The Future of Home Video

[FrauBlucher]

Guillermo Del Toro Backs Christopher Nolan^^^^

[hearthesilence]

Is it possible or even likely that DVDs will be phased out even as Blu-ray and/or UHD is given continued support? I naively assumed that as long as physical media was supported, there would always be backwards compatibility with each new generation of disc players (i.e. DVD players will play CD's, Blu-ray players will play CD's and DVDs, UHD Blu-ray players will play HD Blu-rays, DVDs and CD's, etc.) but I was surprised to find out that at least one major game console (PlayStation) did NOT support CD's in its latest and previous iteration (PS4 and PS5) even though they could play all other physical discs, from DVDs and Blu-rays to their respective recordable formats.

[flyonthewall2983]

CD players are making something of a small comeback, if my preferred local music chain Wooden Nickel records selling them again means anything.

I have a 6-disc changer in my car (2010 Kia) and really glad for it as I can’t afford Sirius and would much rather listen to movie scores or jazz fusion than “classic hits”.

[therewillbeblus]

Christopher Nolan talks about "trying to translate the photography and sound [in #Oppenheimer]...for a version that you can buy and own at home and put on a shelf so no evil streaming service can come and steal it from you."

This has apparently made an impact, as Universal was reportedly not prepared for Oppenheimer's 4K sales and are trying to get more stock in time for the holidays

[Walter Kurtz]

therewillbe4Ks--!

[rrenault]

Christopher Nolan talks about "trying to translate the photography and sound [in #Oppenheimer]...for a version that you can buy and own at home and put on a shelf so no evil streaming service can come and steal it from you."

This has apparently made an impact, as Universal was reportedly not prepared for Oppenheimer's 4K sales and are trying to get more stock in time for the holidays

The 4K SteelBook release of Heat also seemed to disappear after about a minute for lack of preparation I imagine, because the Hitchcock SteelBooks stuck around for a while.

[tenia]

The issue is that we don't know if it sold out because it really sold hundreds of thousands of copies or just because Universal underestimated what should be the size of the first pressing.

[therewillbeblus]

Sure, though I'd like to think that whoever is paid to estimate pressing numbers would consider Black Friday physical media sales and the film's popularity and profitability (which has been.. huge), so even if it was an error on their part or conservative appraisals, it's still heartening that they've been so blindsided by sale numbers

[tenia]

Oh I agree, it's just that the current news cycle irks me a bit. If I was Universal, I would willingly press a low number to create this selling out, thus allowing the news to say "wow it sells so well it sold out that quickly" while there currently is 0 figure available to know which amounts of sale we're actually talking about.
I'm also bothered by the "it's selling out everywhere" as it seems to be an entirely US-centric POV : it's not sold out in France, Germany etc, which would indicate it's not just a gigantic success, but possibly also, or even mainly, an industrial matter : in the current market, being a few % off on the theatrical-to-physical video conversion rate will be seen by the end consumer with situations like these. Before ? The amount of discs pressed straight ahead would have covered anything, and they would have sold at some point anyway. But now, when calculations need to be more accurate because of a tighter market...

[Walter Kurtz]

In July I reduced my Blu-ray/4K collection from 64 titles to 40 titles via a well-played frisbee contest. On our way to dinner in October my wife and I passed by a ticket line at the Aero (Santa Monica) and she hopped out of the car and handed a tote of 20 titles to some lucky 20-somehing. Kurtz was down to 20 titles.

Good news for numbers people-!

In early November I received a German pressing of Roter Himmel. The Kurtz Collection has increased 5% in less than a month! It's a promising trend! I think physical media is on the rebound!

[dwk]

Disney is shutting down their Disney Movie Club and have signed a deal with Sony, who will take over the physical production and distribution of Disney's catalog.

[FrauBlucher]

A Digital Bits Update...

BREAKING ON THE BITS [UPDATE] – Regarding the Disney/Sony physical media news that we broke this morning on The Digital Bits, we’ve learned the following additional information from our industry sources:
Once again, we’ve confirmed that Disney is indeed in the process of transitioning to a licensed physical media distribution model via an agreement with Sony Entertainment.
As part of this deal, Sony will market, sell, and distribute new Disney releases plus catalog titles on physical media (4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, DVD, etc.) to consumers through retailers and distributors in the U.S. and Canada.
This shift is consistent with other strategies that Disney is working to implement company-wide, as exemplified by the company’s recent transitions in other markets.
Per usual, Disney regularly evaluates their approach to the physical media market as the home entertainment business and industry at large continue to rapidly evolve alongside consumer behavior.
This agreement will allow Disney to continue offering its films and TV shows via physical media retailers and distributors, and most importantly to disc consumers more efficiently.
The transition for Disney handing over its physical media operations to Sony has recently commenced and will probably take several months to complete.
The first Disney title that will be managed by Sony on physical media will be The First Omen (20th Century Studios), which releases theatrically on 4/5/24 (digital and physical street dates are TBD will be announced in the coming months).
Watch for further updates on The Bits website and on X/Twitter (@billhuntbits & @thedigitalbits) in the days and weeks ahead.

[domino harvey]

Could this be a way for the Fox vaults to be open again?!

[soundchaser]

Depends on the nature of the licensing agreement, probably. Does Sony act as more of a middleman, or do they get carte blanche in what to let out to other companies? The news story is a little confusing about that aspect.

[therewillbeblus]

At the very least, it's promising that Disney is shedding weight given their reputation of a vault-attitude

[beamish14]

I hope this means Touchstone/Hollywood titles coming out of cold storage

[tenia]

Depends on the nature of the licensing agreement, probably. Does Sony act as more of a middleman, or do they get carte blanche in what to let out to other companies? The news story is a little confusing about that aspect.

It is a bit confusing. At first, it looked like a distribution deal only, so no real change for the consumer, only a change in logistics for the label. Now, it looks like a full-fledged deal, at least going up to the disc authoring. I doubt Sony will have such a say in what they can have Disney release, though, as I doubt we’d suddenly see, say, a Sony disc of Cinderella and Tron (or Three Caballeros and Sixth Sense), but if it’s wider than a distribution disc, I’m way more curious about precisely what’s in and what’s out.

[ZacSc]

Depends on the nature of the licensing agreement, probably. Does Sony act as more of a middleman, or do they get carte blanche in what to let out to other companies? The news story is a little confusing about that aspect.

Personally, I highly doubt Sony will get that much power. Otherwise it will be like a monopoly. I think they will just be a middleman, and maybe have more power in what to let out to other companies.

Hello, everyone.

[MichaelB]

Sony has precious little interest in licensing their own back-catalogue stuff, so I can't see them suddenly getting all enthusiastic about acting as a middleman for licensing Disney and Fox titles. I'd love to be wrong, but I bet I'm not.

The fact that Sony sub-licenses were region-free for ages is revealing enough in itself; they genuinely didn't think that they were a particularly big deal. Rumour has it that they only changed their minds and started insisting on region-locking when Indicator's Night of the Demon became a genuine smash hit - but I note that they still haven't released a US edition, so I'm assuming that it was only a smash hit by boutique label standards and not by massive international major studio ones.

[Blip Martindale]

Sony has precious little interest in licensing their own back-catalogue stuff, so I can't see them suddenly getting all enthusiastic about acting as a middleman for licensing Disney and Fox titles. I'd love to be wrong, but I bet I'm not.

The fact that Sony sub-licenses were region-free for ages is revealing enough in itself; they genuinely didn't think that they were a particularly big deal. Rumour has it that they only changed their minds and started insisting on region-locking when Indicator's Night of the Demon became a genuine smash hit - but I note that they still haven't released a US edition, so I'm assuming that it was only a smash hit by boutique label standards and not by massive international major studio ones.

You sound like an insider of some sort. I have a few friends in the business, though obviously in the trades, not the executive areas, and I hear ridiculous things. Tell me, are the majority of big studio people - the decision makers - you deal with just, like, complete dullards? Are they evil incarnate, like Zaslav? The stories I hear about the difficulty of licensing and releasing titles suggest as much. I have yet to hear anything good about anyone in positions of power. If not dullards or evil, at best they seem like rote businessmen, bean-counting boors, which in many ways might be worse. What a fucked up industry, I don't understand how anything good gets released to disc.

[MichaelB]

I'm a freelancer who works on the actual discs in a production capacity, and I haven't had to deal directly with a rightsholder in years.

This is not something that troubles me overmuch.

[tenia]

What I've been hearing from various labels isn't that corporate studios people are "dullards", but rather that they are part of companies whose littlest move has a big cost attached, and spending those just so 1 label in 1 country can sell 2000 copies isn't worth it for them.
Which also means that they sure might be sitting on some money that could be earned through licencing fees and stuff... but once put against the cost from asking the legal team to check the contracts, technical to deal with materials, etc etc, it's actually cheaper not to do anything.

It's a shame, and it's definitively shared by multiple big studios (I spoke to someone from Universal about it, but I'm sure we won't be seeing a disc of the 1931 A House Divided's 4k restoration soon despite the blah blah I got from this person about how they were dedicated to ensure this was seen in the best possible quality by the biggest possible audience), and it means many movies aren't as available as they could/should, but that's what it is at the moment.

[MichaelB]

Yes, the various labels that I work for are constantly told that they can "make a fortune" selling such-and-such a title, or "make a fortune for [insert rightsholder's name]", but if that was truly the case the rightsholder would be licensing vastly more titles, or indeed releasing them themselves.

Someone at ITV told me point blank that they don't consider anything other than massive bulk licensing deals because "it isn't worth it" - which I assume I'm correctly translating as "only a big one-off bulk licensing fee will really make a visible difference to our bottom line". (I was trying to get hold of their 1984 South Bank Show about the Taviani Brothers, with its original producer/director firmly on my side - but that counted for nothing.)

Part of the problem is that people think that sub-licensing is simply a case of the rightsholder handing over a master and wishing the project well - but in fact in order to get that master into a commercially releasable state there may be a ton of legal work involved, especially if the film dates from before the home video era when third-party rights may not have been fully cleared.

I'm often told that "surely [insert title] must be available because there's clearly an HD master out there" - but that master may have been created primarily for TV/streaming, which means that certain rights won't necessarily have been cleared. A good example being California Split, which exists in two versions: the full version as signed off by Robert Altman, whose theatrical and broadcast rights were cleared at the time but whose home video rights weren't (since this wasn't an issue in 1974), and a shorter version created by Sony in the mid-2000s for DVD release that removed a couple of tracks after they turned out to be too expensive to license the home video rights for retrospectively.

It appears that broadcasting rights automatically encompass streaming rights, hence the uncut version of California Split being made available for streaming - but, as Indicator found out the hard way, releasing the full version on home video requires shelling out what turned out to be an unrealistically huge sum (and unrealistically huge for Sony, never mind a small British boutique label). And while they could have released the shorter version, they reckoned - no doubt wholly accurately - that people would loudly protest not only because it was a cut version but also because the uncut version is easy enough to see on other platforms, so surely the label must be full of utter blithering incompetents who don't know what they're doing (and so on for several more ranty paragraphs).

And there's no easy way round this, which is why so many wishlists are full of titles that, realistically, are very unlikely ever to be made available on home video.

[Matt]

I’ve never worked in home video, but I used to do quite a bit of licensing for educational use. Dealing with rights holders was different every time. Some were extraordinarily generous, others had a wildly inflated estimation of the work under consideration, others just ignored you completely.

The ones who ignored were often bigger, and I assume they just thought even replying “no” to an email was too big an expenditure of resources. I often had more success dealing directly with a producer on the film rather than the official distributor or licensing agent.

[MichaelB]

One of my absolute dream projects foundered because the filmmaker's direct descendants had, as you say, a wildly inflated estimation of the work under consideration.

We were in full agreement as to the films' colossal historical importance, but sadly I knew from first-hand experience with a 35mm revival that we were talking niche audiences, so it wasn't just pessimistic guesswork on my part - I knew for certain that the films weren't worth anywhere near as much commercially as was being demanded. And I see that nobody else has picked up that particular baton since I reluctantly abandoned the project well over a decade ago.

(I'm not naming the filmmaker because I haven't given up hope yet.)