DS9 on blu ray?
- Thread starter borgboy
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I wouldn't call as much a niche market as Laserdisc was. I mean, you still find plenty of blurays for sale, both online and in stores. Just a lot less than dvd. But certainly so much more than you ever saw Laserdisc.
Every new movie I buy, is bluray. I love actually owning a movie. Look at the Marvel movies for example. Netflix Netherlands doesn't have all of them, and doesn't keep them forever aswell. If one is gone, I want to be able to watch it again with having to wait for Netflix to stream it again. WE've had the unfortunate bad lack to have no internet for a few days two times in the last seven years. Trust me, it's awesome to have a huge library of actual discs to choose from. And, because I want good quality, I love owning the blurays.
The fact that vinyl sales in the UK have now overtaken digital downloads for the first time is proof positive that we should never take for granted what we're all being told about these things. I am more convinced than ever that "The death of physical media" is nothing more than a myth. Yes sales may be taking a downwards trend from the heights of the 'DVD boom', but I think referring to the imminent death of the medium (so imminent that 'experts' have been predicting it for many years now 
) is short-sighted. It may only become a collector's niche, but I am in no doubt whatsoever that those collector's are in fact still there, and that they are a market ripe for exploiting. 
) is short-sighted. It may only become a collector's niche, but I am in no doubt whatsoever that those collector's are in fact still there, and that they are a market ripe for exploiting. I actually own a large library of Blu-Rays. But for a lot of people even the cost of Blu-Rays/DVD plays a huge factor; I haven't seen the Marvel movies since the first Avengers movie came out (finishing the first part of their cinematic universe) since all the stores that I've seen Iron Man 3 or other Marvel Phase 2/3 movies in on Blu Ray, have had just the regular edition priced in the $35-$45 dollar range, while the DVD has also been priced in the $25-$35, (by comparison the recent Batman-Superman Blu Ray I've seen in stores for a maximum of $25, while the DVD has been around the $10 mark), whereas a lot of people think it's cheaper to pay $8 dollars a month or buy for $120 one of those Android/Roku boxes and just stream for free (with ads) any show or movie that they want (or I tend to download from iTunes, and a lot of times, especially with TV series, the difference between HD & SD versions of seasons is no more than $5, but a lot of times the difference is closer to $1 or $2 more, whereas for physical it's usually closer to $10). Or if the do want the movie, they just wait for stores to have those "Movie Blowout" bins where they can get it on DVD for $2.50 - $5. (I can't recall the last time that I saw a store with a $5 Blu Ray bin.). Plus people don't need a lot of storage room for digital copies.
There is demand for physical media, but the big demand comes from DVD, not Blu-Ray, and by comparison Blu-Ray is like Laserdisc in that it is the people who want the high picture quality, whereas your average consumer is fine with upconverted DVD, and is more concerned by price. And I saw that report out of the U.K. about vinyl sales, but that report also pointed out that that occurred most likely due to Christmas sales. At Christmas, and even for birthdays, most people prefer to receive a physical gift rather than a gift card (plus at Christmas people like seeing the classic image of large gifts under the tree), so physical disc sales are going to spike. But I even noticed this Christmas season, but amongst video games in stores I was seeing a number of games for the PS4 and Xbox One S that were $30-40 dollars per disc, compared to $75 for a full game, but when you read the back, it mentioned that the disc only contained episode 1 of the game with more episodes to be released online only, and could be accessed with an included code, and there were other things that could be bought online only for gameplay.
It's interesting. I buy blus, but a lot less than I used to buy DVDs. Mostly because as a parent, I rarely have time to watch what I want anymore. But when I do purchase a blu, it's a series I really want to own in case a streaming service drops a show or something (that happens). My intention is to rip the blus and have them available on my hard drive for Plex/local streaming purposes, but I have had trouble ripping blus as opposed to DVDs. I need more hours in the day...haha!
And the great thing about buying 4K - always come with a bluray as well.
It depends what people want but if you have a decent telly (I have a 55" OLED 4K) nothing beats physical media - 4K streaming is *good enough* (and that's fine for the vast majority of people) but for big films, I still want the disc - nothing for everything but for a select number of films, I want to watch the best version...
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But how many of those Blu-Rays are TV series? The majority of Blu-Rays that I see are theatrical movies as either stand-alone discs or box sets of film series or those multi- packs where the film's are just put together because the star one actor or their themes are similar. How many newer shows, that are produced in HD do you see on Blu? How about shows that were cancelled after 1 season, such as "Pan Am"? Or even shows like"Pawn Stars", "Orange Is The New Black" or "Fuller House"? Or how about animated fare aimed at kids? I hear the new Sailor Moon dubs are doing pretty well, despite the Blu-Ray video being poorly upconverted 480i (which is a fairly accurate statement for a number of catalogue titles from all the studios).
@tomswift2002 does raise a good point about TV shows. Interestingly, by far the biggest reason the DVD boom even happened was because for the first time people were able to buy their favorite TV shows and collect them in full for a reasonable price without it taking up ridiculous amounts of shelf space ala VHS. Most TV shows (eg the likes of Seinfeld) only ever got 'best of' releases on videotape because releasing whole shows was almost cost prohibitive exceot for specialist fare like Star Trek, Buffy, SG1 or Doctor Who, where a fanbase could demonstrably be relied on to buy the lot. DVD made TV shows accessible to a mass audience of people who wanted to own them. And far more than movies, it was TV on DVD that pushed sales of DVDs into the stratosphere.
For better or worse, Blu Ray has never cracked that market. The few shows that have been released have really struggled to gain traction paired against cheaper DVD options. And the fact that a number of 'vintage' shows simply can't be released "cheap and cheerfully" in HD, they require far too much work to get them up to standard. TNG-R proved that consumers can't be relied on to buy individual seasons, so the older shows that have been released have often been done as 'complete series' releases (eg. The 60s Batman, X-Files, Friends.)
For better or worse, Blu Ray has never cracked that market. The few shows that have been released have really struggled to gain traction paired against cheaper DVD options. And the fact that a number of 'vintage' shows simply can't be released "cheap and cheerfully" in HD, they require far too much work to get them up to standard. TNG-R proved that consumers can't be relied on to buy individual seasons, so the older shows that have been released have often been done as 'complete series' releases (eg. The 60s Batman, X-Files, Friends.)
By going totally streaming, you are giving complete control back to content providers and distributors. I use streaming, but the things that are important to me, I still buy a hard copy.
Same here.
Unfortunately, having got Netflix I watched Daredevil season one, Jessica Jones, most of Daredevil season two and haven't even got around to Luke Cage yet. Haven't used it for months.
I'll be buying them on Bluray (and not watching those either) soon...
I used to use a combination of AnyDVD and MakeMKV with nearly 100% success. However, with the current huge amount of content available via Amazon, Netflix and Sky, I haven't bothered for two years. If I could be assured that the shows and movies that I own on Blu-ray or DVD will continue to be available via streaming, I would get rid of my discs as well.
I streamed "Duet" from Netflix the other day and it reminded me that if the dramatic content is high quality, I can forgive the picture for not being pin sharp enough to count the number of hair follicles on an actor's nose. In any case, René Auberjonois made up as Odo would probably look exactly the same in UHD as in SD.
Blu-ray keeps getting compared to Laserdisc, but it's just not equivalent. Laserdisc wasn't really even known among the general public; it was very much for serious home theater enthusiasts. The movies themselves cost about $40 each (adjusted for inflation, that's probably $60-something in today's money). On the other hand, I see blu-ray discs everywhere, at all kinds of stores, including Wal-Mart and grocery stores, and with the frequent sales, I can often get new movies for around fifteen bucks.
Kor
Kor
Laserdisc would be seen as lousy resolution (425 lines for NTSC) nowadays, of course.
I was thinking of this too. TNG-R sounded impossible during TOS-R's run. But then it was announced on 7/26/2011; the sampler released 1/31/2012, season one 7/23/2012. This was after TOS-R season three was released 12/18/2009. My calculations were based on the period between the last TOS release and the announcement of TNG-R. So, my thinking was the window was 19 months (and 8 days if we want to be precise). The last release for TNG-R was 12/02/2014. So, 19 months would have been around July of last year.
But, I'd say your calculations posit the long end of the range, while mine is the short end. Right now, we're in the middle. So hope is not entirely lost yet.
My hopes aren't up, but they're not impossibly down either.
The risk to getting my hopes up are relatively low anyway. My previous comment merely suggests a timeframe when those hopes may realistically fade slightly.
The risk to getting my hopes up are relatively low anyway. My previous comment merely suggests a timeframe when those hopes may realistically fade slightly.
SD looks awful on 4K UHD TV's with more than 49" of diameter and those TV's will become norm in 3-4 years. So if CBS want to get new fans for DS9 and VOY they will update those sometime in the future. Question is what will they do with the special effects. They might invest money and do directly an 8K transfer (35mm stock footage does permit higher than 4K resolution if transferred correctly) with redone CGI effects for future proofing DS9 and VOY for the next 20 years, but they also decide just to upgrade the stock footage and leave the CGI up scaled with some smoothing ... But they need to do something because in 4K SD will look and does look so bad that it isn't enjoyable anymore. The TOS and TNG transfer look OK although they show soma age already too in 4K, as they aren't that crisp as in a 1080p set.
If they do end up doing an HD for DS9/VOY it will probably be something along the lines of TNG-R. I expect that if DSC is successful after 1 or 2 seasons, CBS will probably start work on DS9 and Voyager, likely with a Netflix or Amazon partnership.
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