Video Asylum

Posted by Cosmic Closet (A) on November 02, 2008 at 16:14:54

In Reply to: RE: Blu Ray is failing in the marketplace posted by DavidLD on October 28, 2008 at 08:33:14

The 'big ignorance' is getting bigger with each new format released in anything. Combined with society's shorter and shorter collective memory, trying to sell anything remotely subtle like 'picture improvement' is becoming absurdly difficult.

That means, a lack of ability to hear and/or lack of caring about when sound is reproduced well and when it is reproduced badly.
(Don't get me started on tape vs. digital, or compression ratios...)

Also, no sense/no caring when a picture is of really high quality or when it is in fact quite a bit less so. The one thing that matters is that the screen is BIG.
(Don't get me started either on 35mm film and the new quest to make films on DVDs look like video by 'de-graining' them....)

For all the folks who care enough and have the ability to see that well-done Blu-Ray looks a heck of a lot better than the majority of conventional DVDs, you will have the hordes of Ipod-pounding, one-hand-photographing 'do not cares' who at best will think of us as 'elitist' if they ever even pause long enough to give a damn about the subject.

(Much like the word 'adult', the word 'elitist' is officially a bad word in the US; I have stopped wondering why..)

They should drop the price on Blu-Ray players and especially on discs; no doubt about it.
They are killing the mass appeal like this, because people don't even bother to read about it anymore after a short period. Instead, when they finally drop the price on the discs enough, most likely you will have more people returning Blu-Rays to the store complaining that they don't "play on their DVD players."

Physics don't lie. Faster tape, wider tracks, bigger negatives, more data per film or audio file, less compression, better reproducing systems.....these are timeless truths.

What unfortunately is changing (translation: going down the toilet) rapidly is the interest in getting 'the best', as opposed to getting the 'good enough' and while this attitude has always been there in the majority, it used to be "less lonely" to be in the minority.

Even your average Joe at some point could hear when a stereo sounded good, or see that going to the movies was much nicer than watching it on TV. Sarah Palin might call him Joe the Media Buff.

Nowadays, it's not just that it's a niche, but it is seen as almost fascist by some to suggest that, yes, it looks and sounds better, I can see it and hear it, and either you can't, or don't care enough to try. The appreciation of quality was never democratic enough for some people.

Blu-Ray is a terrific format for viewing films at home. Whether it succeeds or not has no bearing on its quality, much like any other good thing that got rejected by the masses along the way (be it from public fickleness or bad marketing.)

Best,
CC