CES 2009 Blu-ray Announcements a HUGE dissapointment

Give them time...

Not a problem. CES is not a content show, it is normally devoted to hardware.

The fact that there were few Blu-ray content announcements at CES is in fact GOOD NEWS: it means that the Blu-ray business has now become a normal fact of life and is no longer in doubt as it was the last several years.

While I am not targeting any particular movies I do have to agree with the sentiment. If they want BD to become the successor to DVD that they claim then they need to at least have as many releases on BD as they do on DVD. I don't see them working towards that, I actually see them scaling back again.

Don't get me wrong there are a few good releases coming out which I am thankful for. But for the most part it looks like we are still in taking out the trash mode. BD has to be the most depressing format in history because the vast majority of the movies are zomby/shasher/horror movies. The recent catalog thread has shown there is considerable demand beyond those types of movies. I was hoping CES was going to show us some signs that the studio had seen the light but it looks like they still have their eyes closed as hard as they can. When we are in this boat again next year will people still be saying just wait, give them time. Or will people have just given up and moved to downloads where possible.

I have been waiting over 5 years for this format to get it's act together and my patience is wearing thin.

You obiously missed the first couple of years of DVD. Up until The Matrix, it pretty sucked hardcore.

There's no point of releasing 100 title per week if you're mass won't be able to buy any of them out...

I don't have a problem with CES having no software announcements as it's generally a hardware show, MS excluded. I don't really need any big announcements other than what the companies announce throughout the year.

I have actually been pretty happy with the number of tittles released on bluray each week for the last few months..

CES is not a show for studios to anonce tittles. The only reason they did it in the past was to hype of the HD DVD/BD format. The format no longer needs that kind of hype.

These titles is the must owned as BDs,May be they will add in the future,I guess.

5 years?

So you've been waiting for a format to get its act together when it hadn't even been released yet?

Don't forget BD was supposed to be released almost 2 years before it actually was. On top of that any one with any interest knew it was coming because sites like this were talking about it for years ahead of time. If you remember back before either HD-DVD or BD were released Sony was talking up how they had been working for years on rescanning films for them selves and most of the other studios so that they would be ready to go right away. Well where the hell are they?

It isn't the lack of announcements at CES that bothers me but the fact that we have been told by 2 or three of the studios what their plans are for the year now and they are much weaker than they were last year. For Pete sake we are still waiting for some of these studios to take their HD-DVD releases jack the price up and put them out on BD. Until they are done doing at least that, it is hard to cheer about their efforts. They talked it up plenty about how they were really going to be cranking the movies out this year. Well lets see the announcements. Don't forget any thing announced now won't show up for months. Is this a seasonal format, movies only show up in Q4?

Folks, its all about marketing....

Why doesn't the studios release all of those catalog mega-hits right now?
Answer: money, $$, money, $$, money, $$......


Let us say, for a moment, the vaults are opened and all the good stuff comes tumbling out.
The BD market cannot consume enough of the software.
As it exists today, the BD software market is small (when compared to DVD).
If the studios go to the trouble (and more importantly, the expense) of releasing all of those super-duper films right away, who will buy them?
With low sales numbers, how do the studios make a profit NOW?
Answer: they don't.

What would happen, over time the Star Wars, Aliens, Titanic, etc., would mostly sit on the shelves, waiting for the market to expand.
And what would happen would be massive DISCOUNTING to move stock and with it goes all those profits everyone had been counting on.
Suddenly, BD is NO longer a source of projected high revenue streams, etc.
Can you guess what will happen???

I want all the studios to release all of their films right NOW!!!!
OK, now, back to the real world....

CES is a hardware show.

The Blu-ray hardware people were all very happy and there are a lot of new cheaper better performing BD-Live players coming up now and many were announced here in Las Vegas.

Nice to have Blu-ray the default assumed and established as the best high definition video and audio standard on the show floor.

Here is where my theory about BD taking over DVD comes into play. If the studios stop releasing those very popular catalogue titles that are on DVD and they will and then release them on BD...and that ties into what oink is saying in post # 11.

Anyone want to wager that we will sometime in the next couple of years hear the words we hear now, "exclusively on Blu Ray" . Of course they won't say not on dvd, they just won't mention it.

I disagree. Check out the archives for the hidef DVD news threads which are great as historic reference. Nobody was expecting BD to launch in 2004. Actually, HD DVD was going to beat BD by a year because they actually announced titles in CES 2005 for that year.


Those were 1080i masters that aren't good enough for the current state of the art in movie transfers. Unless you want all titles to look like The Perfect Storm or Enter the Dragon.


Disney and who else?


Absolutely not. Just look at the release schedule. Both January and February have around 60 titles each, over twice what we got same time last year.

I must admit I was looking forward to the thrill of title announcements like in other CESs. But as has already been said, it is really a hardware show.

Well from everything I have seen there has been an increase in the number of Blu-ray titles coming out. For instance if you compare each month to the month from the previous year how many months in 2008 had less Blu-ray titles released than the month in 2007?

Last year and the year before, they had a vested interest in letting people like us know that a lot of titles were coming, because they wanted us to choose the BD format. Now that there's no format war, why bother?

BTW, I could be wrong, but I don't think Dreamworks actually releases their own titles. I think they are just a movie studio, and the video details are handled by whoever has distribution (which is Paramount now), like Fox with MGM.

Where's Lord of the Rings?

In Mordor...

lol :d

How come we don't see all the HD-DVD titles out on BD sooner? Where is "Forbidden Planet" and "Apollo 13"? Seems those that were already on HD-DVD should be easier to get out on BD faster.

It would be a poor marketing strategy for Universal (or other studios) to dump all of their HD-DVD releases to BD immediately.
This would lead to discounting and long term inventory.
Neither would be smart.

I understand not wanting to dump the whole catalog, but HD-DVD to BD is different. The decision to print them in hi-def was made, and the expense of transferring the title to hi-def is done. It's just a technology transfer to get caught up to where they should already be if the damn format war would never of happened, and (in the case of Universal), to immediately correct the piss-poor business decision to go HD exclusive in the first place.

Maybe we'll get a 55th anniversary ultimate edition in 2011, who knows...

I wish it was only a tech decision.
But Marketing ALWAYS plays a significant role in product releases.



Couldn't agree more...Universal is to blame for the BS that was the Format War.



LOL!

I asked the studio heads about this at a press briefing a couple of months ago and they laughed at such a prospect. The DVD market is still way too large for this to happen anytime in the foreseeable future.

Right, currently laughed at present and foreseeable future could be next month. I said in two years I could see it happening.

You asked EVERY studio and in a press conference they literally laughed at the prospect? I am laughing now at the doubt I have that is entirely true or that even they are accurate about their own future business prospects.

I think in a general sense they were answering the best they knew how to based on current market and data, but not 2011. I could see in a more specific title to title basis how the studios could absolutely start putting out a title, then two, then three only on BD. Time will tell.

Such an approach may benefit hardware sales more than software.
I.E. - If the only way to view the next Bond sequel at home is to buy the BD, those that wish to do so would HAVE to buy a player (unless, of course, they already had one).
At that point, maybe these DVD people will say "to heck with it" and jump on the BD wagon (particularly if they believe this will be the future release practice).

So what new titles were announced at CES?

If anyone does it, it would be Sony.

I believe Forbidden Planet only sold a few "hundred" copies or something insane like that on HD DVD. Sad, but that probably explain why they aren't in a hurry to put it out on BD.