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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

#181

Post by garrickvanburen »

retrac wrote: post #136
codedokode wrote: post #94

The problems with streaming services: - they do not allow anonymous usage (you need to provide a visa application worth amount of personal information) - stupid geographical restrictions - they tend to limit quality, both for copyright and traffic saving purposes As an intermediate result, a generation of people is growing who got used to watching digitally compressed audio and video (social media, especially for mob…

> a generation of people is growing who got used to watching digitally compressed audio and video It is unfortunate how today phone calls are often heavily compressed. Back in the 80s, 90s, 00s the digital phone network would stream uncompressed PCM audio at 64 kbps and the rest was analog; calls often sounded better back then than they do today. Once we accepted the heavy compression necessary to make early digital…

I use phone call quality as my prime example of why most people don't actually care about quality.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#182

Post by KETHERCORTEX »

jprete wrote: post #115
codedokode wrote: post #94

The problems with streaming services: - they do not allow anonymous usage (you need to provide a visa application worth amount of personal information) - stupid geographical restrictions - they tend to limit quality, both for copyright and traffic saving purposes As an intermediate result, a generation of people is growing who got used to watching digitally compressed audio and video (social media, especially for mob…

You're not wrong, but DVDs were also region-locked. I think at the time this was both less annoying and more easily circumvented. I think it only came up if you bought DVDs internationally, were moving between regions, or wanted to bring DVDs but no player on such a trip. DVDs also have less-than-stellar image quality by comparison to today, although a lot of older works need the lower resolution because special effe…

> DVDs were also region-locked

A lot of later players didn't care though and were region-free.

> DVDs also have less-than-stellar image quality by comparison to today

Some DVDs have less-than-stellar image quality even compared to other DVDs. The format doesn't mandate some fixed bitrate numbers, so it can be truly atrocious.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#183

Post by smolder »

everfrustrated wrote: post #63
smolder wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution of the day would have been to put a .jar on each disc and it would have been a nightmare, I think.

Pretty sure bluray did something like this - some sort of java app definition that gets executed to display menus and the like.

For menus it makes sense. For compression schemes I see a lot of downside, mainly inefficiency of hardware.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#184

Post by navbaker »

tom_vidal wrote: post #110

How in the world can you have a discussion about DVD packaging and special features without mentioning the Lord of the Rings trilogy extended edition box sets? Not only did the movies come in beautiful collector’s cases with two DVDs per movie, they were also completely packed with special features, the run time of which exceeded that of the movies themselves. Hours and hours of in-depth making-of documentaries. I us…

I absolutely consider the EE discs to be the canonical version

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#185

Post by [deleted] »

openrisk wrote: post #142
browningstreet wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 we…

> Calling capitalism's market economics an idiocracy is.. tautological. Thats definitely not true. The most ardent and smart defender of markets argued that they operate and optimize within the boundaries that society decides. If you legislate that people should be able to repair, own, exchange etc. stuff then markets will deliver exactly that. If you let them race to the bottom thats also exactly what you will get.

[deleted]

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#186

Post by KETHERCORTEX »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #160
jebarker wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they tend to limit quality, both for copyright and traffic saving purposes This is the killer for me. I've worked on both video compression and graphics in my career and those projects involved a lot of pixel peeping. The compression artifacts in streaming video are sometimes really distracting now. I keep contemplating switching to bluray but apparently an increasing number of 4K HD releases there are being ruined…

I've started to look for old Blu-Ray disks because the quality of the image is generally much better.

As far as I know, you should also look for older Blu-Ray drive if you want to get content off the disks.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#187

Post by darknavi »

hx8 wrote: post #126
fidotron wrote: post #108

Not mentioning the non-skippable anti piracy noise that ironically made the legit product worse than the pirated one poisoned the well for interactive features later on Blu Ray. Who cares about getting extras if they are hidden behind obnoxious menus and abusive junk when the Internet will tell you anyway? That said I remember that era fondly because of things like the Tartan output. In the UK if you had a multi regi…

If I recall correctly these anti-piracy statements were like 10 seconds out of 2 hours of runtime. Hardly makes the product poisoned.

Experience matters, especially for consumer goods like media. Unskippable notices about piracy that are only shown to people who have pirated is silly and clunky. You can probably tell this by the fact that none of the streaming services show something similar.

This will sound very silly, but one of my favorite features of my Tesla Model 3 is that it doesn't stall the screen for 5-10 seconds every. single. time. you get in the car reminding you to drive safely and to pay attention to the road.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#188

Post by KETHERCORTEX »

stevenAthompson wrote: post #173
Miraste wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DVDs and Blu-rays also have stupid geographical restrictions. They come marked with region codes, and DVD players will only play discs from their home region. You have to go all the way back to VHS to be free of that particular corporate "innovation."

This is no longer the case with 4k UHD Blu-ray. They CAN be region locked in a technical sense, but I believe that there have only been two ever released that utilized that functionality. For the most part you can just buy one without worry.

I saw Blu-Ray region restriction bypassed just by skipping to the next "chapter" to initialize run the movie.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#189

Post by mindslight »

23B1 wrote: post #31

Not to mention streaming/digital media is going to kill off actually good movies and content. This isn't the technology's fault mind you, but the streamers' business model, but you could rely upon residuals via DVD sales for movies back in the day and that money is gone, which eliminates the safety margin required to take risks. It's why I can't stand the 'information wants to be free' argument. Where the hell do you…

> It's why I can't stand the 'information wants to be free' argument. Where the hell do you think that intellectual labor required comes from, the aether?

Assuming your goal is to understand - yes, that thinking is a product of time when people were altruistically publishing very high quality content on the web. The time before adspam, blogspam, llmspam, etc. You could punch queries into search engines and find no-nonsense sites with detailed information, not trying to sell you anything but rather just wanting to be the most complete resource about a certain topic.

I'm not saying that ethos works for million dollar movie production. But on the other hand the ethos of people needing to be paid evidently doesn't work for high quality informational content, given that it has all but disappeared in the torrent of commercialized/intermediated spam.

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