[Pincho Paxton]

According to Microsoft, we are going to see downloaded movies taking over from Blu Ray, or DVD. So what do you prefer?

Download, saves you going to a shop to buy a movie, possibly cheaper without all of the packaging, quite convenient at night when you are bored.

Disc, has nice packaging, can be in tins, or special limited edition offers. It's physical, you can hold it, takes up space however.

So let's get a poll going!!!

[bradavon78]

I'd rather buy it on disc, but then I collect films, most of the general public don't.

[AML]

I also prefer to buy discs simply beacuse I like owning something phisical. I can also collect discs and watch them anytime.
I also like having all my discs lined up on my shelf. (like a book shelf)

BUT
I admit that i hardly ever watch a disc more than once. Im also paranoid about scratching and dust.
And ive also been known to re-buy the same film on more than one format. (ie. Blu Ray/HD DVD as well as DVD)

So I do think that downloads have a future.
It all depends on how its done. And if streaming is possible.
After all nobody wants to wait days for a 1080p film to finish downloading.

Something else that botheres me is that most internet conections are not always stable or reliable. My conection can at times slow down to a crawl and ive also lost the conection altogether untill I called up my SP.

Theres also the problem of storage. HDD's arent really all that cheap. And it wouldnt take many films to fill up a 500GB HDD.

Over all I think a single disc (ie A blu ray) is more reliable. And if looked after can last for a long time. (I beleive Blu Ray has a hardcoating which will enable each disc to take a lot of punishment before it stops working)

Im sure both can co-exist. But I really dont see myself downloading any 1080p films in the near future.

[Dan Smiffy]

When I first got into DVDs I went mental on them, at my collecting peak I owned 1100+ but have sold and sold and sold them in the last year or so and am down to 300 or so. I still need to shift another 100 or so to leave the hardcore of a 200 I watch often, or believe I will watch often. Other than those my spare room was crammed with hundreds of little dust magnet boxes containing films I was never gonna watch again. So I've voted download - because from expensive experience, 90% of what I buy I'll only watch once.

[cj]

Downloads - physical media is such a waste of resource and space. I consigned my 600+ DVD collection to the loft a long time ago, and my family get the convenience of playing any film on any screen by choosing the artwork. And actually the only discs that get repeated plays are the kids' films and cartoons. Have been trying to get out of the collection mentality with HD media.

The downside of course is storage (my Home Server is currently 11 Terabytes), but hopefully in the future we won't even need a local copy - if you had access to all films at anytime on any screen, why would you even need a local copy (unless it's for the car of course)? I think most people would save money with a "pay per viewing" model - how many films do you actually watch more than once, and how many times?

[Azzin]

Shouldn't you have posted this in the Movies forum rather than the High Definition DVD Players forum?

[kingfats]

Moved to HD Movies.

[SILVERBACK]

download,i like the flexibility (and laziness of swapping discs lol) of having films i can just click and watch on one hard drive as opposed to having shed loads of discs on a shelf taking up space.

[andythescientis]

I'd rather own a piece of physical media. That way you can also lend it to family etc.

I still buy many cd's each year and have not touched downloads, despite now being on my 3rd mp3 player.

[y2k]

It should be a good bit cheaper to download so I would rather download.

[richard plumb]

I'm not voting as IMO the question isn't a reasonable reflection of reality.

Its not a question of disc or download of the same quality. its disc or download of noticably less quality.

HD movies on appleTV (haven't checked out xbox live but sizes seem similar) are about on par with skyHD IMO. On a good day, they can look great. But they are 720p and so aren't archival quality IMO - just a step up from DVD, which isn't what I'm looking for.

for rental, fine - the convenience is probably worth it. but for keeps I'd rather have a disc. And include a digital version for my convenience - whatever happened to HDDVD/bluray 'managed copy'?

[MikeK]

Originally Posted by y2k

It should be a good bit cheaper to download so I would rather download.

There is no download service for Bluray/HDDVD equivalent quality downloads!
When there is, it won't have been set up to save us money - it'll be to make more money for the companies involved.

Personally I won't be holding my breath on price - let's not forget there are more charges involved here than just the sticker price charged by the download company. There's the broadband charges - just 4 films a month will likely be around 80-100GB or so! Then there's the cost of what you are going to store it on, long term.

All this is also assuming that people forego all the extras and interactivity features the studios currently insist we can't do without, and that people will be happy with the DRM measures!


I would be happy to download in preference to buying a disc IF

- the quality is broadly comparable
- it's cheaper (to offset my greater costs)
- the DRM is fair (ie no tighter than what is currently employed on disc)

Until then, I'll be buying the disc!


A side effect of this of course is that unless they actually sell more movies, each download will be a lost disc sale - eventually that will put upward pressure on disc prices

[y2k]

Originally Posted by MikeK

There is no download service for Bluray/HDDVD equivalent quality downloads!
When there is, it won't have been set up to save us money - it'll be to make more money for the companies involved.

If they were the same price then I would buy the discs of course, but I think that they would be cheaper because you (the customer) would have to download it. I have already downloaded quite a few HD quality movies from the net so it wouldnt be to hard for the big companies to do the same but I think that the downloads might be a problem because they will be a lot easier for people to make copies of and give them to friends or family.

[chelsea.tone]

I prefer discs

[BenchyUK]

Definately discs.

Downloads are simply no where good enough. I've tried some HD and SD Movies on xbox video marketplace and there's simply no comparrison.

SD transfers (Oceans 13) the PQ i found to be less than DVD. HD Transfers at maxed at 720p but look no better than an upscaled DVD. The fact that alot of te films are only 2 channel sound is disgusting.

Apparently this is the same with Apple TV

All these films are on a rental basis too. By the time you've rented a film twice you've paid wat it costs in the shops to buy


I will NEVER be a fan of downloads ad will always protest against it. People complain about region coding but my God it's going to be worse with downloads which are riddles with DRM

I hope other people don't go with downloads as although people think it's the future..... it's a very expensive and limited future

[inzaman]

Definitely disks for me too

[Rob20]

At present I think I would rather have a film on disc than as a download. A disc can be easily transported to player in other machines, lent to family/friends//sold on etc. Having the ability to do all the above with a digital medium is far more complicated. Also, what's to prevent you copying disc media to a central HDD? Also, large HDD sufficient for storing Blu-Ray movies are too expensive when the probable cost of downloads is added. One thing that puts me off downloading music is that it's no cheaper than buying a cd and the quality isn't as good. Plus you can't copy digital downloads like you can with cd. When you think that a digital download cuts out all the production, packaging, delivery, storage, wholesaler, shop profits etc... music downloads should be about half the cost imo.

One advantage of digital downloads would be that films could be modified for a small charge when new features are added, (instead of studios releasing 'Special Edition', 'Ultimate Edition' discs. If you have a lot of films and nowhere to store them then one large HDD would be useful. As well as having a movie juke box with all your films in catorgorys/alphabetical, perhaps availble to every tv in the house.

Maybe something for the future.

[KeanosMagicHat]

I haven't voted because the poll does not take into account the developments that will take place over the next 4-5 years or sooner.

Average internet connection speeds are currently neither fast nor stable enough to make "on-demand" movie downloading a truly viable proposition for the masses.

Also at the moment "unlimited downloads" doesn't actually mean what it says.

I see Blu-Ray as a much shorter life-span product than DVD and VHS. The above issues will be addressed and most people will move to subscription based on-demand downloading for both movies and music (and probably computer software as well).

So at the moment I prefer Blu-Ray disc, but would be happy to join a subscription based service in the future.

[Fen Star]

Buy the disc no question about it.....

[me-uk]

The notion of downloading films/music really doesn't appeal to me, I still buy cds rather than downloading mp3s and I shall still buy blu's rather than downloading. However with that said i think it does appeal to the general pub.

[GrahamC]

Downloading will be more an attack on the rental market than disk buying IMO. As posted there is no equall to disk from download.

[cascade]

I'd do both, i use my xbox 360 and ps3 to stream media from my PC including HD material. i like the conveniance of being able to download straight to my media drive. then streaming it.

[Repton]

Disc! I'm a collector!

[MikeK]

Originally Posted by Rob20

At present I think I would rather have a film on disc than as a download. A disc can be easily transported to player in other machines, lent to family/friends//sold on etc. Having the ability to do all the above with a digital medium is far more complicated. Also, what's to prevent you copying disc media to a central HDD? Also, large HDD sufficient for storing Blu-Ray movies are too expensive when the probable cost of downloads is added.

Totally agree.
If you assume a BD/HDDVD comparable quality download will be on average about 20-25GB, that puts the storage cost at about £3 per movie or more, and that's on HDD, a mechanical device which can fail, resulting in the loss of all contents, which could be 20-25 films if you were using 500GB drives. Adding a mirrored drive for protection, takes the storage cost up to £6 per movie.
The alternative is of course a recordable Bluray disc - a bit ironic that instead of buying a Bluray disc we may end up having to pay more to download a movie and store it on.....a Bluray disc!

Then you have to add the cost to download it - all the infrastructure upgrades necessary to support this kind of service won't be free.

One thing that puts me off downloading music is that it's no cheaper than buying a cd and the quality isn't as good. Plus you can't copy digital downloads like you can with cd. When you think that a digital download cuts out all the production, packaging, delivery, storage, wholesaler, shop profits etc... music downloads should be about half the cost imo.

The music model isn't quite the same.
Downloading is certainly cheaper if you don't want all the tracks on the CD.
You can't really do this with movies - almost everyone wants the entire movie, not just the best bits off it!

One advantage of digital downloads would be that films could be modified for a small charge when new features are added, (instead of studios releasing 'Special Edition', 'Ultimate Edition' discs.

Could be and would/will be are very different things though

If you have a lot of films and nowhere to store them then one large HDD would be useful.

Until it breaks, of course!

[Pincho Paxton]

Originally Posted by richard plumb

I'm not voting as IMO the question isn't a reasonable reflection of reality.

Its not a question of disc or download of the same quality. its disc or download of noticably less quality.

HD movies on appleTV (haven't checked out xbox live but sizes seem similar) are about on par with skyHD IMO. On a good day, they can look great. But they are 720p and so aren't archival quality IMO - just a step up from DVD, which isn't what I'm looking for.

for rental, fine - the convenience is probably worth it. but for keeps I'd rather have a disc. And include a digital version for my convenience - whatever happened to HDDVD/bluray 'managed copy'?

The poll is to assume that Microsoft have something up their sleeve to get the downloads as good as the originals.

Example.. Star Wars HD was taken from Sky, and apparently it is one of the best HD images you can currently get, and it's (apparently) 1080p. Now this is a recording taken from an image whilst you watch the image. Microsoft are in a position to make a windows product that can immitate this behavior, and therefore you would get to watch a movie, and store it...1080p.

Anyway, we all know the results of a poll where the quality is worse, this is a poll with the best possible solution for Microsoft, and if this poll fails for them, then a worse quality would be disasterous. And of course this is an AV forum, and we don't really want inferior AV.

[BlackCountryBob]

Personally I really don't find the idea of a download to own appealing at all. Disks are IMO just so flexible and that is what I want. I can lend the disks to my friends or watch them in other rooms of the house and I have the option of selling on the disk if dislike the movie or if there is a new edition (like a directors cut) released.

Most of all, the idea of a download makes me nervous in terms of price, with a disk you find that movies get reduced over time and that retailers can compete on price for individual movies to get the best price (see the big DVDs that are released in the run up to xmas, the supermarkets always work to undercut each other so the DVD is about £9 in the end). Download services will never be able to have such an open and competitive market that will get the best price for the consumer.

Downloads may be useful for the rental market and I am sure it will happen eventually as firms like LoveFilm release their own hardware or software but in the terms of the ownership market I don't wanna know about downloads, regardless of what quality they are.

[KeanosMagicHat]

Originally Posted by BlackCountryBob

Personally I really don't find the idea of a download to own appealing at all.

That's the thing though. We've grown up in a generation where you "own" everything.

In my prediction above, which I'm convinced will happen once technology allows, you will not own anything.

Nor will you have to pay per download.

It will be subscription based (like Sky at the moment) and you will be able to select from 1,000's of movies / CD's etc that are stored on servers and stream them to your TV on demand.

So for example you've paid your £30 per month subscription or whatever it may be and you fancy watching the Bourne Ultimatum in HD, you simply find that in the menu and play it, on demand.

I honestly think we are only five years or so from this becoming reality.

Technology aside, the only other thing to iron out is the royalty, distribution payments etc from the broadcasting company to the record companies / movie studios.

[arj154]

peranally i would prefer just to download them. I rarely watch a movie more than once tbh. It is very rare that i find a movie that i would like to own on DVD. I think digital distrubuation is a good idea but im really unsure if it can actually take off. There so many worrys about piracy that they put on a lot of drm and this is one of the reasons people dont like it and our broadband speeds in the uk are not that good and ISP's as a whole do not support large file downloading as it takes up a lot of bandwidth and it again allows more piracy if they were more relaxed on it. I think its hard to tell if it can take off properly.

[Greg]

This seems to be a common thread at the moment. Quite a few on the forums of a similar vain.

Personally, it will be at least 10 years I would guess before my broadband has even remotely got close to being able to download HD movies.

Even when it does, I would much prefer to buy the disc. Knowing what MS and similar companies are like, I bet the price difference would be minimal anyway.

[RottenFox]

Originally Posted by Greg

This seems to be a common thread at the moment. Quite a few on the forums of a similar vain.

Personally, it will be at least 10 years I would guess before my broadband has even remotely got close to being able to download HD movies.

Even when it does, I would much prefer to buy the disc. Knowing what MS and similar companies are like, I bet the price difference would be minimal anyway.

and potential DRM limitations may be outrageous/very limiting at the least.

physical media all the way for me,not just for collection purposes,but to have freedom in the choice of when,and where,and how i watch it.(maybe over the space of days,rather than all at once,something ive had to do with several movies,either by falling asleep,or just not having the time,to finish it up).