
Bag of hurt - barredo
http://www.marco.org/4012540846
======
danilocampos
I'm pretty tech savvy. I write code. I have a half-decent living room setup,
with an HDTV and surround sound. I have an Xbox 360. I get the latest gear
when it tickles my fancy. New technology _does not scare me_.

And I have absolutely zero urge to buy a Blu-Ray player. None at all. And I
don't expect that to change any time soon. DVDs are good enough on the rare I
occasion I need them. Netflix Watch Instantly is awesome. I'm at the point
where if I want to watch something I can't stream from Netflix I say fuck it
and watch something else.

Marco's right to be skeptical of the next generation of physical media
distribution. That game is going to be over inside of five years.

~~~
seanalltogether
I'm all the above and I love my Blu-Ray player. Netflix Watch instantly is
full of mediocre B-rated movies. Good for background noise on a saturday
afternoon, yet too boring for night time viewing.

DVDs are decent but all my movie purchases or netflix rentals these days are
Blu rays. I refuse to purchase drm time bombs from itunes or amazon.

~~~
acdha
I'm trying not to sound like a troll here but: why are you comfortable buying
DRM time-bombs in fragile plastic form? I think Apple or Amazon's DRM servers
are equally likely to be viable 10 years from now.

~~~
seanalltogether
Because at least a Blu Ray disc is a standard that is playable by a wide range
of devices and vendors. You're right that Apple and Amazon aren't dying any
time soon, so I should've said I don't want a single vendor determining how I
play their videos.

~~~
acdha
The real question is simply whether the estimated longevity of a Blu Ray disc
is greater than the estimated longevity of one of the major online video
vendors. I'm not sure I'd bet against the physical media deteriorating or
drives requiring replacement or upgrades before then - and since it's usually
cost-neutral across the form-factors, there's a temptation to bet on software
lasting longer than hardware.

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tom_b
I have a family member working directly in the manufacture/production of
DVD/Blueray media (movies and games).

The company is actively telling employees the facility will shutdown at some
point in the future. While the timeline is not specified, the parent
corporation is not replacing low level production staffers now, hours for all
workers have been curtailed, and generally the production projects are falling
off.

Compared to even just a few years ago it is a pretty shocking change - this
place used to run full out 24/7/365 and employees were typically scheduled for
20+hours of overtime in a two week rolling schedule. These days, they run two
shifts, often close up early and I can't remember the last time they offered
any overtime.

It's too bad, this was a pretty solid employer in a rather remote region that
doesn't have many other options available for the class of workers facing
layoffs.

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hristov
He is right and it is a darned shame, because with the big screens of today
the quality of blu ray is sorely needed. I do own a blu ray player, and i am a
huge arthouse movie buff and it does make a difference for the very few good
movies that make it on bluray.

The Netflix online service is not nearly as good.

But having to watch 15 minutes of mandatory nonscippable adds before you get
to watch a movie you actually paid for is really really f-ing annoying.

It is a shame the industry could not come up with a standard that actually
works. Next time, the manufacturers should just make the most technically
advanced and open standard they can come up with and completely ignore the
content makers.

~~~
dbrannan
Try this: On your VCR and/or Blue-Ray hit STOP STOP PLAY. In many instances it
will skip the previews and go straight to the movie.

~~~
davweb
This does work for me, but I think you mean DVD rather than VCR.

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depoisfalamos
Internet streaming/renting is great for the US market. But where I live
(Portugal) there's no TV Shows tab in iTunes or Amazon Instant or even
Netflix. We are tied to DVDs or Blu Rays. They are much more expansive for
sure and that's why people don't buy as much, see as much or consume as much
media (movies or Tv Shows). Anyway, when they do, it's in DVD or Blu Ray (or
piracy...).

We need physical discs here... but we wish we didn't...

~~~
statictype
Do you feel you're being unethical by downloading pirated copies of tv shows
that are not available in your country?

~~~
CrLf
Well, I'm also from Portugal and I can say that...

Actually, most relevant TV shows are available here, on cable, with proper
subtitles (dubbing is _very_ rare in Portugal, unlike other european
countries). Some shows are just one episode behind their US counterparts, but
most are a few months/a season behind.

Cable TV is widespread, and on more rural areas where the "cable" doesn't go,
the providers have a satellite alternative. So, every one that wants to watch
these shows, can.

So, it's not really ethic to pirate TV shows. But only in the sense that if
most people pirate, the cable networks won't have much (financial) incentive
to keep the shows close to their original airing.

~~~
depoisfalamos
You're right. I completely agree with your last sentence. Although it's really
hard for people to buy movies/tv shows for a lot of reasons: when we get a
proper DVD with subtitles it's weeks if not months behind the DVDs from the
US; if we want to import (because it's cheaper) you have to pay a lot of
additional euros for transportation; if you wait to see in the television for
3 or 4 months, you always get into spoilers from friends, the web or even
television;

I guess it's hard problem and everyone has a point. Let's wait and see if the
situation gets better because they get to win a lot providing a better service
to fans/consumers.

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tedunangst
"enough copy protection to kill almost all casual piracy (including such
innocent cases as ripping movies you own so you can play them on vacation on
your iPad)"

Actually, I think every blu-ray I've purchased recently came with a download
code and/or disc containing another copy of the movie specifically for copying
to iGadgets. If I cared to put my movies on an iPad, this is even more
convenient because it's already pre-ripped.

~~~
blutonium
It's a DRM'd copy[1], and which devices it's supported on depend on the studio
(and other mysterious factors). Some will work on iPod & PSP, some only work
on Windows.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_copy>

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hoggle
Owning the Blu-Ray version of a movie is like owning the original film roll to
me. Priceless experience, in fact the first time I'm really happy to spend
money on my favorite films ever since the Laser Disc. I love Blu-Ray.

~~~
vl
I sorely miss BluRay support on Macs, because of this my media center computer
is PC and on top of that I can't play movies I own and rent on family trips
because our laptops are MacBook Pro and MacBook. It's just lame, I would pay
$150 for an option to have BluRay in my MacBook Pro, why not just give it to
me?

When companies have too many interests integrated, they start to hurt
customers, in this case Apple with it's interest in iTunes hurts it's own
customers that need BluRay.

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msy
Once again the movie industry seems to believe it calls the shots only to be
bitch-slapped by the invisible hand of the market. You'd think they'd learn by
now.

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CrLf
As other people pointed out, most people don't care about the difference
between a DVD and a Blu-ray, even when they have HD displays.

It would be interesting to know exactly why, but nobody wants to survey the
users, prefering instead to pretend that this isn't true.

My interpretation is that when you're 3 meters from a display with the size
regular people buy (between 32 and 42 inches), the quality difference between
HD content and a decently encoded DVD is barely noticeable.

Some say that sound quality is more important than picture quality. That may
be true, but that's not the reason people ignore the quality difference
between DVDs and Blu-ray. When you live in an apartment, you tend to watch
movies with a low volume anyway, so sound is always crap.

Then, there's the mistake that people moved to DVDs from VHS because of
picture quality. This is false, people moved from VHS to DVDs because DVDs
have are random-access media. No more rewinds, no more fast-forwards and
searching for parts of the movie.

DVDs hit the sweet spot of price/quality and convenience. Blu-ray offers
little more.

If the successor to the DVD had been a flash-memory card, it may have been a
hit. The same movies in 1/10th the space. Now it is too late.

People will keep their DVDs until online distribution is mature. And this
doesn't necessarily mean internet distributed content. Here in Portugal, the
two major cable providers have a video-on-demand service (in old-school
parlance) that was the final nail in the video rental shops 'coffin, and that
all but removes the need for the average consumer to buy physical media.

~~~
neutronicus

        people moved from VHS to DVDs because DVDs have are random-access media. No more rewinds, no more fast-forwards and searching for parts of the movie.
    

I miss VHS fast-forwarding. It was impossible to accidentally skip scene,
which _always fucking happens_ when I try to rewind a DVD to catch some
dialogue I missed.

------
sambeau
Surely the internet has killed the need for little metal discs? I can't
remember the last time I used one.

~~~
raganwald
Yes it has, but was it the convenience of typing the name of a movie and
streaming it? Or was it the convenience of watching a movie without having to
navigate through commercials and menu options designed to ruin the movie
experience?

Check all that apply :-)

One thing that absolutely killed DVDs for me was having children. If you ever
want to put a movie on for kids, you want to put it on, press play, and watch.
Navigating menus and ads just doesn't work for my kids, no way, no how.

I had to handbrake my entire collection of family DVDs. I buy movies through
iTunes. A DVD is a pain in the ass if you want to watch a movie with kids.

~~~
noonespecial
Its even worse in the car. Ever tried to start a Disney movie for a 3 year old
while driving?

For our own safety, every movie in the car is HandBraked from the original so
it starts instantly when inserted.

I can just about _guarantee_ that a serious accident has been caused by those
damn menus.

~~~
vl
Aren't you concerned that prolonged looking at the movie screen in the moving
(and thus vibrating) vehicle will be bad for the kid's eyesight?

I personally feel eye strain if I try to watch or read something on my iPhone
for too long in a moving car (not so bad on a bus).

------
bengl3rt
Unfortunately, nothing can match the quality of Blu-ray, and as other
commenters have noticed, on really big/high-resolution televisions - the kind
that movie buffs tend to have, personally I have a projector - it really makes
a difference. Netflix is pretty compressed both in the audio and video
departments.

The only thing that comes close is the HDX catalog on the Vudu box. I have my
eye on this as a potential replacement but for now I use a PS3 to play Blu-
rays because the audio and video quality is just superb.

~~~
ctdonath
I just saw Toy Story 3 on our newish HDTV.

At the end, I smiled and marveled at how great Blu-ray is.

Then I ejected the ... DVD.

One of Steve Jobs' great insights is the balance of specs vs. usability. Yeah,
the Apple product line may not beat out the competition on specs (though it
happens more than the naysayers like to admit), but by maintaining a high bar
for user experience, the need for top "checkbox" specs is reduced. Yeah, Blu-
ray is better and desirable ... but upscaled DVD and 'net streaming is plenty
good enough for most users, and the few users for whom it isn't aren't worth
the "bag of hurt" to make it happen now.

Broadband is improving. Codecs are improving. Most viewers can't discern 720p
from 1080p (as my wife likes to often opine on the subject "I can't see the
difference so who cares?"). We'll get pervasive 1080p on Apple platforms soon
enough; until then, I'll put up with the good-enough upscaled DVD, 720p
streaming, and the occasional Blu-ray from Redbox.

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kondro
The trouble is, the average consumer doesn't understand or see the difference.
They get bombarded with acronyms and marketese and they just shut down. And,
they don't want to have to replace their movie collection with another one
that seems to cost 20% more per disk for a difference they just don't see.

When it comes to media what people want is library size, convenience and cost-
effectiveness. DVDs and Internet-based streaming have all of these things for
the average consumer. Blu-ray™ is a 'premium' product that average Joe six-
pack can't justify.

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nkurz
We have a Panasonic BluRay player at home that gets used quite a lot. Almost
every evening it gets used by someone to watch streaming videos from Netflix
or Amazon Prime using the built in network interface. Once or twice a week, it
also gets used to play standard DVD's from Netflix, and a couple times since
getting it we've even found something we want to watch on actual BluRay.

(Translation: BluRay disks aren't going to take over, but the additional
features of the devices are a bulkhead for streaming media in the living
room.)

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jsz0
I can see the appeal of BluRay for home theater enthusiasts but on a computer
it has limited uses. Not sure there's even a good case to be made that BR is
useful for removable storage given the size/prices/speed of USB/magnetic
storage. Does anyone really travel around with a laptop and a binder full of
BR disks? I doubt it. So that leaves you with HTPCs. Not a big market and most
of them have a file server in the closet full of 1080P MKV rips anyway.

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StudyAnimal
There is one use case for Blu-Ray that Apple does not have an answer for yet.
Home movies that people have taken with their HD camcorders, that they want to
keep on permanent medium, play easily on their home theater, and not
necessarily upload to youtube or facebook.

Until Apple offers free online storage for high bitrate movies (keeping them
on a huge hard drive is ok, but even a terabyte drive wont hold more than a
year or so of a typical families precious memories, and you would want some
form of cloud backup anyway rather than relying on a hard drive not crashing),
and we all have 25Mbps+ bandwidth to support it, AND I can watch my home
movies without buying a special device like an Apple TV or whatever, then they
are still not competing with Blu-Ray for home movies, or hobbyist film makers.

You know apple used to focus on the creators rather than the consumers, but
their attitude towards blu-ray assumes we are only interested in consuming
content.

I have a handful of blu-ray films that I bought when i got my PS3, watched
once I never watched again. But I have stacks of home movies burnt on blu-ray
that we watch all the time.

~~~
silvestrov
Blu-Ray isn't a _permanent_ medium. Don't expect to be able to read all the
discs after 10-20 years.

Look at how quickly recordable CDs and DVDs detoriates. The manufactures
promised a lot longer life time when they launched them, but reality was
different.

There isn't any media which is permanent. The one that comes closest is non-
acid paper stored in a vault.

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nhangen
I agree, but I refuse to go 100% digital when the quality sucks like it does.

Netflix's streaming catalogue is bad...like really bad, and I don't intend on
paying $15-$20 for an HD version on iTunes when I can get the same thing for
the same price on Blu-Ray.

Yes, I'm tired of the shitty menus and load times, but until they find a way
to reproduce Blu-Ray quality in a digital format, it's a price I'm willing to
pay.

Still, great piece by Marco.

~~~
jfb
Of course, Blu-Ray is digital. What it really comes down to is that 1)
existing broadband in the US is too pissweak to stream anything even
resembling the 40Mb/s Blu-Ray datarate; and more importantly 2) nobody cares.
I mean, _I_ care — I spent a good part of my life's blood (metaphorically
speaking) getting those iTunes HD versions to look as good as 3Mb/s of H.264
can, and I can't watch _HD_ TV programming, let alone _SD_ without griping
about quality; but for the average consumer, convenience (1.5Mb/s < SD basic
profile H.264 streamed from Netflix) trumps all.

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ABFrep
How short our memories are! It started with HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, and the
studies 'decided' to abandon HD-DVD (and the customers that chose the format).

At that point, Blu-Ray became a joke. The new LaserDisc.

~~~
wladimir
It looks like the market for a 'next generation DVD' format is _much_ smaller
than what they expected. There wasn't place for two formats, and even the
remaining format isn't doing that well.

Either that, or the DRM-related inconvenience caused them to price themselves
out of the market compared to online streaming.

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Kilimanjaro
Spinning media is the way of the dodo. If there is ever a replacement it will
be in the form of an SD card or memory stick. But then again, streaming killed
it before being even born. Video cameras went from tape to cd, dvd, hd and now
flash mem. If we could insert removable flash memory in different devices like
our own TV and play it, then there might be a slight chance for it to start a
new era, but I doubt it.

Blu ray? I hardly knew ya.

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glenjamin
I was watching a film the other day on DVD, but I wasn't enjoying it. I
managed to get hold of a copy on blu-ray, and enjoyed it much more...

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tintin
I don't think this has anything to do with the medium. You could create one
track on a CD with all the songs, commercials included. But this will be so
annoying nobody will buy it. If you don't like the commercials a producer is
putting on the BD, just skip the producer.

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Hominem
I own a blu-Ray player that has never seen a disc, I use it exclusively for
streaming. Even though the quality of netflix streaming is pretty poor some of
the time, it is still not worth the effort of obtain physical discs.

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nosse
So the High priest of the magnificent cult of Apple was right again!

