Ask John: Why is the Industry Trying So Hard to Promote Blu-ray?
Question:
Why do Hollywood and certain domestic anime companies continue to assert the value of BD when it’s clearly an overpriced gimmick? With the advent of the Matrix on the format, DVD was instantly accepted two years after it officially made its debut. BD only makes money when the manufacturers slash the price every few months. Yes, certain titles do sell well enough for certain studios, but it’s clear that they should be selling a lot higher.
$15 more for a prettier version of the same 50 minute schoolgirl vampire movie I can get for half that price? If I want to pay $5 more for an exclusive 15-minute Oshii interview on Sky Crawlers I’ll also have to buy a new player to watch it. Bandai Visual thought Jin Roh was popular enough for me to pay $100 for it on BD, when I could get it for a quarter of that price on DVD. Manga thinks that version of Ghost in the Shell with the new dye-job is worth paying extra for, just to hear Oshii justify the pointless endeavor on the commentary track. So, if I have to be coerced or bribed into buying these titles, and companies are still discounting their Blu-rays at rates they wouldn’t for DVD, where exactly is the profit in this format? When are shareholders for these companies going to admit that, when it comes to BD, their execs have no clothes?
Answer:
I’m far from an expert on the technical attributes of Blu-ray technology. Perhaps I’m still a dinosaur because I don’t have a BD player, an HD television, nor any Blu-ray discs. (Actually, I do own the five-disc Blade Runner BD, but that’s an exception.) I would be hesitant to reply to this question, but I suspect that it’s one which many anime fans wonder. So while I may not be able to provide a conclusive answer, I can provide an opinion that will hopefully encourage another examination of the situation.
From one perspective, the Blu-ray format is performing well in America and even better in Japan because BD sales are increasing while DVD sales are decreasing. However, BD sales still account for a small fraction of all home video sales. They’re not anticipated to overtake DVD in for foreseeable future. And BD adoption is not increasing rapidly or widely enough to provide a future financial foundation for the film industry. America’s anime distribution industry, which has traditionally championed home video technology advances, has been noticeably slow to transition to Blu-ray. And the domestic distributors that have moved into BD releases have merely dipped their toes. The question posed to me isn’t about the difficulty or necessity of transitioning to Blu-ray, so I’m not going to discuss that. This is a question about why Hollywood and, to a smaller degree, the anime industry continue to promote BD as the format of the future when the consumer market isn’t convinced. Home entertainment distributors simply have no alternative. The consumer audience isn’t convinced of the need to upgrade to BD in part because the necessity is, in fact, exaggerated, and in part because the consumer, especially the anime consumer, sees the home entertainment market fundamentally differently from the commercial distribution industry. The home video industry is obligated to approach home video distribution as a fair and legal match while consumers don’t have to play by those same rules.
The jaded, selfish, and spiteful critics of the video distribution industry love to trot out the Darwinian “evolve or die” argument. They cite that legitimate distributors must earn consumer purchases by providing products that consumers want to purchase. It’s unreasonable to expect consumers to purchase inferior goods, or support dated or restrictive formats and distribution methods. All of this sounds like an absolutely sound argument, however, in reality it’s based on an apples to oranges comparison. In the present high definition era, I’ve lost count of the times I’ve read anime fans insist that they refuse to continue purchasing retail DVDs because the maximum resolution supported by the DVD format is 720×480 while fansubs are common in higher resolutions including 960×720, 1024×576, and 1280×720. Likewise, when digital fansubs in full high definition 1920×1080 resolution are available for free, purchasing them on BD is a less appealing prospect. Legitimate film distributors must respect legal copyrights, distribution agreements, and the technological limitations imposed by legitimate market conditions and economic and technological practicality. Consumers don’t acknowledge those same limitations. The consumer insistence that the industry evolve and keep up with consumer demand is an unreasonable and impossible demand because it only works in a fair playing field. But consumers expect the legitimate distributors who play fair to compete against the unfair competition of video piracy and unlicensed distribution.
Consumers want the best. Blu-ray is presently the best that the law and practical market conditions allow. But Blu-ray, the movie industry’s best, isn’t good enough for consumers that have become accustomed to better, faster, and cheaper that also happens to be illegal. There’s no question that a large portion of American consumers literally don’t see an advantage in Blu-ray. Countless consumers don’t care about supplemental features or interactivity. Countless consumers literally can’t distinguish a significant difference between the clarity of standard definition and high definition video. And, in fact, many current BD releases are simply standard definition video artificially upscaled to HD resolutions. As other observers before me have noted, the transition from VHS to DVD offered not only improved audio & video quality, but also increased convenience and value. DVDs are smaller and more convenient to collect, store, and access than video cassettes. Even the transition from laserdisc to DVD, which was a smaller gap in audio & video quality, still represented a major leap forward in practical convenience. The transition from DVD to BD doesn’t offer added practical benefit; it’s a transition from one compact digital disc to another compact digital disc. So apart from videophiles, the upgrade to Blu-ray doesn’t seem especially necessary to average consumers. But what else can the home video industry do?
Hollywood, and even America’s anime industry, are making the greatest concessions they can to appease consumers. Blu-ray is still heavily promoted as the future format of choice because the evolve-or-die mentality makes the only alternative extinction. Consumers can easily suggest that the home video industry simply react faster and evolve to meet consumer demand more promptly, but the movie industry will never be able to move as quickly as consumers demand because consumers have become accustomed to measuring efficiency by the speed of video piracy, which doesn’t have to deal with the time-consuming and expensive obstacles that legitimate home video retail does. Japan’s Blu-ray market is largely being supported by otaku who are obsessive collectors; otaku who purchase Blu-ray discs as a means of expressing their devotion and appreciation for anime. America’s otaku community has seemingly almost entirely forgotten the concept of expressing gratitude through practical DVD & BD purchases. The American market has developed an entirely selfish attitude that expects the entertainment industry to entertain with instantaneous responsiveness for practically no compensation. With that fact in mind, Hollywood’s insistence on promoting the Blu-ray format is absolutely reasonable and appropriate, and it’s actually the lukewarm consumer response that’s somewhat unreasonable. Film distributors have no profitable alternative to encouraging Blu-ray adoption while consumers – particularly anime fans – are increasingly turning to illegal options and legal digital distribution that doesn’t generate much profit.
Related Posts
About The Author
john
Add a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
“Hollywood’s insistence on promoting the Blu-ray format is absolutely reasonable and appropriate, and it’s actually the lukewarm consumer response that’s somewhat unreasonable.”
Um, no, it’s unreasonable to be charging me more money for an upscaled version of the same thing I already own or can rent, especially, as in BVUSA’s case, when it’s nice to begin with, and I’m the only one who might even be interested in it. I remember back in the day getting in an argument with a BV rep who said dubs sell better on tape, while countering that, if priced the same, subs would do better. And now you got companies making more money off sub-only releases for certain titles than they would if said titles were re-dubbed. It’s the same thing with BD. Hollywood is just cannibalizing its profit margin with two dueling formats on the market.
“Film distributors have no profitable alternative to encouraging Blu-ray adoption while consumers –”
Their alternative is legal streaming. But the suits don’t want to admit that it’s the wave of the future, because they’ve been riding so high on the retail hog that they’re out of touch with current market trends.
This anime fan still enjoys buying a full-price Blu-Ray for his home theater system. The made-for-hi-def anime can be absolutely beautiful.
The only problem is that there isn’t much of a selection of anime on Blu-Ray right now. If there was, I’d gladly buy more of it.
This is one of those “I guess that makes me a videophile” pieces, as I simply can’t *not* notice the difference between HD and SD content, so the benefit of Blu-Ray over DVD is completely obvious and worth it to me (upscales excepted, of course). That being said, I think the whole thing reflects the shift in mentality that occurred over the course of Blu-Ray’s life cycle that was hard to predict. There was time when everybody thought that “home theatres in the home” were the new norm, and that everyone would rush out to buy HDTVs and start demanding all their media in the highest quality possible (to get the “theatre experience at home”). I think that was the mentality that gave us Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. But the economy did some funny things in the meantime, so now the mentality in general is more “spend no more than needed”. That’s why you get comments like the OP’s “it’s clearly an overpriced gimmick”. Customers just aren’t discerning enough to see how HD is so much better, and it’s certainly not “better enough” to justify buying a new player, more expensive discs, and possibly a new TV. It’s a luxury line in a time where “luxury” isn’t something most can afford. Hence, “I guess this makes me a videophile”, but I don’t think the people designing these formats ever thought it’d be that hard of a sell. The difference is fairly obvious to look at it, but apparently not when most people count the costs.
The other related thing that has happened in the meantime has been the rise in online streaming sites and services, like YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, and now places like Crunchyroll and so on. If anything, this caused the “quality push” to go in the complete opposite direction, where people accepted lower quality in return for instant gratification. This is a second “I guess this makes me a videophile” moment, because while the quality of these are finally starting to get “watchable” now, I used to wonder how anyone could actually watch anime like this. And yet, streaming is by far the largest growing (and possible largest in general?) source of online anime viewing today, both legal and illegal, and this is like the complete antithesis to something like Blu-Ray (physical, traditional purchase, extreme high quality, premium price). Who knew?
Personally speaking, I’m one of those people “who purchase Blu-ray discs as a means of expressing their devotion and appreciation for anime”, largely in the form of the original Japanese home media these days. The move to Blu-ray has certainly been welcome both due to the higher quality and the simplification of the region code mess (many discs are region-free, and North America is in the same region as Japan anyway). So, for me in particular, Blu-ray has been a great thing, and has kept me enthused about buying anime. But, of course, I realize that very few people see things in that same way, and that doesn’t do much at all to help the North American anime industry, whose potential for a move towards Blu-Ray has almost certainly been hobbled by reluctant, slow-to-change licensers.
And as an aside, the catchphrase that came to mind during the conclusion of the answer was “converting analog dollars to digital cents”. Normally this is used in the context of online advertising, and I realize that in this specific case it’s digital-to-digital, but the same overall principle seems to apply. The entire structure of the entertainment industry is designed around what many now consider to be an antiquated business model based on physical product sales, region-specific licensing deals, and control over the timing, packaging, and presentation of the product and its distribution. People were able to make the “digital transition” much more quickly than business models ever could, and everything would seem to indicate that there’s still a lot of pain ahead before it all gets figured out. But as you say, they have no choice but to head down the road they’re heading, because otherwise what’s left? Tough times…
“There was time when everybody thought that “home theatres in the home†were the new norm, and that everyone would rush out to buy HDTVs and start demanding all their media in the highest quality possible”
If HDTVs were more affordable, and they weren’t released near the end of the housing bubble, I’m sure that would have happened.
“but I don’t think the people designing these formats ever thought it’d be that hard of a sell. ”
Why is that? Didn’t they learn from the mistakes of the people who gave us the 3-DO and CD-I?
” I used to wonder how anyone could actually watch anime like this”
Having to pay up-front dvd costs for a lengthy show we might not even like is how we can watch it. ^_-
“And yet, streaming is by far the largest growing (and possible largest in general?) source of online anime viewing today, both legal and illegal, and this is like the complete antithesis to something like Blu-Ray (physical, traditional purchase, extreme high quality, premium price). Who knew?”
The people who picked the iPod over Mini-Discs? Same reason, too: Companies dumping over-priced CDs on the market which might have one song worth owning.
“The move to Blu-ray has certainly been welcome both due to the higher quality and the simplification of the region code mess (many discs are region-free, and North America is in the same region as Japan anyway). ”
I will agree the shared-region thing is a plus, but only if you can afford Japanese import prices. Though I really didn’t like when BVUSA had the gall to charge me the same R2 price for an R1 Gunbuster while excising the training music cue. That was total bullshit. And releasing Freedom on HD-DVD only, while making Honneamise available on both formats, was what was really stupid. The guy running the U.S. branch was a well-intentioned chap, but he was really behind the times. And I imagine there were a lot of those business people who probably tried to lobby Sony not to include that shared-region option for BD, because they were worried about reverse importation, even though a recent ANN story said that it barely impacts the R2 market.
…and here I am hoping and praying that my VCR will hold out until I can convert my old tapes of THE LAST UNICORN and SHINESMAN and EARTHIAN to something more substantial.
In any case, if Blu-ray disc or some variant of it is the future of home video, and it truly happens to be the next standard the home video industry has collectively set, then the reason distributors’ so-called over-charging is simple: they have to make money on it. In the least, enough to hold them over until the economy turns around. It’s a lame excuse but it’s true. Practical anslysts are predicting Blu-ray sales will overtake DVD by 2012 — Blu-ray retail sales were apparently up +91% in Q1/Q2 2009 combined (from Digital Entertainment Group), discs shipped to retailers grew +57%. Blu-ray sales are held up mostly through rental companies (kiosks are exploding again… courtesy of Redbox, lawsuit or no lawsuit). Rentrak’s data reported a -2.4% decline in DVD revenue in traditional and online stores
Blu Ray isn’t only for video purposes. Blu ray has many advantages that blow dvds out the water. Sure to an average movie watcher the format transition from dvd to BD doesn’t serve much purpose. But when talking about memory storage size a dual layered BD can hold up to 50 GBs where as a DVD can only hold about 5 GBs. That’s a huge difference. When it comes to gaming far more can be stored on one disc. And as for everyday computing it makes far more sense to be able to back up data on a disc that can hold 50 gigs over something that can barely hold 5. With a digital age of downloading everything i do feel the adoption of the BD by all will still be many years to come. I still know people who watch VHS…which that alone pains me to say. There are those who never convert till they are made to, there are those who take time to convert, and there are those who jump right on ship. BD says have went up after the wars of HD Vs. BD ended. As for accordance to anime, why not sell it in blu ray if they can afford to? There are those who will buy and those who won’t. I’m sure the companies just don’t haphazordly make decisions…I’m quite sure they take everything into account the best they can. They already know there’s people who will download their product illegally, they also know with in those, there are potential consumers.
New technology no matter what it is, is always gonna cost more even if there isn’t a big difference between the functionality of the item. Phones are still phones…they call, text, surf the net, and have apps yet people still pay high price for the newest one. If you look at BD their prices have dropped since the release of them, theres only a 5 to 10 dollar different between DVD and BD. And as for live action if you’ve ever experienced a movie in HD on a good tv with 240hz refresh rate….theres a HUGE difference between standard and High def. To many the money is worth the extra cost
“Why is that? Didn’t they learn from the mistakes of the people who gave us the 3-DO and CD-I?”
“The people who picked the iPod over Mini-Discs? Same reason, too: Companies dumping over-priced CDs on the market which might have one song worth owning.”
In the case of all of these analogies, I’m not quite sure they perfectly apply except in the broadest and most general of senses. I mean, Blu-Ray or not, HD is here to stay. Most anime today is produced in HD, and most TV stations have or will be moving to HD in the next few years. So, prevalence of DVDs aside, the availability of some sort of physical medium that can properly store HD content is a bit more than a “nice-to-have” on some level. And, it should be said, the pricing on Blu-Ray players and discs is nowhere near the absurd levels of some of those old extinct technologies, and they have certainly been much more responsive to price pressure (learning at least *some* of the lessons of the 3-DO). It seems to me that if Blu-Ray does end up “dying”, it won’t be because some cheaper more-popular disc-based HD media will take its place (i.e. it was an idea ahead of its time, or was just too expensive to compete), but rather because the entire market switched to a new paradigm sooner than expected. And if that’s what happens, we shouldn’t be surprised that the entertainment industry, with its decades of baggage dragging behind it, was a bit slow in adapting.
As for the need to preview, I don’t know if that has ever really changed all that much (has it?), except that the amount that people are willing to spend for anime “on impulse” today and what it was 5-10 years ago must be significantly less. Also, the amount of product to choose from is significantly higher, hence people feel they need to be more “picky”. I sort of feel like the North American anime market got us into this mess with its extreme devaluation of the product over the last few years. But I suppose that’s in contrast to the Japanese market that has stubbornly refused to devalue the product, and so the arrival of Blu-Ray just adds another tier of “premium” to what was already a premium line. I don’t really know what’s better or worse, but I do think that any industry would have a hard time surviving when people go from being willing to pay $30 for singles to being hard-pressed to pay $40 for a season set (or worse still, from any amount of money at all to zero).
So I’m sort of with John in the sense that the real issue here may not be whether or not Blu-Ray is the thing, but it’s how to still make a profit on a luxury product when everything “luxury” is considered taboo. I sort of wonder what sort of anime release you *would* be willing to pay a premium price for (Blu-Ray or not).
Aaron: I kind of wish I’d kept my Manga UK dub of Cobra myself, if I had known that UV was never gonna put it on dvd. [As it is, I still have the Kiseki-subbed Macross DYRL desu and one of the Lupin specials from Dezaki desu. ;-;]
“then the reason distributors’ so-called over-charging is simple: they have to make money on it.”
From what I heard, the real reason the format is so over-priced is that it’s harder to work with than it was with DVD. [Even a video pro like Justin Sevakis was frustrated by it.] And Sony decided to do the same thing with the PS3, which is why it’s doing just swell.
But let’s be honest here. The majority of the studios wanted this format to cost so much, because they wanted the bigger profits, which is why they rigged it so HD-DVD would lose from the get-go-because it was a cheaper format to work with than BD. And now the studios have ironically had to lose money on BD with artificial discounts, just to get the product off the shelves. So even the money BD is allegedly making is probably more of a break-even return than a profit.
“Practical anslysts are predicting Blu-ray sales will overtake DVD by 2012 —”
Can they really afford to wait that long?
“Blu-ray retail sales were apparently up +91% in Q1/Q2 2009 combined (from Digital Entertainment Group), discs shipped to retailers grew +57%. ”
But as you yourself pointed out later, it’s not enough to off-set home video sales in general.
GATS sez: “Um, no, it’s unreasonable to be charging me more money for an upscaled version of the same thing I already own or can rent, especially, as in BVUSA’s case, when it’s nice to begin with, and I’m the only one who might even be interested in it.”
Me: Who’s charging you for something you already own? Did your DVD’s reach their expiration date? (No DIVX jokes, please.) Did your DVD player go on strike when it found out there was a newer format available?
Of course not; that’s all silly hyperbole.
The fact is, no one is forcing anyone to upgrade to Blu-ray. I know of no titles that have been released *exclusively* on Blu-ray; everything is available on DVD as well as Blu. Titles you already own on DVD will not only continue to play fine in Blu-ray players, but the SD titles on a DVD will look remarkably better when played from a Blu-ray player; Blu-ray players upscale SD video, so when it’s played on an HD display, it looks better than it ever did before.
I have hundreds of DVD’s in my collection; I’m upgrading only a select few to Blu-ray, and the ones I’m upgrading are those that are either a) personal favorites, or b) movies that really deserve to be seen in high definition. Thus, while “Harold and Kumar” aren’t getting the bump to HD anytime soon, the “Blade Runner” Blu-ray was an absolute must-purchase, even though the DVD looked fine to begin with.
(For the record, I still have Laserdiscs that I’ve never upgraded to DVD, even though there are DVD versions available. Just because it’s on a *little* disc doesn’t mean I have to upgrade from my *big* disc, especially if the big disc still works fine.)
As for the price difference, it’s the same sort of thing that happened with DVD and CD when they first came out. Anyone else remember the early days of the compact disc? Way back when, when the jewel case was packaged inside a long cardboard sleeve with cover art. Remember prices back then? $15 to $17 per. And that’s in 1983 dollars. Adjusted for inflation, that would be $34 in 2008 dollars.
No one is forcing anyone to switch to Blu-ray. It’s an available format for those who prefer it. GATS, I hope you’ll remember this conversation in five or six years when you buy a Blu-ray player at your local JumboMart for $40
blade: “But when talking about memory storage size a dual layered BD can hold up to 50 GBs where as a DVD can only hold about 5 GBs. That’s a huge difference.”
A huge difference which isn’t being demonstrated in the actual value of the product, since we still end up paying more for less content.
“When it comes to gaming far more can be stored on one disc.”
But it’s far less convenient to actually program on the thing, which is why Sony is suffering lower sales from consumers who don’t see enough games on the system.
” I still know people who watch VHS…which that alone pains me to say. ”
Well, to be fair, there are still a lot of VHS titles yet to be released on dvd. [The subbed and uncut Drunken master 2, for example.]
“BD says have went up after the wars of HD Vs. BD ended.”
The sales only started going up when the manufacturers began slashing prices. They have not gone up out of demand, which is the deciding factor in the format’s success.
” As for accordance to anime, why not sell it in blu ray if they can afford to?”
Cus it might be a show the industry loses twice as much money on than usual?
“I’m sure the companies just don’t haphazordly make decisions…”
Have you seen FUNi’s recent licenses?
” If you look at BD their prices have dropped since the release of them,”
That’s because no one was buying them at regular MSRP.
“And as for live action if you’ve ever experienced a movie in HD on a good tv with 240hz refresh rate….theres a HUGE difference between standard and High def. To many the money is worth the extra cost.”
The money’s only worth the extra cost for a product you like. If Freddy Got Fingered got released in theaters in 3-d, do you think people would see it?
relentless: “I mean, Blu-Ray or not, HD is here to stay.”
Only until they force you to buy 3-d tv sets and/or converter boxes next, of course. BTW, that is the biggest fraud of a tv format I’ve ever seen in my life. The reception for most of my tv shows still blow, but the only difference is the picture is less grainy. Big whoop.
“Most anime today is produced in HD, and most TV stations have or will be moving to HD in the next few years.”
But that won’t stop sales and ad revenue from slipping if no one likes the shows.
“And, it should be said, the pricing on Blu-Ray players and discs is nowhere near the absurd levels of some of those old extinct technologies, ”
Um, the PS3 was only $700 a few years ago. And did you ever try buying Honneamise on BD?
furd: “Did your DVD’s reach their expiration date? (No DIVX jokes, please.) Did your DVD player go on strike when it found out there was a newer format available?”
No, but I don’t exactly have a choice in how I watch GITS 2.0 or that FFAC “extended” cut, now do I?
“The fact is, no one is forcing anyone to upgrade to Blu-ray.”
Tell that to people who bought HD-DVD, but got screwed over by a studio monopoly which supported the other team. Or to people who just want to see Ponyo on DVD, but will end up subsidizing the BD, because Disney can’t get rid of the latter things otherwise.
“Titles you already own on DVD will not only continue to play fine in Blu-ray players, but the SD titles on a DVD will look remarkably better when played from a Blu-ray player; Blu-ray players upscale SD video, so when it’s played on an HD display, it looks better than it ever did before.
Assuming you don’t have some sort of software conflict which forces you to download a patch, sure.
“Remember prices back then? $15 to $17 per. And that’s in 1983 dollars. Adjusted for inflation, that would be $34 in 2008 dollars. ”
CD still cost that much, although not adjusted for inflation, which is why the music industry started losing money until the iPod and Youtube came along; and even then, it keeps trying to shake down companies for residuals which are not even justified for most of their one-hit wonders.
“GATS, I hope you’ll remember this conversation in five or six years when you buy a Blu-ray player at your local JumboMart for $40”
Why would I do that, knowing they’re gonna charge me for a 3-d player by then?
Damn, I was going to say something but it’s all been said. I guess I can only agree on these points:
1. We’re in an ambiguous transition phase between paradigms… SD to HD (do people care enough?), physical to digital/streaming (will digital supplement or supplant physical?)… throw the 2010 push for 3D into the mix… snap. Consumers will get what they want however they can, and right now the only things that provide that are piracy and Crunchyroll.
2. Relentless Flame has touched on the fact that American distributors of anime have done a pretty thorough job at devaluing their product, not only through price drops but through sheer abundance of titles, lack of timeliness and generally unappealing packages (a lot of them look like chinese bootlegs at best). There’s basically no sense that corny domestic DVDs of yesteryear’s anime are worth anything.
“…American distributors of anime have done a pretty thorough job at devaluing their product, not only through price drops but through sheer abundance of titles…”
I fully admit I’ve probably missed your point entirely, but it sounds like you’re actually complaining about there being more titles at lower prices. From someone who purchased the clam-shelled Escaflowne tapes, it doesn’t bother me in the least that anyone can walk into a Best Buy and purchase the entire series for the same price that I paid for a handful of episodes.
Flooding the market can be a disaster (I’m looking directly at the manga shelves), but lowering the price of anime? While I might question purchasing a car for $50 (“it’s cheap…too cheap…”), I won’t think twice about grabbing the original Area 88 anime for $15. I don’t feel lower prices cheapen anime in the slightest.
On that note, I’m not too keen on jumping onto the Blu-Ray ship just yet. If more companies start releasing complete, higher-def series for bargain prices, then maybe. I suppose that makes me a bad consumer, at least from a pro-Blu-ray perspective.
Can they really afford to wait that long?
The funny thing is… over the years I’ve read a few articles where people are obscenely cynical about such a date actually being too soon.
…there being more titles at lower prices.
That’s part of it, I believe. But the basis of this perspective includes a few other components: retail shelve space, scalability, and overall yield management. Should any one of those three, or other, facets of the current pricing model fail, the balance sheets will invariably tip into the red. Since we’re currently supporting a relatively weak market, if the leading model fails as it currently stands, there won’t be much left afterward.
“I fully admit I’ve probably missed your point entirely, but it sounds like you’re actually complaining about there being more titles at lower prices.”
Actually I didn’t elaborate as much as I should’ve. It’s not so much abundance by itself as arbitrary abundance… as an example, if you go to Funimation’s website you’ll see a totally arbitrary assortment of titles across several genres for several demographics, with a lot of variation in quality. Some of the titles prompt me to wonder “who buys this crap?”… apparently nobody if they’re trying to offload it in a corny $20 series box right on their website.
What makes a Funimation product distinctive or desirable? What defines their catalogue? Does the “Funimation” label mean anything? Do people equate the “Funimation” label with “This will definitely be show worth buying” or “this product will be a very cool novelty to own”? If no, then why would anything they make be worth more than $20/season… or more realistically, worth more than free?
It’s obvious that the majority of anime distributors in the US like Funimation, rather than trying to create a desirable product, are instead playing a losing game against Bittorrent and Crunchyroll in a race to deliver more, faster, cheaper. The problem is media in itself has very little inherent value especially in this age, and distributors like Funimation are not providing anime with any additional _perceived_ value (they’re doing the opposite).
John delivered a pessimistic counterpoint to this assessment a month ago saying that anime cannot be sold as a niche high-end thing in the US either. If that’s true, then physical anime distribution in the US is pretty much doomed.
I suppose you can say the same about Hollywood flicks and American TV shows, but they make up for that in sheer volume. Anime will always be relatively niche. The kind of mainstream explosion that companies like ADV (now defunct…) banked on did not occur in the end.
seanny: It’s not the more, faster, cheaper aspect that’s an issue as much as the fact that the more we’re getting is increasingly mediocre on the Japanese end. Even the ANNCasters were mocking the current season of shows. But I disagree that media has no value if a company like ADV/S23 can make rise from the ashes with certain fan-oriented shows. There is clearly an untapped audience which does consider it a value, but which is pickier about how it appraises said value on a particular title. And apparently I’ve been considered controversial on other forums by arguing that that group should be cultivated, rather than ignored, since it’s going to actually continue paying the bills when the Naruto/DBZ fad dies out one of these days. At least Viz sort of gets that with its Ikki line, but the other companies seem to be picking this stuff out at random. Much as I like the OVA and live-action Casshern, for instance, I’m not sure why anyone thought the new show would sell with FUNi’s target audience here.
I think BD adoption is slow because one simple reason. To even watch a BD requires:
An HDTV — $500-2000+
A BD player — $200-400
A Component or HDMI cable — $100+
That’s, on average, at least $1000, and that’s on the lower end of the spectrum. Given that you can easily hook up a $50 DVD player to any $200+ CRT TV that has A/V plugs, you get the same content (albeit at a reduced quality) for less than a fourth of the price. And you pay at least a $10 premium on each BD you buy, all in the name of “better quality picture and sound.”
Given the current state of the economy, it’s kind of a no-brainer for most people, especially the further down the economic ladder you go.
For the record, I think regular DVDs that are up-converted in a BD player on an HDTV look almost as good as a native BD does, and unless you’re an extreme audiophile, you’ll never notice the difference in BD sound vs. DVD sound.
GATS: Yes, I would buy the Blue-ray of Freddie Got Fingered if i had the chance.
It’s really just a matter of personal taste. I am slowly starting to get into the BD market but I am not buying what I already own on DVD. Only if something like the Blade Runner set came along. There still is not that large of a BD collection for people to wallow through in a store, like there is of DVD’s. Our local best buy has 2 isles of BD, as opposed to the 12 they have of DVD’s. The old favorites have yet to be added to the BD catalog so a lot of people have yet to switch their media. The prices of BD players has come down remarkably in the last 6 months. It is juts a matter of whether or not you buy into the new media. Many people are afraid of change, especially in this lovely economy. When the recession is over and more people are actually buying again,. I’m surer the BD sales will go up, as well as the sales of HDTV’s and BD players.
“Only if something like the Blade Runner set came along.”
Came along, and has been out for some time. However, this movie is a very definitive reason why I will not be going BD anytime soon.
Reviewers have overplayed the visuals too many times and it’s getting appalling. This movie, as an example, is indeed very clean, but not perfect. In fact, it’s “too perfect” from an HD perspective.
Call me cynical, but I’ll carry this to my grave. HD simply ruined the movie, and it’s working its way in whitewashing the consumer.
This definition varies, and it’s being pushed to the anime crowd for nothing short of profit scalping. While it’s true most anime is digitally produced, it simply can’t get any better with HD. It’s like stating the reason it’s better is because we can see the variance in the outlining black ink of a character.
Sure, vibrant colors are nice, but what benefit is there in terms of sharpness?
I proved a point with a friend who was used a mortgage payment to obtain a PS3. He came over, hooked it up onto my TV, and began raving about the quality.
Until, that is, I pointed out my TV is output in 480p. It’s an EDTV which supports HD input, all the way up to 1080i. He didn’t believe me, so I pulled out the owner’s manual to my Samsung plasma TV.
Thus, proving beyond any doubt, “picture quality” varies by persons.
The anime industry is going to ride the BD train until it runs out of steam, and truthfully, I’ve no problem with it. If there are those out there willing to believe an HD rendering of a digital character is better than its SD counterpart, so be it for me to complain against their parting of funds.
But I will bark, bite, and kick if this industry starts to force a change by releasing in BD only strictly to garner these profits while offering nothing better. Yes, it holds more and we’ll possibly get more extras (like Bandai’s propaganda telling fans not to fan sub), but I don’t believe this will help sales, but hurt them.
It’s bad enough several distributors are releasing sub-only titles at dub prices, so to force BD would be an added insult, leaving me no choice but to disregard Bandai’s propaganda, save my money, and enjoy all the series I want at no cost. Legal or not, makes no difference.
I’ve a very strong feeling I won’t be the only one, either, especially since John posted an image describing the cost differences between anime and drugs, as the latter being *cheaper*. QFT.
geisha: I didn’t say BD, I said watch it in 3-d. (As in watch it in theaters, since I think that’s just another over-priced gimmick which studios are using to fake overall lower attendance.) As for purchasing BD-only titles, those will seriously depend on how exclusive they are, and I can only think of two I’d want right now. And I’m already dismayed to hear that the Akira BD might be “dub-titled”, if the AOD’ers are correct.