Will Internet Video Replace Blu-ray?

"Eventually movie prices fell to the point where consumers could make the decision to purchase the movie for their collection, or rent the movie for 1/3 the price. Luckily for Blockbuster, <a href="http://skiptalk.com/blockbusted/">the value to the consumer remained in the rental arrangement</a>. It was an entire industry built around a simple mistake: Hollywood's inability to recognize the simple economics of value. The reason that the video rental industry still exists today is that there is no value to the average consumer if he has to pay $20 for the movie. The rental industry essentially corrects this mistake and makes a huge profit that should be enjoyed by the producers themselves." full article: http://skiptalk.com/blockbusted/

I can certainly see myself downloading rental HD movies, or renting them through Netflix or some other similar company. But I think I will most likely rent Blu Ray through the Netflix business format rather than download, unless I am in some kind of unstoppable rush to see it. I can't see too many times where waiting two or so days for a movie will be catastrophic.

Also, I don't have fiber optic connections (a la FIOS) and don't care to spend any time downloading large files. In addition, for the next few years I don't see any internet software provider giving the consumers complete dowloads with all that is on the Blu Ray disc--including the best audio surround codecs, such as Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio.

If I am going to pay the same for renting by internet or mail, it is a no-brainer for me to go by mail--at least until the downloads have 1080p, the movies totally uneditted, directors and actors commentary, and most definitely the best video codecs.

I also don't think the price for total ownership of a movie download will be significantly cheaper than buying the Blu Ray disc--particularly when various sources have them on sale. And if I own the movie I presume I will be able to "rip" a copy, either by legal or illegal means:-)

I do expect that I am in a large minority on this issue. I expect the geeks and the under 35 crowd will likely go with downloads, since Idon't see the masses as caring to a great extent about the ultimate quality of 1080p and the best audio codecs.

Greg

One huge problem with rental optical disc media is defects from mishandling by previous renters. Don't you just love watching 80% of a movie, only to have it lock up and prevent you from finishing the movie due to a scratch! That's why I buy movies I consider worthy of repeated viewings over time. Downloads that can be archived would be better than renting hard media in this respect. I certainly like the idea of a media appliance that is not a computer. There will always be a large percentage of the movie-loving public who will not want to use a computer.

Joe Kane started talking about this capability over 18 months ago, for NEW movie releases, timed to coincide with the theatrical release! I also like the idea of digital rights management offering the option of purchasing a title for download and making one copy on BD-R for extended personal use. There are many questions that could be presented about HD audio formats, etc., from the download plans. Image and sound quality from the data streams and the associated hardware will be potential hangups, if some of the same chimpanzees will be making decisions then like they are now. This is a subject that I'll be watching intently.

Best regards and beautiful pictures,
Alan Brown, President
CinemaQuest, Inc.
www.cinemaquestinc.com

"Advancing the art and science of electronic imaging"

the model I see winning is what some providers are already doing, and that is selling minutes that allow you to stream any content in a collection.

You could pay $3/hour and choose a live stream from blockbuster, and you could watch anything in the collection as long as your pass was valid. FF and rewind all you want - even jump to another stream if the content sucks.

I'll bet once 10+Mbs connections are the standard for broadband this model will win out.

I mentioned this in a different thread, but there is an alternative to internet downloads already available. If you are a DishNet customer and have your trusty DVR, you can activate the USB port for $39, add as large an external hard drive as you want and save movies to your hearts content. My 750 Gb drive should hold over a hundred HD movies. Cost around a buck and a half for HD movies, lots less for TCM kind of content.....

Pros: HD quality, ability to erase when you decide that indeed, you're never gonna watch it again. Some hacks have already figured out how to get these programs into their PCs from the DVR.....If it gets full, unplug it and install another one.....

Cons: You can only playback through the same DVR as you recorded with. Some copyprotected material won't copy. Not fast downloads like the internet, but then, you can schedule a copy for the middle of night or during the day when you're working and wouldn't be using the TV and DVR anyway......

Just a thought.....

Jerry

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.

We want 1080p/24fps and HD audio formats, if BD is going to be replaced with anything. Enough with this going backwards in quality for convenience sake!

"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public." H. L. Mencken.

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.

PPV only. That doesn't happen with HBO/SHO/MAX/etc. At least not yet.

We want 1080p/24fps and HD audio formats, if BD is going to be replaced with anything. Enough with this going backwards in quality for convenience sake!

We? And just how many people do you think own a system capable of displaying 1080p/24 and decoding HD audio formats?

The mass market has never catered to audiophiles and videophiles. There is nothing wrong with 720p/1080i video and DD and DTS 7.1 audio and it's a huge step up from NTSC.

I guess everyone should eat at nothing but 5 star restaurants and we should close Wendys, McDonalds, Chilis and Red Lobster and all the other mainstream restaurants.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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?

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

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

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.

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

Do you really want the government to get in the business of telling us what we can download and what we can't? What will be next? Why not ban text messaging? How about banning breast implants? They use valuable resources in the health care system. How about banning cars that get below xx mpg. Again, a valuable resource...

Hospitals ban elective surgery any time they get too busy for it.

Banning movies would hardly address the problem. The typical American household uses as much bandwidth as a major office park a few years ago. We download music, watch videos, email photos. We are now ranked 15th place on the broadband ranking kept by the OECD. People from other countries are shocked by two things about America: our homeless situation and the terrible state of broadband (not an exaggeration, by the way).

Improving America's broadband infrastructure is vitally important to keeping us competitive with the rest of the world. We need more capacity, better compression technologies and more sophisticated routers.

Banning movie downloads in this country to reduce bandwidth problems would be like banning school buses to avoid building highways. Not smart; not future pointing; and ultimately anti-American. Unfortunately our current administration would seem to have trouble spelling "smart", least of all being it.

Henry

School busses are necessary. Downloading movies is not. In a few years maybe 80% of all internet traffic will be HD movies. Is that a good reason why we should expand internet capacity?

Are you just picking the 80% number because it sounds nice and high, or is it based on some sort of factual information?

- Miller

Perhaps a better analogy would be ban a particular product being trucked on highways to avoid building more and better highways. Movies are Internet commerce analogous to highway commerce. To be competitive in this world, we need to expand our ability to do commerce, not cripple it.

Miller- I made it up. It is a wild guess, but it seems about right to me. It assumes that internet capacity expands to meet demand. Most likely capacity will not expand that fast, and it will be a long time before movies reach the 80% mark. I would not be surprised if they reach 90%. For the next decade movie suppliers will make their quality as high as they can get away with, which will be just enough to make the internet miserable for the rest of us. -Ken

I believe he's right. Experts are predicting movie downloads may reach 80 percent with potential to jam up America's Internet. My argument is that this is a problem with our infrastructure and that needs to be addressed before we start banning downloads. We can't be competitive in the world if we reduce commerce in an attempt to fix our own infrastructure problems. This is a bad idea that would be a further strain on our current flagging economy.

Henry- Our competitiveness in the world is harmed by squandering our nation

So who's going to judge the worth of a product? You? Let's not be ridiculous. I'm talking about free enterprise, not turning our country into some kind of soviet state where someone decides what products should be distributed.

We should be worrying about the fact that the rest of the world no longer considers the dollar the standard on which to do business, not planning on how to bring down free enterprise. The fact that our Internet infrastructure doesn't measure up to those in many countries should be a warning to us all.

Henry