Disney CEO: DVD 'Is Not Dead' - Yet

You know how to tell whether or not he's right?

Imagine removing DVDs from Netflix, Blockbuster, and all other store shelves whether it be for sale or rent. Replace them all with Blu Ray counterparts.

Watch the fury ensue.
 
well i havent bought a single dvd for like 3 years, and the last bluray i bought was like 2 weeks ago and most of my friends are doing basically the same thing so while dvd format isnt dead yet its getting pretty close ti it, just my 2 cents
 
OldSchool said:
I have considered DVD to be a dead format for a while now. MPEG-2 doesn't come close to the efficiency of modern codecs.
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Shame that nobody wants to do something like throw H264 onto DVD and have it officially supported (scene groups have tried, it's largely the basis of MKV, but the keywords being OFFICIALLY supported)... Even 4.7GB is more than enough for a nice quality high def video. The Watchmen Ultimate Cut 720p rip weighs in at 4.5GB... and it looks gorgeous. This is a 3 1/2 hour film that includes 5 subtitle and 3 audio streams. So more "normal" film lengths can go even higher resolution and/or quality. Cheaper to manufacture and probably not at all possible to have on a DVDPlayer unless it was new. Ah well.

Yes, I'd buy a new DVDPlayer to watch a hackjob of high def to avoid having to give Sony any more cash.
 
GoodBoy said:
I think he was talking about Discs in general, i.e. DVD + Bluray sales. Overall sales are down and online distro hasn't made up the difference.

It's the economy, doesn't take a genius to figure that out.

I bet Movie Theater ticket sales are also down.
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Yeah, he seems to be talking about movies on discs in general as opposed to DVD vs blueray.

As for Bluray, while I love the format I buy more dvds then I do bluray discs as most movies don't get enough benifit from Bluray to justify the addition costs.

As for Netflix streaming I think it's awesome, but the low of the video of most of their movies, and the lack of sub-titles reduces it's viability to totally replaceing discs purchases, and let's not forget that movies come and go on Netflix streaming so if you truely want to be able to watch something whenever you want you need to have it on disc.
 
DarkStar_WNY said:
As for Netflix streaming I think it's awesome, but the low of the video of most of their movies, and the lack of sub-titles reduces it's viability to totally replaceing discs purchases, and let's not forget that movies come and go on Netflix streaming so if you truely want to be able to watch something whenever you want you need to have it on disc.
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Failure to deliver subtitles/captions a year after they said they would have it (and two years after Hulu had it all automatically supported) was why I canceled Netflix. They seem determined to cut out 30 Million potential customers. (The number of deaf and hard of hearing folks in this country who rely on captions or subtitles to be able to enjoy tv and film.)
 
TL;DR (or rather, skimmed)

With the exception of some "elite" people (insult or compliment, take it as you will) Most people are happy with a picture and sound. Doesnt have to be 1080p, doesnt have to be 720p, 480x640 is fine. Hell some people dont even care if it's color! (my parents (and even to some extent myself) still watch some of the old B+W series/movies (and before people start making snide remarks, think about some of the greatest movies of all time like CasaBlanca which was B+W)) Also very few people have SurroundSound systems, some of us who DO dont even have them set up properly... *facepalm*

Netflix is taking a bite out of video sales, YouTube is taking a bite out of video sales, Piracy is taking a bite out of video sales, Video Games take a bite out of video sales, Hell I'll bet with some work you can prove that lolcats take a bite out of video sales! (the funny one is to see the argument that Theatres take a bite out of video sales, then the same people say theatres are having to shut down due to video sales!)

So what's next? Are we gonna say Books are taking a bite out of video sales? Why not blame sunny days? Or just take the ultimate joke and say God is taking a bite out of video sales!

Honestly, I'm getting tired of hearing movie companies whining.

On a serious note:

This is a simple case of Freemarket Economy. People may choose to do X instead of Y.

As much as I hate it, Netflix is likely going to bite the dust soon. With Tiered internet nobody will want to "waste" their bandwidth on Streaming. The few of us who have contracts that guarantee us unlimited bandwidth probably wont be enough to sustain netflix indefinitely. Likewise while it wont dissapear by a long shot, Piracy will also be slowed down by the tiers. Youtube wont be hit as hard (except it's movie/TV streaming) because it's videos are so small.

the DVD Format itself is on the way out the door. More movies are releasing BluRay only and BD prices are falling. Soon DVD will only exist as a PC/Game media (and that wont be but a few more years, just as most modern software is released on DVDs not instead of CDs) It's not "Dead" yet because BD is still working on lowering costs. Both the BD media and the players are still more expensive than DVDs, but within a couple years they will drop and DVDs will dissapear just like VHS and Betamax did.
 
I think DVDs are still useful for parents, primarily because minivans come with DVD players, NOT bluray players.
 
450 said:
I think DVDs are still useful for parents, primarily because minivans come with DVD players, NOT bluray players.
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...and portable DVD players are inexpensive these days.
 
OldSchool said:
I have considered DVD to be a dead format for a while now. MPEG-2 doesn't come close to the efficiency of modern codecs.
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Still wish the HD DVD's would have kept the same physical DVD's and just changed the compression. I've seen excelent quality 1080p video compressed down to 7 or 8GB that would fit on a standard dual layer DVD.
 
450 said:
...and portable DVD players are inexpensive these days.
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Been there, done that.

Now I just rip the DVDs to ISOs and copy them to my laptop when we go on vacation.

Easier to just carry a small laptop instead of a dvd player and dvd's too.
 
mdameron said:
DVD is not dead. I don't know many people with blu ray players, and netflix streaming kind of blows. Mediocre selection, stereo, and crapshoot quality.

Blu Ray is better than DVD but DVD is good enough to have a lot of staying power. Reminds me of Windows XP.
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Exactly. You're spot on. DVD will be here probably for another 2-4 years. I think what's holding bluray back is a. bluray discs are a hefty premium above dvds (price) b. DVDs are still around. I don't know many people with bluray players (I have one though so I feel special! :D
 
My girlfriend couldn't care less that we're watching a blu-ray with a $2000 5.1 surround system vs a DVD on TV speakers...so annoying.
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I agree with your GF.
 
Aaron11 said:
Exactly. You're spot on. DVD will be here probably for another 2-4 years. I think what's holding bluray back is a. bluray discs are a hefty premium above dvds (price) b. DVDs are still around. I don't know many people with bluray players (I have one though so I feel special! :D
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Not to play Captain Obvious here, but the same thing happened wit DVD/VHS, tapes were cheeper and everyone had a VCR, look where we are now. If they want to offset DVD, make players play both then stop making standalone DVD players, then lower the BD cost. Thats what finally killed VHS
 
As some others have mentioned, I still buy DVDs:

- DVD quality is adequate if the movie is good. When I watch a Blu Ray at a friend's place, I only notice the quality if the movie sucks and I'm not paying attention to the actual movie, but instead looking at the picture.
- I have a small child and a portable DVD player. Portable DVD will be a staple for me for a while to come. I guarantee my daughter doesn't care if Toy Story is in HD or not. She can go to the part where Buzz says "See the hat? I AM MRS. NESBITT!" and replay it over and over on a DVD or Blu Ray and will get no more enjoyment out of the Blu Ray.

Most importantly, I can easily play my DVDs on all my computers, regardless of HDCP compatibility.

Disc sales in general are in decline for simple supply and demand reasons. Disc prices have increased, so sales will decrease as a result. It's not gasoline, people will be priced out of purchases. Couple this with people having less discretionary income and it's kinda obvious..
 
Concillian said:
- DVD quality is adequate if the movie is good. When I watch a Blu Ray at a friend's place, I only notice the quality if the movie sucks and I'm not paying attention to the actual movie, but instead looking at the picture.
- I have a small child and a portable DVD player.
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Screen size is a major factor here. Honestly on most portables, SD is as good as it gets. you could hook a 1080p source to it and not get any better. Why? because you already have the max 640x480 resolution.

Same goes for larger screens. However this is when it becomes noticable: pick a youtube video and play it full-screen. see how blocky it is? The same thing will happen (in a lesser degree) with a SD video on a large HD screen. Pay attention to edges, especially black-on-white, blue-on-yellow etc.

Keep in mind that as of now, people are still mostly purchasing smaller TVs (bad economy) so they wont see artifacts. I have a 42" 1080p display and I rarely notice them when I'm watching SD video on it. unless it's glaringly obvious most people wont complain. When we start seeing people buying masive 60"+ displays to view SD on it will really be evident, but untill then most people wont complain.
 
Ashton said:
Both the BD media and the players are still more expensive than DVDs, but within a couple years they will drop and DVDs will dissapear just like VHS and Betamax did.
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There was real drive for DVDs to replace VHS, because tapes SUCKED. Rewinding sucked, the size sucked, tapes degraded, VHS just all around was significantly worse from a convenience aspect than DVD.

There is no such impetus moving people from DVD to Blu Ray. The only difference is the picture quality. Blu Rays are actually less convenient. Players have compatibility issues, it takes like a minute to start a freaking disc, some DVD players let you skip the 10 minutes of previews, etc...

Not to mention the HDCP mess that really screws the portability of Blu Rays.

There is actually plenty of motivation for consumers to stay with DVD until they just plain stop selling them.
 
Ashton said:
Same goes for larger screens. However this is when it becomes noticable: pick a youtube video and play it full-screen. see how blocky it is? The same thing will happen (in a lesser degree) with a SD video on a large HD screen. Pay attention to edges, especially black-on-white, blue-on-yellow etc.
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You Tube videos are compressed to hell.
I'm talking about actually watching movies on MY 47" TV on DVD vs. actually watching movies on my friend's 47" TV on Blu Ray.

I am aware of what the differences look like, I know what to look for and will see it if I look... I simply do not notice the difference unless the movie is so bad that I get bored with it and actually look for the picture quality differences.

If a movie is engrossing, you're thinking about the plot of the movie and not looking at all the picture quality details.

DVD is plenty high quality enough that it doesn't detract from the plot. The same was not necessarily true when comparing VHS to DVD.
 
What I want to know is, where's the "S-VCD equivalent" for BluRay?

Since h.264 produces much smaller file sizes than MPEG2, there are quite a few BluRay movies that would fit just fine on your standard dual-layer (9.4 GB) DVD. How much cheaper could these HD movies be if they weren't forced to use Sony's media?
 
How about... people aren't buying discs because everyone's jobless or otherwise broke?
 
nutzo said:
Still wish the HD DVD's would have kept the same physical DVD's and just changed the compression. I've seen excelent quality 1080p video compressed down to 7 or 8GB that would fit on a standard dual layer DVD.
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HDDVD was to market sooner because they could be made on existing DVD Fabs with minor tweaks whereas BluRay required all new fabs.

Shame the format died because it was a very, very well designed spec. That, and no region coding.
 
i would go with dvd rather than blu ray as many of them actually don't work (so i've heard) but the prices are same and i do see about 50% of the blu ray has dvd version disk in it.
 
nutzo said:
Still wish the HD DVD's would have kept the same physical DVD's and just changed the compression. I've seen excelent quality 1080p video compressed down to 7 or 8GB that would fit on a standard dual layer DVD.
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Our wish may have been granted with AVCHD-DVD.

I just gave it a try, and it works splendidly. I took one of my 8.5GB BluRay rips and burned to a Dual Layer DVD as an AVCHD-DVD. My cheap Samsung set-top BluRay player picked it up as a BluRay disc and started playing the 1080p content it immediately. :D

Makes me wonder why we don't see commercial AVCHD-DVD's used for cheaper movies or TV series episodes, rather than full-blown BluRay discs.
 
mdameron said:
Blu ray.. the media itself is expensive. The players are a crapshoot in quality. I have a $150 LG player and 90% of blu rays play just fine.... the other 10% have annoying skipping problems where the movie will skip ahead from 1 minute to 5 minutes.
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I have to disagree with you here....I have 3 blu-ray players and they all have great quality and compatibility. The fact that they can update via the internet is a plus...and their quality is WAY better than the old DVD standard.
 
Unknown-One said:
Our wish may have been granted with AVCHD-DVD.

I just gave it a try, and it works splendidly. I took one of my 8.5GB BluRay rips and burned to a Dual Layer DVD as an AVCHD-DVD. My cheap Samsung set-top BluRay player picked it up as a BluRay disc and started playing the 1080p content it immediately. :D

Makes me wonder why we don't see commercial AVCHD-DVD's used for cheaper movies or TV series episodes, rather than full-blown BluRay discs.
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Because it still requires a BluRay player. You can't put a BluRay disc in a DVDPlayer and have it be readable. Same with a DVDRom. However, you can put an AVCHD-DVD in a DVDRom and a DVDPlayer...won't play the video natively (in the case of a DVDRom on a computer), which would inevitably lead to scores of dumb customer calls complaining about "WHADDYA MEAN I CAN'T PLAY NO HD ON MY DVD! THIS IS A DVD!"...

When it comes to BluRay, the cost is in the player. Pressing discs is still a trivial expense. Need a BluRay player to play AVCHD-DVD, might as well just get the BluRay. It won't be cheaper because they can charge you more for the same stuff.

What they need to do is release DVD v2.0 and make H264 a supported codec format along with MPEG2. Cut Sony out of the loop entirely.
 
Phoenix333 said:
How about... people aren't buying discs because everyone's jobless or otherwise broke?
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When the economy goes in the tank, the first thing to go are CDs, DVDs, and especially Blu-rays. That's when people are most willing to accept crappy streaming options.
 
Big picture time folks.
Keep in mind there are several factors involved here. Netflix's biggest niche with streaming is it's novelty. The convenience of pressing a button, boom there is a movie to watch all for $9.xx a month.
And even waiting a day or so to get your DVD to watch in the mail is still much more convenient than driving to a video store and putting up with that hassle or a RedBox and waiting behind some drunk that is trying to find a movie with boobies in it.
The video quality with streaming is sub part, the selection is crappy. BUT there is a pretty wide diversity of crappy to choose from.
Personally I'm a history buff and I can find old documentaries that keeps me interested.
Then there is the whole SD/HDTV, DVD/Blu-Ray arguments.
There are A LOT of people that don't get the appeal of the whole "HD" thing. A movie on DVD is HD as far as they are concerned. Why spend the extra money on a BR player, and a HDTV if they really don't see a benefit? And it isn't just old fogies that are half blind that think this; a lot of people just don't get it. Consider that most people only realize the difference between a movie on a DVD and the same movie in a full K2 or K4 digital theater as the theater having a big screen. I tried to explain to some people that a digital cinema K4 is over 4000 lines of resolution compared to a DVD which is less than 500.
Usually the response is "Meh; looks the same to me".
I would agree that the DVD format is technically antiquated. I am constantly amazed how efficient the H.264 code is when I can transcode a movie that occupies 5 gigs on a DVD down to a 1 gig almost no appreciable loss of quality.

The only thing I see that can really unseat DVD as the format of choice is a total rebuilding of the internet infrastructure that can deliver REAL broad band to stream REAL HD and services offer a very wide and diverse selection. And this would have to be made widely available. They can't even make poor excuses for broadband widely available so don't invest any hope in this. In other words it will have to be a more convenient format to access because for a lot of people the quality aspect is "Meh"
 
DVD isn't dead. Just because you don't use it doesn't mean it's dead. Many people don't even have blueray players, like some posters have mentioned. On top of that, many people don't have TVs that will support or show the picture quality difference between blueray and dvd. So why bother until you buy a new tv?

And Disney releases most of their new movies and vault classics on Blueray + DVD combos. I know this because my wife just spent a small fortune on Disney blueray/dvd sets for the kids we don't have yet. :) She's so cute. So "other things to do" doesn't really mean Blueray, at least from the Disney perspective.
 
Ya know, it's hilarious: Gamers (and a few nerds) are going "1080p isnt good enough! We need a more-HD HD Experiance!!! GIVE US 2160p!!" (or w/e) and yet so many of the "movie people" are saying "what? DVD isnt HD? well screw HD then, this is fine."
 
Other things to do... like that 2nd or 3rd job to help make ends meet so greedy out-of-touch sh*tbags like him can keep rolling in caviar?
 
i kinda agree with him. People are not that big into movies anymore as other entertainment options have become more popular. Most people I know only watch movies when there's nothing better to do and definitely dont care about having a dvd collection.
 
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