Back to the Future: Why New Technology is Sending Us Backwards - Part One

Note: This is an article written in all seriousness. If you're just here for the entertainment please continue scrolling down the page, as I promise it gets better than this. If you're in it for the long run though, know that this blog will be separated into four parts: Blu-ray, digital distribution, region coding, and my take on the industry itself. Enjoy.

We're going backwards. No, that's not entirely true. What we're doing is getting cheap and lazy. The average consumer would save a few dollars and forgo quality (or just steal it; you save quite a few dollars there) while the industry complains about piracy without offering viable alternatives to over-priced physical content. The move from VHS to DVD revolutionised the home entertainment sector in a way more profound than is immediately obvious, cleaving the industry in two and rewriting the guidelines for film marketing while offering quality products worth every cent.

Now we have blu-ray...and on a user's end there's still very little to get excited about. High Definition televisions have sold exponentially well, especially with Australia's current move into the digital domain, while blu-ray itself has had very limited success. There are various reasons for this, but I'll just tell you the most important:

- Please note I have a Samsung Series 5 B550K LCD Television, often considered one of the best in its range for HD content of all kinds. -

1) Transfers.

One of these is House of Flying Daggers on blu-ray. The other is House of Flying Daggers at a quality lower than that used for DVD. Without the headings would you spot the difference?

I don't read reviews of films anymore. I read the reviews for the blu-ray discs themselves. Why? Distributors seem to be under the impression that aspect ratio and data size are the only reason people buy blu-ray, so they use any old source footage to blow up in order to fit the screen and as much of the disc as possible. The result is big images looking bad. Here are a few examples from my limited blu-ray library:

Generation Kill

Even at this size you can see the noise and washed out colour. I still linked to the 1080 image, if you'd like to click.

I first watched this online via a 17" monitor of limited capability that had glare issues thanks to three different light sources in the room. Still, I could make out the night scenes better than I could on my TV. The problem is that at regular contrast levels it's too dark to make anything out, and by raising the contrast the image creates a lot of noise, which is extremely distracting. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, you might as well buy the DVD version.

The Wrestler

 This was their chance to impress. They failed.

Just because this was one of Hopscotch's first blu-rays doesn't give them an excuse to release The Wrestler in this condition. You end up paying more for less, with an unimpressive image and less special features than the cheapest DVD option.

Ran

 Did someone leave the sprinkler on stage left?

This was the biggest disappointment of all my blu-rays, and is why I have all but stopped purchasing them and now make a point of reviewing before buying. Ran was released by StudioCanal, a distribution company of moderate esteem. What we get, however, is a transfer that looks worse than the DVD version. Most reviews suggest otherwise, but I am a big Kurosawa fan, and when I see banding in the best of his colour films I feel cheated. 

Even some of the best releases have their problems, depending on their source. Here is a fantastic link to a site that explains why by down-upgrade tests which compare the source quality with the full-scale quality. You'll be surprised to note how many (including a lot of popular films) have a quality similar to or less than a regular DVD. The Playstation 3 has a 1080p upscaler. If you have the console you might as well buy the DVD in a lot of cases, since pixel-for-pixel you are getting the same image.

2) Blu-ray quality is directly compatible with TV quality.

Of course this is the case with every medium, but with high definition television the distinction is more important than ever. Every television is unique, they often require a careful application of settings to make a good picture great, and many consumers are still confused by digital terminology. There's not much else to say about this, as a movie lover is going to want to buy the best anyway, but the question is why anybody else would bother with an upgrade if there's no benefit. 

3) Cost.

A film has been out for fifty years. It's $12 on DVD. Finally it gets released on blu-ray...for full price. Nothing of broad interest has been changed; it can't be after so long, especially if it hasn't been perfectly archived. Full price is a relative term too. If one film was released by two distribution companies they would inevitably have different costs, since each group decides the costing range of their catalogue. A blu-ray from Fox averages out to be the most expensive. That's something I'll go more into next time, however.

4) It's not technology for the average home.

Letterboxing is more prevalent than ever. Why? More and more films are being shot at aspect ratios larger than a television can handle. The only way blu-ray producers can fit the images onto a screen is by letterboxinggoing to consider this a technological advancement. Not to mention the fact that the colour range of every blu-ray needs to be down-converted before it can be encoded, hence any film can have contrast or colour banding issues that can be easily amplified if played on a lower-mid to low-end television. The earlier blu-rays were often released with lossless audio since there was such an amount of space on the disc. Now they don't. In fact, stereo isn't even supported much any more. Too bad if you can't afford/fit eight speakers into your room.

5) Digital Rights Management.

DRM has been a plague for just over a decade now, often being used by companies to steal information and driving people to piracy in order to get working copies of products. Thanks to the tyranny of Fox (what do you know?) blu-rays support a DRM named BD+, which restricts the backup of discs for personal use. BD+ has resulted in many tech-heads refusing to support blu-ray, as the discs themselves are already extremely easy to damage due to thin layers and a small aperture meaning even minimal error can cause massive problems.

More often than not when we buy a blu-ray we're purchasing the exact same product on a new medium. The problem is that the medium is more advanced than the technology, which usually results in disappointment if you're like me and want to see some of your favourites revitalised or miss out on a visually impressive film at the cinemas. Rather than focusing on releasing quality, viable products, distributors are now relying on gimmicks to sell units. One popular example is the blu-ray/DVD/digital download boxset. Not only does this raise production costs but also nullifies the primary reason why we now buy blu-rays instead of HD DVD - capacity. Then there's the release of multiple versions of the same film, something that DVD buyers have complained about for years. When these don't result in sales stores are dropping prices much quicker than any time during the DVD's history (I've seen some brilliant titles on blu-ray that are cheaper than I've ever seen them on DVD, but I don't know the quality/know the quality is poor so I don't buy it).

Blu-ray will be the last physical distribution method of its kind, there is little doubt. Not because it has failed; after all, it still has great potential, but because its arch-rival grows more attractive and available by the day. But just how soon will it meet its demise? Check back soon for part two of this series of articles as we look at the rise of digital distribution.