There are tabletop RPGs that focus on story? Seriously, how many people actually like that kind of stuff? I’m kidding, of course, but that’s what our Inquisition last week focused on – What’s your experience with story games/indie RPGs? The largest number of you, at 26%, only play story based / indie RPGs occasionally, with another 24% of you playing them only rarely or a few times in your life. 22% of you never play story/indie RPGs either intentionally or by chance, and the rest are broken up into 14% who play them regularly and 13% who play semi-regularly. I think it would be safe to say that 27% of you are story/indie game players and the rest aren’t that into them. Dave and I are currently working on changing that, as I have started planning at least a one-shot adventure in Mouse Guard that I will run in the next few months.
We seem to be at an interesting crossroads when it comes to movies and video formats, with Blu-ray beating out HD DVD I assumed everything would transition over pretty quickly but it still seems that regular DVDs are the primary format for people watching movies at home. I have no doubt that given a little bit more time, Blu-ray would dominate but with cable companies offering HD movies on demand and netflix streaming online the digital medium might be changing the whole market. I have not yet made the jump to Blu-ray because of cost and a less-than-eager attitude towards re-buying hundreds of movies that I already purchased on DVD. In the end I think we will purchase new movies and maybe a handful of ones we already own that have stunning visuals we really want to see in HD (like the first Transformers movie). The results of this poll may be a bit skewed, because most of you are gamers and the PS3 has a built in Blu-ray player, but that’s one of the answers I’d like to get from this poll. With that in mind, I’m very interested to find out how many of you watch movies on DVD, Blu-ray, or digitally. I’ve included Beta and Laser Disc for the sake of being inclusive, and because the odds are if I didn’t someone weird would ask for them.
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I literally just bought a BlueRay player about 18 hours ago (bundling it actually made the new TV cheaper). So I have no BlueRay content yet, but may consider buying some of the more visually affective movies in that format rather than on DVD (which still looks fine IMO).
I don’t buy movies anymore. I have plenty that I’ve received as presents that have never been opened. The reason? I can stream so many of them from Netflix, or watch them when they come on the movie channels (with a DVR it’s not really hard to catch what you want to watch, and in HD).
Blu-Ray is too expensive and feels like zombie technology. The disk isn’t dead, yet, but as streaming technology advances, there won’t be much of a reason to buy them, so the price won’t likely drop, and it’ll eventually fade away.
My folks switched to Blu-Ray when they upgraded their home theater system, but then went back to DVD rentals on Netflix because their Blu-Ray player has DVD optimization feature that makes the picture quality nearly equal to BR. We’re still using DVDs at my house, and streaming Netflix.
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The whole HD and blu-ray thing is still a bit expensive. I might be quicker to get on the train if xbox had a blu-ray attachment or something. However, DVD special features are starting to get the shaft (Observe and Report, for example). So, I might need to start switching over. Decent special features are my main reason for actually buying the physical item of a movie I really like.
We got a PS3 bundled with the new television and so far we’ve been buying new movies mostly on Blu-ray. Somethimes though, if the movies hasn’t got any special effects I don’t think anyone really minds what format it is. Star Trek, Iron man, Watchmen etc all got the Blu-Ray treatment.
I don’t have a Blu-Ray player so all my films are DVDs…
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I think Blu-Ray is too small a step forward from DVD, that’s why BR and HDDVD never really made it big.
When VHS jumped to VCD, and VCD to DVD, those were bigger jumps forward. For the western audience, I think VCD never really made it mainstream anyhow. SO the jump was from VHS to DVD, and that is obviously a really big leap forward.
For the Asian market however, that transition was slowed by VCD. And I think that caused DVD’s uprising to slow a bit in some asian markets. But even in this case, the picture quality went WAY up from VCD to DVD.
The transition from DVD to the BR or HDDVD however, isn’t quite as big. The picture quality of DVD is already quite high, and we have all built a collection around it. I never collected VHS releases quite like I did for DVDs.
With up-convert players, the DVD picture quality is already near HD enough that it makes no matter for the general consumer. Add this to the advent of digital media, the need for a “next gen” physical media is also lessened; the very concept of physical media may already be an “old gen” one replaced with digital.
We can look at Sony’s experiment with the PSPgo, going full digital with no support for UMD media. Just a few years back they tried to push UMD. The same may be true for PS3 and BR. By the time PS4 and the next XBOX arives, we may be looking at full digital content with no physical media.
I am an old school kind of guy, and like my things physical; something I can hold onto in my hands, though.
Xenoss: I totally agree with you, DVD was a much bigger usability/functionality jump from VHS than Blu-ray is from DVD. This is probably the big reason it’s slower to take off, but the poll is already showing a large amount of people watching movies digitally so that has to factor in as well.
Many of you are mentioning that Blu-ray is not a big jump from up-converted DVDs, which I actually have to disagree with. Watching an up-converted DVD on a Hi-Def TV (which is what I have at home) many of them look fuzzy and grainy, especially when compared to a Blu-ray or to TV that’s in HD. That said, I am using my 360 to play the DVDs so it may not be as good at up-converting as other devices (which is something I’d like to know, so if you know that for sure please tell me).
Blu Ray players also play DVDs, they also make regular DVDs look better. So you do not have to go out and buy everything you already have on DVD to upgrade to blu ray. Do what I did, when I got my Blu ray player last year, keep your DVD collection and get everything from now on on blu ray.
Bartoneus,
I will echo what you said. I own a Sony Bravia 54″ HD TV and the Sony Blu Ray player made for it. Although it’s nice that my old DVDs up-convert, the difference is frankly amazing for detail and depth on some movies. I have a copy of a “blah” film like Troy, which I got free in a package deal, and the picture resolution down to blades of grass or grains of sand is stunning.
The Trek films got the Blu Ray treatment nicely. I think all of them transferred well. Battlestar Galactica: The Plan is amazing on Blu Ray, and I forgave the end of Season 4 because The Plan was such a visual, and story/production/acting treat.
Because of my Blu Ray, you can clearly see R2-D2 in the new Trek film at about 47.39 minutes or so. We froze the picture and went frame by frame, and our little droid buddy went sharply flying by for one instant! 🙂
Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I like having a disc more than a digital copy on my computer or DVR. In fact, I watch so little TV that I cut off cable/dish and I either watch shows online (that I don’t want to own) or I wait and watch the Blu Ray when the season comes out (or both).
I have regrets — like no Lord of the Rings on Blu Ray yet, or that Legend of the Seeker only came out in standard format so far, and that Battlestar complete seasons are only now coming on Blu Ray. I repurchased the Treks because the movies were a deal on Amazon, and I think the new transfers and clean up looks very, very good.
Now, some transfers, like Brahm Stoker’s Dracula did not get any extra oomph for the Blu Ray transfer. Some, like Hellboy 1 & 2, or Pan’s Labyrinth, or many Anime I have seen are sooo sweet in Blu Ray.
I have 7.1 sound on my home theater, and the Blu Ray loss-less surround in many cases makes my investment from years ago shine.
I’m in precisely the same situation is highbulp–we just got a blu-ray player as part of a sale package with a new HD TV (there was a great sale at Best Buy. From the sound of it, highbulp took advantage of the same one). I don’t have any blu-ray movies yet, but since I also recently received the new Star Trek and Beowulf movies from Columbia house in DVD, I’m going to send those two back and exchange them for blu-ray versions. And we’ll probably get blu-ray versions of at least some movies going forward, in those cases where the effects are most important. And, of course, I’ll have to debate with myself long and hard when Lord of the Rings and Star Wars come out in that format. I’ve already bought the former in the extended edition format, and the latter I own the original trilogy in at least 3 versions (2 VHS and 1 DVD), so I’m kind of reluctant to do it again, but maybe I will.
We’ve already got a pretty extensive collection of DVDs, and have just about managed to replace all the things we had in VHS that we care enough about, so we’re unlikely to do that again with blu-ray, especially since, for the most part, the DVD versions look perfectly fine, and are no less convenient to play on the BD player.
We also watch a fair number of things on Netflix streaming–at the moment via the XBox, but once my current gold subscription expires, we’ll probably do it through the new player instead, since its free and I don’t care about multi-player gaming much. That’s primarily television shows, though, such as Heroes, Leverage, Numbers, etc, with the occasional movie when its available. We pretty much don’t watch newly-broadcast TV anymore–can’t stand commercials, and don’t like paying for dozens of channels we’ll never watch.