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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

#241

Post by selectodude »

pwarner wrote: post #238
arielweisberg wrote: post #216

I started buying Bluray/UHDs as a replacement for going to the theatre and purchasing/renting digital copies and streaming. I was spending the money anyways, why not own a copy? Streaming is primarily just for specific TV shows, subscribe, immediately cancel, watch the series, then resubscribe when something worthwhile exists. I can't stand the bugs, slow interfaces, forced ads in ad free tiers, bad audio quality, an…

I've been ramping up on UHD Blueray lately, especially since I upgraded to an OLED TV. It's a massive picture quality upgrade. I think I have like 6 discs, all ~$10. A mix of newer movies I haven't seen, and 80s-90s movies I want to show the kids in a few years. It's been fun.

I want to rip them to NAS so I don't need to bother with the discs but goodness is that a project.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#242

Post by Kon-Peki »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #208
jasode wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Or check out a DVD for free from a public library. Major downsides to that alternative. My 80-year old friend started borrowing DVDs from the local library 6 months ago as a personal protest against Amazon Prime adding ads to their streaming. So far, made 3 trips to borrow DVDs and all had various issues: 1) checked out White Collar tv seasons but library only had seasons 1 to 3. Library didn't have last 3 seasons a…

Most libraries want to know if the media is damaged so they can replace it. Your friend can also put holds on things. Some library services also have streaming services, and there are free streaming services as well. PBS has a free streaming service, although I think parts of it are ad supported

... and don't you all have interlibrary borrowing too? This system is 50+ years old [1], surely it can't be the only one around. Request a title from your local library website and it shows up at your local library a few days later regardless of which library actually holds it. Return at any library, it will always find its way back to the right place.

We also have reciprocal borrowing privileges at many libraries that aren't in the network. You can always find a DVD you want!

[1] https://swanlibraries.net/member-libraries/

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#243

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

dboreham wrote: post #198
bombcar wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A significant percentage of people alive today have never made an analog phone call, or know just how good (and low latency!) it was to literally have two copper wires connecting two phones thousands of miles apart. Direct at the speed of light (almost)!

I'm skeptical there's anyone alive who made an analog phone call over thousands of miles. Local calls yes, but even so I'm pretty old and I never made one because I had no friends on the same CO as my parents' house.

Long distance between US coasts is thousands of miles.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#244

Post by Brian_K_White »

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…

But region coding granularity was very course, just a few big regions, unlike geofencing today.

And if you travelled with your dvds, they still worked, unlike your netflix subscription today. (The need to bring your own player to match your disks doesn't change anything because your same laptop that you watch a stream with today had a dvd drive right in it before.)

Region coding was a problem, but simpler and just not as bad as todays streaming geofences.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#245

Post by robbs »

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…

If you haven’t already, get yourself to Wellington and take the tours at Weta. You might even recognize a few of the faces that still work there.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#246

Post by giobox »

nemomarx wrote: post #217
giobox wrote: post #209

Funny to see movie people going through the same pain PC gamers did (lamenting the loss of "big box" retail games - the reasoning is much the same), especially the complaints around the loss of things like booklets etc.

weirdly I'm more in favor of it with steam - I guess there's not a really great equivalent for movies and music? I mean band camp is pretty close to gog but it's a little bit of a hassle to manage your library still, and easier to keep CDs in the car.

Steam works great while the benevolent dictator (Gabe) is still alive and in direct control.

What happens to the company and its services once he dies is extremely concerning to me given depth of my own investment now in game licences on the platform. Things may not be so rosy if/when Steam is sold to a publicly traded parent and has to do boring things like deliver quarterly growth for shareholders etc.

Would a Steam/Valve owned and run by Microsoft be as good? It might not be Microsoft in the end of course, but that question is going to come up a lot sooner than a lot of Steam fans probably realise, especially as Gabe ages out.

Big box games generally had very little of these types of concerns.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#247

Post by [deleted] »

dboreham wrote: post #198
bombcar wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A significant percentage of people alive today have never made an analog phone call, or know just how good (and low latency!) it was to literally have two copper wires connecting two phones thousands of miles apart. Direct at the speed of light (almost)!

I'm skeptical there's anyone alive who made an analog phone call over thousands of miles. Local calls yes, but even so I'm pretty old and I never made one because I had no friends on the same CO as my parents' house.

[deleted]

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#248

Post by entropicdrifter »

hx8 wrote: post #223
stronglikedan wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A movie adaptation of a book is a retelling of a story for a completely different type of audience, so it's an apples to oranges comparison always .

That is how Hollywood does movies. Other film traditions will more accurately adapt the source material. For example, many animes are a shot-for-shot recreation of manga.

>For example, many animes are a shot-for-shot recreation of manga.

This is something of a newer phenomenon in the grander history of anime as an artform. Osamu Tezuka, one of the founding fathers of the modern anime industry, notably created the filler-heavy formats of yesteryear that were the dominant form of popular televised anime well into the 21st century. There are notable early outliers like Yu Yu Hakusho and Death Note, but most of the popular anime had their runtimes padded all to hell in order to continually cash in on the unpredictable zeitgeist popularity of their source material. This trend of creating manga-accurate adaptations was largely spawned during the mid-80's OVA boom (wherein many one-shot OVAs were functionally made as high-production-value advertisements for their corresponding manga), but it largely didn't make the leap to TV anime until well after the turn of the century.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#249

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

BryantD wrote: post #224

This article is focused on mainstream cinema and I tend to agree with it; I miss the days when major studios were releasing DVDs packed with extras. Simultaneously, we're in the middle of a major boutique Blu-ray boom. I am not intimately familiar with the economics of this, but it's demonstrably true that it's possible to license and produce high quality Blu-rays with a lot of interesting extras in batches of 2-3K a…

Many major music artists release limited-run vinyl records, with unique coloring and packaging and often booklets as well.

It's often to monetize their back catalogue by giving people a way to buy a gift for a fan.

I think there's totally an opportunity to do the same with films.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#250

Post by 7734128 »

latexr wrote: post #207
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…

> stupid geographical restrictions DVDs had those too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_region_code > they tend to limit quality, both for copyright and traffic saving purposes As long as the quality is above 480p, it’s still better than DVD.

I consider streaming 720p to be DVD quality at best. (And no, i'm not basing that on bitrate. I know modern compression is much better.)
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