# Thoughtful "impact of Blu-ray" article



## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

Found this New York Time article interesting. The author makes the point that with each successive generation of home movie distribution technology, the cost of re-mastering movies for the new medium makes studios think twice about the undertaking. As a result, the catalog of readily available movie titles shrinks with each new generation of playback medium.

_"[...] huge swaths of our film heritage have vanished. After 10 years of DVD the studios seem to have concluded that all the films that will make money in home video have already been released; that number is a very small percentage of their output. Turner Classic Movies online says that of the 162,984 films listed in its database (based on the authoritative AFI Catalog), only 5,980 (3.67 percent) are available on home video [...]"_


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

...and yet 2009 was a record year for Blu Ray...including many of those same "older titles" mentioned in the article. 

In addition, most trade publications are predicting another surge growth year for BD in 2010 and again in 2011.


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## elaclair (Jun 18, 2004)

I also find it interesting all the old catalog titles that are being given a full restoration treatment for release on Blu-Ray. The top two that come to mind are of course Gone With The Wind and The Wizard of Oz. Both have never looked better and in the case of Wizard, maybe even better than it's original theatre release. A lot of the "epic" and "vista" movies are promised a similar treatment.

I think the advent of really good restoration technology, coupled with a "latest and greatest" consumer medium available have sparked a long awaited and much needed interest in the catalog titles that have for years sat degrading on the shelf....


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

elaclair said:


> I also find it interesting all the old catalog titles that are being given a full restoration treatment for release on Blu-Ray. The top two that come to mind are of course Gone With The Wind and The Wizard of Oz. Both have never looked better and in the case of Wizard, maybe even better than it's original theatre release. A lot of the "epic" and "vista" movies are promised a similar treatment.
> 
> I think the advent of really good restoration technology, coupled with a "latest and greatest" consumer medium available have sparked a long awaited and much needed interest in the catalog titles that have for years sat degrading on the shelf....


Agree...anyone who has seen Lawrence of Arabia, for example, on Blu Ray disk should be amazed at how it appears - it never looked better.


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

hdtvfan0001 said:


> ...and yet 2009 was a record year for Blu Ray...including many of those same "older titles" mentioned in the article.


The article is not a disparagement of Blu-ray. It acknowledges its success as a medium is growing. It simply points out that the economics of HD restoration _may_ result in fewer titles being available than in past generations (DVD, VHS), but hopes that won't be the case.

Under 4% of titles being available on DVD is a telling statistic, IMHO, no less BD.


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

Steve said:


> The article is not a disparagement of Blu-ray. It acknowledges its success as a medium is growing. It simply points out that the economics of HD restoration may result in fewer titles being available than in past generations (DVD, VHS).


True.

It has taken some time to get BD established with the studios themselves - now they all seem to be getting on the bandwagon.

The other good news that the recent trends to lower pricing on the BD disks themselves will surely accelerate things.


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

hdtvfan0001 said:


> [...] The other good news that the recent trends to lower pricing on the BD disks themselves will surely accelerate things.


I don't think so. What I deduced from reading the article is that lower profit margins on disks will make it even more difficult for studios to justify the cost of re-mastering older titles.


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

Steve said:


> I don't think so. What I deduced from reading the article is that lower profit margins on disks will make it even more difficult for studios to justify the cost of re-mastering older titles.


Disagree....volumes will offset that....they already saw that in this past holiday season....


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## Tom Robertson (Nov 15, 2005)

Steve said:


> I don't think so. What I deduced from reading the article is that lower profit margins on disks will make it even more difficult for studios to justify the cost of re-mastering older titles.





hdtvfan0001 said:


> Disagree....volumes will offset that....they already saw that in this past holiday season....


Volumes only apply to movies that have a large audience. Remastering is touchy, delicate work and therefore expensive... Few older movies would make back the cost of release much less the cost of remastering and release.

Remember, the article is talking about nearly 100 years of movies, with only portions of the last 20 years being worth the cost of remastering. Very, very few people would be interested in movies from the 1930's and 1940's, except for the most well known movies.

I've never seen _Gone with the Wind_ for instance. I'm just not interested in many of the older movies.

Cheers,
Tom


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

Tom Robertson said:


> Volumes only apply to movies that have a large audience. Remastering is touchy, delicate work and therefore expensive... Few older movies would make back the cost of release much less the cost of remastering and release [...]


Precisely the point the author was making. It's not about sales #'s for recently released movies.

_"Fox has virtually eliminated the archival initiative that brought us marvels like the Fox Film Noir series and the box sets devoted to John Ford, Frank Borzage and F. W. Murnau. Paramount has apparently lost interest in releasing its older titles (a shame, since it also owns the Republic Pictures library, a wonderful, largely unexplored repository of genre films from the '30s, '40s and early '50s).

Universal makes the occasional effort on DVD, and usually does a good job with what it does, but the studio has allowed its superb library to fall almost entirely out of distribution apart from a handful of horror films and Abbott and Costello comedies. The vast majority of the 700 prime Paramount titles owned by Universal (essentially all of Paramount's sound films up to 1948) have for all practical purposes disappeared down a black hole."_


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## RobertE (Jun 10, 2006)

I agree with Tom. The "classics" will always get a treatment to get them to look the best. But, think of the countless Westerns, B-Movie scifi & horror flicks from the 40's, 50's & 60's that will probably not see the light of day for some time to come if ever

The only way I see those getting a HD treatment would be to outsource to some 3rd world country where labor costs are nil, or someone comes up with some hardware & software combo that can automate a good chunk of the process.


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## LarryFlowers (Sep 22, 2006)

The frightening thing here is that many of these films may well be lost forever.

I am not so much concerned with getting these movies onto a DVD, Blu_Ray, etc., as I am with getting them digitally stored from master prints. The fragility of film stock is the frightening part.

Digitizing the films and storing them would always keep them available to be viewed, remastered, even placed on new film stock if needed.

People that care are going to have to step up.

It is frightening to watch the current generation turn up its nose at any film simply because it is in black & white.

It isn't going to be cheap.


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## BattleZone (Nov 13, 2007)

As hard as it is to believe, huge numbers of those older films have already been lost forever, except perhaps for some older, worn, damaged prints floating around. There have been countless studio fires and floods, as well as buy-outs and takeovers that have resulted in tons of footage being thrown out. And even films that were intended to be preserved aren't always preserved as well as intended.

Then there's the problem of digital storage. The amount of data for a film is staggering. Archival footage isn't just the final studio master, but all kinds of additional footage, such as outtakes, alternate scenes, interviews, etc. And we have only recently been able to digitize film at resolutions that approach the quality of the actual film. Even today, few movies use 8k masters, though 4k is fine for many movies. But even 4 hours of footage stored at 4k is HUGE!

And as the studios have found, technology moves very, very quickly. Data storage devices, mostly tape backup machines, that were cutting edge just 10 years ago are obsolete and unsupported today, and it will only be worse in the future. And many studios were making 1k masters during the latter part of the DVD era, intending to use those masters for Blu-Ray. In most cases, that simply wasn't good enough, and they've had to go back and remaster many of those movies at great additional expense. *The Fifth Element*, anyone?


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

There's a little bit of spin going on here too...

Before Blu ray came out, DVD prices were already trending lower.. I bought lots of $5 DVDs many years ago... so the profit margin on DVDs was shrinking independent from Blu ray.

Catalog movies, especially those not in the highest demand, would never be DVDs that the studios could have released at $20 anyway... Only those in highest demand would ever be big sellers on any media format!

Meanwhile... yes, they might have to spend more time/money on remastering for Blu ray... but they also can sell those Blu rays for a higher price than a DVD... so IF they have a movie that will sell enough to be profitable, it should be equally profitable as a Blu over time than a DVD over time because it will always be of higher quality on Blu.

Also, worth noting... that the good restoration teams have been working from HD masters for years now anyway... so any new DVD of a catalog title that has come out in recent years should really have been scanned at HD resolutions anyway unless they weren't planning for the future... so there might not be any additional cost of restoration at all... just the higher cost of Blu replication vs DVD... which again, should be taken care of in the higher price they can sell the Blu.


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

Stewart Vernon said:


> Meanwhile... yes, they might have to spend more time/money on remastering for Blu ray... but they also can sell those Blu rays for a higher price than a DVD... so IF they have a movie that will sell enough to be profitable, it should be equally profitable as a Blu over time than a DVD over time because it will always be of higher quality on Blu.


You could have made that same "higher quality wins over time" argument 12 years ago about DVD relative to VHS. 10 years from now, Blu-ray will probably be replaced by something "better", in an effort by the movie studios to once again get us to buy the same movie we may have _already _purchased on VHS, DVD and Blu-ray.

That said, I think the market for home purchase of disks or whatever format is coming next will be increasingly diminished by IP delivery of HD movies (Netflix, Vudu, VOD, etc.) Lots of people only want to see a movie once every 5-10 years, if that often, and won't feel compelled to physically own it if they know it's only a click away. Just my .02.


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## Art7220 (Feb 4, 2004)

BattleZone, do you have a list of movies that have been lost like you say?

I believe there is also a list of movies that were released on VHS and Laser Disk that were not released on DVD and movies on DVD that aren't on BluRay.

The Beatles "Let It Be" is an example of the former. Song of the South was released on foreign VHS and Laser but not DVD.

Say what you want about piracy, but that's the only thing that will save old movies where legit rights holders won't do anything about it, if they can't make money on it.

ETA: And don't get me started about TV shows. We are now able to see shows that premiered in other countries and didn't show up here till months/years afterward, if ever.

ETA2: Article on What movies died with VHS. www.cinematical.com/2009/03/01/what-movies-died-with-vhs/


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

Steve said:


> That said, I think the market for home purchase of disks or whatever format is coming next will be increasingly diminished by IP delivery of HD movies (Netflix, Vudu, VOD, etc.) Lots of people only want to see a movie once every 5-10 years, if that often, and won't feel compelled to physically own it if they know it's only a click away. Just my .02.


I think we're a ways off from that. The internet isn't robust enough to provide everyone who wants it with the ability to get high-quality HD video via IP yet... and couple that with the ISPs who want to cap bandwidth and charge "excessive use fees" to customers who download a lot... that just makes the whole thing really unattractive.

Also... if prices on physical media are cheap enough, people want value for cost. If it costs me $5-$7 to "Rent" a movie for one time use... It's really attractive to buy the movie outright on Blu ray for $15-$20 and own it forever.

Frankly, any movie worth my renting at $7 is worth a buy for twice that easily.

MP3s and legal downloads have worked against CDs because of how many people like those small portable players, and the CD requires too large of a player and carrying around those CDs as well.

But movies, people tend to enjoy them most on a large screen and home theater, which by design is very much NOT portable... which means having a "portable" movie is not nearly important when you're going to watch it primarily in your living room anyway... so no big driving need for downloads vs Blu ray just to avoid having a physical storage item.


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

Stewart Vernon said:


> [...] But movies, people tend to enjoy them most on a large screen and home theater, which by design is very much NOT portable... which means having a "portable" movie is not nearly important when you're going to watch it primarily in your living room anyway... so no big driving need for downloads vs Blu ray just to avoid having a physical storage item.


I respect that P.O.V. for a large part of the current viewing audience.

Speaking for myself, tho, my LG BD player allows me to view Netflix and VuDu HDX movies at 1080p on my 65" display for $5-$6 a pop. The PQ is virtually indistinguishable from BD disks at normal viewing distance. Since I may only watch it that one time, I'm happy not to spend an extra $10-$15 to own it.

If I do want to see it again 5-10 years from now, I'll just stream it again and I still won't have spent what it would have cost me to buy the title outright the first time. Plus, if it _does_ make the cut for remastering to whatever the next delivery format will be, I'll probably be able to see view it with even better PQ at that time.

Finally, even if it never gets remastered again, since it's _already_ been digitized to 1080p quality, the odds that iteration will still be available for IP streaming are probably pretty good.


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## djlong (Jul 8, 2002)

I like to think that SOMEday we'll have a model that will allow low-volume, obscure movies to be done like "books on demand" and that you'll be able to order them online and they'll be burned for you at that point.


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## tralfaz (Nov 1, 2009)

hdtvfan0001 said:


> The other good news that the recent trends to lower pricing on the BD disks themselves will surely accelerate things.


But now that the holidays are over that trend seems to have reversed. The cheapest price last week for "9", for example, was about $25. It seems the cheapest price for next week's "Cloudy with a chance of meatballs" is also about $25.

In previous months, you could always find BD discs on release week for less than $20.

Even Amazon had/has these titles for $25 pre-order. In the past, pre-order BD's were always $15 - $20


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## Mark Holtz (Mar 23, 2002)

From DVD Savant (through DVD Talk):


> Those readers not in a coma know that 2009's recession appeared to hit the DVD business as well. Just as the percentage of film people unemployed soared, slowing DVD sales took an even steeper dive. This after being a success story and sales bonanza for ten years straight. In other words disc companies could no longer just announce their products and have consumers waiting for street dates. The DVD biz is typical of new-age business ... as soon as the Gold Rush was over the big companies stopped releasing deeper library titles and induced more layoffs in their ever-shrinking Home Video departments. If you find bad information on a DVD package or some other kind of screw-up, think before you chew out some Home Video employee -- believe me, everybody below executive level is being worked to death.
> 
> When product doesn't move, companies drop their consultants and start re-packaging the big titles for the umpteenth time, scrimping on the frills. Fox, Paramount and Warners' active release programs for great old pictures either stopped cold or slowed to a trickle. Para froze up, putting out only a trickle of repackaged 'classic' DVDs that had seen release just a few years ago. Fox's Studio Classics and Film Noir branded lines evaporated. Warners' flow of great boxed sets slowed to a crawl. Sublicensing came back in a big way, a development with occasional fringe benefits. Criterion suddenly found access to class act titles from several studios. They have Nicholas Ray's _Bigger than Life_ for next March, which is cause for celebration. Could Elia Kazan's _Wild River_ be far off?


FULL ARTICLE HERE

I consider myself to be a movie fan. I have a sizable DVD collection, and got into DVD collecting when many movies are not shown in their original aspect ratio on television. My favorite movie channels are TCM and Fox Movie, not HBO and Starz.

Hmmmmm..... where to start? First of all, some of the folks behind the print clean-up efforts have been the cable providers. A clean print is easier to compress than a print that has all sorts of scratches.

However, the economy took a dump, and with it, discretionary spending. Thus, for older releases, the demand has dried up. This has been combined with the fact that older titles aren't really stocked by mass retailers such as Target and Wal-Mart. I once was looking for a good older film as a surprise for a worker. The only "older" films that they had in stock was selected James Bond films.

DVD changed things from VHS. VHS had, at best, 240 lines of picture quality, but you can do a quick and simple transfer to videotape. However, the cost of replication of VHS cassettes was higher than DVD discs. In comparison, DVDs are more expensive to master for a quality release because each frame has to be scanned in, then compressed to fit the DVD. (While MPEG2 compression is used for satellite transmission as well as DVDs, they do not have to compress "on the fly"). On the other hand, once the master has been made, it's really easy to do re-issues.

However, I do not hold out the same hope for movies making the transition to BluRay. How many older movies will really benefit with the transition to the higher resolution format? More importantly, how many people will repurchase that movie in BluRay when they already have it on DVD? _Indiana Jones_-probably. _You Have Mail_-maybe not. In addition, some people have DVD setups in their cars for entertaining the younger set in the minivan on even short car trips. No way they will go with BluRay at this time.


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## Tom Robertson (Nov 15, 2005)

Mark,

Very good analysis. One other point to supplement your post is how some catalogs are being marketed for cable. Certain studio labels (no longer separate studios with all the mergings) have been very active in preparing many of their titles in digital format for delivery to whomever might want them. Local stations, cable networks, independent stations/networks, and even the premiums all benefit from having easy access to already digitized catalogs. 

So at least one label has been doing all the work necessary to scan, digitize, and pre-compress their library for multiuse. MPEG4 compression, using multiple runs for the best picture/bandwidth combination is taking about a full day on a computer for each motion picture title. When you have thousands of titles, that takes lots of computer cycles. 

Conceivably we could see a collection of highly compressed, almost blu-ray picture quality, inexpensive titles for streaming or on BDs. Let's hope at least. 

Cheers,
Tom


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## lwilli201 (Dec 22, 2006)

The Smithsonian needs to gather up all the films the studios no longer want to deal with. They could be designated as public domain and open them up to third party restoration. Otherwise these films will be left to deteriorate. Seems that I saw a documentary many years ago about films being stored in caves where the temp and humidity slows deterioration. I believe it would be a crime to let these films be lost forever. Maybe they should use some of the Stimulus money to restore these films. It would create meaningful jobs that would not be exported to China.


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

If the exponential number of new Blu Ray players shown this year at the Consumer Electronics Show is any indication....BD is here to stay for a while.

The studios have been known to remaster, re-release, and retool movies onto Blue Ray Disk, so as long as they have something to digitize from, a new Blu ray version can still be released. 

Some of the true "classics" are slated for remastering - after seeing what they did with the original Star Trek series film, some of which was in bad physical condition to start with....almost anything is possible. There are now a number of companies that specialize in "restoring and cleaning" original film to digital forms.


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

hdtvfan0001 said:


> If the exponential number of new Blu Ray players shown this year at the Consumer Electronics Show is any indication....BD is here to stay for a while.


Once again, it's not about the viability of the medium. No one doubts that Blu-ray will reign supreme until the studio bean counters can figure out _*another*_ way to sell us the same movie we may have already bought before on VHS, DVD and BD. I'm willing to bet that 3-D versions of the Disney and Pixar classics are already slated for release Christmas of 2012 or 2013.



> The studios have been known to remaster, re-release, and retool movies onto Blue Ray Disk, so as long as they have something to digitize from, a new Blu ray version can still be released.
> 
> Some of the true "classics" are slated for remastering - after seeing what they did with the original Star Trek series film, some of which was in bad physical condition to start with....almost anything is possible. There are now a number of companies that specialize in "restoring and cleaning" original film to digital forms.


 What can be done and what the studios are willing to spend to do it are the issue. The eye-opener for me (and the reason I started the thread) was the dwindling % of AFI film titles that successfully survive each new generation of distribution technology. With less than 4% having made the digitial transition to DVD after 13 years, our film history is in danger of being lost. I agree with *lwilli201* that we may need the government to step in, perhaps under the guise of the _Smithsonian_, to preserve a major part of our American cultural heritage... before it's too late.


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