As always, nice review, Luke!
SWillie! wrote:Disney's Divinity wrote:The people with Blu-Rays aren't the ones being denied bonus features. So I agree there's a reason for DVD owners to get annoyed.
It's just the natural progression of things - as new, superior technology is developed, older technology is pushed aside and eventually abandoned completely. This argument would be comparable to people who have stuck with CDs in the age of digital music. I haven't heard many complain (at least seriously, like the DVD people do) about the fact they spent all this money on CDs, and now the industry wants them to buy music online!! AND they've cut back on packaging on CDs! AND preordering on iTunes is the only way to get a ton of bonus features with the music?!! (EDIT: Also, I know what argument is coming here, so don't tell me "because you can still transfer your old CDs into digital music." Because a blu-ray player still allows you to play your old DVDs, as well.)
I don't think that's a perfect analogy, as "digital download" music is hardly "superior technology" to CDs. CDs have better sound quality, packaging, artwork, etc. I don't have an "I-Pod" and have no desire to ever get one. CD is fine for me.
A better analogy would be comparing CD to Super Audio CD, which clearly does have superior technology and sound quality to CD... and has failed to take over the physical market from CD.
It's the same battle (yes, I understand the shift from CDs to digital is a bigger one than from DVDs to Blu-ray), but for some reason DVD people just won't accept that blu-ray is on it's way to being the new standard.
Yeah, like SACD became the new standard for physical audio releases! Just because something has the "latest and greatest" technology and an improvement in quality, it does not mean the public will embrace it as such. If they did, BetaMax would have defeated VHS and then LaserDisc would have destroyed them both!
I admit BD is slowly gaining ground, but the last I checked, a few weeks ago, DVD STILL has 80 percent of the physical sales, and that's WITH 100% of ALL Combo Pack sales counted as "Blu Ray sales". Despite the fact that many of these are deceptively packaged in
DVD packaging, stocked in the
DVD section, and bought by many people for the
DVD inside the package and not the BD. Some of these people buying it for the DVD are going "combo" because they feel its a better value if they ever get a BD player, others don't even realize or care the package has a BD inside. Yet ALL these sales are counted as BD sales. A fair way would be to count combos as 50/50, or count them as BD sales if they are in BD packaging, and DVD sales if they are in DVD packaging.
Also, at last count, less than 5 percent of the titles in my DVD collection (representing my favorite movies that I cared about enough to own) have been released on BD. At this time in DVD's history, more than half of my favorite titles were already available. Kind of hard to get excited about a new format that so much is missing from, and makes up only 20 percent of sales (with the inflated numbers discussed above).
New technology in, old technology out. Simple as that.
It wasn't that "simple" for Laserdisc vs VHS even before DVD came around, even though it was CLEARLY superior to VHS.
