10 Ways Blu-ray Is Letting Movie Lovers Down

I truly honest believe that people care about quantity over quality. Sure there is a point where people care about quality, but when it comes down to it everyone is subscribing to Netflix steaming due to its ability to watch a tons of movies without going to the store and being able to switch between movies without making trips to the store or waiting.

I am not sure why anyone is attached to this idea of "picking a movie to watch days before we watch it". The convenience, especially for families, and the quantity smashes any quality argument in my opinion.

Netflix is up from 63 to 113 a share, but the bigger problem lies in the fact that other bidders are in the market to drive up Netflix's content costs. Netflix doesn't have the cash on hand to compete with Amazon and Google.
 
Stayfr0sty said:
I dunno eh?
You being a "veteran coder" eh? Your denying the fact that an mkv file will never match true blu ray?
You can put the highest bit rate ever with a gazzilion other tweaks and the quality will be close but not the same, not to mention the extra hardware power you need for that.
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The better question is, will the average viewer be able to tell the difference?
 
Azhar said:
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.
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Heh, I understand given the current userbase of [H] nowadays.


But I don't spend much money on my HT system since my tv is only 720p. But I have watched ripped 720p HD content and it looks and sounds amazing enough to me. I don't think I will ever have a need for an actual blu-ray player.
 
By the way the market for Home Theater is awful. If you want to make a residual argument about costs of Blu Rays then look at the players (outside of the PS3) and the equipment like receivers. My RX1300 yamaha from 2004 is probably worth 90 bucks on Craigslist if I am not getting low balled by assholes and the cost to ship it is worse.

While there are places to sell my awesome Paradigm speakers and the fact that the new ones like apple products never go down in price doesnt mean shit.

If someone low balls me on a Macbook Pro I can turn around and ebay it for next to nothing.

If they do that on speakers I am fucked. Demand isn't there.
 
Lots of things lose a lot of value after you buy it. The most obvious example would be cars. I am also huge into cars, and I spend money on my car. It's not invalid to do so just because the resale value is going to suck (at least relatively). It just means that you have to take that into account when you buy it. Besides, why do you have to sell your Paradigm speakers? Why not just keep them?
 
dandragonrage said:
Lots of things lose a lot of value after you buy it. The most obvious example would be cars. I am also huge into cars, and I spend money on my car. It's not invalid to do so just because the resale value is going to suck (at least relatively). It just means that you have to take that into account when you buy it. Besides, why do you have to sell your Paradigm speakers? Why not just keep them?
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I know. I agree with you. It was more in reference to the article about BluRays losing their value. Just a food for thought on the equipment losing its value.

Not sure. I don't plan on selling them, but I did live in Kansas because I moved thinking it was a better work opportunity and it wasn't. For the year I was there I didn't have the speakers. They were with my significant other in Nebraska. I missed them, but I lived without them. I couldn't live without my xbox though.
 
The only movie release I waited a long time to get the Bluray treatment was The Big Lebowski. The DVD version was crap. Watching it in HD was a huge difference.
 
Stayfr0sty said:
I dunno eh?
You being a "veteran coder" eh? Your denying the fact that an mkv file will never match true blu ray?
You can put the highest bit rate ever with a gazzilion other tweaks and the quality will be close but not the same, not to mention the extra hardware power you need for that.
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Did you read his post, or just flame? He already answered your question and explained why you're wrong here.
 
I don't have a blu-ray player so much as I have a BDROM on my Win7 PC with Arcsoft theatre whatever and I can skip ads and whatnot just fine.

My only complaint is the digital copy. I never use it so I don't feel like I should be paying whatever they tack onto the price.
 
I think part of the reason prices are so high is because most of them are Blu-ray/DVD/DIGITAL COPY!!!!! packs...

Nearly of the blu-rays I have I bought from Amazon/Walmart for $10 and less.
 
Why not link directly to HighDefDigest instead of the content skimmer/aggregators at the Consumerist?
 
GoldenTiger said:
Did you read his post, or just flame? He already answered your question and explained why you're wrong here.
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Im not wrong, thats my point and is also my argument on why the MPAA shouldnt be crusading against piracy, an mkv would never be the same quality as blu ray period.
I can see the difference I have very good eye sight.

roaf85 said:
The better question is, will the average viewer be able to tell the difference?
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I can.
 
Stayfr0sty said:
Im not wrong, thats my point and is also my argument on why the MPAA shouldnt be crusading against piracy, an mkv would never be the same quality as blu ray period.
I can see the difference I have very good eye sight.



I can.
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So you did a blind test? Source material etc? Elaborate on this perfect test you ran to pick out the quality difference.
 
roaf85 said:
So you did a blind test? Source material etc? Elaborate on this perfect test you ran to pick out the quality difference.
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I can tell the difference between Blu-Ray and a 1080p compressed copy, but just barely. Not enough to warrant any major (or minor) complaint.
 
Brahmzy said:
As mentioned above, I really wish the 1080p thing was 1440p from the get-go. There'd be less need to go to 4K so soon. My 70" is about as big as I'd want to go at 1080p, but 1440p would allow 80" & 90" screens while maintaining great fidelity. Problem is, like mp3's, the mainstream public couls mostly give a shit about hi-fi. Maybe cause they've never heard/seen it? Maybe cause they don't care? I don't know. It has always been this way and will always be this way. As far as blu-ray letting us down, that's a load of BS. Amazon and Netflix baby.
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The majority consumer has a TV they bought from walmart. And for surround sound, I have noticed that people buy those crappy $40 HTIB from walmart hooked up. And sometimes I've seen them line up all the speakers on their entertainment center.

For the most part, people are clueless and don't know what they are truely experiencing. For the average movie viewer, they will watch their netflix/hulu/amazon streams, and goto the theater for the full big screen/audio experience.

I love audio/video too much to stick with mediocracy. You can have a decent experience under 1k for both the receiver and speakers.
 
MavericK96 said:
I can tell the difference between Blu-Ray and a 1080p compressed copy, but just barely. Not enough to warrant any major (or minor) complaint.
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My point was not that you can go on one of the pirate sites and generally find that most movies look as good as the BDs. I would never claim that. I was correcting him technically. MKV IS capable of having the EXACT same quality as BD - and technically even BETTER if one so desires. The H.264 codec is capable of lossless compression (as are several less popular codecs like HuffYUV, FFV1, Lagarith, etc.). MKV is a container that can contain many different types of compression. One could simply transfer the streams from a Blu-ray directly into MKV and you would have the exact same quality. Or if you had an even high quality source than Blu-ray (most of us will not see one of those until 4k resolution comes out, either via an improvement to Blu-ray or via a new format) then a Matroska file could hold higher quality video than Blu-ray. Being a container, it is not the limiting factor here.
 
dandragonrage said:
My point was not that you can go on one of the pirate sites and generally find that most movies look as good as the BDs. I would never claim that. I was correcting him technically. MKV IS capable of having the EXACT same quality as BD - and technically even BETTER if one so desires. The H.264 codec is capable of lossless compression (as are several less popular codecs like HuffYUV, FFV1, Lagarith, etc.). MKV is a container that can contain many different types of compression. One could simply transfer the streams from a Blu-ray directly into MKV and you would have the exact same quality. Or if you had an even high quality source than Blu-ray (most of us will not see one of those until 4k resolution comes out, either via an improvement to Blu-ray or via a new format) then a Matroska file could hold higher quality video than Blu-ray. Being a container, it is not the limiting factor here.
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Ah. Yeah, true. And personally, I'd prefer a 6-8 GB 1080p compressed copy over a 25-50 GB uncompressed Blu-Ray. :cool:
 
JimmiG said:
Last century called. They want their little plastic discs back.
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You'll beg for the shiny plastic disc in 15-20 years when you realize that when everything went streaming you own it about as much as the house you do after refusing to pay property taxes.

Can you resell your Amazon Digital Movie purchases? Can you resell your Kindle or Nook ebooks?

Be careful what you wish for.
 
jinjuku said:
You'll beg for the shiny plastic disc in 15-20 years when you realize that when everything went streaming you own it about as much as the house you do after refusing to pay property taxes.

Can you resell your Amazon Digital Movie purchases? Can you resell your Kindle or Nook ebooks?

Be careful what you wish for.
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LOL. I liquidated an entire 100 movie DVD collection in 2009. The end result was about 1-2 dollars a disc. If even that. I would say I got about 100 bucks back. This is some dvds and tv shows selling for like 15 to 30 bucks when I first got them.

All the shows were on Netflix.

Movies have such shit resale value that this argument is a moot point. Video games are a better argument when things are at 50 to 60 bucks a pop, but that isn't slowing down digital distribution.
 
roaf85 said:
LOL. I liquidated an entire 100 movie DVD collection in 2009. The end result was about 1-2 dollars a disc. If even that. I would say I got about 100 bucks back. This is some dvds and tv shows selling for like 15 to 30 bucks when I first got them.

All the shows were on Netflix.

Movies have such shit resale value that this argument is a moot point. Video games are a better argument when things are at 50 to 60 bucks a pop, but that isn't slowing down digital distribution.
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It is absolutely NOT a moot point. I practice just a little judiciousness in picking my movie titles that I want to own. I also purchase them used. Average price is $1-$5 per title.

In 15-20 years I will have to pay a constant monthly fee (membership) or a fee per viewing if I want to watch a title again. All because you won't be able to purchase it.

'Purchase' is now a scary word in economic circles. It denotes ownership of something. Studios and Publishers HATE that word. They don't want droves of purchasing consumers, they want droves of licensed consumers.

We have a desktop app that we indeed sell. We are currently rewriting our product for SAAS. No more purchasing, but we will be happy to rent it to you forever.
 
Some titles sell for more than others. And regardless of what they sell for, it is my right as a consumer to resell if I desire. The First Sale Doctrine states such. Period. Any company who disagrees will not get my money.
 
dandragonrage said:
Some titles sell for more than others. And regardless of what they sell for, it is my right as a consumer to resell if I desire. The First Sale Doctrine states such. Period. Any company who disagrees will not get my money.
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With you there. When the time comes where I can't own a copy (and all the things that come along with it) I will simply find something else to do.
 
From the High-Def Digest article:

I shouldn't be able to land a copy of 'Cowboys and Aliens' for five dollars just a month after it came out, yet that happened. Studios need to buy back that product, and destroy it, because all they're doing by allowing Blockbuster to sell discs for 99 cents or $1.99 is hurting everyone who bought the titles when they first came out. It's no secret that studios buy back poor selling titles and destroy them, which is why the massive influx of Warner titles at Big Lots stores a few years back was such a shock (the lawsuit that followed these doomed discs that escaped the shredder was a tad less shocking). While I'm all for cheap Blu-rays, I don't see where bottoming out the market helps anyone.

That had me laughing. So because you have the in-ability to repress your 'got to have it now' purchasing urge, studios have to protect you buy buying back titles.

I waited months after titles like Inception and Avatar hit just so I could scoop those titles for less than $5 used. Sorry but if you have to have new releases you deserve to pay the 'You're a chump' charge.
 
jinjuku said:
It is absolutely NOT a moot point. I practice just a little judiciousness in picking my movie titles that I want to own. I also purchase them used. Average price is $1-$5 per title.

In 15-20 years I will have to pay a constant monthly fee (membership) or a fee per viewing if I want to watch a title again. All because you won't be able to purchase it.

'Purchase' is now a scary word in economic circles. It denotes ownership of something. Studios and Publishers HATE that word. They don't want droves of purchasing consumers, they want droves of licensed consumers.

We have a desktop app that we indeed sell. We are currently rewriting our product for SAAS. No more purchasing, but we will be happy to rent it to you forever.
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You say it isnt a moot point then you say you purchase something used? That only helps the second hand retailers. The publisher doesn't want you to buy used. If you aren't buying new you pretty admitted to not doing it because of the price point.

And people license the movies that they want now via Netflix. 8 bucks a month is cheap. The problem is content costs are going up. So how much room does netflix have. Amazon Prime is adding content in waves and still is 80 bucks a year. Cheaper than netflix.

CDs in the 90s were 9 to 15 dollars. By inflation standards they should be around 25 bucks at least, but they arent. They are cheaper. Thank itunes for that.
 
dandragonrage said:
Some titles sell for more than others. And regardless of what they sell for, it is my right as a consumer to resell if I desire. The First Sale Doctrine states such. Period. Any company who disagrees will not get my money.
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Yep I agree with you there in regard to video games. But there is no streaming game service unless you count OnLive. Only time will tell about Onlive.
 
I do not understand why there are people here actually COMPLAINING about cheap prices. I have one thing to say to you all: WELCOME TO CAPITALISM. If you don't like it, move to a socialist country.
 
Ugh, such a terribly misleading article filled with half truths and outright bs.

1. Retail exclusives. Releases available only at specific retailers often slip out with non-existent marketing campaigns, and many discs get lost in the shuffle.

- DVD has the same problem, VHS had the same problem, and Digital releases have the same problems. This is not a blu-ray issue but a studio issue.

2. Ridiculous prices. Many new releases carry laughably high MSRPs of $29.99 or more. These are often deservedly marked down, but not always.

-This was largely true at first for all 3 mediums. I would argue that Digital distro is still too high in many cases as well. Again not a Blu-ray exclusive problem. I think someone got spoiled by ultra cheap DVD's at bargain prices day 1.

3. Terrible packaging. Some box sets are burdened with overly complex packaging that makes it a chore to remove the discs to watch.

-Yet again..not exclusive to Blu-ray, more complaining about an industry problem.

4. Rapidfire re-releases. Too often, bare-bones versions give away to full-featured follow-ups within the span of a year.

-Repeat my previous answers..noticing a trend?

5. Unnecessary digital copy discs. Once you use the extra disc to transfer the digital copy, it's no longer useful. Yet you're stuck with it.

-Oh Boohoo..seriously they are complaining about a freebie included?

6. The back catalog is still too large. Studios have been too slow to bring some of their older fare to market. Where are Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Waking Life?

-Been a problem every single time they move to a new format. Again, industry problem not format problem.

7. Anthology overload. Some movies in long-running series — we're looking at you, James Bond — don't merit individual releases, and instead stick to high-priced box sets that force you to buy movies you don't want.

-Seriously? did he just try to peg this as a blu-ray problem? See basically every single response leading up to this.

8. Low resale value. Gluts of discs dilute the resale value of products on the market, increasing buyer's remorse for those who want to thin out their collections.

-See above..idiot

9. Tricky re-releases. Studios brand discs as "anniversary editions" while only tweaking the box art instead of adding in new features.

-See above..yet again..

10. Small-studio apathy. Some smaller studios refuse to release many films on Blu-ray, refusing to give their classics the HD treatment.

-Studio problem..not a format problem. Why I bothered to respond to this mess individually instead of just blanketing it all under the same response I don't know. Apparently I put more effort into this post then this guy did into this article.
 
Eisenblut said:
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.
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I'm pretty sure it's because most people don't really give a shyt.
 
roaf85 said:
You say it isnt a moot point then you say you purchase something used? That only helps the second hand retailers. The publisher doesn't want you to buy used. If you aren't buying new you pretty admitted to not doing it because of the price point.
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I don't purchase new for two reasons: Price point of new and the fact that buying used deprives the organized racquet that is the movie industry of my $$'s.

I would rather help the used DVD shop than Sony Pictures or Time Warner.
 
I never bother to purchase Blu-ray, I just rent them for $2, since most movies are watch once and forget anyway.

I used to download HD torrents etc of movies but once I got a Blu-ray drive I can't go back to compression artifacts...

And if there is a blu-ray or DVD that I want to keep after renting I just rip the ISO to my hard drive.
 
One of hte main things I hate is the fact that blu rays took a step BACK from dvds as far as "resuming" a movie goes.

Instead of the actual blu ray player/disc ALL being able to be resumed (like a dvd) where if you turn it off without finishing the movie it starts where you left out, many blu rays start from the beginning and you have to manually find your place again.

This is super annoying and makes no sense. A few blu rays have it built into the disc, but I don't understand why it's not a blu ray player feature that shoudl be 100% used on every disc? If some can do it, why don't they all???

It's REALLY annoying on tv series blu rays, getting far in and having to skip to the last episode then ff it to your spot.
 
Stiler said:
One of hte main things I hate is the fact that blu rays took a step BACK from dvds as far as "resuming" a movie goes.

Instead of the actual blu ray player/disc ALL being able to be resumed (like a dvd) where if you turn it off without finishing the movie it starts where you left out, many blu rays start from the beginning and you have to manually find your place again.

This is super annoying and makes no sense. A few blu rays have it built into the disc, but I don't understand why it's not a blu ray player feature that shoudl be 100% used on every disc? If some can do it, why don't they all???

It's REALLY annoying on tv series blu rays, getting far in and having to skip to the last episode then ff it to your spot.
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AFAIK it has something to do with Java that runs on the disc. Not entirely sure though.
 
ljbade said:
I never bother to purchase Blu-ray, I just rent them for $2, since most movies are watch once and forget anyway.

I used to download HD torrents etc of movies but once I got a Blu-ray drive I can't go back to compression artifacts...

And if there is a blu-ray or DVD that I want to keep after renting I just rip the ISO to my hard drive.
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Good job making a confession on a public forum. I bet you're proud of yourself :rolleyes:
 
I find most Blu-Ray's to be $9.99 to $14.99. Maybe that's just electronics stores in my area, though. Oh, or just complainers making shit up who are still just butthurt because Blu-Ray prices 5 years ago were $30.

*shrugs*
 
stop!theradio said:
I find most Blu-Ray's to be $9.99 to $14.99. Maybe that's just electronics stores in my area, though. Oh, or just complainers making shit up who are still just butthurt because Blu-Ray prices 5 years ago were $30.

*shrugs*
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..

You ever go to Wal Mart? Almost all new releases are 25-30 bucks.
 
Stiler said:
..

You ever go to Wal Mart? Almost all new releases are 25-30 bucks.
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I bought one Blu-Ray from Wal-Mart. Resident Evil Degeneration. $13.99.

The last time I went for a Blu-Ray it was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 1. It was $9.99 at Best Buy. There is nothing wrong with the price of Blu-Ray movies unless you purposefully go seek out the most expensive ones for the sole purpose of complaining.
 
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