waiting for gidget

Just sold a dozen of my favorite DVDs to Spectator Bookstore for less than half what I paid for them.

Spring Clearance

My reasoning goes like this: each of these are already out or will be released this year on Blu-ray. If I wait until the remainder are released, it's possible the DVDs will be worth even less. And if I don't end up buying the Blu-rays, it's not exactly the end of the world if I don't own every one of my favorite movies, is it? After all, there's always Netflix. Which brings up the point: do I really want to watch these movies again on DVD, when they're available in Hi-Def? Probably not.

Having said that, I'm not planning on selling most of my DVDs. I'm keeping neither the movies I absolutely love nor the ones I absolutely can do without, but rather the ones I like, but not enough to repurchase on Blu-ray.

You see, the quandary distributors face is that Blu-ray just doesn't offer the quantum leap in audio/video quality, convenience, compactness, and durability over DVD as DVD did over VHS. Yet the media is still more expensive than DVD was at this point in its product cycle, while similarly high prices on players have kept the adoption rate below that of DVD, and so distributors are already facing smaller margins than with DVD.

Although I think it unlikely, it would be dire times indeed for the movie industry if mainstream consumers acted like me and only upgraded their favorite movies, and only when the Blu-ray provides an extra wow factor that makes it hard to go back to watching the DVD. In my book, that only applies when the DVD does not realize its full potential due to poor mastering, but there exist source materials of sufficient quality to benefit from the Blu-ray treatment.

Very few films made before the widescreen push of 1952-3 have extant source materials that can even do justice to DVD, let alone Blu-ray, video quality (with the exception of instant-and-perennial classics like Casablanca and Gone With The Wind). As for audio, little made before the 90s is held back by DVD-quality DTS. So unless the studio (or Criterion) has bent over backwards to restore and remaster, it's not likely I'll upgrade most movies more than about twenty years old - which includes the vast majority of the DVDs I own. I doubt I'll upgrade even recent comedies, which tend to be unspectacular in the audio and visual department.

In fact, even when it comes to my favorite dramas and action flicks, this time I'm going [to try] to wait for prices to come down, rather than pre-order most of them as I did with DVDs. After all, this time around I already have most of them on DVD, and can wait.

we're off to see the Wizard

In some cases it'll be a long wait - only a trickle of catalog releases have made it to Blu-ray so far, and the remainder of the year only yields a few more from my wishlist. I guess the studios don't feel Blu-ray adoption has quite turned the corner yet. Blu-ray just passed the three-year mark, and there are still only about 1600 titles available — at this point in its cycle (around December 1999), DVD had about 5,000 titles.

Even further in the distance, I'm still waiting on some titles that have not yet even been properly released on DVD after almost a decade, let alone Blu-ray:

The Merry Widow (only available on VHS or import DVDs)

Where are the rest of the Ernst Lubitsch classics? Did someone burn the sources when they made the VHS master?

Gidget (only released in 1:33, when the original was 2.35:1)

Granted, the extra sides mostly just show more cheesy bluescreen, but having nearly half the picture cut off is downright distracting, and gets in the way of enjoying this ultimate escapist fluff piece.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

One of the all-time greatest family films hasn't seen a home video release since 1998's VHS tape? Hello? Anybody listening?