Very OT: How wide is consumer acceptance of blu-ray in your experience?

[Mike Parfit]

We’re seeing most people using Vimeo or other online options for things like nominations, festival submissions, prize judging, almost everything that requires convenience over quality.

But once you’re talking about showing it, festivals generally want Blu-ray. Many prefer it to DCP packages. More flexible with the projectors.

More relevant to this discussion, though, we do have some online sales for our films, and have more Blu-ray sales than we expected. We think that’s going to increase, for a number of reasons already mentioned in this thread.

In quizzing buyers, we see a significant lack of knowledge that Blu-ray even exists and about the difference in quality, this even from people who own HD TVs. But these days if you go into a big-box store to buy a DVD player, you can seldom find one that isn’t also a Blu-ray player, so we think understanding of the quality will grow and that the market for Blu-rays is more robust than the conventional wisdom would have it.

On a separate note, having released our film theatrically in 2011, I can say that in our experience the Blu-ray technology has had a huge impact on the theatrical distribution of indie films.

Since most digital projectors can ingest a signal from a cheap Blu-ray player, it has become miles cheaper to get into theaters. Anecdotally, if you look at the numbers of films being released theatrically in NY and LA, you see many more per week than there was when you had to put your movie on actual film. It’s gone from about six per week about three years ago, to over 20 a week now. (The NY Times has a policy of reviewing every film that opens, so I count ’em.)

This isn’t just because it’s cheaper and easier to make movies. Since the advent of DV and HDV the numbers of theatrical films submitted to Sundance have skyrocketed, but the increase in the numbers of films actually being released in major cities seems to have jumped only with the advent of Blu-ray.

We made two versions of our film. The first, released in 2008, was on film and showed for a few weeks in Canada. The second (remade after Ryan Reynolds did the narration), was distributed digitally, through Blu-ray and, partially, on the digital network of Emerging Pictures. Though we had almost no publicity and the actual box-office dollars hardly paid for the disks, the film was shown in a hell of a lot of US theaters for over 35 weeks.

My guess about the importance of Blu-ray might be clouded by the explosive spread of digital projection in the same time period. But back when we were first noticing the phenomenon, DCPs were very expensive, and smart indie theaters were promoting their blu-ray capacities, so we think the Blu-ray was more important to the trend than DCPs. We even showed the film in some massive-monster-mega-multiplexes on BR.

It looked great on BR, too, but I have to say a crowning technological moment came quite recently in a brand-new Jackie Chan theater in Beijing, when we were invited to the Beijing Film Festival. We showed the film there using a DCP we’d made in-house. All that great work the sound designer had done years before was finally all around us. Ahh.

Cheers,

Mike Parfit

https://www.thewhalemovie.com
https://www.mountainsidefilms.com

[Chris Harlan]

I think the reasons for sending out screeners in SD on DVD, at least from Hollywood, are are multiple; first is guaranteed universality at the lowest common denominator, second, an SD image with constant bug and L3 warnings is very slightly less fodder for piracy, and third, price per unit is cheeper, which matters more, since there is no recouping costs on a promotional item. Basically, there just isn’t any real incentive to change the process.

[Lance Bachelder]

I’m a Blu-ray snob – own lots of them and it’s my preferred way to watch a movie for both picture and sound quality – love ’em.

I have bought a few movies on Apple TV lately and the quality is pretty good. This week I burned Blu-ray screeners of a new feature film and did the final cut on for studio screening. I used FCPX (not for the edit – just for the disc) and burned directly to Blu-ray with 5.1 sound – screening went great. It was Alexa, all Pro Res 444 directly to Blu-ray and looked fantastic.

Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Downtown Long Beach, California
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1680680/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

[Brett Sherman]

My sense is that unless you are releasing a feature film, high-end television production or something targeted to pixel peepers you’re safer sending out a DVD. For the kind of work I do, which is advocacy, we do not want anyone to not be able to play what we send out. So lowest-common denominator for us – DVD. But web more often than not. Blu-ray never reached the critical mass where if you sent out a disc, you know someone can play it. It never will either.

[Olof Ekbergh]

I have seen a drop off in the request for BR. The request for VOD is way up.

For video kiosks we use to use BR but they fail very quickly so we now use solid state players, no moving parts.

We use FTP uploads for most work to be broadcast or digital files on HDs.

For client review we used to send BR or DVD now it is all Vimeo.

My own TV watching is 90% Apple TV Netflix. Quality is OK. The few times we get BR we got discs that would play partway and then stop, so we only use Netflix VOD now much more reliable.

I find sending SD cards or even HDs works very well for most clients who want physical delivery.

So IMHO BR is definitely on the way out.

Olof Ekbergh

[Helmut Kobler]

I was very excited about Blu-Ray a few years ago, but then started buying movies through iTunes, and will NEVER go back to buying a physical disk again.

Blu-Rays:
1) scratch fairly easily (as all disks do), and sometimes get lost
2) they don’t play on most computers, iPhones, iPads, etc., and..
3) You have to physically have the damn disk with you to use it. A pain in the butt if you left it upstairs, back at the office, in the car, in the laptop bag, etc.
4) Have damned ads and trailers that I have to spend 5 minutes tediously skipping through, just to see the main attraction I paid for.

Digital downloads like iTunes:
1) Never degrade and are never lost (you can always re-download online)
2) Play on all my devices
3) Are immediately available on any device without having to run and get a physical product.
4) Remember where in the movie I stopped watching, and can resume that play position even when I resume watching on another device.
5) No damn ads.

It’s all downhill for Blu-Ray going forward…

——————-
Los Angeles Cameraman
Canon C300 (x2), Zeiss CP.2 lenses, P2 Varicam, etc.
http://www.lacameraman.com

[Frank Gothmann]

VOD may be a convenient alternative to physical rental in the same way a tv dinner is a convenient alternative to a home cooked meal. In the long run I consider it to be one of the most destructive things to film as an art form (same applies to music, books and news magazines). It devaluates everything, eliminates the distribution middle men who sort out content that should have never been made in the first place plus it monopolizes distribution and access in a way that is seriously harmful to our culture in general.
The whole thing is a very complex subject matter and it’s effects are only starting to show. Unfortunately nobody thinks about these things when new technology is thrown to the masses as long as it generates a buck.
Physical media will be around for a long, long time though because there are enough people out there who care and who don’t just want to consume and then throw it away like a used kleenex.

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“You also agree that you will not use these products for… the development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, missiles, or chemical or biological weapons.”
iTunes End User Licence Agreement

[Steve Connor]

[Frank Gothmann] “VOD may be a convenient alternative to physical rental in the same way a tv dinner is a convenient alternative to a home cooked meal. In the long run I consider it to be one of the most destructive things to film as an art form (same applies to music, books and news magazines). It devaluates everything, eliminates the distribution middle men who sort out content that should have never been made in the first place plus it monopolizes distribution and access in a way that is seriously harmful to our culture in general. “

I disagree with that entirely, digital distribution is an ENABLER for creativity, we don’t need middle men to decide what “should have never been made” How does it monopolise distribution, digital actually democratises it, anyone can get their work out there now and at the end of the day the consumer will still be the one that decides what sells and what doesn’t.

Steve Connor

There’s nothing we can’t argue about on the FCPX COW Forum

[Frank Gothmann]

That’s the theory, the reality is very different. You’d bring your project to the market and it’s accepted or rejected, if it’s the latter you search and you may find someone who is specialised in or just “gets” what you do.
In the monopolized VOD scenario, the big player has the say.
Examples: we were prepping some sex comedies (American Pie style) for iTunes. In our country the have the equivalent of a PG13 rating. Mild stuff.
Apple rejected it because they consider it semi-porn. It’s non of their f****g business to decide such things, they’re not making the laws.

Old tv stuff that only survived on analog tape: rejected because quality isn’t up their standards.
The list goes on and on, prepping stuff for iTunes is hell and they have no clue about the reality of film distribution and asset availability.
It’s not for them to decide on content or quality matters, it’s for the distributor who bought the rights. Apple is just the store that sells them, same as any store where you buy your goods. If one doesn’t carry the title, others will. But with only two or three players in the VOD endgame your choices are seriously limited and they can and will influence the market of what goes out there and in what shape or form.
From a consumer’s point of view: want to watch something that a) isn’t available in your country at all b) might be censored d) might not have the audio or subtitles or extras you want. No go with VOD cause you can only buy in your country of residence. From Amazon etc. I can order discs from anywhere in the world.

——
“You also agree that you will not use these products for… the development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, missiles, or chemical or biological weapons.”
iTunes End User Licence Agreement

[Steve Connor]

Agreed, ITunes is the last wall that needs to come down in Digital Distribution, once Google finally gets it and gives everyone the ability to sell on YouTube, then iTunes domination, at least on the VOD side, might start to slip.

There are plenty of other routes to market if you are determined enough.

Steve Connor

There’s nothing we can’t argue about on the FCPX COW Forum