This year in home video

[randy_byers]

This year saw two major developments in home video that are creating a fair amount of dissonance and conflict in my poor widdle bwain.

First (although it came second chronologically), I finally signed up for Netflix when it became apparent that the era of streaming had finally arrived. Now, I ended up getting the plan where you can have one DVD at a time along with unlimited streaming, so I've probably ended up watching as many DVDs through Netflix as I have streamed movies. The bottom line is that Netflix gives me access to more movies than I can possibly hope to watch and seriously undercuts my old tendency of buying DVDs of movies I was curious about but then ended up only wanting to watch once. Now I can watch them once via Netflix and forget about them. This has the possibility of saving me from the clutter that DVD collecting (on top of book collecting, not to mention fanzines) has caused in my little basement cavern.

The second development (which actually came first in my personal chronology), however, is pushing me to only increase my clutter. This is the growing tendency of corporations with large film libraries to offer their more obscure films on burn-on-demand disks. This started with the Warner Archive, and has now spread to other companies such as Sony with their Columbia Classics. These disks are not available from Netflix, and they tend to be the kind of obscure gems that cinephiles adore. For example, I recently picked up William Cameron Menzies' 1944 anti-Nazi film Address Unknown from Columbia Classics and Fritz Lang's 1955 pirate movie Moonfleet from the Warner Archive. Warner alone has put out such a flood of titles in the past year that I have had to nail my hand to my desk to prevent it from clicking the Purchase Now button on many titles I'm curious about but might end up only watching once.

It's not clear to me which tendency will win out. Warner Archive has made some of their films available as downloads that you can watch as many times as you want, but I tried it a couple times and didn't like the interface or the $15 price. It still seems possible, even likely, that downloads or streaming will completely replace burn-on-demand in the near future.

On that front, I suppose it's also worth mentioning that Netflix has been increasing the number of movies available via streaming that aren't available on DVD. I've been halfway thinking about doing a post on some of the great titles that are available this way, including Frank Borzage's Moonrise (1948) (which I've wanted to see for years), Max Ophuls Caught (1949), and Mitchell Leisen's No Man of Her Own (1950) -- or for that matter, Derek Jarman's radical adaptation of The Tempest (1979). Again, I can't even keep up with what's available on Netflix streaming, and yet my eyes (and clicking finger) still stray to titles in other formats.

It's a glut, I tell you. The home video market is undergoing massive changes, and more and more obscure titles are becoming available one way or another. We live in interesting times that way.

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Ah, the cornucopia! This is how I felt when used bookstores began going online. All of a sudden I could just go out and pin down books I'd been desultorily looking for for years.

Caution: All DVDs (or CDs, for that matter) are perishable, but burn on demand disks are more perishable than mass-produced ones. I've had burn-on-demand CD-ROMs that went unreadable after 5 years, though others have lasted much longer, and I suspect the half-life is shorter for DVDs.

On the other hand, if you download them, how many can you fit? Today's hard drives are very large, but film files are big. And if you save them to a thumb drive, perishability again.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Well, let me put it like this :)

I have taken to ripping my DVDs to MP4s, so a typical Movie runs at 750MB(ish) - I have 3 1TB drives in my home server and next year I'll probably be upgrading to 2TB drives which are currently $90ish... so I've 3 data drives which all map across to each other for redundancy...

You run out quicker ripping DVD files completely at 7GB(ish) a movie or Blu-Ray at 20GB (a BluRay ISO/MKV rip is more like 5-7GB) - but in 2TB you're still looking at 200+ movies on a single drive at those rates. At MP4 sizes you're looking at over 2500 2hr movies, or 5000 hours of TV shows...

Frankly I keep forgetting to delete things these days because there's so much room in there...

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

That's certainly a caution worth bearing in mind. I'm moving haphazardly in the direction Dave outlines below, and I've ripped a number of my burn-on-demand DVD to external hard drive. At this point, however, that hard drive is not backed up.

But this cluster of issues is another reason that streaming is so appealing.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

I've got an old 1TB external if you want it?

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't turn it down. The one that needs backing up is .5TB.

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

The local library might take your excess DVDs. You'd have to talk to the librarian first -- if they don't want it (or don't realize they want it), it either goes to a Friends of the Library sale, or it gets dumped. That would be a shame, as there really should be a "Fringefaan Collection" of films in a file cabinet somewhere in the back of the library.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

That's a great idea. Thanks for that.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

voidampersand speaks wisely. You have two big library systems locally, city & county, so they're good bets. The person you want to contact is the collection development officer for videos/films/DVDs. If they sound interested by a general description, send them a list.

[kim-huett.livejournal.com]

Haven't explored anything like Netflix or Warner's burn on demand services as yet. Nonetheless such developments are of interest to me because as this field develops I hope that access is expanded to unavailable television of yestreen. I know I've discovered enough on YouTube to happily spend modest sums via such technology if it means getting to see certain ancient tv shows.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I don't follow tv very closely, but one thing I've noticed (from friends telling me about it) is that in the digital tv era there has been a mushrooming of channels dedicated to old tv shows. It's not on-demand, so not quite what you're looking for, but I wouldn't be surprised if we're headed in that direction.

[kim-huett.livejournal.com]

These sort of TV channels, or any sort of TV channels for that matter, aren't of use to me because the whole system is only months away from becoming digital and I have no plans to replace my elderly analogue television with a digital model. Besides, I think it's safe to assume that anything popular enough to be shown on TV is also available on DVD.

Where for example burn on demand could come into its own is in regards to material considered unsuitable for television. There are shows that had very short runs, or for which very few episodes still exist, or which are deemed not of interest to a sufficiently large audience that I doubt are ever going to make it back onto TV. The Adventures of Dr. Fu Manchu comes to mind, or the BBC serial Escape Into Night.

[reverendjim.livejournal.com]

Escape Into Night is available on region 2 DVD from this lot. It's only in black and white as the colour copies no longer exist. I've got a copy but I've not watched it yet so I don't know if it's going to be quite as impressive as I remember it.

[kim-huett.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tip. have bookmarked this for future reference. I see the same source has available other shows of interest to me as well. Anyway, this reinforces my original point about the development of technology helping to make such material available. I imagine there's only a small market for something like Escape Into Night but once advances in technology make it sufficiently cheap for somebody to make a profit supplying that even a small audience then the possibility of somebody doing so becomes high rather than nonexistent.

[janetl.livejournal.com]

I'm a big fan of streaming, because my Sony Blueray DVD player is as slow as molasses to start up. Is that the general case, or is mine a dud?

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I have yet to be initiated in the mysteries of hi def, so I'm afraid I can't help you there. Doesn't *sound* right, but what do I know?