Into the Blu
So what does Blu-ray mean? Does it mean we’ll be buying our DVD collection all over again? As we bought our VHS collection all over again? As we bought our LP collection all over again on CD? And are we doomed to repeat the whole process in 10 years time when the next generation format comes out? Blu-ray Plus, or green laser, or illegal downloads or whatever that next gen format is. For me, Blu-ray boils down to two categories.
Dr. No (1962)
I ummed and ahhed about buying James Bond films on DVD, because although I’ve always kind of liked them and been willing to watch them, even on ITV, even censored as all get out, even full of adverts, I’ve also been very aware of their enormous shortcomings as entertainment, where the very repetition of the format has hindered anything resembling any meaningful development. This tiredness set in early while Sean Connery was still playing the part. I’ve never found that the speedboat finale of Thunderball (1966) benefited from being artificially sped up in the editing process - it didn’t make it more exciting, it just made it look a bit crap. And an awful lot of You Only Live Twice (1967) is only made bearable by one of John Barry’s best scores. The volcano set is fun, but it wasn’t quite so much fun when it turned up again on a supertanker in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and in outer space in Moonraker (1979). However, I’d bought a couple of Bonds because I ran across them cheap: Goldfinger (1965) and The Living Daylights (1987). And when I ran through the extras I discovered they were awfully good and full of arcane Bond trivia I’d never come across before. So I was tempted. But not until the good folks at Lowry Digital had set to work on the original negatives rescanning and recorrecting for the next generation formats (HD-DVD coasters are now £1 in Computer Exchange - remember when they were the future of high definition for about five minutes?). And doing the sound in DTS. And with MGM adding even more extras, so the Ultimate James Bond Collection became the one I could no longer resist. And so then 6 of the films are issued on Blu-ray, and HMV crazily knock them down to £35 for the boxset, which is slightly less than £6 each, in 1080p and DTS-HD Master Audio. And you know, as good as Dr. No looked on the Ultimate DVD (and it looked very good indeed), it looks even better on Blu-ray. Which means that the first category of films I’m acquiring on Blu-ray are films I’ve already bought on DVD that I either a) like very much indeed (such as Blade Runner (1982) - hint: the American 5-disc set will work on UK machines) or b) I’m willing to rebuy on Blu-ray, but only if the price is right. And I’m not prepared to resist such a temptation. Hell, I’ve even bought Lady in the Water (2006) which I’ve not yet watched and which is widely regarded as very poor indeed, but it was £6. I’m not made of stone.
Inside Man (2006)
Which brings me to the second category of Blu-rays I’m buying: new releases. Now if Inside Man had been issued properly on DVD back in 2007 with all of the American DVD extras ported over, I’d probably already own it. But since Universal very kindly and incompetently couldn’t be bothered to release it properly on DVD in the UK, I was able to wait for it to be issued with all US extras intact on Blu-ray. Result. I’m sure I’m not the only one to notice that a certain number of discs from Warners, Sony, Universal and Paramount commence with a FBI warning and an intent to fine me in dollars if I pirate this Blu-ray content. This means only one thing. A UK disc issued like this is identical in every respect to the US disc, and for someone like myself, long infuriated by the shortchanging of US content on UK discs, this is heartening indeed. Things aren’t perfect by any means, and new releases even from the dedicated region free companies may still be issued as region Bs just like Fox and Disney do, but for now I think we’re heading in the right direction. And with the news that multi region Blu-ray machines are already on the market, I’m quite confident that by next Christmas I’ll have one, and be able to start buying those Criterion Collection Blu-rays which have, unless I’m mistaken, all been naughtily issued as Region A, like Criterion aren’t making sufficient effort to release all region Blu-rays, and are instead claiming that it’s not their fault, it’s down to the rights holders. Hmm. Even Fox have issued some catalogue titles coded all region. And how many more customers would Criterion be able to reach if The Last Emperor was an all region Blu-ray? You know, it’s not a coincidence that for some time Warner Home Video in the US has been issuing a lot of its back catalogue DVDs as region codes 1, 2, 3 & 4; they know there’s an overseas market for these discs, and they do not want to cut anyone out. If only Criterion were as smart as their cover designs and packaging.
The future is bright. The future is Blu.
And not downloads. Certainly not in the UK, not for ten years at least, because the broadband pipe is simply not fat enough to accommodate the downloading of up to 50GB of data that makes up the typical BD-50 dual layer disc. We don’t have the speed. We don’t have the network. We don’t have the time to wait. If you want to watch something now, in Blu-ray quality, recorded media is still going to be the only way to go for some time to come. Sky don’t transmit 1080p (and I may be wrong but nor does anyone else), and iTunes doesn’t sell it to you, and even if they did, are you going to wait a day to watch in quality, or are you going to accept a live internet stream in lower picture quality with inferior sound that stutters and starts as your existing connection struggles to cope?
The future is bright. The future is Blu.
October 18th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
Blu-Ray isn’t going to become as widely accepted a digital format as DVD. It offers very little that DVD can’t already do. Yay.. better picture and better sound.
Actually, the picture and sound on my old VHS tapes wasn’t all that bad at the time. Sure, it pales in comparison to DVD, but the jump from DVD to Blu is much less.
DVD wouldn’t have caught on unless it offered a lot more than VHS. Less storage required, Playable on multiple devices (TV, Computer etc), Audio Commentaries, Extras, Chapter Jumps and No rewinding.
So what exactly does blu ray offer above better picture and sound? Nothing.
I’m not re-purchasing my collection to make some studio exec happy. The future isn’t blu, it’s digital storage (the same way MP3 became the next format after CD)… and my DVD collection are quite adequate as masters for this.
October 19th, 2009 at 12:39 am
I don’t Criterion’s “it’s because of rights” excuse is quite as facile as it sounds. Fox, Warner and so on likely own the rights to those multi-region films in all territories, so buying the US disc instead of the UK disc is fine by them because all the money ultimately ends up in the same place. The stuff released by Criterion, on the other hand, is often owned by someone else in another country, and they won’t be too happy if everyone’s buying the superior Criterion disc and they’re not getting their profits. Doesn’t necessarily make it fair on the consumer, but since when did most companies think that mattered?
As for downloads, I wouldn’t count against them just yet. Personally I hate them and hope they never take off, but down the years I’ve seen plenty of people genuinely believe things like a 400Mb TV rip of a whole movie was “DVD quality”, and I should imagine the same thing goes on with HD. Just because it’s obviously inferior to some of us doesn’t mean the masses will notice, and it doesn’t mean it won’t win out — inferior formats have in the past, of course.
(More of a barrier to downloads, I should imagine, is that Regular Folk don’t want to watch a movie on their computer and don’t understand how to get the movie they downloaded onto their TV. Fingers crossed no one makes it too easy…)
October 19th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
Quite right BBB; Janus usually only own North American home video rights to their titles, but occasionally, they have been known to ’sub-let’ those rights, when they’re able, to overseas territories - Second Sight’s ‘Wise Blood’ is a recent case in point.
Regarding The Last Emperor; the rights here are held by Studio Canal/Optimum, so we may not get an edition as extras stuffed as the Criterion when it comes to BD, but we have a better chance of seeing it transferred in OAR.
There’s nothing wrong with trying to protect your investment, your property. The BFI’s BD output is, thus far, a mix of Region B coded discs, but where they are permitted, they have released discs encoded for all regions to reach as wide a market as is possible. In a very short time, as in the DVD market, it will cease to matter as cheap multi-region BD players become the norm.
October 19th, 2009 at 8:53 pm
Well, Gavin, I know it may not look like it from the storage space devoted to Blu-ray in HMV, but according to the guy who runs The Digital Bits website in the States, and who is tracking Blu-ray sales figures as they’re released, Blu-ray is already outselling DVD in terms of the time period after the initial launches of the products, and this is despite the recession. Just as DVD became the fastest selling consumer product since CD, Blu-ray is already on track to exceed DVD. I remember when the DVD display in HMV looked exactly like the Blu-ray section now, and it only took another 2-3 years for VHS to be banished almost completely from the store. I’m not saying the end of DVD is in sight in quite the same way VHS was wiped from the racks, since you’re right that to a certain extent Blu-ray is “only” DVD plus.
But actually, Gavin, the jump from DVD to Blu-ray in terms of quality is considerable, and you owe it to yourself to try it out rather than dismiss it out of hand. As you say, you don’t want to replace your DVD collection, but you don’t really need to if you were to buy new releases on Blu and supplement whatever catalogue films you already have and really like with a high def big brother. That’s all I’m doing.
Digital storage? Really? I have 140 Blu-rays, and if we were to average them out at 50GB a disc, I would need 2.8 terabytes (or 2,800GB) of storage space just to hold the equivalent content if it was ever made available for download (and that’s a big if), and how long would it take to download 2.8 terabytes of data? I don’t even want to think about. And who wants to turn their home into a data farm? Not me. And what about backing this stuff up? Backing it up onto Blu-ray discs that you write yourself as opposed to buying them second hand for around £10 like I’m doing? Hmm.
There have been any number of articles pushing downloads of movies as the future rather than Blu-ray, but all I keep coming back to is when are BT going to come down my street with their big fat fibre optic pipe and hook me up to 100MB broadband? Maybe by 2020. If I’m lucky. If I’m prepared to pay for it. Downloads are still not quick, they’re still not very on demand, the streaming is poor, the picture and audio quality only adequate rather than exceptional. Downloads pose a much more obvious threat to DVD movie rentals; if I was a Blockbuster or Netflix or Lovefilm shareholder I’d be very worried indeed.
October 22nd, 2009 at 9:40 am
Do the Blu-ray James Bond titles have the restored original mono track? That’s just about the only thing which would make me tempted to get into this new lark since the surround remixes are so horrible.
October 22nd, 2009 at 8:24 pm
Hi, Mike,
The good news is that the original mono is on the American Blu-ray release(s). The bad news is that they’re all Region A discs and won’t play on Region B Blu-ray players (until multi region players start emerging, that is). The mono is not on the UK Blu-ray releases.