Discount DVD rental kiosk operator Redbox recently announced it would start stocking Blu-ray movies for $1.50 per night rentals.
[url=http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/columns/2010/08/hdtv-expert-redbox-a-blurace-to-the-bottom.php]Read Column[/url]
HDTV Expert - Redbox: A “Blu-race” to the bottom?
-
720pete
- Major Contributor
- Posts: 133
- Joined: Fri Nov 12, 2004 12:19 am
-
stevekaden
- Major Contributor
- Posts: 241
- Joined: Thu Nov 30, 2006 3:20 pm
I'm not sure what's missing in your systems, but in my videophile peers and my system, 1080 kicks upscales butt. And we have all kinds of BR and upscaling players. I have Oppo BR with the Anchor bay chip. I think it does a fabulous job.
But 10' from my 1080 calibrated Kuro, and audio-wise, there is a real, distinct difference.
Especially since I stopped drinking.
Even my utterly technically brain dead wife appreciate the difference (- though I do have to ask!)
And I'd argue that there is reason to buy (not that I ever buy at first release list price), and that is because if I really like something, I want to be able to see it and share it, and not be dependent on what is in the RedBox, or rental store, today, or what shape they are in.
And when I have the time, I like to view the extras. Some of us actually like cinema: the commentary of the creators, how it was made, all that mundane to the masses stuff - the stuff cut out of the rentals so they can (at least) jam in the commercials.
Oh, yeah, no commercials in the disks I buy. (I don't buy from Blockbuster, etc.). So while I do rent, will try RedBox, I still think there is a strong, building market for Blu-ray - or at least for what it offers. When they get lossless audio and extras over the wire, on demand, I'll be there also.
And for all this I and me, I am not so egotistical to think I am alone, or special....I just think I have a lot of peers with similar feelings. Though, of course, the majority could care less as long as there is an image and noise.
But 10' from my 1080 calibrated Kuro, and audio-wise, there is a real, distinct difference.
Especially since I stopped drinking.
Even my utterly technically brain dead wife appreciate the difference (- though I do have to ask!)
And I'd argue that there is reason to buy (not that I ever buy at first release list price), and that is because if I really like something, I want to be able to see it and share it, and not be dependent on what is in the RedBox, or rental store, today, or what shape they are in.
And when I have the time, I like to view the extras. Some of us actually like cinema: the commentary of the creators, how it was made, all that mundane to the masses stuff - the stuff cut out of the rentals so they can (at least) jam in the commercials.
Oh, yeah, no commercials in the disks I buy. (I don't buy from Blockbuster, etc.). So while I do rent, will try RedBox, I still think there is a strong, building market for Blu-ray - or at least for what it offers. When they get lossless audio and extras over the wire, on demand, I'll be there also.
And for all this I and me, I am not so egotistical to think I am alone, or special....I just think I have a lot of peers with similar feelings. Though, of course, the majority could care less as long as there is an image and noise.
-
Rodolfo
- Author
- Posts: 755
- Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2004 8:46 pm
- Location: Lansdowne VA
Help BD take off? (is already flying high and fast) - Race to the bottom? (who would be on top? overcompressed Internet over DSL?)
Pete,
I suspect that the DVDs look so good on your 42” plasma not only because of the good OPPO scaling but I wonder if it is also because 2.35:1/2.40:1 movies look even smaller on that screen, perhaps 30”+, plus two black bars indeed, and probably at the 16:9 sitting distance you may not notice “intolerable” differences on such AR image when compared to the Blu-ray version.
As you know, to get the theatrical involvement and fill your peripheral vision at least 30 degrees side-to-side, you have to sit very close to the small image above, which makes it unpractical on a family room with dedicated places for large sofas to fit other people sharing the viewing; it may feel like watching the local news from the kitchen while cooking dinner, certainly not like a HT experience but sometimes the thought of family in a casual environment is more important than the movie itself.
In the case of your 92” Da-lite screen, if your number expresses diagonal measurement on a 16:9 screen as I suspect (although it should express width on a HT screen), a widescreen movie as the above would also show a smaller diagonal size with black bars eating about 30% of resolution lines of your projector. While the OPPO may still do a good job for DVD on that setting there should be a considerable difference with a Blu-ray version. I believe you said you have noticed it but do not use the HT anyway, so perhaps this is a matter of being satisfied enough with lower quality and smaller screen size for the benefit of a practical and more casual family viewing setting, instead of a better movie experience on a dark dedicated HT.
On my 58” Elite and 60” Kuro the DVDs display well with good scaling but I can see obvious difference with Blu-ray viewing from 3 times picture height distance. On my 135” Cinemascope 1080p HT with no black bars for widescreen movies and dedicating the whole screen for the image, the upscaled DVDs still impress well casual viewers perhaps because the huge screen and extreme width takes them into the movie inmediately.
For me DVDs are just acceptable at first impression on such screen, but I stop looking for perfection when I consider that the original resolution within the disc is only one sixth of BD and my projector's DMD, and that over 80% of what I see moving rapidly on the screen is actually the wonder of interpolated pixels created by a good quality video processor. When playing a BD version with the whole set of 1080p pixels it is easy to decide which version to rent (50 cents more) or buy (see prices below).
To recommend one disc format or the other, or for some, to journalistically kill one format prematurely and favor Internet media instead, many factors should be taken into account in the analysis and the conclusions, a few of those are screen size, resolution, video processing, and viewing distance. Only then a valid evaluation can be stated, or, as a reader, been able to judge the weight of statements made by others, and maybe discard them.
As you said, I welcome the Red-Box addition of Blu-ray, there are many movies I want to rent in Blu-ray that I am tired to wait from the Netflix “long waiting” queue, but there are also many BD movies I buy anyway as a collector of good action sci/f movies. Viewing a rented BD sometimes helps me decide a movie purchase and Red-Box would be invaluable for that. I will be feeding both markets I also get the benefit of reassuring my choices and my collector’s investment.
Regarding prices of new releases, I am not sure where you buy, but Amazon has many Blu-ray movies for under $10, some new releases like ”Iron Man 2” are as high as $26.99, the price you mentioned, but a reader should also know that the DVD version sells for $22.99 on the same Amazon. Would that give a different picture of BD and DVD? But wait.
For $4 more the Blu-ray version has additionally a DVD disc and a Digital Copy version in the same package. Not to mention having 6 times the DVD resolution, higher bit rate, and lossless audio. The buyer can then take the BD and play it on the HT where quality is needed, store the BD there and take the DVD and play it on the kids room, store the DVD there and take the Digital Copy and play it on a laptop on his/her next trip, all for $4 more.
And it gets better; pricing of DVDs is in some cases double the cost of the Blu-ray version, for example, the “2001 a Space Odyssey” movie released in Blu-ray is $7.99 in Amazon while its DVD version is $17.49. The Hangover movie in Blu-ray is $12.99 while its DVD version is $14.49. The Harry Potter Half-Blood Prince Blu-ray is $12.99 while its DVD version is $14.49.
Regarding your last statement “If this (Red-Box) doesn’t help the format take off, then nothing will.” it actually seems that “a reasonably selling price is already helping considerably”, without Red-Box rentals.
Some negative journalism also say that BD will be dead in a couple of years because the Internet will take over and is better, and some may say that $1.50 Red-Box rentals may not help BD media sales, ignoring the large market of collectors and movie-ownership motivation. However, the BD “take off” stage is already past, the BD format is already established with reasonably priced players, reasonably priced TVs that can play BD at its full resolution, and with media rapidly growing in variety and with down spiral pricing.
Best Regards,
Rodolfo La Maestra
I suspect that the DVDs look so good on your 42” plasma not only because of the good OPPO scaling but I wonder if it is also because 2.35:1/2.40:1 movies look even smaller on that screen, perhaps 30”+, plus two black bars indeed, and probably at the 16:9 sitting distance you may not notice “intolerable” differences on such AR image when compared to the Blu-ray version.
As you know, to get the theatrical involvement and fill your peripheral vision at least 30 degrees side-to-side, you have to sit very close to the small image above, which makes it unpractical on a family room with dedicated places for large sofas to fit other people sharing the viewing; it may feel like watching the local news from the kitchen while cooking dinner, certainly not like a HT experience but sometimes the thought of family in a casual environment is more important than the movie itself.
In the case of your 92” Da-lite screen, if your number expresses diagonal measurement on a 16:9 screen as I suspect (although it should express width on a HT screen), a widescreen movie as the above would also show a smaller diagonal size with black bars eating about 30% of resolution lines of your projector. While the OPPO may still do a good job for DVD on that setting there should be a considerable difference with a Blu-ray version. I believe you said you have noticed it but do not use the HT anyway, so perhaps this is a matter of being satisfied enough with lower quality and smaller screen size for the benefit of a practical and more casual family viewing setting, instead of a better movie experience on a dark dedicated HT.
On my 58” Elite and 60” Kuro the DVDs display well with good scaling but I can see obvious difference with Blu-ray viewing from 3 times picture height distance. On my 135” Cinemascope 1080p HT with no black bars for widescreen movies and dedicating the whole screen for the image, the upscaled DVDs still impress well casual viewers perhaps because the huge screen and extreme width takes them into the movie inmediately.
For me DVDs are just acceptable at first impression on such screen, but I stop looking for perfection when I consider that the original resolution within the disc is only one sixth of BD and my projector's DMD, and that over 80% of what I see moving rapidly on the screen is actually the wonder of interpolated pixels created by a good quality video processor. When playing a BD version with the whole set of 1080p pixels it is easy to decide which version to rent (50 cents more) or buy (see prices below).
To recommend one disc format or the other, or for some, to journalistically kill one format prematurely and favor Internet media instead, many factors should be taken into account in the analysis and the conclusions, a few of those are screen size, resolution, video processing, and viewing distance. Only then a valid evaluation can be stated, or, as a reader, been able to judge the weight of statements made by others, and maybe discard them.
As you said, I welcome the Red-Box addition of Blu-ray, there are many movies I want to rent in Blu-ray that I am tired to wait from the Netflix “long waiting” queue, but there are also many BD movies I buy anyway as a collector of good action sci/f movies. Viewing a rented BD sometimes helps me decide a movie purchase and Red-Box would be invaluable for that. I will be feeding both markets I also get the benefit of reassuring my choices and my collector’s investment.
Regarding prices of new releases, I am not sure where you buy, but Amazon has many Blu-ray movies for under $10, some new releases like ”Iron Man 2” are as high as $26.99, the price you mentioned, but a reader should also know that the DVD version sells for $22.99 on the same Amazon. Would that give a different picture of BD and DVD? But wait.
For $4 more the Blu-ray version has additionally a DVD disc and a Digital Copy version in the same package. Not to mention having 6 times the DVD resolution, higher bit rate, and lossless audio. The buyer can then take the BD and play it on the HT where quality is needed, store the BD there and take the DVD and play it on the kids room, store the DVD there and take the Digital Copy and play it on a laptop on his/her next trip, all for $4 more.
And it gets better; pricing of DVDs is in some cases double the cost of the Blu-ray version, for example, the “2001 a Space Odyssey” movie released in Blu-ray is $7.99 in Amazon while its DVD version is $17.49. The Hangover movie in Blu-ray is $12.99 while its DVD version is $14.49. The Harry Potter Half-Blood Prince Blu-ray is $12.99 while its DVD version is $14.49.
Regarding your last statement “If this (Red-Box) doesn’t help the format take off, then nothing will.” it actually seems that “a reasonably selling price is already helping considerably”, without Red-Box rentals.
Some negative journalism also say that BD will be dead in a couple of years because the Internet will take over and is better, and some may say that $1.50 Red-Box rentals may not help BD media sales, ignoring the large market of collectors and movie-ownership motivation. However, the BD “take off” stage is already past, the BD format is already established with reasonably priced players, reasonably priced TVs that can play BD at its full resolution, and with media rapidly growing in variety and with down spiral pricing.
Best Regards,
Rodolfo La Maestra