Ohhh...my....!!!!

[madmac]

I found out today that our one and only video store in my town is closing down!!. I have zero access to dvd's and BD discs locally now. What am I going to do now???.

Very sad!!!

[Dmantis]

Sucks , I hear yeah and feel your pain man. I'm so tired of Audio video companies going out of business. It's the internet sales with all these companies selling things at just above cost and killing brick and mortar retailers.
Even best Buy is not doing so well , Such a shame.

[wkhanna]

Are you saying the entire city of Montreal no longer has a brick & mortar movie rental business?

Just curious….Do you guys have Redbox up there?
I do not remember seeing one when the The Wife & I were up to The Great North two years ago.

[madmac]

Are you saying the entire city of Montreal no longer has a brick & mortar movie rental business?

Just curious….Do you guys have Redbox up there?
I do not remember seeing one when the The Wife & I were up to The Great North two years ago.

I believe there are a few in another town about 3 miles away. We do not have Redbox here in Montreal. We do have Zip.ca whereby you order online and have dvd's mailed to you. I might go that route........

[aud19]

Zip.ca and/or streaming my friend.

Tried to tell you guys a couple years ago during and after the whole BD vs HD-DVD thing that streaming was going to be the new king of the castle before BD could ever reach anything resembling DVD penetration.

[Ovation]

I believe there are a few in another town about 3 miles away. We do not have Redbox here in Montreal. We do have Zip.ca whereby you order online and have dvd's mailed to you. I might go that route........

There are dozens of Super Videotron rental shops for movies (all well-stocked with Blu-ray discs, as well as DVDs) all over the Montreal area. My local one recently renovated and expanded its store size and BD collection (including adding a number of non-new releases in BD--and all BD rentals are exactly the same price as regular DVD).

[Ovation]

Zip.ca and/or streaming my friend.

Tried to tell you guys a couple years ago during and after the whole BD vs HD-DVD thing that streaming was going to be the new king of the castle before BD could ever reach anything resembling DVD penetration.

DVD had no obvious competitor, so it was in a better position for market expansion. Moreover, I seem to recall most of those who did not see streaming as becoming "king of the castle" in the immediate future, back in 2007 (including myself), allowing for an eventual overtaking of physical media with streaming in terms of hi-def content, but we're not there yet (and we are approaching the seven year mark of hi def discs). The download caps remain the same problem I thought they'd be back then. I have purchased HD content in download form (on iTunes and with my PS3). In each case, especially with the PS3, it took quite a while to download the film, but that wasn't the big deal. Nearly busting my monthly cap when downloading a TV series from iTunes (thus almost rendering the savings of the download moot) was more bothersome. And even if they call it 1080p, it isn't the same quality as BD (especially since it also lacks lossless audio and often omits the extras). As for Netflix.ca, I use it, but, also to avoid busting my monthly cap, I don't set my account for the HD setting. I use my laptop or the SDTV in the living room (at the medium setting, it looks like DVD). I've tried the HD setting on Netflix with my PJ, but it is not as good as even iTunes, let alone BD.

I have VHS (which I still use on occasion--some titles are not yet on any disc nor for streaming), DVD, HD DVD, BD, iTunes and Sony downloads, Netflix.ca streaming and local/Zip.ca rentals (DVD and BD). I seek the best quality I can find when I think it is important, and settle for lower quality when I think it won't matter. If I did not have SDTV at my disposal, though, I probably would use Netflix.ca a lot LESS (ironically enough, given that streaming is newer than HDTVs). I also plan according to screen size regarding video quality. VHS never goes to my PJ, Netflix rarely so.

Audio is the same for me--I have audio cassettes, MiniDiscs, CDs, SACDs, DVD-As, DTS-CD, DVD-V concerts, HD DVD concerts, BD concerts and audio only discs. I also have some vinyl (though currently lacking a TT--that's my next gear purchase). I am…formatially promiscuous.

I will say Netflix is great for kids' stuff. My kids don't care, yet, about what kind of TV they are looking at and it saves me a bundle on rental/purchases for kids' programming. It's also good for TV shows, as I am more likely to watch those in the living room with my wife on the SDTV. It's good to be flexible on formats. But we're still not at the point where anything currently available via streaming matches, let alone bests, the quality of a Blu-ray, in aggregate terms.

[aud19]

What the heck cap and/or usage do you have?! I've never hit my cap on my internet connection...

As for quality, in general, nope it's not BD. There are ways to get better quality though, like say Vudu (though that requires us Canadian to skirt the law and use US based proxy servers). Quality is also affected by your connection speed, which if you're hitting caps after downloading ONE TV show season I can only assume may be part of your problem.

And FWIW I never thought BD was going to fall flat on it's face...it will continue to doddle along until it slowly dies at the hands of streaming. They'll keep it on life support for a while with things like 4K but there's no getting around that it will be this generations laserdisc. A middle ground that serves as a stepping stone from one mainstream format to another. Nothing wrong with that, it's just not worth re buying an entire disc collection in IMO.

[impala454]

The major internet providers where I live have caps, but rarely enforce them.

Amazon Prime has a lot of great stuff as well, and gets you free two day shipping all the time on purchases!

[George Bellefontaine]

Well I live in a rural community made up of 4 towns and, though Blockbuster took leave awhile back, there are still plenty of places to rent dvd and blu-ray discs. Streaming is not my cup of tea. As for how long dvd and/or Blu-ray discs will be around, well I'll be turning 77 this year and I got a feeling people will still be renting discs and pissing on my grave well down the road.

[madmac]

DVD had no obvious competitor, so it was in a better position for market expansion. Moreover, I seem to recall most of those who did not see streaming as becoming "king of the castle" in the immediate future, back in 2007 (including myself), allowing for an eventual overtaking of physical media with streaming in terms of hi-def content, but we're not there yet (and we are approaching the seven year mark of hi def discs). The download caps remain the same problem I thought they'd be back then. I have purchased HD content in download form (on iTunes and with my PS3). In each case, especially with the PS3, it took quite a while to download the film, but that wasn't the big deal. Nearly busting my monthly cap when downloading a TV series from iTunes (thus almost rendering the savings of the download moot) was more bothersome. And even if they call it 1080p, it isn't the same quality as BD (especially since it also lacks lossless audio and often omits the extras). As for Netflix.ca, I use it, but, also to avoid busting my monthly cap, I don't set my account for the HD setting. I use my laptop or the SDTV in the living room (at the medium setting, it looks like DVD). I've tried the HD setting on Netflix with my PJ, but it is not as good as even iTunes, let alone BD.

I have VHS (which I still use on occasion--some titles are not yet on any disc nor for streaming), DVD, HD DVD, BD, iTunes and Sony downloads, Netflix.ca streaming and local/Zip.ca rentals (DVD and BD). I seek the best quality I can find when I think it is important, and settle for lower quality when I think it won't matter. If I did not have SDTV at my disposal, though, I probably would use Netflix.ca a lot LESS (ironically enough, given that streaming is newer than HDTVs). I also plan according to screen size regarding video quality. VHS never goes to my PJ, Netflix rarely so.

Audio is the same for me--I have audio cassettes, MiniDiscs, CDs, SACDs, DVD-As, DTS-CD, DVD-V concerts, HD DVD concerts, BD concerts and audio only discs. I also have some vinyl (though currently lacking a TT--that's my next gear purchase). I am…formatially promiscuous.

I will say Netflix is great for kids' stuff. My kids don't care, yet, about what kind of TV they are looking at and it saves me a bundle on rental/purchases for kids' programming. It's also good for TV shows, as I am more likely to watch those in the living room with my wife on the SDTV. It's good to be flexible on formats. But we're still not at the point where anything currently available via streaming matches, let alone bests, the quality of a Blu-ray, in aggregate terms.

There are a few providers here in Montreal that have no bandwidth caps (ie...AEI) but most have caps. 2 hours of Netflix at best quality gobbles about 2 gigs of data. I need the best quality because I have a 60 inch HDTV so it displays everything wrong with a bad picture. VHS for me is out of the question as my monitor would destroy that picture!!.

I don't think DVD and BD discs are going anywhere anytime soon. BD will stick around if for no other reason than for computer applications in the future. No one can deny the beauty of Netflix and the ability to watch something with decent video quality on a dime. Currently, I don't have the bandwidth capacity to use it though. I'm using my HTC phone as a WiFi hotspot and have to get by currently on a lowly 1 gig a month!! ACK!!. Netflix would kill that in a half hour!!.

[Hdale85]

I highly doubt 2 hours of Netflix at best quality uses up 2 gigs of data. Their compression algorithms are pretty extreme.

[Ovation]

Don't doubt it. I've tested it on several occasions. Recently it's gotten better (slightly) as it is down to 1.75 gigs. This is Netflix.ca, though. Perhaps the US version is less bandwidth hungry.

Edit to add: Best quality (up to 1 GB per hour, or up to 2.3 GB per hour for HD). While I've measured 1.75 gigs for an HD stream, it would appear I measured for one instead of two hours at Best quality (I took the bolded statement directly from the Netflix website).

As to my ISP, the TV show season by itself did not bust my cap but I work online (I teach online courses for a college in Vermont) and I use a fair amount of bandwidth for work purposes. The month where the TV season download brushed against my cap was also the month where everyone was home for the holidays, Netflix got a lot of use by my kids because of the extreme cold that kept them indoors and I had a lot of files to transfer for end of semester purposes. My cap is 60 gigs/month combined (upload/download). A whole TV season at 1080p from iTunes took over 20 gigs of that, and even at medium settings Netflix.ca gobbles 700 megs over 2 hours.

I don't normally approach my cap (usually use 35-40 gigs per month), but if I moved to best quality Netflix AND replaced BDs with download purchases/rentals, I'd bust the cap on a regular basis (or, more likely, take a bigger package, with the extra cost that entails).

As for BD being laserdisc--sorry, that argument doesn't fly. It is both way less expensive per disc (even without adjusting for inflation--do that and it's scary how much laserdisc cost) and there are far, far more titles available on BD than ever were released on laserdisc. Again, it won't reach DVD levels of market penetration (even VHS never reached that level in terms of sales within a similar timespan) but that hardly makes BD the narrow niche laserdisc was. I guarantee far more people are aware of Blu-ray (even if they don't use it/own it) than they were aware of laserdisc at its height. BD will continue to be a sizeable part of the overall mix of ways people watch hi-def content for a while.

[Hdale85]

I don't know in Ohio we still don't have caps, and I'm in a rather rural area and we just got 50Mbit service as well.