Topic: Well well.. Look who just went Blu

[hal9g]

OTOH, they did that with Obamacare, didn't they?

Please keep your american political discussion out of here. This is not a political forum and since I ain't american I couldn't care less about your insane system...

Unless there is some forum rule which prohibits this, your heavy-handedness is not appreciated.  I was under the impression that there was not supposed to be much censorship here....especially when my comment was offered as a joke.

I'm not really sure why you seem to have a hard-on for me??

[Antares]

I may not want to embrace this new technology yet but that might change in the future.

That should be sometime around 2025, right Kathy? 

Take baby steps girl, buy a touch tone phone first. 

[RossRoy]

Please please please Hal and Jimmy - do try and keep it civil. You both have your opinion - and you obviously both think you are right. Just please try and not let this escalate.

Pretty please? With a cherry on top?

(click to show/hide)

[Jimmy]

No problem Sebastien sorry.
I just don't appreciate when someone try to make me look like an idiot patronizing me and retyping my phrase by changing one word when he had nothing substancial to add except shooting the messenger.

BTW since we have to write everything to be clear : I hope the moderators will make it clear that political discussion or jab aren't permitted here. It's like that since day one and I don't see why it would be different now

[Kathy]

I may not want to embrace this new technology yet but that might change in the future.

That should be sometime around 2025, right Kathy? 

Take baby steps girl, buy a touch tone phone first. 

2025? Hmmm...let's see I'm still using a 1957 Bell rotary phone. So, if my math is right it should be around 2063...I hope they have them in the next life! 

It's funny because even my 74 year old mother has updated to a blue-ray player!

[hal9g]

This will be my last word on this.

I want to clarify my post that seemed to have set you off Jimmy.  Doing that was simply a way to point out that your argument could be used to describe what happened when DVD came out as well.

Speaking strictly from personal experience, I never owned a Laser Disc.  The first VHS player I bought cost about $1000.  I think I bought about 6 movies on VHS tape ever.  I bought the VHS almost exclusively to record TV programs.

When DVD came out, like I said, I spent $1100 for my first player.  I hooked it up to a 37" Toshiba CRT TV.  Sound was played from the TV speaker (single speaker).

It wasn't long before I realized I was missing out on the sound quality, so I hooked up my Aika mini-system to the DVD and now I had "simulated" surround sound.  I was in heaven.  For a couple of months.

I knew that the sound could actually be much better.  So, I bought a Denon receiver for about $1000.  Of course, once I had the receiver, I needed speakers.  I did a lot of research and wound up buying reference THX speakers from M&K.  I got front center, right and left, three sets of surrounds and two sub woofers.  Total cost around $8,000.  Then I decided I better get a power control center to protect all that expensive equipment...another $400 bucks.  Throw in wiring and miscellaneous parts for another couple hundred.

I want to stress that I never had any interest in music before this, so I was not an audiophile.  I had always enjoyed movies but only very occasionally went to the theater.  DVD itself is what sent me down this path, and I spent a ton of money because of its release.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining.  I loved every minute of it and still do.

The next "big" thing that comes along is HD TV.  This is before Blu ray and HD DVD.  So I get a 720p TV to enjoy sports in HD.  Well now they come out with upscaling for DVDs.  Gotta have that to take advantage of the new TV.

Guess what, Blu ray still hasn't been released.  When it is released, I buy a Blu ray player.  That's it.  Nothing else.  Now I'll grant you, I was still watching it on a 720p TV, but it looked awesome.  Since then as, I've had to replace a TV, I've done so with 1080p, but I would have done that without the Blu ray player because of all of the HD content on TV these days.  I still haven't replaced my receiver so don't get the full capabilities of Blu ray sound formats, but one day, yes, I'll do that as well.  But I don't have to.

I may be the exception, that I invested that much into the DVD format, but I don't think so.

All that to explain why I disagree with your statement that people didn't spend money when DVD was released the way they must spend money when Blu ray was released.  That just wasn't the case for me, and I don't think it was for a lot of people.  I have lots of friends who simply replaced their DVD player with a Blu ray player and are enjoying a better movie experience.

So as not to offend any of the other long standing members here, this will be my last post on these forums for a while.

[Jimmy]

What you describe above is the exception, the large majority didn't invest that kind of money when the dvd format came out.

If you would have said : I spent personally thousands of dollars to go the dvd way, so a minority did it. This discussion would have never happen since it's my point from the start that the regular joe who represent the majority isn't interested to spend thousand of dollars to make a format switch...

Don't take a minority personal exemple to represent what the average costumer would do.

[Najemikon]

Somebody invested, Jimmy.  Again, I can only speak for the UK, but I think DVD holds the record for fastest adoption of a new technology. I used to buy VHS and got on the DVD bandwagon early and saw the VHS shelves in shops shrink dramatically over a course of weeks. Demand was high.

People love convenience. That's the driving force and why CD was a success even over better quality vinyl. DVD had the advantage of a massive leap in quality and I felt like there had been this collective sigh of relief when it was released. Finally! Bulky, mechanical cassettes that warp and wear out are gone! Blu-Ray is not such a huge leap of course, but still I see it getting stronger all the time. Going back to CD, it took a very long time to kill of cassettes because the convenience was already there. CD in that sense was the Blu-Ray of its day.

The ironic thing is, considering who I'm addressing, is that it was the adult industry that ensured success of DVD!

By the way, you commented earlier that Blu-Ray is cleaned up too much (it isn't) and that film is not supposed to be that good. That seems absurd to me; a projected film negative on a 40ft screen is still better, authentic quality than anything home video can achieve. In other words, all formats are a downgrade in some way. Except Blu-Ray on new digital films which should be close. Maybe you don't like digital, which is fine, neither do a fair few film-makers! But the Blu-Ray format isn't exaggerating anything and any decent director would want his film to look as good as possible, hence the huge attention to detail these days in the bigger profile transfers, like Blade Runner or Godfather.

Of course there are titles that suffer from cheap transfers, boosted levels and too much grain reduction, but that's what reviews are for! 

So as not to offend any of the other long standing members here, this will be my last post on these forums for a while.

For my money that makes me very sad, Hal. Who on earth were you offending? I'm sure Jimmy wasn't truly aggrieved and I didn't feel pissed off in any way. Don't abandon your marathon now... I need to insult some of your choices again! 

[Jimmy]

Somebody invested, Jimmy. 

But my point was the majority didn't and what makes a technology sucessfull or not is if the majority embrace it or not. This is why the LD wasn't and the DVD was... I sure don't understand why an evident point like that had caused that much drama

Finally! Bulky, mechanical cassettes that warp and wear out are gone!

Tell me about it... 90% of my VHS movie collection was in a very degrading way when I got rid of it. The quality was good enough for my father, but not anymore for me (I can't stand the image and sound detoriation because of the number of watching). Wich kind of suck since some of those movies aren't available on dvd (uncut or just available)...

The ironic thing is, considering who I'm addressing, is that it was the adult industry that ensured success of DVD!

The adult industry had a lot of power in the entertainment industry
Even in the old days of the video tape the XXX rated films were the highest sellers and the most profitable, followed by the horror film.

So as not to offend any of the other long standing members here, this will be my last post on these forums for a while.

I've missed this part on the original post... Hal it was just a discussion, not in the best behaving from me and you but it's just that. I'm sure not offended and I sure no one either is... So forgot about the non-posting non-sense, a bad discussion doesn't worth it