TNG sales were called "dismal" by one of the people who worked on it.
DS9 on blu ray?
- Thread starter borgboy
- Start date
TNG sales were called "dismal" by one of the people who worked on it.
Yes, but what did they expect, if almost noone knows TNG on BD exist?
I don't know how many times i've heard "Oh, those are out on blu-ray?" when someone saw the boxes on my shelf.
The single movie discs (which are an excellent chance to convince someone to buy a full season box) were for a very long time only available in some foodmarkets (!) here in Germany, with absolutly NO advertisment or announcement, neither on the CBS/Paramount site, nor in any paper commercials of the foodmarkets.
No release dates, up to this point "All good things" is yet to come (said Trekcore) and noone knows when and if, this is ridiculous!
Australian release of AGT was announced by Trekcore and somewhere deep down in the comments of one article they wrote, that - out of a blue - there won't be a release of AGT in Australia.
And in the main article, it remains announced.
If i want to sell a product, i need to let people know that it exists. If i don't, i won't sell it. As simple as that.
Hell, even I wouldn't know about TNG on BD, if it wasn't because of this forum ...
I don't know how many times i've heard "Oh, those are out on blu-ray?" when someone saw the boxes on my shelf.
The single movie discs (which are an excellent chance to convince someone to buy a full season box) were for a very long time only available in some foodmarkets (!) here in Germany, with absolutly NO advertisment or announcement, neither on the CBS/Paramount site, nor in any paper commercials of the foodmarkets.
No release dates, up to this point "All good things" is yet to come (said Trekcore) and noone knows when and if, this is ridiculous!
Australian release of AGT was announced by Trekcore and somewhere deep down in the comments of one article they wrote, that - out of a blue - there won't be a release of AGT in Australia.
And in the main article, it remains announced.
If i want to sell a product, i need to let people know that it exists. If i don't, i won't sell it. As simple as that.
Hell, even I wouldn't know about TNG on BD, if it wasn't because of this forum ...
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You know, this is very true. I too know people who had no idea the series was even available on BD-Disc.
The weird thing about the single-discs is that, although I agree they would have been a terrific way to entice casual buyers, perhaps with the aim of cross-promoting them onto buying the full season sets, the reaction I've gotten about them is that the idea of buying only one episode instead of a whole season is strange, a bit like going back to the VHS days. So maybe they would've had the opposite effect.
I also think maybe they were unnecessary expenditure. Something like BOBW is an epic that could have done that, but releasing one 'special release' per season, to presumably decreasing returns, was just like sinking good money after bad.
If i want to sell a product, i need to let people know that it exists. If i don't, i won't sell it. As simple as that.
Hell, even I wouldn't know about TNG on BD, if it wasn't because of this forum ...
It's clear they've had a lot of trouble in terms of marketing. One wonders if their strategy was flawed, or whether it's just the poor circumstance of happening to release them during a time when physical media has seen a rapid decline. Maybe it's a little of both.
As someone else said up-thread, a lot of the 'promoting' of these sets fell down to fan sites like Trekcore, because Paramount themselves seemed to be less interested in really pushing them out there. But of course, fan sites aren't able to grab the crucial "casual buyers" market... Joe Schmoe who doesn't see himself as a 'Trekkie', but who has got warm feelings towards TNG from watching it back in the 1990s, isn't likely to be scanning the news pages on a Star Trek website. So the marketing lost all the Joe Schmoe's, leaving only a dedciated (but relatively small) fanbase to buy the discs.
It can occur regardless of DVD or Blu-ray. However, they pitch-corrected the Doctor Who discs to eliminate the effect. (The old Farscape S1 DVDs from ADV did the same thing for most of the run - first few episodes were slowed down like you report L&OUK was, but the rest seemed normal.)
a) You flipped 60Hz and 50Hz - the discs are 60Hz (actually, I thought they were 24 FPS rather than interlaced?), ideally they would be 50Hz.The blu rays (on both sides of the pond) increase in quality in the sense that they're not compressed to fit DVD discs, and are therefore 100% compression and artifact free, and at a higher bitrate to boot. But they then lose points by being mastered for 50hz instead of 60, which means there's a degree of slowdown not evident on the PAL DVD versions. So what they gave us with one hand, they took away with the other.
b) They didn't have a choice in the US (as most of our TVs won't accept 50Hz material). Given the choice of doing one set of worldwide masters at 60Hz or two sets, either the BBC or BBC Worldwide (not sure which) took the cheap option like they had been since the first Torchwood Blu-rays.
^ Yeah, that's true. I admit my grasp of the terminology is a little weak.
I found the pitch correction quite decent, and the lack of DVD compression artefacts definitely means the Blu Rays of DW S1-4 look and sound better than the DVDs in a mild sense that even a layman like me can appreciate. They aren't HD, and they never will be, but on some levels the exercise wasn't a complete loss, IMO.
But in an ideal world they wouldn't have been slowed down.
I found the pitch correction quite decent, and the lack of DVD compression artefacts definitely means the Blu Rays of DW S1-4 look and sound better than the DVDs in a mild sense that even a layman like me can appreciate. They aren't HD, and they never will be, but on some levels the exercise wasn't a complete loss, IMO.
But in an ideal world they wouldn't have been slowed down.
I can't speak for anywhere else. But here in the States, the early seasons were in the weekly circulars for every major retailer (Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Target).
Upscales from original SD masters can look great, particularly compared to upscales done by consumer equipment. The main difference is that the source is much higher quality than a DVD would be (minimal/no compression). Unfortunately this is rarely taken advantage of. Even most broadcasters use pathetic HD upscalers (as in a lot worse than anyone could do at home in real time).
^ Yeah, that's true. I admit my grasp of the terminology is a little weak.
I found the pitch correction quite decent, and the lack of DVD compression artefacts definitely means the Blu Rays of DW S1-4 look and sound better than the DVDs in a mild sense that even a layman like me can appreciate. They aren't HD, and they never will be, but on some levels the exercise wasn't a complete loss, IMO.
But in an ideal world they wouldn't have been slowed down.
They didn't need to be slowed down but it was presumably done because most TVs in the US are crippled and don't support 25/50 fps formats. This is actually really annoying because for cost reasons often only a single BD master is made. Thus there are some BDs of UK shows on sale in the UK that are either slowed down to 24 fps or converted from 50i to 60i for no reason. Red Dwarf series 9 is an example.
On it's own, this isn't of huge relevance. Had they known, would they have bought? That's the question you need to ask.
I think it's safe to say for the great majority folks who didn't already know it was on BD, they wouldn't have bought regardless. There are always exceptions, but hardcore fans or Trek completists would likely be the only groups willing to fork out a few hundred bucks for all of the seasons of TNG on BD. And those folks would have found out regardless of promotion. Given the cost of TV seasons on BD, casual fans are perfectly content to catch the HD version on a SyFy marathon or sample it on a streaming service. Or purchase used copies on ebay or craigslist. Eventually. Call it a hunch.
For shits and giggles, I thought about the calculations I did earlier, and compared it to the number of members this BBS has. If every person on the BBS bought only one season of Next Gen on Blu-Ray, DS9 would've most likely been a certainty Depressing that for how hardcore Trek fans are, they can't be bothered to spend money on it.
Edit: Sorry, five seasons. Five seasons for every member.
Depressing that for how hardcore Trek fans are, they can't be bothered to spend money on it.Edit: Sorry, five seasons. Five seasons for every member.
So, five seasons. Plus not everybody's still active. Plus not everybody's interested in TNG. Plus not everybody can afford it.For shits and giggles, I thought about the calculations I did earlier, and compared it to the number of members this BBS has. If every person on the BBS bought only one season of Next Gen on Blu-Ray, DS9 would've most likely been a certainty
Edit: Sorry, five seasons. Five seasons for every member.
I really think that five seasons per member would have been unrealistic expectations. Even one season per member is pushing it.
doubleohfive
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I thought Tennant's farewell run of specials in 2008 were shot in HD? I have those on Blu-Ray and they look pretty good to me.
Some people just don't care about HD vs SD. I tried very hard to upgrade my parents setup at home; they resisted it. When they finally did it themselves, they were astonished at how used to HD they'd become and how (now) very apparent the difference is. Whaddya gonna do?
Some people just don't care about HD vs SD. I tried very hard to upgrade my parents setup at home; they resisted it. When they finally did it themselves, they were astonished at how used to HD they'd become and how (now) very apparent the difference is. Whaddya gonna do?
When people tell me they don't see a difference, I pop the Avatar DVD in my XBox 360 and Avatar Blu-Ray in my XBox One, start them both at the same time and flip back and forth between HDMI1 and HDMI2. That changes their tune REAL quick. Got my whole family riding the HD bandwagon with this trick
Absolutely. The benefit we would get from an upscale from the SD "broadcast tapes" would be an uncompressed version. Popping a DVD into a Blu Ray player and using the hardware to 'upscale' it does see an increase in visual fidelity, but it doesn't remove the compression artefacts that were part of the source DVD (and it can, in the most severe cases, magnify those artefacts). So a BD version would be an improvement over simply upscaling the DVDs, because the BD version would be taken from a cleaner 'source' to begin with. The 'bump' in visual quality wouldn't be too big, though, unless they took the opportunity to digitally color-correct the image and that kind of thing. It still wouldn't be HD, but it'd look better than a DVD upscale.
For shits and giggles, I thought about the calculations I did earlier, and compared it to the number of members this BBS has. If every person on the BBS bought only one season of Next Gen on Blu-Ray, DS9 would've most likely been a certainty
It's not so much a case of "not being bothered" as it is not everybody can afford to spend that much money on each season. The world has been going through recessionary times, not everybody has got the expendable income they once did, and some of them might see the online streaming option as a cheaper way to experience the same product. So yeah, plenty other factors apart from "people can't be bothered".
It's also possible a larger portion of the fanbase filed away the BDs as a "someday in the future" purchase (without having come to realise that physical media is in it's death throes, so that "someday" may never come.)
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If one waited a couple of months, one could easily buy each season for 60 bucks, with six months intervals between them.
I find it hard to believe one couldn't save up 10$ per month, unless we're talking about homeless people.
I think people just didn't know or didn't care enough.
I find it hard to believe one couldn't save up 10$ per month, unless we're talking about homeless people.
I think people just didn't know or didn't care enough.
It's just... a surprisingly harsh process-of-thought, given that no-one can put themselves into other people's financial positions, where due to one factor or another in your life, the first decision you have to make is about which of life's luxuries you go without. Put simply: not everybody can afford the outlay.
I mean, *I* own all seven seasons. Proudly. I've done my bit for the cause.
But I have a regular job, and I don't have a mortgage (or a family) to consider. I can 'indulge' myself, but I don't doubt for a moment that there are people out there who have to look at their options. Especially in today's climate.No, IMO the most likely scenario is that the kinds of people who are likely to tighten their belts are going to look at the (relatively) cheaper options available to them. It doesn't help that TNG-R has been released into a climate where optical media is dying anyway, and that it's competing against itself on streaming services. (Actually, as a point of interest, it'd be fascinating to see what the numbers are vis-a-vis how TNG has done on streaming vs blu ray sales, is there any way to get those figures?)
Of course, as you say, CBS could have done a better job promoting the benefits of the product too. There's been missed opportunities here.
Yes, I agree that when faced with choice of streaming or buying the discs, many would choose the first.
Wouldn't be much a case of not having disposable income, but more of choosing the cheaper option, which is quite rational!
On that note, I wonder how well did the show do on streaming?
Wouldn't be much a case of not having disposable income, but more of choosing the cheaper option, which is quite rational!
On that note, I wonder how well did the show do on streaming?
^ It'd be interesting to see the numbers for sure.
I'm still "old school" and prefer to have my media on optical disc with beautiful packaging on my shelf. In the past I've even argued the extent to which online services have taken it over. But most recently (in the last six-twelve months), even I've come to the realisation that streaming has made in-roads as an option for people. It seems to be supplanting the traditional 'home video' formats much faster than I would ever have predicted.
The TNG-R Blu Rays may have simply had the (mis?)fortune to be released during a period when optical media sales seem to be on a general decline.....
I'm still "old school" and prefer to have my media on optical disc with beautiful packaging on my shelf.
In the past I've even argued the extent to which online services have taken it over. But most recently (in the last six-twelve months), even I've come to the realisation that streaming has made in-roads as an option for people. It seems to be supplanting the traditional 'home video' formats much faster than I would ever have predicted.The TNG-R Blu Rays may have simply had the (mis?)fortune to be released during a period when optical media sales seem to be on a general decline.....
Unfortunately, we don't have any numbers like that for streaming. People have quoted "ratings" from netflix here before, but that's nothing more than people who have offered their one-click opinion of the series. It doesn't account for how much of the show they watched (if any at all) on streaming, how many episodes, how many times, how often, demographics, etc. Those are the numbers I'd love to see. Hopefully someday those will be available. And not just for Netflix.
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