see an eye doctor.
 
I dispute even what you say, but at least you're not being a douche about your opinion. daglesj is the only person who not only doesn't care about a good setup, but finds good setups distracting (LOL... what?!) and actually thinks negatively of people for wanting to have a good setup as if his hobbies were better than theirs.

Some of my friends care about quality, and some much less so. All of them like my setup a lot. Some of them would like my setup a lot even if it weren't good enough for me to like. But I can 100% guarantee you that not a single one of them thinks negatively of me for having a good setup.

This. We always gather at my house for movies/games because of my setup. Usually the friends buy the food/drinks and I host. About 90% of the people who see my setup can notice the difference in picture and sound, especially when I play the same movie on DVD and Blu-ray.
 
I agree with Eisenblut. I think it's absolutely fine to think that chopped steak is good enough and to not care about having HDMI 1080p images. But to not even notice the difference? Uhh.... It's EXTREMELY obvious in both cases. If you don't notice it, there is something wrong with your senses.
 
Because when you download a movie, you're not paying for it? :rolleyes:

If he's saying that he buys movies, but download a backup from TPB, then yeah ok I can see the justifications, but not if you have no intention of buying the movie.

It takes 30 minutes to rip a Blu-ray media. Another 10-15 minutes to copy it to a NAS.

No one said anything about downloading is not paying so I'll ignore that strawman.

I think his point was that the industry needs to take a page from IPT or PB's book and offer a downloadable version that doesn't have all the other crap associated with the retail disks. It's not just because the user didn't want to pay for it.

I don't see why you would try to jump down his throat with accusations of justifying piracy given what he wrote.
 
I'm sorry you can't afford a better setup. I bet you feel sorry for people who buy Audi's and BMW's.... after all a Camry will get you there just fine. Some of us can afford to enjoy the finer things in life.

No, I can afford to spend that it's just that I don't feel it's important enough to me to do it.

Different strokes.

All I'm saying is I'm not that uptight enough to only be able to watch a movie in a expensive home theatre setup.
 
No, I can afford to spend that it's just that I don't feel it's important enough to me to do it.

Different strokes.

All I'm saying is I'm not that uptight enough to only be able to watch a movie in a expensive home theatre setup.

I gotcha. I never said I wouldn't watch a movie in other circumstances. I subscribe to Netflix and enjoy it. However I simply wanted to point out that people who think Blu-rays are not needed and useless are missing the point of Blu-ray. There is a massive difference in the audio/video quality that Blu-ray can put out vs a stream. If you have a higher end setup, and really enjoy a movie, Blu-ray is the best way to go as streaming or DVD won't even touch the quality you get.
 
I recently purchased the Game of Thrones bluray set.
Like many others, I am experiencing very slow load times and sometimes lockups in all my players.

The current speculation is that the set is trying to communicate with some BD-Live server which is timing out (or disabled in your player)... and many people are having to wait over a minute before the FBI warnings come up.

Of course, had I pirated this content rather than purchasing it I would be having none of these problems.
 
Way to justify piracy.

Here's something else to try: pay for the movie and use DVDFab and rip a backup yourself.

Pirated movies will never look as good as true blu ray.

Almost there but still not as good.
 
Oh you are right the difference between DVD/Streaming/BD is massive when done properly.

If you have invested, then BD is the only way to go as you would be mad to only use streaming.

I use Lovefilm here in the UK and with a decent 16Mbps connection I have to say the streaming quality while only SD is very solid. In fact I would say the quality is better than the broadcast digital TV. But the bitrates for Digital TV have been whittled down and down over the years.
 
The MSRP on them is a joke. Anyone actually paying retail price for blu-rays needs to learn to shop around. Amazon, Wal-Mart, Target, etc all have good discounts on blu-rays the day they release.

I paid 115 bucks for ultimate matrix collection blu ray
I didnt care about the price. I needed them they are my bible.
 
I recently purchased the Game of Thrones bluray set.
Like many others, I am experiencing very slow load times and sometimes lockups in all my players.

The current speculation is that the set is trying to communicate with some BD-Live server which is timing out (or disabled in your player)... and many people are having to wait over a minute before the FBI warnings come up.

Of course, had I pirated this content rather than purchasing it I would be having none of these problems.

Damn. I'm glad I rented it on DVD to watch it. I would have been pissed if I bought the blu-ray set and that happened.
 
Pirated movies will never look as good as true blu ray.

Almost there but still not as good.

Depends on how it's done. If you have the bandwidth you can find the exact same quality, minus the DRM. Not everyone is re-encoding, or compressing down to a Xvid so it can play on their 10 year old DVD player.
 
No one said anything about downloading is not paying so I'll ignore that strawman.

I think his point was that the industry needs to take a page from IPT or PB's book and offer a downloadable version that doesn't have all the other crap associated with the retail disks. It's not just because the user didn't want to pay for it.

I don't see why you would try to jump down his throat with accusations of justifying piracy given what he wrote.

I went back to read what he said with this in mind and I apologize for accusing him of justifying piracy. I was thinking he's one of the few (ok, many) [H] users who justify piracy for whatever reasons, most of them asinine. It's just getting silly.
 
Depends on how it's done. If you have the bandwidth you can find the exact same quality, minus the DRM. Not everyone is re-encoding, or compressing down to a Xvid so it can play on their 10 year old DVD player.

Who said I was talking about xvid?
Even mkv 1080p wont match true blu ray.
Almost there but not exactly the same.
 
Damn straight. I can never understand these folks that have got themselves into such a terrible state 'mentally' that they cannot watch a movie unless its in 1080p on a 60"+ screen with full DTS 7:1 sound etc. etc. We are not really impressed by the fact you have spent $15000 on Home Theatre, trust me. We are just trying not to hurt your feelings by going "Oh wow!" We just want to watch the flick okay!

I find most home surround setups distracting. I really only feel it works in cinemas but its a nice to have. I can watch a movie just fine in mono if I have to. I don't have to 'feel' a movie in my guts to enjoy it. Thanks goodness.

Yeah so we should just cater to your lame movie viewing experience. I wouldn't be surprised if you watch them on a black and white TV. :p

I certainly don'e have $15k invested in my home theater but what I do have makes for a really nice viewing experience and I'd like to have my content in the best quality possible.
 
Who said I was talking about xvid?
Even mkv 1080p wont match true blu ray.
Almost there but not exactly the same.

Uh, you clearly don't know what you're talking about. First of all, MKV is a container, not a codec, and it does not indicate what the quality will be. Secondly, I am a veteran video encoder (I am NOT in the movie pirating scene) and I can improve almost any video with the right toolchain. Thirdly, as mentioned before, you can have all sorts of bitrates and codecs, and it's even possible to mux in the video from a Blu-ray without reencoding which would give you the exact same quality as the Blu-ray.

Not that I'm advocating piracy or anything (there are legitimate ways to put that knowledge to use), but your statement was incorrect.
 
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