Will Internet Video Replace Blu-ray?

[perfectinght]

Yikes! There's no shortage of hypersensitivity in America as well. As I said, in so many words, I'm not impressed by a replacement for this technology if it means a reduction in quality.

[bbrooks]

I wholeheartedly agree with perfectinght...while this country will always, sadly, be defined by the lowest common denominator which seems to always reset the bar even lower, there is plenty of room for those that truly like HD programming and do not want to sacrifice quality for convenience or to save a few bucks. How many have 1080p capability? I would hope every serious HD viewer does or soon plans to, and nothing on satellite or cable compares to the quality of Blu-ray. You are right that there is nothing wrong with lower quality for those that like it, we just hope that it does not result in losing the availability of true HD for those of us that care.

In addition, downloading HD movies requires bandwidth that most providers aren't willing to provide, let alone 1080p movies. I also enjoy the extras on most DVDs that you don't get in downloads or PPV. I do use NetFlix because I can rent Blu-ray and, since Blu-ray hasn't quite been taken in by the Wal-Mart crowd there are rarely any problem with the rental discs.

Downloading audio files rather than buying the media is a lot different, primarily because MP3 files sound fine to the average person even though lower quality that original CDs. That is definitely not the case between Blu-ray and downloaded movies. It may be some day if the providers pony up the bandwidth, but with outfits like Comcast penalizing people for actually using the limited bandwidth they provide, I don't see mass bandwidth availability for some time.

[akirby]

Yikes! There's no shortage of hypersensitivity in America as well. As I said, in so many words, I'm not impressed by a replacement for this technology if it means a reduction in quality.

Not hypersensitive - I just don't think that there's anything wrong with multiple levels of quality especially when cost is a factor. I don't see any of this as a replacement for high quality BD discs, but rather an alternative for the non audiophiles/videophiles. Some people think MP3s are just fine while others would rather jam swabs into their eardrums than listen to them. No reason they can't coexist.

[DavidEC]

Yikes! There's no shortage of hypersensitivity in America as well. As I said, in so many words, I'm not impressed by a replacement for this technology if it means a reduction in quality.

Not hypersensitive - I just don't think that there's anything wrong with multiple levels of quality especially when cost is a factor. I don't see any of this as a replacement for high quality BD discs, but rather an alternative for the non audiophiles/videophiles. Some people think MP3s are just fine while others would rather jam swabs into their eardrums than listen to them. No reason they can't coexist.

when adirby was talking about supporting BluRay over supporting HD-DVD

"... No studio in their right mind WANTS to publish the same movie in 2 different formats. No retailer or rental outfit WANTS to carry movies in 2 formats..."

So if movie studios only offer movies via PPV either download via the net or satellite why would they bother publishing disc's at all...

A number of historians are worried that the 21st Century will be lost to future generations due to too many important images and sounds being stored electronically and not on film or other well ageing formats.

--David

[hharris4earthlink]

I can see how one would be tempted to jump to conclusions. iTunes revolutionized the music industry. The next step must be something similar with video. Right? Except remember that at the time the music industry was selling collections of songs on one CD forcing people to buy songs they didn't want to get the the one or two they did. iTunes offered a convenient, fast way to buy individual songs at a high enough bit rate that most people found acceptable. There's no video analog to this situation. Another thing about iTunes was that it was easy to backup the data on existing devices. Backing up a large library of HD movies requires hardware beyond what the casual computer user normally has today. The alternative, renting downloaded bits, has a large inconvenience factor that most people will reject out of hand in my estimation.

Right now I don't see any compelling reason for the average user to stop buying or renting disks for movies. It's easy, cheap, fast and, personally, I've never had a case where Netflix sent me a defective disk. One day some form of downloading movies will happen, perhaps with another generation of computers, but not now.

I should add that these comments don't apply to people who like to watch low resolution movies on their computers such as those Apple is currently offering, but in my humble opinion, this will remain a much smaller market than rented or bought DVD or Blu-ray disks for the foreseeable future.

Henry

[akirby]

So if movie studios only offer movies via PPV either download via the net or satellite why would they bother publishing disc's at all...

--David

Because you can't easily download high quality 1080p/24 with TrueHD audio and extras. Not yet anyway.

BD disc becomes the master copy and the lower resolution/smaller download versions are created electronically. And there will always be a market for discs just like standard DVDs enjoy today (at least for the near future). Also not everyone has or wants a DVR or computer for downloading and storing movies for playback.

What's wrong with cheap standard DVDs for folks with upconverting players, BD for video/audiophiles and downloads in between with various delivery methods and resolutions?

[miller]

Excellent article Richard.

Thank you for not writing another piece insisting that Blu-ray was doomed. It seems every other publication wants to create another format war and is pitching Internet Downloads as the death of packaged media.

I am very glad to see that you took the high road, and approached it as an inquisitive piece, rather than a doomsday post (the title says it all). I agree that we are a long way from seeing the quality levels we expect via Internet Download, and nothing can yet touch Blu-ray when viewed in an appropriate environment. I'm sure most who read this forum will agree with that.

I also agree that you can't discount the apathy of the younger generations. I don't listen to mp3's. Anything I rip from my DVD collection is in lossless, and I don't buy from iTunes. I enjoy the convenience of digitally stored media, so I will not miss that ... but I hope that the collective society doesn't forego quality for the sake of that convenience when it comes to video.

Long live packaged media ... or at least the quality-level of packaged media!

- Miller

[cohominous]

Well, what do you know? Miller and I agree on something after all.

[allargon]

The main troubles with Internet and/or Satellite recorded PPV is... in the DirecTV+DVR model they will self destruct after 24 hours after you start viewing and will not have a rewind feature to restart from the beginning.... while not happening today it is reported that it will start happening in April'08.

Dish Network PPV does NOT self-destruct with a DVR. It's there until you delete it. My issue with HD PPV/OnDemand is that most of the movies are open matte or cropped and not OAR. I don't mind a few black bars in my 2.35, 2.40 and 2.76:1 movies.

Pan and scan/foolscreen is for 4:3 CRT's. That sort of stuff has no place in the HD era.

If cable and satellite companies got their content together and somehow got the studios (other than Warner) to remove that waiting period between when the DVD/Blu-Ray(previously HD DVD, too) goes on the shelf and when the PPV movie is available I believe that would be a bigger draw.

Now, Internet VOD/downloads? Err... no. Most of the solutions are too slow, too cumbersome, too expensive and look worse than Blu-Ray/HD DVD and even sometimes upconverted DVD on screens 50" or larger. Moreover, some of them are actually for purchase. Here's the problem I have with purchased downloads. You can't share them with a friend the way you can with physical media. Moreover, they're attached to whatever device you used because they are pretty much DRM'd beyond all recognition. (This only recently changed with music.)

No one mentioned Blu-Ray's sound upgrades over cable/satellite/Internet. Why? The average consumer doesn't care about sound in the mp3 era.

I can see the rental market getting dinged by PPV/downloads if the studios day and date them with the standard DVD/Blu-Ray. I don't see the purchase market going away just yet especially since Blu-Ray is pretty much in the hands of videophiles (not even close to mass market) that actually care about higher PQ and AQ.

[kq6qv]

In all this talk about whether quality video can be downloaded, maybe we should ask whether it should be allowed. Every time my internet link slows down I blame somebody downloading a movie. And these are SD movies. Every day the same movies will be downloaded thousands of times. The potential for swamping the internet is very real.

Downloading movies is a stupid waste of a precious resource. There are so many efficient ways to distribute movies: satellite, cable, DVD, fiber optic