DVDs, and the paradox of choice
So it’s not just me. This Fortune blog article attributes this year’s 2% drop in DVD sales to consumer paralysis over which of the new formats to buy:
Market research showed it wasn’t just NetFlix (NFLX) or Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes hurting traditional DVD sales, either. Consumers who bought HDTVs were so afraid of backing the wrong high-definition movie format that they decided not to buy movies at all.
It’s a phenomenon that would be familiar to anyone who’s read Barry Schwartz’s Paradox of Choice
Thanks to Mike Curtis for the link.
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January 8th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
I’m not afraid of picking wrong, but I do suffer from cheaptechnophobia. By the time I accumulate 100+ of my favorite movies, they always change the damn format.
January 8th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
I plan to wait until either one format wins, or they make an affordable player that supports both formats. But I’m in no hurry anyway.
January 8th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
I think it’s just that most of us remember that poor schlub who backed Beta-Max.
January 8th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
I agree with this, actually. I’ve had a nice HDTV for about 3 years now. However, I hadn’t even considered switching to either HD-Dvd or Blu-Ray until this recent Warner Bros move. In fact, I have stopped collecting dvds altogether.
January 8th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
I am one of those who has waited and reduced my purchases of DVDs…but I think you’re right that Blu-Ray is the likely winner (>80%) and I’m on the band-wagon soon.
How is the PS3? I have the XBOX 360 pre-HD-DVD version, so i’d only go with the PS3 if the DVD player is on par with a stand-alone player. Any experiences would be great to hear.
January 8th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
LG and Samsung both make good dual format players .. of course they are not exactly what some would call “affordable”.
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-BD-UP5000-HD-DVD-Blu-Ray-Player/dp/B000VDG0UK http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/bd_up5000/
January 8th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
LippyOne, I love my PS3, the bluray playback is fantastic and the standard def upscaling is great as well. I can’t compare it to a stand alone bluray player, but I do have a stand alone HD-DVD player, and I have to say I think the bluray movies look better. (But obviously that depends on how the movies themselves were shot).
Plus, the PS3 has wifi and a hard drive to store downloadable content. The only downside for me is that I’ve gotten sucked into playing Ratchet & Clank for hours and hours. I was never into video games, but I figured that since I had a PS3 I might as well buy a few games. Now I’m addicted.
January 8th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Nice reference. This link will take you to a video of Barry Schwartz making a presentation on this material at TED: http://pwnership.com/the-secret-to-happiness-is-a-bad-1st-marriage/
January 8th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
I stopped buying DVD’s about the same time that HD DVD’s came out for the very reason that I didn’t want to back the wrong horse. Now I can feel secure in going with Blueray. And while eventually the internet is probably going to the way to get movies, it’s not likely that Blueray discs will be useless, like VHS is, because the quality from internet downloading is probably not going to surpass the quality of Blueray discs for a very, very long time. In the end, it’s the quality of what you’re seeing that’s the main thing. Besides, when the day comes that you give up and DVD player for good, you can just copy your disc onto your hard drive.
January 8th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Im not really a tech person, I just like watching movies. Am I the only one who hasnt even contemplated buying HD-DVD or BluRay, simply because DVDs seem to be doing alright by me? It seems to me that this is a completely pointless war, because they arent superseding something that is broken or needs to be replaced. DVDs are good quality, cheap and plentiful. So why replace them for, to me, purely aesthetic reasons?
January 9th, 2008 at 12:59 am
Barry’s book sounds a lot like this one: “The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse”
http://tinyurl.com/yvmwxd
Both seem to be about how abundance in contemporary life can have a destabilizing effect on the individual… too bad I can’t choose which to read, guess I’ll just wait to see which one gets made into a movie first :)
(that would be a corollary to Barry’s paradox of choice — waiting for someone else to choose for you.)
January 9th, 2008 at 5:24 am
For me, the paralysis definitely exists. I have stopped buying DVDs pretty much altogether, but not because i was afraid of backing the wrong horse. I’ve been a movie collector since high school, and I used to own hundreds of vhs tapes. Then DVD came along and I jumped on board. It’s taken years to replace my video tape library. Now I am suppose to jump on to another format that will be dead even sooner than regular DVD? It’s just an endless cycle. I’ll stick with regular DVDs for as long as possible, and I’ll buy a few titles, the ones that mean a lot to me. If and when DVD dies, I’ll probably get whatever system is around then, but I won’t collect anymore. I’m tired of repaying for the same product again and again.
January 9th, 2008 at 5:43 am
People are not afraid of picking the wrong format, people are being wise and waiting until the format war is over.
January 9th, 2008 at 6:47 am
Thanks for the review Jim…I figured the picture quality was good in all its 1080P glory, but I know Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are supposed to have a bunch of interactive features that may be player dependent. But the PS3 sure is tempting at a price point slightly above a basic Blu-Ray player, if only that logic made sense to my wife :-)
Tim W: I wouldn’t be so quick to discount internet downloads hitting the quality of Blu-Ray…I can download movies today onto my XBOX 360 (from XBOX Live) in 720P quality…bandwidth in the home is exploding…it’s only a short matter of time before downloads are broadly available in 1080P!
January 9th, 2008 at 8:01 am
I fall into the camp of not buying DVD’s and waiting for this ‘war’ to settle, mainly for what I’ll term as the “beta-max” reason. Also, I’m not sure if you can compare blu-ray quality with HD-DVD. As others have pointed out it depends on how the movie was shot etc. . Post the arrival of my ps3 I have been ripping my DVD collection to my home computer so I can what I believe is called ‘place shift’ my movies. I was wondering John, if you had an opinion on this type of thing. Also, as a side question/tangent, do you have an opinion on the DRM that is being placed into media hardware in the form of HDMI? I ask because I have an older HD TV with only component inputs, meaning any new media hardware I buy may downgrade the signal if I use the component out vs. the HDMI. (Many newer DVD players etc. will upsample standard DVD content to HD but only if a DRM enabled HDMI cable is used) Sadly, the only option for someone in my position is to buy a new TV, or, go the legally dubious route and get an HDMI to Analog component box. I realize that this might be a bit of a tangent for you blog, but seeing as you are fighting for your rights as a writer, you might have an opinion on rights farther down the media creator > media consumer chain.
p.s. Jim, Ratchet & Clank has been a major time-suck for me too! I highly recommend it.
January 9th, 2008 at 9:33 am
None of these formats matter. In a few years everything will be downloaded like MP3s are. This is a non-issue to me. Both formats will die quick.
January 9th, 2008 at 9:36 am
None of these formats matter as in a few years movies will be downloaded in the same way mp3s are, thus both of these formats will be irrelevant. I’d stick to standard DVDs personally until the download option is available.
January 9th, 2008 at 9:52 am
LippyOne,
It’s not that I don’t think you can download BluRay quality from the internet, it’s that there probably won’t be BETTER quality than Bluray for a long time, so it’s not as if you’re Bluray library will look bad compared to something you downloaded on the internet. It’s not like the difference between VHS and DVD. It’s just the transport system will be different.
January 9th, 2008 at 10:46 am
While it is obvious that HD-DVD and/or Blue-Ray are the future of physical home movies, I can’t help but wonder how much the sales loss reflects online downloads and Netflix subscriptions. While quality is the issue at hand, many people are sacrificing quality for convenience, only time will tell how long this will last. TheIssue.com recently did a feature on the WGA strike that posed the question “Is this the beginning of the end for the current state of media?” With all the other options out there, and surely they will be able to make HD compatible downloads in the near future, it is feasible that physical media may be extinct in 10 years and neither HD-DVD not Blue Ray will matter.
Cheers,
Mike The Issue | http://www.TheIssue.com
January 9th, 2008 at 11:01 am
For the drop off in DVD sales… i’d honestly start looking at the quality of movies we saw in 2007, not great. Some of the big money makers were very disappointing, I’m thinking mostly about Spider-man 3 and the last pirates thing.
There’s really VERY little reason people should be hesitant to buy DVD’s. Any player you get, either toshiba’s HD or Sony’s Blu-ray will play standard dvd’s obviously. And the people that have their 1080p TV’s w/ blu-ray, which i do, need to understand you’re very rarely seeing 1080p. Anything being broadcast is NEVER 1080p except for last years superbowl, it just costs too much bandwidth. When you see the “Club 1080″ stuff like Discovery puts up… that’s 1080i, which is an interlaced signal so you only actually see 540 lines of resolution at any given time. When i was paying attention to it all, which was a few months back at the latest, the only titles that were truly 1080p were Chicken Little and some movie with Jovovich (sp?), can’t remember the title as i wasn’t about to watch it. And you could tell the difference a mile away, truly amazing.
But the PS3 is very cost effective, the frame of it just looks atrocious and is huge. Only drawback to it is it uses compressed Audio. One of the huge perks w/ Blu-ray is uncompressed audio, which sounds amazing. But the PS3 does not use that part of the Blu-ray technology. But it’s also a good 100 bucks cheaper than the other players.
And dual formats… dont even look at them. They dont truly support HD-DVD, so many of the interactive features aren’t usable on those players, among other issues. just take a look at the box or front of the player and you wont see the HD-DVD symbol on it.
January 9th, 2008 at 11:37 am
Even if you get a blu-ray or hd-dvd player, there isn’t a huge need to replace your standard def collection because the upscaling is pretty amazing. I swapped in and out blu-ray and standard def copies of “Total Recall” and was shocked at how similar they looked. (But that movie has a fair amount of grain to begin with so that might be why). For fence-sitters the most cost effective solution might be buying a standard def dvd player that upscales to 1080p. I think they go for around $100.
Personally, I justified the cost of buying a next gen player because I’ve pretty much stopped seeing movies in the theater. It breaks my heart to bypass the theatrical experience, but I can’t stand the epidemic of talking, txting, phoning etc…
January 9th, 2008 at 11:55 am
for anyone that’s going to be picking up an upconverting DVD player, just remember that if your TV does not have an HDMI input, you can not up-convert. All up converting dvd players, which convert standard def 480p to 720p or 1080i, only do so w/ the HDMI output.
there are plenty of older HD tv’s, plasma/tube or w/e, that only have component inputs.
January 9th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
JA (or anyone else who knows)… I was just reading that a handful of ICM agents got fired. I imagine this is the first of a series to come, so I’m starting to get scared. If an agent gets let go, will the agency usually retain that agent’s clients, or are they dumped as well?
January 10th, 2008 at 3:22 am
Alex, if both formats die out quickly, I’ll feel even better about my decision because a), I slowed my dvd buying so I haven’t really spent a lot since hd media became available, and b) I still have my already purchased library of dvds. I’ll be fine if everything becomes downloadable content, though I still think that’s about 7-10 years from full saturation point.
January 10th, 2008 at 4:58 am
I think most of us were in the same position. We don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on technology that might be obsolete. Should we consider this a final victory for Blu Ray then?
January 10th, 2008 at 6:36 am
Brad–I read the same article (or similar) and my take was the agents were essentially placed into suspended animation…that is they aren’t fired but ’suspended’ with special strike pay. So unless this strike causes a radical shift in the way writers interact with Hollywood, agents remain in the equation…to your other question I assume that many agents take on ‘pet’ projects/writers that they really believe in…if a writer only has equity with an agent and that agent leaves I think that the writer could be out of luck…but that’s a complete speculation.
January 10th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Lippy, Thanks for the response. To everyone else, sorry to get the conversation off track, but I love coming to the site because of those quick responses. Thanks to JA for housing such a forum.
January 11th, 2008 at 8:21 am
Not only is it about choice, it’s about knowing that only one format will survive and you don’t want to buy one until you know for sure it’s here to stay, plus you know prices are going to drop.
January 11th, 2008 at 10:59 am
I have a new PS3 thanks to my company giving all of us one for free, but I can’t pull the trigger on buying any movies for it on BluRay because I honestly can’t think of any I want to own. I never really got around to buying any on DVD or VHS, either. There’s very, very few movies worth watching more than once every decade or so…
I’m looking forward to digital downloads catching on — that seems to be the wave of the future.
January 11th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Why are people convinced DVDs will disappear? Music CDs didn’t. Many stores that sell CDs have shut down, yes, but it’s not like you can’t find CDs. Besides, no one has the kind of hard drive space to store numerous hi-def movies and extras. Avid collectors would have to burn those downloads to DVD to make room for future downloads, anyway. Why not just buy the DVD to begin with?
And MP3s took off because of illegal Napster downloads. I don’t see digital movie downloads going down that same road. Digital download will happen, but it won’t replace DVDs.
January 11th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Sorry if I’m derailing this comments thread, but I wasn’t predicting that DVDs were going to disappear or anything, just that I’ve never really understood buying or collecting them myself, so digital downloads make more sense to me. I don’t care about storing them or maintaining a library since I rarely get a craving to watch something over and over and could just download said video again sometime if I wanted to do that.
I already watch more TV and movies on my computer than I do on on TV and movie screens. PDAs and cellphones seem to be replacing big, clunky computers for web browsing, emailing and watching video content, so I was just saying that I look forward to that.
January 11th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Peter, I agree. I have both formats and in the last six months of owning them, I’ve bought only one movie (Blade Runner — which looks mind-blowing BTW). I was a rapid DVD collector, but I just can’t justify spending $30 on a bluray or hd-dvd title. I would have thought that the studios would have learned the lesson from the last go around with DVDs. Price ‘em cheap and people buy. Price ‘em over $15 and most people give their money to Netflix or Blockbuster.
January 12th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Jim, part of the reason DVD’s are so cheap, along with CD’s, is that they are priced below cost. So companies like Best Buy and Circuit City actually lose money when you buy one. Trust me I did Merchandising for both of them for a while. They don’t really care about you buying the DVD’s, they just want you to come into the store so you’ll buy other things that actually do have a nice mark up. It’s the same with all your big ticket items, there’s really not much markup in say a camera or a TV, and absolutely NO markup on a computer. That’s why they push the accesories on you cause they are marked up drasticly to recover, and the Service Plans which have a straight profit of about 70%.
But they’re not going to sell Blu/HD discs below cost yet cause it woulnd’t bring in enough customers to compensate, so they get marked up about 7-9 bucks per title.
January 16th, 2008 at 3:53 am
The HD-DVD camp deals with the battle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=friS4OOcdgQ
(This probably won’t work as well if you understand german…)