Platinum Release Schedule vs. Upcoming HD format

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Lars Vermundsberget
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Re: No need to panic and dump DVD collection

Post by Lars Vermundsberget »

Pluto Region1 wrote:Oh boy... you bought laser discs, Lars? So what am I crying about? :cry:
I guess you shouldn't, because I'm not. :)

...even though LD was a heavier investment, money-wise, than DVD.

I'm not throwing my LDs in the trash and you shouldn't do that with your DVDs - and perhaps not with your tapes, either, for a while.

The way things work we should expect some sort of improvement every few years. If we don't get a new format within the next few years, the next DVD release of any given title is probably going to be better than the last one. You're never going to reach the "ultimate". So, if you aren't going to be absolutely uncompromising and obsessive in your video collecting, learn to live with something that is eventually going to be just "good", no longer the best.

There are quite a few people who have collections of thousands of DVDs. SOME of these are going to start replacing everything they can when a new format comes along. It's a matter of money, of course. And it's definitely a matter of priorities.

My suggestion: Don't panic. As long as you think your DVD copy of any given title is good enough, don't feel forced to replace it. Take the time to consider replacing on a case-by-case basis.

There were some people, though, who at one point decided that they'd sell out their (laserdisc) collections while they could still get a somewhat good price. In a way that could make sense, but they'd never know whether they'd get everything they wanted on the next format. Some people are probably thinking along those lines now. It's their choice.
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Re: No need to panic and dump DVD collection

Post by Pluto Region1 »

Lars Vermundsberget wrote: ...even though LD was a heavier investment, money-wise, than DVD.
I'm not throwing my LDs in the trash and you shouldn't do that with your DVDs - and perhaps not with your tapes, either, for a while.
My dad had bought severel LDs and I'm not sure what happened to them. But you never know. They could become collector's items. I think to some degree because very few people had a chance to buy into Laser Disk format, that that could be the case! It would be like owning a collectible phonograph record but obviously the quality much better. Unfortunately I don't think VHS tapes will ever be collector's items (unless it is something that never made it to DVD - Errol Flynn's "Against All Flags" on VHS was going for about $100 on Ebay, etc. I am still waiting for a decent print of "Double Indemnity" to get released on DVD - luckily I have it on VHS!)
Lars Vermundsberget wrote: The way things work we should expect some sort of improvement every few years..... If we don't get a new format within the next few years, the next DVD release of any given title is probably going to be better than the last one. You're never going to reach the "ultimate".... There are quite a few people who have collections of thousands of DVDs. SOME of these are going to start replacing everything they can when a new format comes along. It's a matter of money, of course. And it's definitely a matter of priorities.
But if I have to endure a change every few years, I will just have to step out of the fray. I can't afford to change mediums like that every few years; that is a rich man's game. I will get alot of years out of the DVDs even if they start introducing the new medium.
Lars Vermundsberget wrote:My suggestion: There were some people, though, who at one point decided that they'd sell out their (laserdisc) collections while they could still get a somewhat good price. In a way that could make sense, but they'd never know whether they'd get everything they wanted on the next format.
I was never one to try and "sell out now" while the getting is good. I am too worried to dump my VHS or DVD collections as I've already been burned on the VHS to DVD transition, in that many titles never made it to DVD. I should have saved the VHS tapes!

I suspect this will be a slow transition process. For one thing UNLIKE with the transition from VHS to DVD, people did not have to go out and spend $1000 for a new TV in order to understand why the DVD was better. The DVD was better because it was a better storage medium. But the new format is supposedly going to look BETTER only if you can afford the fancy TV. So if you can't afford the TV, there is no point in upgrading to HD format. That is a problem for the promoters. Not only do they have to convince consumers go out and buy the new medium, but also spend $1000 on an HD capable TV set. So for awhile, until they can make the TV more economical, the HD medium will be a rich man's sport!
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Lars Vermundsberget
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Re: No need to panic and dump DVD collection

Post by Lars Vermundsberget »

Pluto Region1 wrote:But if I have to endure a change every few years, I will just have to step out of the fray. I can't afford to change mediums like that every few years; that is a rich man's game. I will get alot of years out of the DVDs even if they start introducing the new medium.
Yes, that was pretty much my point.

As for HD capable TV sets, expect them to become cheaper within a few years.

I could be wrong, but I also expect that no future format switch is going to be quite as stunning as the one from VHS to DVD. Besides, the future format apparently is going to be another disc just the size of a DVD or CD. I'll be disappointed and surprised if we won't be able to play our "old" DVDs on the future players.
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Post by deathie mouse »

to answer several questions and matters not in order of appearance :-P

I think Blu-ray already won.
With 95% of studios backing it now (SonyColumbiaTriStarMGMBuenaVistaTouchtoneMiramaxDimension20thCenturyFoxBandaiWarnerBrothersNewLineParamount) (:-P)


DVDs obsolete? maybe in a decade or 2? but i dont think obsolete would be the word, VHS tape is still being used today, and DVDs like CDs and DTS-CDs and DVDs and DVD-As and SACDs are all 5" optical media like Blu-ray is so in a sense they're like from the same family tree or something so as long as there's digital players with multi-wavelength lasers, microchips, and 5" trays, there will be some use for all of them. If Laserdiscs had been 5" im sure they might been playable in various DVD players today :-P

Btw theres many LDs that have features/supplements that haven't been included on DVDs till this day. I'm sure Lars is happy about some of those :)
And of course nothing beats a deluxe 12" x 12" box with 12" x12" booklet art. Certainly not a 5" x 9" amaray case :-P

I think an 8x improvement in picture quality from Blu-ray to DVD is much more than the 3x improvement in picture quality from DVD to VHS (or the 2x from LD to VHS) but that's just me, i grew up used to Cinema big screens, I don't like to watch movies at 9 feet away from 27" TVs, they look like stamps then, i like them to be 6 x 15 feet at that viewing distance :-P (For Cinemascope ones ;)) That way i relive the directors intention of a Cinematic experience instead of just watching a "video". Ben Hur in a 50" TV? nah

The eye's more or less practical visual limit at that size/distance is around a 2000 vertical scanning lines (it could see up to 4000+ vertical lines but the visible diference would be like only 2% better :-P) so that's why 70mm films were kinda the practical limit in Cinemas, no need to go to 150mm, 70mm films were more or less at near the visual limit so that's why them (and Disney's use of Technirama) were the ultimate :-P, 35mm films are roughly like 1000 lines on average Cinemas and 1000 lines is still a good enough sharp picture to the eye, and that's Blu-rays current spec, just look at Corpses Bride and Sin City, both "filmed" (photographed digitally) at the same resolution of Blu-ray.

I'm sure there's lots of paintbrush detail on Fantasia. :)

unless its Digitaly noise reduced :-P


DVDs, with 500 lines at best and 250 at worst, is just like 16mm. But Hollywood movies are not 16mm quality. They've always used 35mm or better.

With a 1000 lines you can throw a digital image as big as a a Theater house screen and it still look great. And get the whole emotional impact of seeing Kong as he really is. Not a tiny monkey in a picture frame :-P


Will 1000 lines be the ultimate quality? there could be some improvement in detail with a 2000 line system (Sony's Professional Digital Projector for Filmakers is already 2160p) we can bump up the frame rate to 60p (instead of 24p) and add 3-D. And there's holography where you can practically look around objects as if they were there :-P. But that'll take another decade or twoo or threee

I've shrunk 35mm 2000 line scans to 1000 lines and compared them at nice viewing distances and there's not much difference. You get to see a lot more of the 35mm film grain tho :-P on the 2000 line scan

And as much as i adore 70mm movies which would benefit most from a 2000 line delivery system, there's really not that many of them and they (and Cinemascope ones) are the ones actually faring the worst on NTSC DVD, being (depending on aspect ratio and either 4:3 coding or 16:9 coding) on average just 300 lines tall on DVD (barely twice as tall than the strip below) so jumping from that to HDTV is a big improvement (8x the quality) for them, and then again, the mayority of movies are 35mm.

Runco is already making HDTV displays with 21:9 wide images (great for Cinemascope and 70mm ratio films) Technology will always be in progress

This morning 2099net and I were discussing the possibility (till now vaporware :-P) that PS3 and Blu-ray might have 120Hz refresh outputs for future TV Displays (some puter monitors do 120 now) so that would make things shot on videotape at 60i after being converted to 60p look awesome. SuperLive. But that don't affect Hollywood films so far.

Going back to DVDs, (told you, this was not in order :-P) DVDs are great, thery're digital, they're convinient, they're available, they have 16mm quality and a Digital 16mm at that :-P) which is great compared to what we had before, they're better than those 8mm Castle Films 5 minute digest versions of movies you could buy many years ago (and project in 50" screens way before Home Video ever existed) and probably better than seeing an optical 16mm copy of a film in an University retrospective showing. Thats why we like them so much. They the best consumer thing at the moment. For now.


About old VHS if you treasure them i'd archive them at least on DV tape or file system (not DVD) using a pro 3-D motion adaptative comb filter ;) or wait to transcribe them to BD-Rom at one point.

I'd talk some more but I need to see some stuff on UD
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Lars Vermundsberget
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Post by Lars Vermundsberget »

deathie mouse wrote:I think an 8x improvement in picture quality from Blu-ray to DVD is much more than the 3x improvement in picture quality from DVD to VHS (or the 2x from LD to VHS) but that's just me, i grew up used to Cinema big screens, I don't like to watch movies at 9 feet away from 27" TVs, they look like stamps then, i like them to be 6 x 15 feet at that viewing distance
Admittedly, I was making the presumption that "we" watch movies on a more or less "normally-sized" TV screen. I realize that there is still much potential for improvement if you use a system with a 15' wide screen. I hope movies such as Fantasia and Lawrence of Arabia will give me even better "home video experiences" some day. :)
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How long before Treasures are in Blu-Ray?

Post by consultant »

I know I'm late to this I just discovered this site. I've always been a little embarrased how materialistic and entertainment-driven our American Society is but one thing you cannot deny is in this physical world we spend a short time in, Disney sure makes life fun (and expensive). So I figured, why sink every penny into boring investments and started collecting some Disney sutff - I still feel guilty as I always thought I was a true believer in the saying "the best things in life are free."

So now that I'm done with my sermon, back to the topic. My latest decision (with a 4 and 5-yo in the house) is to collect the best versions of all my favorite Disney Animated Classics on DVD, primarily focusing on the Platinum/Special Edition 2-disc sets. My plan is to break the seals, backup the discs so my 4 and 5-yo can thrash them to their hearts content, and keep the originals in mint condition having been played only once.

Being the tech guy I am, I started thinking about, here I go, buying a collection of 20+ DVDs only to watch them become worthless when Disney decides to go back to the consumerism well and re-release everything in HD-DVD or Blu-Ray or whatever it ends up being called.

Obviously the discussions here involve people that are REALLY into the Disney DVDs so many fine points can be and will be analyzed. But sometimes it is best to just look at the Big Picture. I estimate my DVD Collection goal will cost me $500-$600, not chump change, but really not that much in the context of retirement funds and other investments/hobbies. So while I don't plan on letting my kids take my collections value from $600 to $60 in a couple weeks, I look at it as $600 invested in disposable entertainment. Worst case scenario is my collection is worthless in 5-7 years when everything I have has been improved upon. And YES, they WILL improve on the current format if they want to keep generating revenue. So that's a cost of about $100 a year which I well worth it for the enjoyment of watching the movies and admiring the collection on my shelves.

The problem is, I just discovered the Treasures series and being the newbie Disney collector and salivating. This raises the ante quite a bit more if my call is to have a complete Treasure series collection and thereby makes me a little more concerned about the collection being re-released eventually in Blu-Ray.

But again, big picture is Disney is going to take a LONG time to re-release ALL their stuff in the next best format. So the cost is worth enjoying what they have available now in the meantime.

If you had to scrape and save and spend hours and hours over the past 5 years+ to build your gigantic collection then I can see your concern but it's definitely premature. Besides, you can start selling your collection to the people that are non-techy people as soon as the first Blu-Ray titles are announced just like I sold my VCR to someone for $100 after buying a new DVD player for $200.


After further thought, duh, I think I higher res format poses no threat to the Treasures collectors as the source material cannot really take advantage of it in most cases. It's whether or not Disney re-releases Treasures in another limited edition (tin) type format years from now.
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Post by deathie mouse »

Welcome to the Forum

great first post!


After all we live in the present and not the future. But of course it's also good to plan for the future and invest or resources wisely.

If Disney were to release all its titles in one big Glomp tomorrow on Blu-ray then buying titles on DVD would be wasteful, but not everything is/will be available in the near future and your kids are kids now so they should enjoy it now not have to wait till they grow up ;) (and nobody should be a luddite and say: i'm not gonna buy/watch anything unless it's all in High Def/Ultra Def/Supra Def/Ludicru Def etc., much less tell their kids: you'll have to wait till you're grown up cus DVD is not all it can be! :-P)

So judicious buying of stuff we realy think meritorious to watch in the NOW instead of in the MORROW is good.

About the treasures, well i don't think they gonna pop up in Blu-ray for a while, (but of course Disney could go beserk :-p) so mmm buying and enjoying them now is what i'm (trying) to do at the moment :-D

Now on the other hand i take issue with your statement that Treasure shorts/source material won't look better on Blu-ray. If they have the original Technicolor B/W sequential separation negatives on those, or even good 35mm prints well preserved, they will indeed look better on Blu-ray, as Academy ratio shorts are 15mm x 21mm and film negatives at that size can record up to 3000 x 4000 pixels (In fact i think that was the resolution the Snow White negatives were scanned into to make the restoration) so if done correctly they can look much better. One day.

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Post by kbehm29 »

The way I look at it is simple.

Blu-Ray / HD-DVD players are going to be backwards compatible. ALL of your current DVD's will play on the new machines, and maybe the quality of the old DVD's will even improve a bit. Replace your absolute favorites with HD, and when you buy your player start buying any new DVD's in the new format.

It's similar to game boy games. My sons can play my old game boy games from years and years ago when game boy first came out on his current game boy. All new game boys are backwards-compatible, making good use out of your previous investments!

This is not the "end" of your dvd collection. I'm willing to bet that from now on, all "new" technology will be backwards compatible so you'll be able to play those dvd's for decades to come! Don't worry!
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Post by singerguy04 »

i kinda wish everyone would stop freaking out about blu-ray. it serisously isn't that big of a deal. since the new blu-ray players can play your old dvd's you don't have to re-buy. in fact the only titles i will re-buy will be my the disney titles that i own, or if a blu-ray edition of a movie seems like it's be better than a current dvd edition. the only thing that does kind of bother me is that i'm probably not going to own all 44 disney classics on dvd b4 they start releasing them on blu-ray. this bother's me bc i just want have them all in a sort of collection, i'm just a collecting freak like that hehe.

anyways back to the original subject, does anyone know how disney is gonna release the rest of the platinum line b4 blu-ray goes into full swing. afterall Dinosaur is coming out this year on blu-ray...
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Post by Little Mermaid »

I have no idea. I don't really understand the whole Blu-Ray HD stuff and it scares me because I just got a new DVD player for Christmas and then I will have to buy a new one and get rid of my DVDs because they won't play on HD because I heard that everything will be HD soon. :cry:
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Post by kbehm29 »

Little Mermaid wrote:I have no idea. I don't really understand the whole Blu-Ray HD stuff and it scares me because I just got a new DVD player for Christmas and then I will have to buy a new one and get rid of my DVDs because they won't play on HD because I heard that everything will be HD soon. :cry:
Don't worry! You don't have to get rid of your DVD's. They will play just fine on your new Blu-Ray or HD player. And the majority of the common population probably won't be buying the HD players for a few years yet.
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Post by DarthPrime »

I got a new DVD player at Christmas as well (my old player was really starting to die). Anyway you don't have to get rid of your DVDs. They will work on HD-DVD/Blu-Ray players. HD-DVD/Blu-Ray players will still play on a standard TV, you just want get the HD picture like you would on a HD set.
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Post by deathie mouse »

Little Mermaid don't be scared. Your DVDs and DVD player will play on an HDTV (That's how many of us are watching them in these days). Your DVDs will play on the Blu-ray player too if you were to get one too. Your DVD player will still be in your home if you buy a Blu-ray player, and it still will work, unless you sell it of course :-P. I have 2 DVD players right now in my home. It could be used as a second player in a room or any other place that has an extra TV. I have a S-VHS VCR here too.

Reading some comments sometimes it sounds as if it looked as if the BD Police would come and confiscate all DVDs from stores, houses, and web retailers in the middle of the night and you'd wake up DVDless and having to buy stuff again against your will. That's not so! DVDs are not gonna go anywhere soon. If you want to buy a movie on DVD it'll be available for a long while. :)

If you'd prefer to enjoy it in a much bigger, sharper, Cinema-like picture, you'd then buy a new player and Blu-ray diisc and display.

Just like when it went from VHS to DVD people at one point decided they wanted a better pic and bought a DVD player and sometimes a bigger, S-Video or Component connector, widescren sometimes, TV; to enjoy their movies more. One difference this time is you can play your VHS tapes oops :-P i mean DVDs on the new equipment. ;)

It'll take a while. Happened when DVDs showed up: VHS people complaining about player prices and having invested in VHS collections and having to buy a better TV to fully see how good DVDs were, and Laserdisc people saying the difference wasn't worth it and having invested in Laserdisc collections and things couldn't look THAT much better on DVD.
And lets not talk about the LP to CD war. There is STILL vinyl being sold and people saying "they will rip my tonearm from my dead cold hands"! ;)


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