OK Blu-Ray, you won. Now where are the movies?
Sunday, April 6, 2008 at 7:18PM 
This splash image for the Netflix Blu-Ray page has not changed in three weeks. I still have not succumbed to the pressure to re-live The Devil Wears Prada in 1080p. It’s time for some new movies.
When I bought my Playstation 3 I couldn’t wait to buy some fun disks to try out. I wound up standing in the aisle of Best Buy for half an hour growing depressed.
Today I was back at Best Buy and the situation is the same. One new movie caught my eye—I Am Legend. But I decided it wasn’t worth $35 plus tax. It’s next in my Netflix queue anyway, and it’s only $19 on Amazon.
I’m happy that the HDDVD/Blu-Ray battle has ended, but the war is far from over. Downloads could still win the hearts and wallets of consumers, which scares me because the quality sucks, and they lack special features.
You won Blu-Ray, now start acting like it. But don’t get cocky, and don’t go thinking we’re a captive audience with no other recourse than to spend double a DVD price on a new release. Give us the movies we want at a price that makes it a no-brainer to eschew iTunes rentals and other, less scrupulous options.
EDIT: Gotta have Hitch now? Amazon has a buy two, get one free deal on Blu-Ray disks.
Reader Comments (12)
Best Buy is probably waiting for all the HD DVD movies to get cleared off the shelves so the consumer will be truly choiceless. That and probably some good old fashioned Sony gloating.
While we wait, there's always Oldboy.
How hard would it be for the studios to look through their library and just put every single "Best Cinematography" nominee and winner onto the fast track to Blu-Ray? Even if they started with 2008 and worked backwards biased towards box office- it would at least be something.
And of course Sony is going to gouge us. Creating a Blu-Ray disc may cost a dollar or so more than a DVD but Sony will tack a $10 license fee onto that.
With no competition, Sony et. al. can milk the current titles with impunity.
"i am legend" is not worth $19.00
waiting for blu-ray titles is painful. you can always buy imports from japan as they share the same region coding.
and say boo to downloads. compression artifacts hurt. standard dvds are still worth buying, especially for reference for us rebel dv filmmakers.
there is always "old boy" on blu-ray indeed.
now where is "sympathy for lady vengeance"?
word.
I will probably skip Blu-Ray altogether. I'm looking forward to the Netflix box and downloading movies when I go to bed. We'll have HD downloads before long. A 720p HD of a movie (90 min) that I did was 3.5gb WMV. a 1080p goes 5.5gb. I could do one per night with my connection. Flash VP6 would be even smaller. I'm not sure anybody won anything that will be important much longer.
I don't think Blu-Ray won much. We'll have HD downloads to the Netflix box before long. Already I could download an HD WMV file overnight and a VP6 Flash would be even smaller. Right now I play my movie in WMV HD, 7.6 M bitrate, with a JVC HD player and it looks good, even projected on a theater screen. Want to save movies? Save them on a hard drive.
I hate ever leaving my apartment or studio. I'm one step away from a Howard Hughes level of agoraphobia.
This is why I love my Apple TV. NetFlix is too much work -- I have to put stuff in a mailbox, and I have to set up a Queue, and I have to wait. I, sadly, still have DVDs to send back, that I've had for months. I'm one of those people subsidizing all the new parents that go through 80 movies a month.
A direct digital download is just a way more efficient experience, and in the end I think it will beat physical media. I honestly don't mind the compression on my Apple TV to 1080P Plasma experience on the HD rentals. Seems like they could put up the DVD extras and improve the image quality, and of course, expand the selection.
That's all I need, my Apple TV, and maybe some empty milk bottles.
Not to point out the obvious, but plain ol' widescreen DVDs are awesome! I have a 37" 1080i set with a DVD player that uprezzes. I'm thrilled. Trying to watch Dish on it displays the worse of digital compression, so standard uprezzed DVDs just blow my mind. Seriously. (But I'm coming from 32" Tube set)
Latest doesn't mean greatest. I just bought 18 unique Gamecube titles for $6 each. Circuit City was dumping. Sears already dumped their $99 consoles for $19.95. Wii is a great idea, but in practice it blows. I want to swing my arm and use a light saber in Star Wars. Nope. It's thumb controls. Since all the Wii titles are just porting over and locked to thumb controls, go back a step from Wii to Gamecube. Again, $6 a shrinkwrapped box with $19.99 and $39.99 price tags stuck on them. For analogy, Standard DVD is gamecube. Blu Ray is Wii. HD DVD is xbox... Just like in real life.
The Bladerunner Directors Cut, Standart DVD with a 55€ Upress-Player looks stunning on my 42" LG.
No Need for Blu-Ray right now. Upload will kick physical Medias like Blu-Ray, I think in only a few year.
Now wee need to get rid of this fucking DRM-Shit ;-)
This is why I could not understand all the gloating by consumers when it was announced that Blu-Ray won...
"in your FACE HD-DVD!" etc.
Why would anyone want to celebrate that we now have the same number of HD disc choices as the Soviets had in toilet paper?
Where are the movies?
You'll get them when Sony is good and ready, you'll take it and like it, and you'll pay what they say you'll pay.
Hasn't this happened before?
Have we not learned anything?
"Why would anyone want to celebrate that we now have the same number of HD disc choices as the Soviets had in toilet paper?"
Actually I never minded VHS and DVD - I was more than happy to walk into a store, look at the wall, see a movie I liked - grab it, walk to the counter, pay for it, go home and watch it.
With HD-DVRay I had to look at the packaging, decipher what 'bigger/better/byeond high-def' actually meant format wise, figure out if it would play on my player etc.
So in itself I don't feel just having one format is bad, it's just too bad that it's the expensive sony one that won.
Totally agree Stu. Unfortunately im waiting for the sad day when i hear... "No more extras" when downloads and torrents kill any form of physical disk and when there's not enough support for the studios to continue to do excellent extras and we'll be lumped with a bad epk and thats your lot.
In reality very few people are actually interested in extras and im sure finding the 'super collectors edition" of an actual disk will involve a trip to the video shop equivalent of "high fidelity"
Exactly as has happened with music where everyones music collections now comprise of '1's and 0's and the closest we get to a crate of double LP's is CoverFlow, movies will eventually go this way and there'll be less and less financial motivation for studios to go to the (now with BR far greater) expense of doing disks at all.
.. but in the meantime YES studios pull your finger out and get realistic on the cost