Blu-ray: What Do I Weigh When 'Online Competition' I Say?
I had to laugh, in reading the reader feedback to my most recent Blu-ray writeup two Mondays back, to see that one poster began his discourse with the words:
I think all of us techies are forgetting again…
I laughed because I had just been having that very same thought, albeit on a somewhat unrelated aspect of the topic. Judging from the comments I’ve received over the past few years, many of you are confused at why I keep mentioning high-resolution movies on plastic discs (i.e. Blu-ray and, until around this time last year, HD DVD) and movie downloads over the Internet in the same breath. Let me try to explain again, and maybe this time it’ll make sense.
I’ve said any number of times over the years that resolution interpolation is an inferior substitute to ‘the real thing’. Therefore, in an absolute sense and with all other factors being equal, I agree with all the techies who’ve written in that a 720- or 1080-line native resolution Blu-ray version of a movie is of course superior to the upscaled 480-line red-laser DVD or downloaded alternative. The problem, of course, lies within those sticky words with all other factors being equal. Consider, for example:
- Depending on your viewing distance from the display, the size of the display, the ambient lighting conditions, the specific display technology being observed, and other display characteristics, your eyes may not be able to discern the increased resolution potential of Blu-ray versus DVD or a equivalent-resolution downloaded presentation of a movie.
- As no less an expert on technology for the masses as my barber remarked earlier this week, "a high quality up-scaled DVD [editor note: or downloaded standard-def movie] looks pretty darn good even on a big screen".
- An older movie captured on inferior film stock (or with film stock that’s subsequently been degraded by the ravages of time), and/or with inferior lenses and other camera equipment, will show little to no benefit on Blu-ray versus with a standard-definition alternative. In fact, arguably, a high-resolution medium might make the resultant presentation look worse by magnifying the flaws. Case in point (IMHO): Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. Case in point (so I’ve heard): porn.
- Resolution is only one of several important metrics of image quality. The particular lossy video compression codec employed, along with the compression ratio selected and the particular parameters leveraged (or not) by the compression algorithm, all have an equivalent or greater impact on the perceived quality of the end result. I’m reminded, for example, of the roundly criticized first-edition Blu-ray pressing of the trophy title The Fifth Element, both in an absolutely sense and relative to the Superbit standard-definition pressing of the same title on red laser DVD.
- In these troubled economic times, even a $200 (or, as I recently saw, $100) Blu-ray player is a tough pill to swallow for a household that already owns one or several DVD players.
- Similarly, a $10 (or in recent days, less…gee, wonder why?) per-disc Blu-ray price increment is a similarly tough pill to swallow when considering a Blu-ray-vs-DVD purchase on a new title, and it’ll certainly squelch any desire to repurchase in high-def titles that a consumer already owns on DVD.
I’d like to focus in particular on those last two bullet points, because they’re the crux of my motivation in simultaneously mentioning both Blu-ray and downloadable media in past writeups. Consumers have a non-unlimited fiscal budget allocated to home entertainment, although it’s not terribly surprising that recent-times ‘cocooning’ at home is causing that percentage of the total household budget to slightly increase on average. $200 for a new Blu-ray player could alternatively finance (I’m estimating here, based on comparative pricing I’ve seen…your mileage may be slightly different) 40 new-release DVD rentals at a local brick-and-mortar merchant or 50 new-release rental downloads…or for that matter, a couple of visits to the grocery story. Each incremental $10 paid for a Blu-ray disc versus its DVD counterpart could alternatively pay for a second DVD or a second standard-definition online title purchase…or a meal for two at a fast food restaurant.
Consumers also have a non-unlimited ‘eyeballs time’ budget allocated to entertainment. As such, anyone doubting that online streaming is eating into physical disc viewing should heed the words of Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, who admitted in the company’s quarterly earnings call earlier this week that he’s seeing a ’substitution effect’ among subscribers. My friends down the street are probably going to throttle back the ‘number of discs at a time’ associated with their Netflix subscription to save a few bucks each month, now that I’ve got them rocking and rolling with Netflix Watch Instantly on the Xbox 360. So are my friends "down the hill" with their Roku Netflix Player (by the way, also check out Engadget’s recent evaluation of various Netflix Watch Instantly streaming options).
Personally, I suspect Netflix has known all along that cannibalization was going to occur, thereby leading to my admitted admiration for the company and its management. Rare among publicly traded firms in particular, Netflix seems willing to trade off some degree of short-term profitability in order to make the necessary long-term infrastructure investments to survive (or perhaps more accurately, thrive in) the inevitable transition from physical media to downloads. Don’t be distracted by the fact that Neflix’s Watch Instantly library currently contains only a scant assortment of recently released blockbusters; that’s a royalty-induced economics tradeoff. There’s no fundamental reason why Netflix can’t deliver current Hollywood hits, too. Mark my words; it’ll happen, and sooner versus later.
Blu-ray won’t outright fail, in the same way that DVD-Audio and SACD weren’t outright failures. Heck, VHS is still alive and kicking…well, twitching (laserdisc, on the other hand…). But as was the case with both DVD-Audio and SACD versus the Red Book Audio CD predecessor, I continue to confidently believe that Blu-ray will ultimately achieve only a small fraction of the success which its red laser DVD predecessor accomplished. I also believe (not that consumers seem to give a damn) that as was the case with DVD-Audio and SACD, at the end of the day nobody (with the possible exception of Sony) is going to end up turning a profit on Blu-ray. A variety of factors will combine to create these conclusions. And online downloads are indeed one key reason.
Agree or disagree? My protective asbestos underwear is donned; have at it. And hey…have a happy weekend.
p.s…I hate to say I told you so, but Blu-ray-supportive PlayStation 3 sales are on a decline.
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