Blu-only Releases?

[Particle Zoo]

I, for one, never got 'Pierrot Le Fou' until I saw Criterion's Blu.

And I randomly saw this many many years ago for the first time on a super small tube tv (and missed the first 20min) and after that had to wait years of pain for a second tv screening, taped it on VHS and was the luckiest man alive...then my VHS fucked up, the tape broke, and i had to repeair it with Tesa - life was worth living again. This just for me being "not into the technical part of cinema".... Plus i think its important to not mix up the "technical side" of filmmaking with the world of consumerism ...

And yet you won't buy a Blu Ray player...

Life is cheap

You are consuming whether the medium is VHS, DVD, Blu Ray or paying to go to the cinema...and I was refering to the technical side of watching films, not making them.

[fiddlesticks]

Imo, limiting the release to an HD release is limiting the people that will see the movie.
Cause BR won't change the cost of a BR player (that has to be region-free for French BR and Criterion ones), a nice Full HD TV and a sound system. So, no, I don't think it will encourage a lot of people to change, it will just prevent them to buy and see the movie. And I don't think that it's a good thing.

...but...

If we keep putting everything out on DVD and BD, it's very costly and it's slowing us down.

There's going to be "limiting" either way.
> BD only: some people won't get to see the new MoC releases (at least, not at their homes, and/or not until they upgrade)
> BD/DVD: all people won't get to see the movies that MoC doesn't release because they haven't the time/resources/capital to get around to them.
As Nick says in the post that kicked this off, it's a dilemma. Personally, I'd rather see more films rather than fewer made available for home viewing, and that means I vote for BD-only.
(And for the record, I'm not a technophile; I love my DVDs and am satisfied with their quality, although I do notice and appreciate the pictorial improvement in BD. Oh, and I don't watch football on TV.)

[Tommaso]

Film is, after all, a visual and aural medium and the way we experience it can often be crucial to our reaction to it.

This can be true; I remember very vividly the only Renoir film I ever was able to see in the cinema. This was "Diary of a Chambermaid", not generally regarded as one of his major works, and probably rightly so (though it's a good film); but watching it on the big screen was an absolutely mesmerizing experience (clarity, depth of field etc.) which probably still leads me to overrate the film a little. So yes, a film that is good but not outstanding might gain in appreciation from the sheer visual spectacle allowed by the cinema screen or perhaps Blu over conventional dvd viewing. On the other hand, I was also completely blown away when I first watched Lang's "Der müde Tod" on a crappy VHS recording off TV coming from an unrestored print; and I still have that recording and I'm still blown away by the film. It would look much better on dvd or on Blu, but really: it's the film that counts in the end; and "City Girl" will certainly look better on Blu, but if you can't tune in to it on SD, it's certainly not the fault of the medium. So in a way, I doubt that it's the Blu that made you appreciate "Pierrot le Fou" suddenly (as opposed to just rating it a little higher than before); I would much rather suspect it's the second or third viewing of the film itself. Sometimes it takes longer before a film 'clicks'.

[Jonathan S]

We'll have to take with a pinch of salt all those harping on about how they can't see the difference between DVD and Blu-ray.

It may of course be literally true for some people that they cannot see the difference - due to their eyesight. I am moderately short-sighted and have to wear spectacles for film viewing, especially as I project onto a screen and sit at the other end of the room. My glasses sharpen the image but with the major compromise of "flattening" it out. Until I compared with and without spectacles, I never realised how much of a 3-D illusion is contained in a 2-D image, even in SD or VHS quality. So I assume I'd lose most of the alleged 3-D quality of HD, though no doubt it would still look sharper.

[eerik]

I'll make it short and simple: Blu-ray. I don't care for DVD... at all.

[starmanof51]

How will this affect everyone here? Can you see why we need to do this?

In the case of City Girl, no effect at all, having the Murnau/Borzage box. Assuming I didn't have it - well, I'd pass on the MoC. I'm simply not "going Blu", or indeed Hi-Def at all until my SD set breaks down. Ceasing to publish SD product isn't going to be the driving fuction for me - the necessity of a new television and the lack of an SDTV alternative will be. So I no timetable at all for going Blu. If MoC and/or Criterion go Blu only, I won't be buying anything new from them for some time. I say this with no petulance or bitterness at all - I'm saying it the way Mr. Spock would. If the entire DVD industry quit, I may have to reevaluate and reprioritize my cash, but I'd rather not and doubt that's happening anytime soon.

And no, I can't see why you need to do this, but I'm not in the business, you are. I wish MoC the very best of luck regardless of what they do, but I sure do hope I have the chance to buy Epsteins from you.

[lubitsch]

I think we can be quite sure that HD-TV and Blu-Ray's will become a standard once they get cheaper. The only debatable point is if we already have reached that point.
Since the DVD isn't that old (roughly 10 years) and some classics are not out yet, quite a lot of people don't see the point in switching again, some maybe having abandoned their tape collection, a medium that at least survived 20 years. I bet the developments for the next, even better medium are already on their way and the Blu-ray will be outdated in 7-8 years and so on.
Naturally I have seen the difference between Blu-ray and DVD and yes it's considerable if projected. But the point is: how satisfying is the home viewing experience via a certain medium for the viewer? VHS was great for making films available at all, but it always was compromised by many constraints like the instable analogue picture, the difficulties of searching and selecting parts you want to look at of the film, lack of multiple sound and subtitle options and so on. So while the VHS was gift from heaven, one always thought there could be something better. The DVD is exactly this improvement. It doesn't age (let's hope so), it allows to roam freely through the film, to make screenshots, gives a razor sharp picture and so on.
Now the Blu-Ray. Well it's better on high quality equiment. That's fine. It's an improvement if viewed in certain conditions. But it's really not enough to make me jump for it or repurchase anything I've on DVD, while everybody throws out his old tape if he has a DVD. I'm very happy with my CITY GIRL DVD from Fox, it's so sharp and good on my TV, what am I supposed to gain with a Blu-Ray here?

All told there will remain many sceptics until the region free Blu-ray player and HD-TV equipment is cheap enough. And until this happens these sceptics will be lost as customers if MoC releases Blu-Rays only while naturally the sale of Blu-rays will rise steadily. So you have to evaluate when the breaking point has come at which the penetration of Blu-ray is high enough. I'm quite sure that 2010 isn't yet the point and think that you'll lose heavily if you release CITY GIRL on Blu only. You've already lost most of the customers who got the Fox box and you'll lose the Blu sceptics and the film itself is hardly known anyway.

It would be arguably a bit better (and I'm saying that against my own interests) to release everything unavailable yet on DVD like e.g. new Naruse's on Blu-ray, but I still think that's not sufficient to really turn around that many people. The time of Blu-Ray will come, but beware of jumping the band wagon too early.

[swo17]

I've already said this, and maybe it's a case of the industry not explaining things well enough, but you don't necessarily even need to upgrade your TV to go Blu. Similar to how you need to buy a multi-region player in order to play all kinds of DVDs, a Blu-ray player can be thought of as just a new DVD player that you need to purchase in order to be able to play all formats. Yes, you need to upgrade your TV in order to get the full effect, but even if you don't do this for a long time, the Blu-rays you play on it now will just look like really high quality DVDs. In the meantime, you can be buying Blu-rays instead of DVDs for future purchases, and if you eventually do upgrade your TV, this leaves less titles that you feel you have to upgrade afterward.

Also, if a Blu-only City Girl turned out to be a poor seller, couldn't a DVD version be released a year from now as easily as doing it concurrently with the BD?

[mikkelmark]

Nick, maybe you could tell the % split between the sales on blue and dvd from Sunrise? (only the new dvd)

[peerpee]

Roughly speaking, across our 5 x MoC Blu-ray titles (which all have DVD editions) the % split ratio is very favourable for Blu-ray. From what I can ascertain, we have the most favourable ratio in the industry.

[Oedipax]

I think if we could see more comparison pictures between Blu and DVD - BUT THE SAME SIZE it would be much be easier to go 'well this one is substantially better.'

I've found a region free Panasonic blu player on amazon for £200 so will probably spring on that in 2010. It's exciting to hear that the people who don't notice a difference are those without players, whilst those who do have them, say there is a big difference - makes me want one even more!

It was readily apparent to me the first time I popped in 2001, but one way to really demonstrate the superiority of the format is to play the same film in both DVD and Blu-Ray players hooked up to the same set and then switch back and forth on the inputs. A number of the things I own on Blu-Ray are double dips (lots of Kubrick, The Searchers, some Criterions, etc), and most people on this forum are likely to have at least one title that qualifies. No one I've done this A/B comparison for has had any difficulty seeing the difference - especially if you compare wide angle, deep focus shots with tons of detail. It's pretty easy to make a shallow-focus close-up look great on DVD, hard to keep it as impressive once you go to landscapes and such. Then there's the separate but also equally compelling (for some) issue of the richness of the film grain you see on Blu-Rays vs. DVDs. It's actually this second area of improvement that's really made me fall in love with the format, as I feel it's gotten short shrift compared to just pointing out the increase in resolution. Granted, it's also a bit more esoteric to the average person, but it gives films a delicate physical beauty that's sometimes less apparent on DVD (and also, importantly, hard to convey in static screenshots).

[peerpee]

What should be said, first off... is that you need an HD TV to view Blu-rays. The pixel resolution of the set needs to be 1920 x 1080p and you absolutely need to be connected by HDMI (or DVI). Anything less will not do.

Secondly, the size of the screen is pretty important. If you're sticking with your 32" because your room is small, you're never going to really appreciate Blu-rays.

The cut-off point really does seem to be about 40". If you have a screen smaller than 40" you're going to struggle to see the full force.

Thirdly, your equipment needs to be calibrated. Some TVs and players default to terrible settings. The TV needs to be set to "full pixel mode" so that you're actually seeing all the 1920x1080 pixels and not losing some of those pixels with overscan, etc. etc.

The downside of all this is that folk really ought to be upgrading their TVs to as large as they can go. Size is the killer with Blu-ray.

If you haven't followed these points above you haven't really properly "seen" Blu-ray.

[starmanof51]

I've already said this, and maybe it's a case of the industry not explaining things well enough, but you don't necessarily even need to upgrade your TV to go Blu.

Understood, swo, I just don't personally find it that compelling. Granted, I'm no doubt an oddball in this joint - I don't think I've spent as much as $100 on a piece of A/V equipment in a half-dozen years, making it all sound expensive to me. That said, the only reason it truly sounds expensive is in relation to my interest level - I'd probably find your middle path cheap if I felt like I was missing something that mattered to me, but I don't. For some (most?) folks, the difference in Blu vs. SD is important, for others (like me) it's a shoulder shrug. I've watched Blu at people's houses, attended professional A/B demos, and still I remain the joe sixpack unrefined proletariat. Oh, except the Pixar stuff. That shit rocks in Blu.

[swo17]

I guess my point is, if I saw no need to ever go Blu from a visual standpoint, but if 2-3 years from now there were a couple dozen films out from Criterion, MoC, or others exclusively on Blu that I was itching to own, and I could get a player at that point for like $50-100, I'm sure I would do so, if only for the purpose of seeing those particular films.

Or in other words, if I really wanted City Girl badly enough, and my only options were spending a hundred and change for the Murnau Borzage box or about the same for a Blu-ray player and the MoC disc, I think I would probably just bite the bullet and upgrade, even if I had no intentions of upgrading my TV. I mean, I resisted DVD too for several years until one particular movie pushed me over the edge...

Though starman, I'm not trying to tell you how to live your life. I was more just trying to suggest that MoC could possibly ease concerns from some Blu-ray holdouts by illustrating how they can still get what they want (i.e. a downgraded version of the film to watch on their SD TVs) for much less (i.e. hundreds) than the perceived cost (i.e. thousands) of upgrading to Blu.

[domino harvey]

"Wait, where's the VHS of Mr Deeds?!"

[starmanof51]

Ah well, point taken then. Yes, I could feel that way at some point, if Blu-only releases were to truly kick in.

[swo17]

I don't know if this would be financially viable for them, but perhaps MoC could even offer some kind of rebate program, where if you could demonstrate that you recently purchased a Blu-ray player and a Blu-only MoC title, they would offer you a one-time rebate of $10-20 or something.

[domino harvey]

One more thing about Blu-ray players with regards to other region titles: Unlike how most DVD players can be made region-free, the list of Blu-ray players that can be cracked is limited and rather expensive. So sure, Target may be selling an $89 Blu-ray player, but that doesn't help most of us, now does it

[tajmahal]

What should be said, first off... is that you need an HD TV to view Blu-rays. The pixel resolution of the set needs to be 1920 x 1080p and you absolutely need to be connected by HDMI (or DVI). Anything less will not do.

Secondly, the size of the screen is pretty important. If you're sticking with your 32" because your room is small, you're never going to really appreciate Blu-rays.

The cut-off point really does seem to be about 40". If you have a screen smaller than 40" you're going to struggle to see the full force.

Thirdly, your equipment needs to be calibrated. Some TVs and players default to terrible settings. The TV needs to be set to "full pixel mode" so that you're actually seeing all the 1920x1080 pixels and not losing some of those pixels with overscan, etc. etc.

The downside of all this is that folk really ought to be upgrading their TVs to as large as they can go. Size is the killer with Blu-ray.

If you haven't followed these points above you haven't really properly "seen" Blu-ray.

Nick, I've got a 32" lcd, and the difference is noticable. I can only imagine how much better on a larger screen, but the improvement is there. The biggest and best surprise for me is the upscaled dvd image. My dvd collection is far from reduntant, and I've spent several afternoons comparing the image played in both the dvd and blu-ray player. Like so many here, I had no immediate plans to upgrade, but a cheap all region player was recommended (thanks David Hare!) and I haven't looked back. As an example, I compared the Criterion Marienbad dvd with the Studio Canal Marienbad blu-ray. The image improvement(for want of a better term) is impressive, even on a small screen.

Another unexpected bonus was the improvement in audio playback. I have an old receiver, at least 12 years old, and i have noticed a substantial improvement in sound. I imagine the blu player takes full advantage of the receivers capabilities. This is not just my mind playing tricks. I have tested dozens of dvds' and all have improved audio and image. (I hooked up two dvd players, and found some variation, but the audio through the blu player was better, and in most cases a substantial improvement)

I look forward to the day when I can upgrade to a larger screen and better audio set-up, but for now I'm very happy with the upgraded image and audio.

Count me in for future blu's.

[brendanjc]

I'll put in another self-serving vote towards Blu-only if that means getting more films released. I wonder if I might be in an interesting demographic in that the only MoC titles I've purchased are Blu, mostly because I haven't gone region-free for SD-DVD and the majority of MoC's SD releases are locked while the Blu ones are not. The caveat with my vote is that I won't be purchasing any region-locked Blu-rays either because there isn't a satisfactory region-free Blu option yet available in the US. I haven't gone completely aox-Blu-crazy and switched over to purchasing only BD, but I have definitely heavily cut down on SD purchases in favor of BD ones.

[Anthony]

I too vote for Blu-ray only. I have a Blu-ray player that can play any region BD so it doesn't matter to me if the disc is region free or not. I was very impressed with MoC Blu-ray release of Sunshine and can't wait for their release of City Girl on BD as well. =D>

[Tribe]

.
And yet you won't buy a Blu Ray player...

Life is cheap

You are consuming whether the medium is VHS, DVD, Blu Ray or paying to go to the cinema...and I was refering to the technical side of watching films, not making them.

What is this?!?! I understand that Blu-Ray will look and sound better. But, what is this gall where some Blu-Ray fadists are taking shots at how other people decide to spend their money. Christ, I get it. Blu-Ray will look better...not enough for me to invest in the equipment at the time being and not as drastically as the difference between VHS and DVD. I like very much how my DVDs look on my tv.

As I understand it, it is pretty difficult to obtain a region free blu-ray player in the us. So, all kinds of reasons why Blu-Ray isn't the choice for me. If MOC goes Blu-Ray exclusively, well, that would be too bad for me...I'll miss out on some nice things for a while.

But this nonsense about how people should spend their money is galling.

And, for some very, very few who have posted to this thread: the issue isn't whether Blu-Ray is better or whether someone personally despises DVD now. Nick is taking a straw poll to decide to assist in making a business decision whether to continue issuing releases in both formats or solely Blu-Ray. Most of the posters to this thread have responded directly to that question and given pretty good, reasonable responses to that issue.

A very few are missing the point...their fanboyish, slavish enthusiasm only turns me off.

[akaten]

Tribe - I agree with the sentiment but things are bound to get heated when, on a forum where people repeatedly ask about niche and risky titles, especially of Criterion, here is a label saying it could do more were people to support it going Blu Ray only where possible. While it is down to choice I would hope people would be prepared to acknowledge that if MOC and others go that extra mile, take that risk, that they would in kind and go that extra mile as well to enable more films to be made available in high quality editions.

One more thing about Blu-ray players with regards to other region titles: Unlike how most DVD players can be made region-free, the list of Blu-ray players that can be cracked is limited and rather expensive. So sure, Target may be selling an $89 Blu-ray player, but that doesn't help most of us, now does it

A situation people around the world face with Criterion region locking blu ray, rather than the largely region free approach of MOC and BFI.

Many must be facing financial hardships and tough decisions about if and when to pick up an expensive player, for my part I have a PS3 only for watching Blu Rays but if Criterion went Blu Ray only, or made some announcement that all new productions in 2010 that could be done on Blu Ray would only be done for the format I'd respond to that by going to the trouble of buying a multi region player now rather than hedge my bets and pick one up a little later.

Prolonging the transition must make it harder for labels to get accurate data about how much interest there is in titles, loss of revenue from people 'holding out' and enable (Ran debacle aside, fingers crossed a one off from Studio Canal) for rivals to grab market share away from companies such as Criterion, case in point being my waiting to see what Axiom Films does with Wings of Desire and I'd buy a Second Sight Blu Ray of Lola Montes were it made available.

[domino harvey]

While it is down to choice I would hope people would be prepared to acknowledge that if MOC and others go that extra mile, take that risk, that they would in kind and go that extra mile as well to enable more films to be made available in high quality editions.

But I don't think MOC's proposal of becoming all-Blu-ray is an admirable idea and I wouldn't swear a loyalty oath to them even if I had a player already. Moving away from an accepted format to a new, still tenuous format is ballsy and if they want to alienate potential customers and take that gamble, well then that's certainly their choice and it could very well pay off. But they are proposing such a change because they see it ultimately benefiting their bottom line, not because they love moviegoers so much that they want only the best for them. This isn't a selfless act of love, it's one of financial investment. MOC presumably sees the numbers going either way, which explains the dithering. As some of the most vocal champions of the label, they asked our advice. This is classy, and I thank Nick for seeking our input. But I'm very uncomfortable with this "Let's blindly support them for their brave decision" line of argument. Being one, I'm not convinced that such a move benefits all of MOC's loyal customers

[Oedipax]

It's a shame that Curtis Mathes Momitsu clone wasn't around a while longer - region-free and priced at $99, albeit with a suspiciously high shipping/handling fee of about $25. There would still be good arguments against Blu-exclusivity (how to show the films in universities is a great example, for one) but I feel once there's a widely available, relatively inexpensive region-free solution a lot of people will make the switch. I'd still be waiting were it not for the CM - about $150-200 was my cutoff and I definitely wasn't buying a region-locked player.

Also, a question - can anyone familiar with the background give us a history lesson of what happened when Criterion moved from laserdisc to DVD? Was there a period of overlap like we have now, or was it more all at once? I'll cop to not really being aware of Criterion until around 99/2000 so I missed whatever happened back then but it seems like it could shed some light on our present dilemma. Of course, the first thing to say is that laserdisc never had anything like the adoption rate of VHS then or DVD now, so maybe trading one niche format for another (at the time) wasn't as big of a deal.