criterionforum.org

They seem to me to be replicating their Disney Vault strategy with Fox titles, ie generating an artificially increased demand by rarefying the access to some movies, only to make their access more attractive once they're made available again.

I would agree with you if it wasn't from this past model's existence and I wouldn't be surprised that their lack of availability online right now is because D+ is solely family-oriented while these movies aren't, and Disney first want to have a worldwide output solution for these movies.

I think a big thing is definitely that a lot of Fox output deals are out of Disney’s hands until they expire (for new release movies, for example, they still have to go to HBO for a period, which is why they’re not actually able to dump New Mutants no matter how much they want to.) Similar agreements probably exist for chunks of the catalog titles as well, and it’ll be a few years until Disney’s actually able to just do whatever it wants with the library.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has opened a brand new poll asking what films you want to see for future 4K UHD releases as part of a hypothetical Columbia Classics Volume 2 Collection. Make your voice heard!

https://secure.sonypictures.com/movies/ ... lls/4k_v2/

I voted for "Punch-Drunk Love", "ANATOMY OF A MURDER", "THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN" and "BORN YESTERDAY".

I didn't realize there was a site that tabulated DVD and Blu-ray sales, though it's not quite comprehensive. MichaelB has posted before how DVD sales were still substantially more than Blu-ray in the UK, and that still appears to be the case here in the U.S.

I stumbled on these sales figures for Beetlejuice, which just had a UHD reissue a month ago. There's huge gaps in the data, but you can see how many more Blu-ray units are typically sold compared to the early days of the format in 2009, when it was pretty much established as the HD format of choice with HD-DVD's demise.

They don't have earlier numbers for DVD, when that market was much bigger, but even now, DVD sales eclipse Blu-ray for this title by well over a 4 to 1 ratio on a weekly basis, though the gross revenue is far less than double of what they get from Blu-ray sales.

DVD sales surpasses BD sales most likely everywhere in the world except Japan and South Korea, including in values : even though the prices are lower for DVD so revenues are too per unit, the difference in volume is most certainly enough that the DVD revenues also surpass the BD revenues.

I'm surprised however by the stability shown by those 2020 Beetlejuice BD sales.

Germany as well.

I've been reading claims about the German home video market but haven't been able to find reliable numbers about it. If you have any, it'd be tremendous.

So here is a new one, it appears that Shout's Weathering With You UHD is region locked

I guess it makes sense that you can program the discs to check the standard Blu-ray region of the player but I guess I thought that the 4K players by design wouldn't make that info available to 4K discs if they're supposed to be region free.

I think by doing this they are openly violating the official UHD spec/certification, which is probably a big no-no and could get them fined or something I don't really know what the consequences would be. I'm sure it was an accident because why would you ever choose to do this.

It sounds like an accident. Which reminds me of an unfortunate incident about fifteen years ago when Munich was being screened for BAFTA members - and those outside London who couldn't attend private screenings (the film hadn't opened theatrically yet) were sent DVDs. But to prevent piracy, they were in a special encrypted format that could only be played on a proprietary player that had been provided to them free of charge.

The problem was that the Munich DVDs were accidentally locked to Region 1, making them literally unplayable on any player anywhere in the world. And by the time people realised what had happened, it was too late - and the eventual outcome can be gleaned from BAFTA's absence from this otherwise pretty impressive tally of awards and nominations.

(More info here.)

If UHD can be region locked :
- then what regions are there ? What are their signs ? We had region 1, 2 etc for DVD, ABC for BD, what is it for UHD ?
- what is the geographical repartition within those regions ?

I ask this because I can't recall the industry physically implementing a system for region locking UHDs, which would in practice be required to do so, and I can't recall the repartition of the countries having been ever made public if it does exist.

Since that's where, IIRC, we are in terms of public info, I'm quite perplexed over this, which I have a hard time believing is intentional, since I can't even understand how it is physically possible.

I've never programmed for a Blu-ray but I assume when the disc loads it's programmed to do a bitwise check against the player to see what region it is and I would assume someone accidentally did that here and simply checked for the region A flag. But I also assumed the player would hold that info back from 4K discs and that appears to be not the case.

With Blu-ray you can even program the player to serve up different menus according to the player's region code, which is how Arrow and Flicker Alley were able to economise by releasing discs whose machine-readable side was absolutely identical - it's just that you got Flicker Alley menus in a region A player and Arrow ones in a Region B player.

4K blu-ray are not, physically, diffrent discs then Blu-ray beyond being 66 or 100; hence, they can have the same characteristics applied during authoring. But it's against the disc spec to use that feature on these discs, so I expect Shout will either have to pay a fine or offer replacements or something like that.

Hence my BAFTA Munich example: there was nothing to stop them region-locking those discs aside from the teensy problem that it would render them totally unplayable.

Ribs wrote:4K blu-ray are not, physically, diffrent discs then Blu-ray beyond being 66 or 100; hence, they can have the same characteristics applied during authoring.

And they're still programmed in Java so all of those libraries are more than likely the same.

Ribs wrote:4K blu-ray are not, physically, diffrent discs then Blu-ray beyond being 66 or 100; hence, they can have the same characteristics applied during authoring. But it's against the disc spec to use that feature on these discs, so I expect Shout will either have to pay a fine or offer replacements or something like that.

So it means that despite no region having been defined during their specs creation, the ABC system was still available for use for UHD ?
But then, doesn't it mean UHD have always been region-lockable and regions HAVE been defined (ie simply reusing the BD ones) ?
I might have missed something but that's not my understanding of it which is why I'm a tad confused (though I guess this explanation works anyway).

My hometown's second to last video store, last locally-owned, announced it'll close early next year due to COVID. They opened in 1986 and had accumulated a pretty huge selection, good enough that I never had to bother with the chains. I knew I wasn't going to find Crimson Gold or Alphaville at Blockbuster. I'm surprised they held on for as long as they did, honestly, especially since they didn't stock XXX fare. At their closing sale, I grabbed some DVD-only silents, B movies, and board favorites for cheap, so that's a silver lining at least.

It's always sad to hear that. I'm sure Covid sped up their demise. I miss everything from the mom and pop shops to the Tower Records type stores.

Amazon in talks to acquire MGM.

MGM is one of the more licensing friendly companies, so, if this goes through, that is obviously done.

Redbox, one of the last places to rent physical media in a lot of the US, is going public, promising in its investor presentation a "radical transformation from a legacy DVD rental business to a multi-faceted digital entertainment company that spans multiple entertainment windows and business models."

dwk wrote: Tue May 18, 2021 1:37 am Amazon in talks to acquire MGM.

MGM is one of the more licensing friendly companies, so, if this goes through, that is obviously done.

"The talks between Amazon and MGM have been on-again, off-again since the start of this year, people close to both companies said. Amazon and MGM have been in exclusive talks in recent weeks, the people said. The MGM board was briefed on the matter Sunday night, a person close to the situation said. There are no guarantees they will ultimately reach an agreement."

An agreement has been reached.

Which I assume closes off the MGM catalogue - or rather AIP, Cannon, United Artists et al - from being licensable by Blu-ray labels.

(The actual MGM catalogue - as in films produced by MGM - is of course with Warners, so unavailable anyway.)

Why is there the assumption that Amazon will close off its catalog? MGM is one of the most liberal with it’s licensing going from Criterion to Vinegar Syndrome to Kino. Considering just how many titles they currently have licensed off, I couldn’t see it ending.