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We all took the DVD boom era for granted

filmstories.co.uk

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Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#81

Post by pavlov »

eru wrote: post #26
Ekaros wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is perfectly sensible to consider data and medium to be single product when you cannot update the software running on products that read it. It was not great sell to tell people to go get new player each time new codec was released. Or tell that these new movies do not work anymore. Have to remember that DVD was released in pre-always-connected world.

You could stick the codec on the DVD itself? They are relatively small programs.

When the DVD format was new, a 300MHz Pentium II CPU could just barely decode the MPEG-2 stream. And that CPU cost almost two thousand dollars at launch:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/pentium-ii-release-d...

In other words, there was simply no way to ship affordable DVD players that would use a general purpose CPU for video decoding. It needed to be in hardware.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#82

Post by wolrah »

episteme wrote: post #71
vouaobrasil wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah...I just want to pay for a DRM-free copy so I can play it and own it forever. That's it. No streaming accoounts, no tracking, no plastic packaging, just the file in exchange for money. I paid for Sublime text that way and it's a great model.

Sounds great, how do you propose stopping people from sharing that mp4 with the world?

> Sounds great, how do you propose stopping people from sharing that mp4 with the world?

You don't.

Regardless of what DRM is applied to official releases, every single mainstream movie gets released through pirate channels the same day as and often even before the official release. There may be a couple of obscure titles that slip through the cracks because no one in the pirate community noticed they existed but the stuff the industry actually cares about has never been successfully protected.

The DRM only stops people who are trying to stay "legit" from doing things they should be able to do like store it on a NAS, play it on whatever device they want, etc. It has never and will never stop pirates.

If I can go to a pirate site and locate a "REMUX" or "COMPLETE" rip of a movie, which is the case for the vast majority of movies ever released to digital formats, an official DRM-free release would change nothing for pirates and only make the experience better for people trying to stay legal.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#83

Post by ta1243 »

lukan wrote: post #22
p0w3n3d wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, DVD is still a standard in medical imaging, which baffles me, because many people do not own drives anymore, but I think this is as close to "owning your own test results" as possible. I cannot imagine someone saying "sorry, you have not extended your subscription to our health-cloud and your results are gone"

They could offer you a download link, that is valid for 10 days. Or since storage is cheap, stays valid. But why change a running system (and I have an external USB DVD device).

If it stays valid that's a security nightmare

People are very good as securing physical items. They are awful at securing files.

A dvd or maybe an SD card or USB stick is a much better approach.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#84

Post by ta1243 »

grahamlee wrote: post #10

It seems to me that the extra features on DVD were originally part of the marketing benefits driving people to adopt the format because the studios preferred it to VHS because of CSS and region-locking. Then they found they had painted themselves into a corner making all these extra features that people came to expect, until finally streaming let them get back to “just the movie”.

Features I don't want on DVD and much prefer streaming

* Adverts (especially the anti piracy "you wouldn't steel a car" ones)

* Logos

* Menus

It can take nearly a minute to go from the disk going in to the film starting.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#85

Post by ta1243 »

guappa wrote: post #16
grahamlee wrote: post #10

It seems to me that the extra features on DVD were originally part of the marketing benefits driving people to adopt the format because the studios preferred it to VHS because of CSS and region-locking. Then they found they had painted themselves into a corner making all these extra features that people came to expect, until finally streaming let them get back to “just the movie”.

VHS were dubbed… no need to do region locking.

Region locking was more that US videos were 60hz ntsc and most of the rest of world was 50hz pal, and multi-region hardware was fairly rare

Throw in the difficulties in buying non-local things in the first place and it simply wasn't a problem, they could market-segment to their hearts content

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#86

Post by infecto »

openrisk wrote: post #39
incorrecthorse wrote: post #12

*Cinephiles took the DVD boom era for granted The reason it ended is because the general public doesn't care.

since when is the "general public" arbiter of wisdom? The masses will embrace anything that smacks of short term convenience and will tolerate enormous amount of abuse because caring for anything actually requires effort. This starts with thinking, collecting objective information among the torrents of marketing and misinformation, agitating for your rights and (horror, horror) even sacrificing immediate gratificatio…

On the flip side, this is one of the best times for people who enjoy movies/media. I can purchase near almost any movie to my hearts content. Streaming is super convenient, I don't have to think about how to store the digital media. I don't need the physical media taking up space. Heck I even love to pay for a 24-48hour digital rental. I can spend $3-4 and get a movie to watch instantly. I don't care about DRM. Its of course not all rosy, there is some nostalgia from living in a world of constraints, having to go to the Blockbuster on a Friday to pick out a movie, looking back there was something nice about it, it built a ritual. DRM is not great and you run the risk that the vendor you purchased the media from might go out of business. I will take those and enjoy my near limitless potential library.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#87

Post by pro14 »

have you noticed that the quality of movies has been progressively declining? i think it's because the pirated movie boom ended. there was a theory that DVD movie piracy increases the box office revenue. bring back movie piracy?

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#88

Post by browningstreet »

openrisk wrote: post #39
incorrecthorse wrote: post #12

*Cinephiles took the DVD boom era for granted The reason it ended is because the general public doesn't care.

since when is the "general public" arbiter of wisdom? The masses will embrace anything that smacks of short term convenience and will tolerate enormous amount of abuse because caring for anything actually requires effort. This starts with thinking, collecting objective information among the torrents of marketing and misinformation, agitating for your rights and (horror, horror) even sacrificing immediate gratificatio…

They're not the arbiter of wisdom, they're the arbiter of commercial success & market viability, which is always a bell curve to the bottom (see Stanley Cups and cupcake, boba, and dumpling retail [in the US]).

I worked in the film industry, in DVDs, at the height of that market. Sales of DVDs tumbled. End of story. There was nothing for the studios to do because the ROI was dead, and their previous efforts (which were terrible natch) to manipulate the DVD market (cheaper, limited play product) were dumb.

DVDs were great, streaming ate their lunch.

Calling capitalism's market economics an idiocracy is.. tautological.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#89

Post by grahamlee »

guappa wrote: post #16
grahamlee wrote: post #10

It seems to me that the extra features on DVD were originally part of the marketing benefits driving people to adopt the format because the studios preferred it to VHS because of CSS and region-locking. Then they found they had painted themselves into a corner making all these extra features that people came to expect, until finally streaming let them get back to “just the movie”.

VHS were dubbed… no need to do region locking.

Region locking stops (or is designed to stop) someone, for example, in the USA buying a DVD sold in the UK market. The localization of the product on sale isn't relevant to the decision not to sell the product.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#90

Post by walterbell »

incorrecthorse wrote: post #12

*Cinephiles took the DVD boom era for granted The reason it ended is because the general public doesn't care.

> the general public doesn't care

DVD "extras" help bootstrap film students.

Less film students, less future films for general publics.

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