[Requiem]

Up until now I've been very resilient when it comes to Bluray releases. My main gripes and concerns are as follows:

- Digital releases will be the future
- I don't want to re-buy my movie collection on yet another new format
- I'll be screwed when the industry decides to give up on Bluray


I bought a new monitor last year. I've not had a great deal of time to sit and watch a movie but I have been watching HDTV. And I've been taking for granted how it fills most of the screen in brilliant clarity with very little artifacts. The other night I finally found myself with a good chunk of free time and decided to sit down and watch a movie. Inserted the DVD of one of my favorite movies, The Matrix, and sat back ready to enjoy.

In some ways, I was slightly disappointed. It was the first moment where I felt DVDs just don't cut it anymore. Where they felt dated. A relatively poor resolution compared with today's standards, and the awful codecs used for compressing the video. HD content is outstanding by comparison, in much the same way VHS -> DVD was an amazing leap forward.

I'm finally finding myself hoping certain movies or TV shows will be re-released on Bluray to provide a reason and opportunity to watch again, but this time in HD. A chance to better absorb all the details. All this would be even more wonderful if it wasn't for the two things which killed my original buzz for the Bluray format. The inevitable two things:

- High prices (and inflated prices for incredibly popular films)
- DRM, DRM, DRM

But I'm almost sold. For future content released on Bluray and DVD, I'll probably choose Bluray so long as it is within a similar price range.


How about you guys, though? Over the last few years, has anyone changed their stance on Bluray and actually started buying into the format?

[???????]

I honestly can't say that it affects me one way or the other, so I really have no opinion on Bluray. I'm not the type of person to sit down and watch things for long periods of time; the only thing I've brought home to watch in the past 10 years is The Dark Knight and I still haven't sat down to watch it for a second time even though I've taken the wrapper off of the casing and had the movie for almost a year now. All but maybe one television in my house wouldn't be able to display things in high definition. Whenever watching things, I've always been content with it not looking the nicest it could unless it was noticeably bad to watch at its current quality.

[NiGHTS Noob]

I'm the kind of guy who only watches a movie or a series a few times. The number of times I've watched even my favorite movies or series is countable on one hand. For that reason I don't really want to invest in Bluray because I won't get a whole lot of use out of it.

Another thing is that I really don't get the massive difference everyone's talking about. Not in the sense that I can't tell how much better it looks, but in the sense that DVD's still look really good to me and don't feel dated at all. I can even put in a VHS and not be bothered in the slightest.

However, I would like to get an HDTV simply so I can fucking see half of my new games. Seriously, it's fucking bullshit that they have to sacrifice the ability to see them properly on standard-def just to get HD support. The whole screen just looks like either a big blurry mess or random jutting pixels due to the resolution and screen differences. Just give me a goddamn Standard mode that modifies the resolution and contrast to run proper on an older TV, I don't have access to the only HDTV in our house most of the time because my parents are using it.

[Sway]

I am now buying Blu-ray these days. It really does make a difference on an HDTV, although I can easily stand DVD resolution and standard def TV as well. I've re-bought a few things, but only stuff I really enjoy.

You bring up a good point about digital downloads. What is weird is I feel kind of like I'm wasting my money at the moment. For a movie or TV show I really, really like, I get the DVD/Blu-ray. I like to have the packaging and everything that comes with it, and the sense of ownership that comes with it. You know, woo, got my Two-Face coin with The Dark Knight!, got this great episode guide with whatever TV show so I don't have to look around for the one I want!, etc. With the inevitable switch to direct download of films in the future, that's going to go out the window, with pretty boxes replaced by pretty small JPEG files, and I'll be more and more likely to pirate stuff. DRM's just going to get harder, of course, but it will never be hard enough, especially since there are high stakes in pirating as well.

Right now, my music collection is 100% digital, and I downloaded a shitload of it for free. Yes, I paid for some things that I thought were worth it or couldn't be found elsewhere, but if I can get Them Crooked Vultures' CD a week early off Demonoid, that's what I'm doing, even if I like the band. There's no incentive to own it, because that cultural aspect has been phased out. My new iPod or Zune or iPhone or Droid or whatever is where the industry is focused, and TV especially is also not far behind. OnDemand content is huge even right now. So, in this way, I guess I'm paying for the future, because in 10 years we're gonna have home media servers (PS5s and whatnot probably) streaming to our HDTVs and our phones, and some of us will pirate, and some of us will subscribe to NetFlix and get unlimited streaming for $x.99 a month, and some of us will pay $15 from Amazon.com for the newest Bond film on our hard drive, and we'll be watching TV from whatever the next incarnation of Hulu is, and in the end I won't be spending the same amount on entertainment, I'm guessing, although the vast majority of people still will since they are more casual with things like that. In that sense, it's always been like that and it always will be, and Blu-ray's just another step, but we're getting to the point where for me, it doesn't make a difference, and I'm looking forward to this digital future.

[NiGHTS Noob]

The sad thing is that it'll probably happen with games too, and that's going to create a hell of a lot more pirates than there are right now. I tend to refuse to pirate shit out of principal, but I will say that I have played purely digital games on private servers in order to play without paying, and if every game goes digital it's only going to be more tempting to do so. The fact is, when I can't have a game cartridge or disc to prove that I have a game, really physically legitimately own it, and when I can't get that excited feeling of popping a new game into the drive for the first time, then what's the point of paying for it?

It's already happened to music, everything I've bought has been on CD, everything off the internet I pirated. I didn't get a whole lot off of the internet other than fan-made free licensed songs, but I've got no incentive to pay for it off the internet when pirating it gives me the exact same product with literally no difference. "The makers will go broke." isn't a good enough argument because piracy has never been a main cause of the demise of anything or anyone.

This post has been edited by NiGHTS Noob: 20 December 2009 - 12:59 AM

[???????]

I don't really think most pirates think the way you're making it seem like they do. I don't think very many of them are going to be thinking nor caring about the fact that they're not getting a physical copy as proof that they own a product nor "that excited feeling of popping a new game into the drive for the first time" (I'll feel excited when I'm really close to being able to play a game I've been anticipating for a long time, but this goes for all games, not just physical copies). Sure, some may think about how old what they're pirating may be, how they're not really hurting a company by pirating, or some other reason to justify their actions/make their actions not seem as bad, but I think the thoughts of the majority are/will be more along the lines of "Awesome, I can get this for free!" and nothing more.

[Requiem]

The talk of physical products and that feeling of owning something reminds me...

I purchased some digital music a few days ago (I've refrained from doing so up until now) and the feeling of "I just downloaded an MP3 I paid for" was completely underwhelming. I really like owning a physical product. I like being able to sit it on my shelf. I like being able to cast my eye over the various titles when deciding which movie or game to pick up. I like being able to study the box of my favorite movie/game/CD before taking out the disc and putting it in a drive. It's all part of an experience. I still have all my old game boxes from way back for similar reasons. I may not play those games anymore but I can hold the box in my hands, look it over, and recall the good memories.

You can't treasure digital formats the same way.

[Muzzy Roberto]

I own a PS3, so I luv BluRay. But if I didn't own one, I don't think it would be that big a deal for me. I always end up watching movie from far away, vision fogged by clouds of smoke, so picture and audio quality is of no concern to me.

However, because the fact that blu-ray players are rather pricey, I buy all my movie blu-ray just so my friends can't borrow them due to their lack of being cheap and 360 fanboys.

But yes, there is a difference, I'll give it that. I'd like to see them utilize all that storage space and put some TV collections on one disc instead of 3.

[Rugdog]

Digital is the way of the future.... but as for me, I like to have an actual physical copy of the game/comic/cd/movie.

[Master of AFTER]

I definitely agree with the people who have expressed a preference for owning a physical copy of something as opposed to a digital download. Despite the ease of attaining something via download, you just don't get that same feeling of genuine possession that you do when you get to actually hold a tangible product in your hands. And while a major argument for digital distribution is that the thing you buy will never wear out or get lost, I feel quite differently. As someone who has had two computer hard drives crash and multiple flash memory devices fail, I actually feel less assured when I only own a digital copy of something. To me, downloaded digital media feels less secure than something you have copied onto a disc or a cartridge or some other physical format.

It's tough to argue that digital distribution won't become more popular as time goes by, but I have my doubts that it will become the primary—much less only—form of media distribution anytime soon. No matter how far technology advances, humans will remain beings that are bound to a physical realm of existence, and for that reason I think we will always have an instinctive inclination toward things that we can physically touch and view as material objects in the real world. Plus, that whole element of collectability is all but lost when you're dealing with digital purchases. Think of how many people continue to hold onto individual games or music CDs or old movies that are later re-released in compilation packages or as digital downloads, all because they want to preserve that satisfaction of seeing their original purchases sitting there on the shelf and knowing they own those as a part of their accumulated possessions. Even if digital downloads carry the benefit of practicality, consider all the collections people have of objects that are intrinsically useless outside of their status as part of a collection of similarly useless things. What is more practical is not always what people want.

I just don't think that the digital download is as popular as a lot of media distributors would have their consumers believe. The PSP Go (the much-hyped "world's first download-only game system") has been selling far fewer units than Sony expected in both the US and Japan—arguably the two biggest technology-obsessed countries on the planet. Also, as popular as legal download sites for TV shows and movies have become, they still only account for a tiny fraction of the total sales for those forms of media when stacked against DVD and Blu-ray releases. Lastly, the advent of certain movies becoming available for digital rentals the same day as their theater debuts hasn't hurt movie theaters' ticket sales anywhere near as much as people were expecting. In fact, the impact has been virtually imperceptible based on what I've heard.

As for Blu-ray movies, I'm more or less in the same boat as Sway. I have a Blu-ray player, and the movies do look pretty damn nice on a good HDTV. The difference is enough that I'll usually opt to buy a new movie on Blu-ray rather than DVD (provided there isn't a really huge price difference or anything), but it's not enough that I've felt compelled to re-buy anything I already own on DVD. As far as advances in formats go, I think the leap from DVD to Blu-ray is far less impressive than the leap that DVD was from VHS.

[???????]

Master of AFTER, on 21 December 2009 - 01:38 AM, said:

I definitely agree with the people who have expressed a preference for owning a physical copy of something as opposed to a digital download. Despite the ease of attaining something via download, you just don't get that same feeling of genuine possession that you do when you get to actually hold a tangible product in your hands. And while a major argument for digital distribution is that the thing you buy will never wear out or get lost, I feel quite differently. As someone who has had two computer hard drives crash and multiple flash memory devices fail, I actually feel less assured when I only own a digital copy of something. To me, downloaded digital media feels less secure than something you have copied onto a disc or a cartridge or some other physical format.

Thinking about it now, don't you think that whatever distributor you download from will have some sort of system that will allow users to re-download lost products? The downsides to that are that there may be a time restriction and/or download limit to prevent the spreading of what you downloaded and the loss of saved data if this something that saves/you save to regularly, but at least what you downloaded isn't lost until you decide to pay again.

[Master of AFTER]

I know a lot of digital distribution services have a system for re-downloading something you've already bought before, but those systems are sometimes pretty restrictive and many have a time limit on how long something remains free to download a second or third time. I was also referring to things like hard drives and memory cards that save and later lose data that can't be easily recovered because you had to create the data that the device stored.

Basically, the point I'm trying to make is that digital storage devices are not completely failsafe, and while digital data generally has a longer lifespan than a physical product, it's ultimately still prone to destruction. Just because you've got something downloaded onto a "safe place" on your media storage device of choice doesn't necessarily mean it's really all that safe.

[Muzzy Roberto]

My only gripe with digital media is the inability to take it to a friends house and show him the cool new game you got. We both own 360s, we both have to pay a monthly fee for Xbox Live, but I can't log onto my profile on his machine and show him the new game? Weak.

[KennEH!]

Why can't you? I do it all the time.

[???????]

Microsoft treats a 360 and HDD/Memory Card as a set. If you plan on playing games you downloaded on a different 360, you have to be able to go online with the LIVE account you used to purchase the game, otherwise, you'll only be able to play the trial version of the game. Also, whether you're successful at doing so or not, if you attempt to play a downloaded game on a different 360, when attempting to play it on your 360 again, you have to go back online in order to do so or you'll be stuck with the trial game. It's a bunch of bullshit. Microsoft is paranoid as fuck.

Before I tried letting my little brother play Shadow Complex on his 360 using my HDD, I thought that only the HDD the game was downloaded to and possibly the profile used to do so were important.