dobyblue
Group: Members
Posts: 33
Joined: May 2009 |
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Posted: June 07 2010, 08:55 |
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| Quote (starfish @ June 04 2010, 13:22) | Oh, I'm not knocking your opinion at all - I'm sure that for "audiophiles" (I hate that word), having the albums in lossless 5.1 would be a godsend. I'm just not sure it's commerically viable, that's all. A few responses to your points...
Certain films may well indeed sell 49% of their copies on BD. However, there are many reasons why this could be the case: some BDs have exclusive extras that the DVD editions do not, for example. And don't forget that not everyone who buys a Blu-ray Disc does so for the sound. A lot of people I know just buy the discs for the improvement in picture quality alone, and just have the sound coming out of their regular TV speakers. Just because Blu-ray sales can be good, it doesn't necessarily follow that all those who purchase the discs have a surround-sound setup. Furthermore, there could be other reasons why sales of CDs and DVDs are dwindling, such as downloads (both legal and illegal), the global worldwide recession, plus of course the fact that more people are going to the cinema!
On to my next point - you argue that BD costs would be minimal, because the only costs involved would be the authoring and pressing. But BD authoring is very, very expensive. If you're expecting to sell lots of units, authoring costs can be spread very thinly. Thats why chart CDs and other media tned to retail for a lot less than niche items distributed on indie labels - because sales are lower for niche items, the authoring cost is spread over fewer units, thereby raising the price. It's one thing to sell hundreds of thousands of units of Avatar on Blu-ray, but a few hundred Mike Oldfield audio discs would be another matter entirely.
I fully understand your reasons for wanting the albums in a lossless format, and in an ideal world they'd be released in all formats to cater for every fan. But realistically it ain't gonna happen - not for a good while, anyway. |
I'm not sure I understand why the reasons for the 49% sales need to be determined, it doesn't change the sales figures. People who buy on Blu-ray buy on Blu-ray. There were no extras on the Avatar release at all, whether you bought the DVD or the Blu-ray you only got the movie. Blu-ray is the fastest adopted media in history.
In addition the 20,000 number I've noted from 2006 was from an independant studio, R&B Film's Richard Casey gave us those numbers referring to Chronos. BD authoring is not very, very expensive. People are authoring Blu-ray's of their own home movies with consumer software packages. The biggest cost would be from the replication, not the authoring...and that is a fraction of what it used to be too.
As for when it will happen, we've already seen artists like Trent Reznor, Rob Halford, The Pixies and Neil Young be delivered on audio-only Blu-ray Discs, none through a major label though. Tom Petty's new album "Mojo", being released this month, is being released on CD, vinyl and audio-only Blu-ray Disc. The MSRP is $24.99. It is from WB's Reprise label and is the first major label release. Yes, it's going to be a good while before we see every title release on Blu-ray as a music medium, but it is already happening and when it's classic titles like Ommadawn it's painstaking to see all the work having gone into a 5.1 mix and then to present it in the lowest possible 5.1 carrier there is. A DVD-Video can easily handle a 1.5 Mbps dts mix and you'd be hard pressed to find anyone with a surround system that can't listen to both Dolby and dts mixes. That's the biggest rub, not that it's not on Blu-ray, but that it is the lowest possible quality we could get.
To put it in perspective, if the 2010 2.0 stereo mix was only presented in 128 Kbps .mp3, how would you feel?
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, yes, I received an email about HR, but both of my orders are still shown in my order history as backordered. But the strangest thing in all this, as Starfish above here pointed out, is that I received the email from Universal stating that HR was being held up... more than two weeks before the supposed release date! This is very weird indeed! 
Or maybe are they "guarding their asses", as we say in Italy, in preparation for an impending disaster? 
