DVD's and BLUE-RAYS becoming obsolete?

[Chris Knipp]

And CD's too, they say. We are supposed to "download" everything. There are many flaws in this forward march of technology. It no doubt favors commercial interests. It doesn't favor the appreciation of film as art. It favors people who only want to watch the latest movies, uncritically, instantly, without benefit of ancillary material.

1. The disks have better visual quality.

2. Bonus material. Outtakes, voiceover commentaries, related films other supporting documents instantly accessible on good DVD's.

3. Ability to navigate, back and forth, chapters, adding and removing subtitles in various languages.

4. Accessibility of the whole digitalized film library. There are thousands of films on DVD on Netflix that can't be downloaded.

5. Box sets and "coffrets" -- the quality of the experience and the pleasure to the collector of owning these. Criterion Edition. What is to become of that resource?

It appears that Apple is phassing out DVD players in their laptops. The push is to sell the ultra-thin Mac Air, which can't have a built-in DVD player. This is of a concern to me, because I watch a lot of movies on my Macbook. Apart from that, I have quite a few DVDs by now, though nothing like the number of CD's I have.

Otherwise, I would not lament the passing of CD's (so long as I have players for them; I even havd a Pioneer Elite edition combined DVD, CD, laser disk player. Yes, I have some laser disks. I would not lament the passing of CD's, because vinyl is so much better. The supposed rendering "obsolete" of vinyl records, not to mention cassette tape, is a prime example of how technological "advances" are not an advance in quality. Compare the sound of a metal cassette tape made from a vinyl record with a good tape deck with a CD of the same recording. There is no comparison for richness of sound. You cannot transfer a better recording, from tape or vinyl, to digital format and not lose important information, assuming that you have minimally discerning ears. Of course digital has many benefits, but it also has serious shortcomings -- in sound recording, in the area that counts most.

The reason these "updates" work so well is that people don't know any better. There are those who love technology and those who love art. The appreciation of an art form does not usually benefit from rendering a large library of the work of the past "obsolete." This is happening with books. Books are becoming "obsolete." But the book is a better "technology" than a computer. Just go to the rare books section of a library and ask yourself how many of its contents will become "e-books."

However, DVD's have a very obvious advantage over videotapes. You couldn't carry a half dozen videotapes with you on a trip to play on your laptop. There is still a substantial quantity of the film literature that never made it from videotape to DVD, naturally, because many films are of interest to only a small audience.

But we are that small audience.

Netflix was opposed and has relented (for the moment anyway) when it proposed to phase out DVS's in their rental system in favor of instant download. Again the obvious reasons are given above, the primary one being that only relatively few movies are available for download compared to the number on DVD, and that is a lack that is not going to be remedied. By the way, I use instand download. It's great, for a quick watch or a quick referral. But the image quality is inferior and there is the lack of those resources and functiionalities I've mentioned -- quick back and forward, referral to chapters, changing of subtitles, access to bonus material.

In discussions of the relative merits of the technologies these things are overlooked. It's curious how a new technology blinds people to the obvious.

[Johann]

I think it's a silent crisis of sorts. Thanks for being vocal about it.
Cinemabon posted about DVD's degenerating, or not being able to be played. (pre-2003 discs).

What format is next?
How can they improve the DVD's for collectors and film buffs who need the special features (sometimes more than the film itself in my case)?

What I've started to do is collect mint condition VHS tapes of titles I appreciate and solely box sets for DVD's (gift set types).
I've become a collector now, because I know that they will be gone with the wind eventually and everybody will be saying "Man, I should have hung onto such and such a movie..."
The new Citizen Kane box set and the limited edition box set of Casablanca are prime examples for a collector to pick up.
In fact, most Warner Brothers releases are great.
I've begun collecting Warner Brothers vhs tapes, because they have a distinctive style. They look nice lined up on a bookshelf.

[Johann]

Some other DVD titles or sets that film buffs want to look into getting (for rarity):

Reservoir Dogs (gascan edition) - I've been looking for this for a while. The 2-DVD set is in a replica gascan.
I saw it for sale when it came out and I lollygagged. Never bought it. Now I'm kicking myself. I have to find it used now.


Iguana (anchor bay)- Monte Hellman's cult classic is hard to find on DVD. Snap it up if you see it.

The Shining (warner brothers) Mick Garris version- 4 and a half hours. I have it as a 2-DVD special edition. VERY hard to locate. I looked for it for years and finally found it last month. I'll post about it sometime. It's the version that Stephen King basically begged Kubrick to let him make. It's the version of The Shining that King had hoped he would see from Kubrick. I like it a lot. But it isn't as interesting as Kubrick's.
But it is well made, and it has the creep factor that is required. But the main complaint that King had about Kubrick's version is true for this version! King said that when you first see Jack in the Kubrick you can tell he's already crazy, when the book has Jack gradually losing it.
Same here.
First scene- Pat Hingle is showing Jack the Overlook's boiler room, and Jack to me is like Patrick Bateman in American Psycho!

Good enough for now. The list of DVD's to look for is miles long I think.

[Chris Knipp]

Indeed for the student or the professional the ancillary material is often more important in a sense than the film itself. We can't just drop that because the DVD is "obsolete."

I don't know how soon it will become truely "obsolte," but it certainly happened with videotape. You can do things with tape that you can't with the other format -- and it's not digital -- but as I mentioned, the compactness of CDs and DVDs recommend them highly over tape -- and laser disks, and the sound seemed better when they first came along.

Vinyl, to my knowledge, has not deteriorated. Is that true? It holds up better than CDs and DVDs? That would not surprise me. Every new technology represents a careless abandonment of the good features of the technologiy that preceded it. However, playing vinyl records damages their surface, whereas the laser reading of CDs and DVDs doesn't. Vinyl has to be cared for. And there is that surface noise. But I listen to a Julian Bream Bach lute recording from the early Sixties on a metal cassette tape in my car now and the sound is wonderful. That recording from the early Sixties is superb. You can hear the fingers on the srings. CD sound doesn't achieve that level of texture. And transfer to digital loses essential detail. The metal tape does not. The surface noise is an acceptable tradeoff, like the background chatter at a live jazz club, for music that is really fresh and vivid.

When I watched videotapes, a good player allowed you slow-montion forward and slow-motion backward and you could view a film frame by frame. That isn't possible with DVDs. I remember examining a certain scene in Blade Runner and seeing how it was edited, frame by frame.

I think you are wise to collect good DVD (or tape) editions and collections, even if it's only for yourself. I have regretted not buying some books of photos that seemed too expensive at the time and now are worth ten times as much. Examples: Larry Clark's Tulsa (originally in 1971 maybe around $15, now original edition $800-$1,700); Bruce Weber's Oh Rio de Janeiro (now $850 collectible and $1,100 on Amazon). But photography monographs like that (often self-published) are in quite small editions and become rare when they sell out, so that may be different. Tulsa became famous

[Johann]

Awesome points.

Yes- you used to be able to slow a VHS down frame by frame. I can still do it with my 19 (MICRON) head JVC monster- I can speed up the rewind or fast forward in increments up to 7x the speed of the tape being played. It's great. DVD's can't do that. And the picture quality is the best you can get for VHS today. SuperVHS quality.
With DVD's you can pause and go, but not frame by frame like the Zapruder film- back and forth in slo-mo.

I still use cassette tapes to record radio shows off my boombox- the Ronnie Wood show, Little Steven's underground garage- you can edit those as you make 'em- add soundbites from films- I still make my own mixtapes and I listen to them just as much as anything else.
If they get near the breaking point, I have a friend transfer them to CD-R.

MP3's and downloading takes all the fun out of it. So soulless. So lame.

[cinemabon]

FYI - My contribution to this discussion and a topic on which I've posted numerous times on this site

What's new: this week, WalMart starting offering a service at $2 per disc to convert your DVD collection into digital files (SD Cards) you can put into and play on your computer or in the new digital TV's that take SD cards. Currently you can copy about 40 feature films with their additional content on one 64 gb chip. However, and here's the sticking point, at a loss in video quality! Instead of going up in resolution, you actually loose resolution when you go completely digital (noticable in close up shots that reveal lots of detail).

Apple claims that if you want to play DVDs on your laptop, you need to buy their external drive (something else to carry around if you are traveling with your Mac). They feel that most people will not be using their new superslim computers to watch DVDs but using their cloud or streaming source.

Blu-Ray discs, while offering more resolution are larger files, some running over 10 gbs for one film if it is longer than three hours (i.e. Lord of the Rings, Titanic, Ben Hur, etc). The average Blu-Ray title runs between 5 - 7 gbs per film. When I transfered my DVD library to hard drive, the process took two weeks and in many cases I went from 1080p to somewhere around 850 lines of resolution; better than ABC's 720p, which is the only network to broadcast lower resolution HD but the loss of clarity was noticable on new films. I did not transfer any Blu-Ray discs because they were too large and took up too much memory space.

Compilations like "The Complete Sherlock Holmes" or BBC "Pride and Prejudice" took several hours alone to transfer, so I gave up completely on the supplemental material and concentrated on the episodes alone.

BTW - All of the transfered material plays well and looks good on my Transformer Prime, which converts low res video into high res display. But watching "Ben Hur" on a ten inch screen, while listening to great sound, is not exactly the same as watching a home theater system where the picture is ten times the size and the resolution is double (again, Blu-Ray version).

None of the new "superslim" laptops have DVD drives in them, Apple included. At Best Buy and at the Apple Store in the mall, the salespeople gave very similar replies, "Who buys DVDs any more? Just download or stream your movies..." or float them down from the cloud of your choice. Whoa be to you if your internet is afoul and your cloud has vanished to some high pressure system that moved in and spoiled your day. Without a good internet connection (such as in airports, in many hotels, and in many rural locations), you can't stream jack.

[Chris Knipp]

Of course there is a loss in resolution, is that a surprise? Turning to digital or from digital to more digital is always a loss in quality. And they make money off of you for doing it. Not for nothing are they the most profitable business in the country if not the world. I will not dignify this abomination by mentioning its name. I have never entered one.

Compilations like "The Complete Sherlock Holmes" or BBC "Pride and Prejudice" took several hours alone to transfer, so I gave up completely on the supplemental material and concentrated on the episodes alone.

More of what I'm talking about.

I am not at all an advocate of "home theater systems," by the way. You can guess why.

This is all the obvious stuff. As I've said, we lose a large part of the video film library, and we lose the ancillary material. I do not advocate watching movies in planes or airports. Read the newspaper. Catch up on current events. People-watch. Start a conversation with a stranger. You might learn something. You might meet somebody interesting, somebody new.

I agree on the soullessness and lameness of MP3 but I don't care for earphones anyway. Not even $1000 Sennhauser headsets.

"Who buys DVDs any more? Just download or stream your movies..."

That's what I'm talking about. These Air sellers are airheads, who mindlessly reenforce the new wave of sales. The point is that DVDs are a good format, a quality format, very compact, which enables us to collect and trade around films with good quality image and sound and good supplementary material, à la The Criterion Collection. It is not to be dropped or trashed. Apple is a condescending exploiter. Their laptop DVD players, which they do not make, are not long lasting, but they're good while they last. I've gotten a lot out of mine in my small Macbook. It is for this reason that I started this thread, that I do not want to move to a Mac Air, without a DVD player. The way I watch DVDs on mine, an external DVD player, apart from being a clumsy extra object to travel with, would be uncomfortable and awkward to use. However, I may eventually have to resort to this. I don't expect to give up watching DVDs on a laptop as long as Netflix has DVDs available and I have my collection of them.

I do watch Netflix Instand Downloads, by the way, but with an awareness of a significant loss of functionality in the watch, image quality, and of the supplementary material. They are handy, but handy at a loss.

One could in fact put an immense amount of information, including lots of sound, on a videotape. And there was SuperVHS. But it's better to go on to a new format, so they can sell a whole new set of hardware.

Johann, I don't think you can pause and view a DVD frame by frame, as you can a videotape. You can pause and go, pause and go, but that's not true frame-by-frame. But I may just not have a top of the line DVD player, I don't know. I'm just using the little thing in the Macbook -- which I had to replace earlier this year -- for $150.

[Johann]

Johann, I don't think you can pause and view a DVD frame by frame, as you can a videotape. You can pause and go, pause and go, but that's not true frame-by-frame.

True. You can only freeze-frame a DVD. Slow motion is not a feature in many DVD players.
With movies being such a gigantic part of people's lives, why wouldn't manufacturers give us astounding tools and hardware to maximize our enjoyment of these films?

Jim Morrison said it: "Money Beats Soul. EVERYTIME".

[Chris Knipp]

Frame by frame viewing is certainly a neat thing for film students.

It is part of my opening point about the disadvantages in new technologies to deliver the same content that DVD players don't offer some of the interesting functionalities one gets with a VCR. Or course there is the obvious advantage that one can go from any point to any point once one has "begun" a DVD reading, whereas on a videotape one has to run back and forth searching the tape. The digital "chapter" access system is nice. There is the annoying fact that in restarting a DVD from scratch one often has to run through introductory warnings, trailers, etc before getting back to the "Main Menu." But the skipping to the bonus material, the adding or subtracting or switching of subtitles or of a commentary track, are things one didn't get till DVD, or maybe laser disk. The Criterion laser disk of Altman's Short Cuts was one of the most amazing in all the material if offered. It seems one could spend days watching it; it was like taking a film course. The text of the short stories; commentary; a "making of" film; an interview with Pauline Kael talking about Altman's films and an audio essay by Michael Wilmington, plus of course out takes, trailers, descriptions of characters not in the stories. An article in the Los Angeles Times for 1994 sings this edition's praises

http://articles.latimes.com/1994-07-...0_1_short-cuts

The first thing you notice about Criterion's wonderfully inventive and informative laser-disc edition of Robert Altman's "Short Cuts" ($125) is that it is anything but short.

Arguably more layered, intricate and artfully crafted than the 1993 film itself, the three-disc set requires you not only to just spend time with it, but also to work at it. It's not something you're going to curl up with on Saturday date night. But then again, neither is the bleak film-mosaic spun by Altman and co-writer Frank Barhydt from nine Raymond Carver short stories and a poem.
. . .
The aspirations of the laser production match the reach of the film itself.

This article describes the included "making of" film:

One of the few such documentaries that enhances the viewing of a complex film, it offers interviews with virtually all 22 actors who made up this film troupe as well as Carver's widow (poet Tess Gallagher), and other creative people behind the scenes. Plus, of course, Altman himself.

That article mentions an edition of Boorman's THE EMERALD FOREST coming out at the same time; I'd like to see that -- one of my favorite films of the Eighties.

My second, more sophisticated and higher quality Pioneeer Elite CD/DVD/laser disk player, the VSX 5700S (it makes CDs sound great--better anyway) is designed to play both sides of the laser disk without having to get up and turn it over -- a disadvantage of the original players. I was able to get this player fixed a few years ago when it broke. Parts are still available because San Francisco is near Japan, and because laser disk players are still manufactured in Japan (or were then) because the Japanese use them for games or Karaoke or something.

As you mentiioned for CDs, I believe, Johann, there was a serious issue with the first generation of laser disks, some of which seriously and rapidly deteriorated. A techie could explain this. I have not encountered this problem personally though. Laser disks were fun! At first I was skeptical that DVDs could duplicate their quality and content.

The store where I bought this factory reconditioned unit (new it was very expensive; reconditioned it was about $450; now they seem to practically give them away) no longer exists but was located near where I used to live in San Francisco, and since they specialized in and promoted laser disk players, they had a whole large rental library of laser disks, which I went through -- selectively, of course. It is because their section of classical music was relatively small that I got to his Yokohama concert at the age of 14 and became a lifelong fan of the piano playing of Evgeny Kissin. I'd never heard of him, but there was a laser disk of this reedy kid playing Chopin, and I said, "Why not?" and took it home on rental. It blew my mind. Laser disks were good for classical. As for that SHORT CUTS laser disk Criterion set, I doubt very much that I paid $125 for it.

Before Tower Records went out of business, they had exceptional classical music sections in their big stores, and I patronized the one in Berkeley, the one in SoHo, lower Manhattan, and once the one in Seattle. The guys in the Tower Classical sections in Berkeley and SoHo were experts. I remember one in Berkeley 12 or 15 years ago warning that already tens of thousands of classical CDs were going out of print.

[cinemabon]

I believe the Tower Records store on Sunset Blvd in Los Angeles was without a doubt the greatest collection of records and CD's I have ever seen brought into one building for commerical purchase. You could find anything within those three stories with a staff that fell all over you to help... and were knowledgable in what they did. It was such a joy and pleasure just to walk around that place. I used to take the CD's I wanted most and put them in the back of rows to hopefully find them later. Of course they were gone. The staff put them back in the right place.

Netflix is now limiting the number of devices one can have per household. What that proves is just that they can no longer handle the high volume of demand on their service and higher prices are soon to follow.

My entire laserdisc collection went by way of laser rot. Fortunately, I found a patron devoted to laserdiscs and he bought my collection before it to hell in a hand basket. Even my Criterion discs fell prey.

[Chris Knipp]

That's great -- but Tower had terrific stores in a all major cities. No doubt Chicago; Seattle; New York; Berkeley was better -- the Classical part -- than San Francisco, avowedly so, due to a higher educational level! Which department excelled may have varied with the region or town. I feel sorry for the dope who bought your doomed laser disk collection, but of course you were lucky to be able to cut your losses. I really have little knowledge of this legendary "laser rot" business, and despite renting manuy laser disks I bought only a few. I found them particularly interesting for classic films and classical music. And a little jazz, all films of live performances, of course, or in the case of some classical piano, studio recordings without an audience. Evgeny Kissin made no studio recordings for a long time; all were in concert. He finally made one in Germany starting with "the Wanderer," and that was on laser disk. Several of Ivo Pogorelich playing in a villa in Italy are quite beautiful, both the sound and the images. And the Glenn Gould Collection from the Canadian series by Bruno Monsaingeon -- 13 or 214 disks -- is a rare collector's item, which I happen to have. That Glenn Gould set is my most treasured laser disk set. No problem with rot there.

I do not see the (as the Wikipedia article points out sort of misnamed) 'laser rot' in my small collection of laser disks. The article indicates the worst (but not the only) 'laser rot' occured during the earliest production of laser disks

Much of the early production run of MCA DiscoVision Discs had severe laser rot. Many DiscoVision titles have ceased to function since their pressings in the late 1970s. Also in the 1990s LaserDiscs manufactured by Sony's DADC plant in Terre Haute, Indiana were plagued with laser rot.

I notice it does not say "all" but "many" though. This article also points out that DVDs are less vulnerable to degeneration than CDs due to DVDs' more protective outer structure. I wonder if mild, stable temperatures (for which the Bay Area is notable) helps CDs, DVDs and laser disks to avoid deterioration. I've never even known anybody else who had laser disks, so I don't know about their collections' deterioration. I have only heard about the earlier ones -- given here as the late 1970's. But then it says certain Sony-made laser disks from the 1990's also had the problem. The big store I talked about where I got both my laser disk players, the original one and the better Pioneer Elite one (factory reconditioned), which are still in operation, the old one for CD playing, the other for everything, went out of business and I guess they got rid of all their laser disks. I wish I knew somebody from that nice bunch of people whom I could ask.

On the subject of Tower Records, I personally was only talking about Tower Classical. If the staff of other departments was equally expert, that's great. But to me the size and quality of the Classical sections stood out. The classical section in Berkeley was a whole separate structure and I think that was true in Seattle too. NYC being "debut town," Tower Classical SoHo had staff with a high level of classical training, arguably a rarer thing in the country as a whole than pop know-how. Anyway, that learning process, that source of entertainment and collecability, is gone. We can order CDs online, and I have, over the years since Tower closed, but I miss those visits for the contact with people whose knowledge is irreplaceable.

Doubtless the Internet fosters the decline of retail outlets and I think it doesn't take a genius to perceive that independent stores give better service than chains, and chains of quality like Tower give better service than Amazon, which provides no consultation option.

[cinemabon]

Tower in LA was exceptional. Part of the reason is that nearly all of the recording industry is based there. While records may be produced in locations all over the world, those recordings end up in LA where they are packaged and put together for sale, which is why Tower Records was so huge, even in the classical part. I understand that New York was its only rival, San Fran included.

My classical vinyl records include many original discs from the Bernstein-Ormandy-Steinberg-Szell-Stokowski-Reiner etc era - late 1950's through 1970's. I have Angel recordings from Russia that have never been converted to tape or CD and many original Phillips records from Europe that likewise never made it to CD and are in pristine condition. I am in the process of converting them over to digital for my own benefit. I have a linear tracking turntable that I can run the output through a digital converter and plan to spare no expense in making their files as large as I feel necessary to duplicate the orginal recording sound. When I finish that project, I will make a list of the recordings... in case you might be interested. Most if not all are no longer available in any format.

[Chris Knipp]

Yeah, I get what you mean. San Francisco's wasn't that great; the Tower Classical store in Berkeley was better than SF as I meant to make clear.

Angel Records were very beautifully made and packaged, I remember.

I don'[t see the point of converting your vinyl collection to digital at all. That was one of the points of this thread. . . .to talk about loss of quality in the new formats, though if you can make the "files as large as possible" that will be some improvement, but still a loss of immediacy over vinyl. So why convert? So you can hoard the records without using them? Why not just enjoy playing the records?

Needless to say, there are many records that are unique and worth having and listening to, if you have the time. After all, there are always new artists and new recordings, and so the discography of the world's music keeps growing, and the older material falls behind.

This is the great record I copied onto a chrome oxide cassette tape and play in my car, which has a tap and CD p[layer (Bose):

Julian Bream, J. S. Bach* - J. S. Bach Lute Suites Nos 1 And 2 (LP, Album) RCA Victor Red Seal, RCA Victor Red Seal, RCA Victor Red Seal 1966 You can buy it for $3.99 on vinyl. It's obviously a rich plummy sound anyway, but better via vinyl I think. Here obviously you're getting it transferred to digital. And it's still good I'll have to admit.

Hear Bream playing Bach lute suite here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgx1KHQhBGU

[cinemabon]

Vinyl is great and if I'm at home, I can think of no better way to enjoy my Red Seal records, which I have many... along with Columbia 360 recordings, Deutche Grammaphone, etc. However, we are a society on the go, and I am on the go every day, in my car, in some coffee shop, in some meeting, or some place where playing a record isn't pracical. Hence, the conversion.

My son, who is a violinist extraordinaire, will appreciate these records some day... I hope.

I have the original recording of "The Execution of Stephan Razin" in Russian by Shostakovich that is so dynamic it will literally blow you away, even without drugs! Not available.

A recording of Miklos Rosza conducting his works with the London Symphony Orchestra, also not available.

The list goes on and on...

Best private record collection I ever saw? The late film historian and curator Ronald Haver's place in LA. He had converted an entire bedroom in his condo that had a floor to ceiling record collection, with row after row of recordings from just about every era of the 20th century. "What do want to hear?" he asked me. "Everything," I told him. He was an amazing guy and I'm glad I got to meet him.

[Chris Knipp]

I see. That's great. Some interesting items there. I guess car tape players are hard to find now. I happen to have one, unusual I guess, Bose combo tape/CD player/radio.