This Blu-Ray Forum is not as active as it used to be..... - Page 5

I think a lot of folks burned out.
Most of us bought a heck of a lot of DVD's....
Only to double dip on Blue Ray...and then along comes streaming.

Most of us still buying have to admit- streaming is and will end up killing physical media.
There will be no out cry like there is with vinyl.

I still maintain uncompressed Blue Rays are better, but this weekend I rented a movie from AppleTv and was shocked by the quality.
I have several pre-orders with Amazon that I am considering canceling.
I re sell most of my buys and take a small $$$ hit for the better experience, but I'm no longer sure I need to bother.
I would miss the extras and the 24 viewing window needs to go. You should be able to view the full movie regardless of how many nights it may take to complete.

It may indeed kill it, but I'll just start my outcry right now: streaming will not happen for me, ever, unless I'm capturing it to burn to disc, and there's no other option.

You can take my physical media when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.

At this point in its life cycle, streaming is for people who think it's really neat to watch movies on a postage stamp. That may change, but I also think that the general public is totally fine with compression artifact-ridden garbage being sold to them as high def content. And of course when everything is in the cloud, the whole concept of individuals owning their movies will be a polite fiction at best.

I agree.
Although I was right in the middle of the format war in this forum, I don't think opening old wounds would be helpful to this thread.

+10000000

Agreed. I have Amazon Prime, Netflix, VUDU and about 30 UV titles. Streaming is OK for some old TV shows but for anything serious its nothing but disc for us.

Folks really need to be careful what they wish for, if physical were to ever go away and only licensed content remains then expect to pay a LOT more for content because the content owners will be 100% in the drivers seat. With disc we at least have First Sale Doctrine protection.

Yet vinyl is still around and enjoying a resurgence.

Wow, this thread has brought back some memories!

The format war was an exciting time. I know a lot of people criticized Amir, and in retrospect, it may be deserved. But his credibility was bolstered for me personally when I purchased the first BD player on the market(the Samsung, I forget the model number) and the first Sony BD releases. The player was a dog, and the first pressing of THE FIFTH ELEMENT and other Sony titles were horrible. In contrast, the early HD DVD releases were pretty nice. After that, I thought that Amir and the HD DVD people were onto something.

But there's a lot of water under the bridge now, I've got an Oppo BD player that blows away any other player I've owned for any format out of the water, and BD's are, for the most part, excellent. But I agree with most of the other posters here that the thrill is gone, and I don't know what will bring it back.

yeah- agree- but I highly doubt we see the same mystique with Blu Ray.
A Home Theater resurgence equivalent to vinyl would be going back to 16mm collector prints.

Don't worry- If 4K ever drops we'll do this all over again.
Edited by Mojogypson - 3/11/13 at 5:01pm

Absolutely right.
If we can't have physical copy of content, you can bet Grandma's Studebaker we all will be paying more for less.

I don't think 4K will trigger a rush.
IMO, 4K will appeal primarily to those with very big screens.

I can't imagine JSP getting enthused on his 42" LCD.....

Correct. It has been a tough sell for HDTV. UHDTV will be a much harder sell. There does not seem to be much interest in 4K on this and other forums and you can bet J6P could care less. I fully expect 4k to make the scene at some point but it will be a small one.

No question 4K will have an impact on videophiles with large screens.
However.....J6P hates grain and any tech that makes it more apparent is in for a tuff sell.

Your right about the J6P will have not much interest in 4K ( I mean there are still many just getting into 1080p ) but on this forum I think there will be many members who will go to 4K.

Now lets not confuse them black analog gems with our shiny plastic digita BD discs and I do agree streaming will be where it is at, I wish the digital copy protection (in all its forms and variations) would allow for lesser expensive HD storage systems like Kaleidescape, but that has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

For the moment "old school bro", pop them discs in!

The bottom line really is what will rersult in the EM to sell more devices.

Art

That's all I use it for too.

Even if streaming takes over, I'll hold onto my physical media. I have nearly every movie I could want on both BD and DVD, and hopefully new, popular releases would still get a legacy BD release the way many albums are still released on CD. As for 4k, it would have to be a major upgrade from BD for me to even consider it, and guys like Robert Harris say it's not a major upgrade over 1080p unless you have a huge screen.

There's a movie forum here? Where? I looked and looked but couldn't find it.

Great! So it's not the director or cinematographer making everything teal and orange?

http://www.avsforum.com/f/44/dvd-movie-concerts-and-music-discussion

-Bill

Looks like Bill hooked you up. You can probably see now why you couldn't find it The other day I saw a reference to a high res audio forum, but I was in the mch audio forum at the time. Sigh ... I can't find that one either. Frustrating (if true) that mch audio is hi res by default, but there's a separate sub-forum for high res audio?

I wasn't so much thinking of the teal/green issue, but the generally bad looking BDs I see of new movies. I assume most are DI. They're quite ugly, and in a similar manner to me. Harsh contrast, over saturated, unnatural colors, especially skin tones. Just my opinion, but at least now I have some evidence to back it up

I think a lot of people are burned out. The transfers these days can be awful to great and you never know what you are getting. That said people take breaks and there are still some very active threads. Perhaps some of us are waiting for re re releases hahaha to some of the films like BR and Predator and all the rest that got snubbed in the first few years. I think once a decent film is transferred there seems to be decent discussion but I agree it has tailed off a bit.

It also seemed that a certain few posters were always nitpicking the new high profile releases. Usually those same posters were big HD DVD cheerleaders. And if a title was on HD DVD first and then eventually on BD those same posters were always claiming how the HD DVD was superior in quality.

Not saying that there was no truth in some of their arguments, but a lot of it was blown out of proportion. I know this much.... after having used projection systems primarily since 2005 in my theater I know this much.... DVD looked like crap at 100"... BD for the most part looks great.


The other thing is that many of the high profile catalog titles that were high on the want lists of many collectors have already been released:
Star Wars Saga
Indiana Jones
Jurassic Park
Back to the Future
Lawrence of Arabia
James Bond catalog
Many of the Disney golden age films
All the Pixar catalog
Blade Runner
Jaws
ET
Wizard of Oz
Citizen Kane
the list goes on....

There really aren't many surefire catalog titles of the last 50 years that can be released now that will generate huge sales. I mean look at Lucasfilm... they are now down to releasing Willow.... it won't be much longer until Howard the Duck will be in their release lineup.
Edited by Toknowshita - 3/14/13 at 9:27am

All A/V forums are declining in membership, not just AVS. Part of it is Facebook taking up so much of people's time, another is that the novelty of HD has worn off.

Blu-ray.com is an exception but they focus on BD software while real A/V forums are more focused on the hardware end. The members here are much more knowledgeable than at BD.com as well and I'll take quality over quantity any day. Formats come and go but A/V and HT will always be a topic and AFAIK AVS is still THE place to go for that.

Seriously? FaceBook?
I'll let you in on a not so little secret, FaceBook is for girls.

I think your second point is probably true for the gamer contingent that seemed to come out of the woodwork a few years ago.

There are more popular forums than AVS especially for the audio hardware part, like Audio Circle and ICE and the Steve Hoffman forum for the software side.

I still very much like certain forums here but I frequent others such as the above just as much if not more.

I meant sites like Facebook. I don't use it myself so you may be right that it's for girls. The point is that message boards in general aren't as popular as they used to be because their are so many other internet diversions competing for your time that weren't there before.

WRT social networking demographics:

http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/08/21/report-social-network-demographics-in-2012/

http://pewinternet.org/Commentary/2012/March/Pew-Internet-Social-Networking-full-detail.aspx

Since I'm a man, I don't mind being surrounded by woman.
I agree that FB has a lot of drama, primarily from woman but I will tell you that I do not friend anyone I do not know personally.
What FB has allowed me to do is connect with people I've lost contact over the years and re-establish our physical(face to face) relationships.
Without FB, I would have lost out on a lot of good times/memories over the last several years reconnecting with friends.

That and the younger crowd just isn't interested in owning "our" "old" movies that don't have over the top CGI/VFX and room shaking LFE, etc.
When I look at my 25-30yo nieces and nephews- they buy just a handful of new titles a year- mostly things like Transformers, Battleship, Dredd, etc.. stuff with audio and visual impact that give their 15" subs and 47"+ 3D sets a workout.
Yeah, they may stream Argo, Silver Linings Playbook, Life of Pi, etc... but they won't buy those on disc- they buy action titles that show off their systems.

Ah, I was guilty of that too. Anyone else remember being thrilled at the AC-3 release of the Clear and Present Danger laserdisc?

"Must... watch... van... attack... again..."

Circle of life, man! :-)

Sure do, used a Sony EP9ES and Pioneer CLD-900 (that I had modified). Pictures of the items below but they are not my pictures.

Saw a interesting report fairly recently that said 80% of people viewing TV was do other things while they were watching. The other things included surfing, talking, gaming, social networking, etc., etc. It appears folks really don't watch anymore, the TV is just a noise generator and they have to have one in every room.

Not just distracted while watching TV-
My kids team had to do punishment laps around the gym (because of a bad inter-squad scrimmage) last night during practice- afterward one of them told me two of the girls were texting while doing the laps..