Downfall of Indian Blu rays

[gourav]

Things like these have bugged me for a long time. It's not only about blu-rays, Indian film industry is very bad at preserving and keeping content available to people.

Think of old movies. While in the west, you can find movies released in 1930s and even 1920s, as far as Indian movies go, finding movies from the even the 60s is difficult. If you do find them, then audio and video quality is abysmal. Same for audio. You can find songs from 1950s and 60s, but the quality is like an old radio, none of them sound decent.

Apart from this, there's this general unwillingness to accept the changing realities and move content delivery into the new era. This goes somewhat for the West as well, not just India.

First there's music. In India, Saregama is the only platform which offers DRM free music purchase option. None of the other major music studios give such an option. The only way to get their music is to buy audio CDs. It's been over a decade since I stopped using CDs, why is the industry sticking to this outdated tech? What is the harm in providing legal purchase options for DRM free high quality music? How is it that the industry feels that content not being available at all is a bigger medicine for piracy than content being easily available for purchase?

Same goes for movies. This thread is discussing why movies are not released in blu-ray. But the question I want to ask is that what is the need for content to be released in blu-ray these days? This point is applicable to the west as well. What is the capacity of Blu-rays? 100 GB at max. Downloading a couple of movies a month even at 100 GB is not a big deal for most people these days. People who can afford blu-rays can easily afford a broadband connection which allows them to download 500 GB a month. So why doesn't the industry work out some way of providing blu-ray equivalent download options legally?

When people buy a blu-ray disc, they can rip and share the file with others, they can simply share the disc with others. All the risks are already there with a disc. So why is it that film industries are so afraid of offering legal download options for the same content? It would be a huge convenience for people to be able to download content in full uncompressed quality legally. And this would also reduce piracy, because in many cases, piracy is pretty much the only way of obtaining content, regardless of their willingness to pay.

 

[revolty]

Things like these have bugged me for a long time. It's not only about blu-rays, Indian film industry is very bad at preserving and keeping content available to people.

Think of old movies. While in the west, you can find movies released in 1930s and even 1920s, as far as Indian movies go, finding movies from the even the 60s is difficult. If you do find them, then audio and video quality is abysmal. Same for audio. You can find songs from 1950s and 60s, but the quality is like an old radio, none of them sound decent.

Apart from this, there's this general unwillingness to accept the changing realities and move content delivery into the new era. This goes somewhat for the West as well, not just India.

First there's music. In India, Saregama is the only platform which offers DRM free music purchase option. None of the other major music studios give such an option. The only way to get their music is to buy audio CDs. It's been over a decade since I stopped using CDs, why is the industry sticking to this outdated tech? What is the harm in providing legal purchase options for DRM free high quality music? How is it that the industry feels that content not being available at all is a bigger medicine for piracy than content being easily available for purchase?

Same goes for movies. This thread is discussing why movies are not released in blu-ray. But the question I want to ask is that what is the need for content to be released in blu-ray these days? This point is applicable to the west as well. What is the capacity of Blu-rays? 100 GB at max. Downloading a couple of movies a month even at 100 GB is not a big deal for most people these days. People who can afford blu-rays can easily afford a broadband connection which allows them to download 500 GB a month. So why doesn't the industry work out some way of providing blu-ray equivalent download options legally?

When people buy a blu-ray disc, they can rip and share the file with others, they can simply share the disc with others. All the risks are already there with a disc. So why is it that film industries are so afraid of offering legal download options for the same content? It would be a huge convenience for people to be able to download content in full uncompressed quality legally. And this would also reduce piracy, because in many cases, piracy is pretty much the only way of obtaining content, regardless of their willingness to pay.

+1. Exactly, my point too

 

[imagineer]

Things like these have bugged me for a long time. It's not only about blu-rays, Indian film industry is very bad at preserving and keeping content available to people.

Think of old movies. While in the west, you can find movies released in 1930s and even 1920s, as far as Indian movies go, finding movies from the even the 60s is difficult. If you do find them, then audio and video quality is abysmal. Same for audio. You can find songs from 1950s and 60s, but the quality is like an old radio, none of them sound decent.

Apart from this, there's this general unwillingness to accept the changing realities and move content delivery into the new era. This goes somewhat for the West as well, not just India.

First there's music. In India, Saregama is the only platform which offers DRM free music purchase option. None of the other major music studios give such an option. The only way to get their music is to buy audio CDs. It's been over a decade since I stopped using CDs, why is the industry sticking to this outdated tech? What is the harm in providing legal purchase options for DRM free high quality music? How is it that the industry feels that content not being available at all is a bigger medicine for piracy than content being easily available for purchase?

Same goes for movies. This thread is discussing why movies are not released in blu-ray. But the question I want to ask is that what is the need for content to be released in blu-ray these days? This point is applicable to the west as well. What is the capacity of Blu-rays? 100 GB at max. Downloading a couple of movies a month even at 100 GB is not a big deal for most people these days. People who can afford blu-rays can easily afford a broadband connection which allows them to download 500 GB a month. So why doesn't the industry work out some way of providing blu-ray equivalent download options legally?

When people buy a blu-ray disc, they can rip and share the file with others, they can simply share the disc with others. All the risks are already there with a disc. So why is it that film industries are so afraid of offering legal download options for the same content? It would be a huge convenience for people to be able to download content in full uncompressed quality legally. And this would also reduce piracy, because in many cases, piracy is pretty much the only way of obtaining content, regardless of their willingness to pay.

Couldn't put "like" on your opinion 42 times on the last line . Hence, had to reply!
Absolutely agreed! Whopping 42 times.

 

[captrajesh]

we live in a land of scammers and Pirates [no disrespect to either of them]

Couldn't resist: Heights of politeness and decency. ROFTL.

 

[sbg]

(note - image randomly picked up from google results - not mine)

 

[gourav]

On top of it we live in a land of scammers and Pirates [no disrespect to either of them]

One has to wonder is piracy has led to death of Audio CDs or audio CDs have led to death of music buying.

Why do we live in a world where we can buy a refrigerator from home but have to visit a store to buy an audio CD?
And why am I expected to have a CD player just buy music legally when literally every device can play WAV and FLAC files these days? Why can't the industry make this content available online for purchase without having to go through the hassle of buying CDs and CD player or ripping them on my PC (Note. even my laptop doesn't have a CD drive anymore)?

Saregama does that. Most music is available for purchase in DRM free format in the West. It's high time India followed suite and made content easier to access rather than crying about piracy and locking down content even more, which only increases piracy.

You can easily find small studies which show that piracy went down when Netflix became dominant and increased again when everyone started launching their own streaming platform. For the consumer, ease of access is more important than the price. Pirate sites make everything available in one place, industry people keep promoting fragmentation in the market. They just make things worse for themselves and then cry about the consumer's unwillingness to pay.

 

[mail2sumanth]

Looking at the thread, you all have a reason . I have been working to get a similar solution for HT enthusiasts for a long time as being one among you all. I spoke to many production houses in South India. Let me break it down.
1. Economics: no producer is willing to go beyond what makes him money. No passion, those words are only for press meets . This stops everything moving to advanced tech etc.
2. Syndicate: Television industry is major, bigger that any entertainment in India. Producers wanted to sell the rights and make money. All financial transactions are completed even before the movie is released. They will look at max returns before it’s out. Exhibit rights are not with producers, middle men called content aggregators. If some one observed Netflix and SUNxt release same titles. Sun network is one of the aggregators. OTT is seen as just another version of local theaters, nothing more. From there on they are actually rented to OTT on agreement. Later those titles will be removed.

3. Technical challenges: it is not easy to find a perfect balance for content quality vs distribution. More the quality lesser the people that can afford the required hardware to playback. I have been researching on this. Commercial theaters have DCP compliant projectors and servers to playback original content, no device in our home can even play few frames continuously when feed with rich content. This is where most of the content stop including Bluray. Every media here is produced and is a packaged differently. Bluray needs separate encoders to make the content ready for its format, similarly for VCD, CD, even OTT. This determines quality which is governed by studio cost, time, bandwidth, and format limitations. Amazon takes 2 weeks to make the movie ready in their platform. Similarly Netflix. All this costs money, all are proprietary softwares and system does the job. Some one have to invest. Maintaining cloud service for digital copy downloads is much tough, there is DRM which costs a bomb, relevant client hardware that can honour this DRM. Every download costs them, not only us. It’s like a digital warehouse, they need to pay rent. Why will they do all this if very very very few people like us wanted. Besides me hardly anyone in my home even know how to power on HT if there is more than one remote . Now the King of everything, that is content. We already discussed how bad the content is. Not watchable more than once. None of them are archive worthy. Industry knows this very well. It is now more of gambling for quick money. OTT has made it worse, OTT needs content to feed us, else we will unsubscribe.

I have started this journey even before YouTube first announced movies. Producer asked me who will buy if YouTube is streaming for free. This rings in my ears even today. But today we are paying for the same content. I kept going, we are still not matured enough or our HT foot print has not grown enough. Revolution is not far, there come a day movie can be enjoyed on the same day of its release with the same quality siting at home with family. Dynamics changing across the world. Right people and investment makes it happen. If someone thinking on same line I’m more than happy to collaborate in this vision.

Thanks
Ram.

 

[revolty]

Looking at the thread, you all have a reason . I have been working to get a similar solution for HT enthusiasts for a long time as being one among you all. I spoke to many production houses in South India. Let me break it down.
1. Economics: no producer is willing to go beyond what makes him money. No passion, those words are only for press meets . This stops everything moving to advanced tech etc.
2. Syndicate: Television industry is major, bigger that any entertainment in India. Producers wanted to sell the rights and make money. All financial transactions are completed even before the movie is released. They will look at max returns before it’s out. Exhibit rights are not with producers, middle men called content aggregators. If some one observed Netflix and SUNxt release same titles. Sun network is one of the aggregators. OTT is seen as just another version of local theaters, nothing more. From there on they are actually rented to OTT on agreement. Later those titles will be removed.

3. Technical challenges: it is not easy to find a perfect balance for content quality vs distribution. More the quality lesser the people that can afford the required hardware to playback. I have been researching on this. Commercial theaters have DCP compliant projectors and servers to playback original content, no device in our home can even play few frames continuously when feed with rich content. This is where most of the content stop including Bluray. Every media here is produced and is a packaged differently. Bluray needs separate encoders to make the content ready for its format, similarly for VCD, CD, even OTT. This determines quality which is governed by studio cost, time, bandwidth, and format limitations. Amazon takes 2 weeks to make the movie ready in their platform. Similarly Netflix. All this costs money, all are proprietary softwares and system does the job. Some one have to invest. Maintaining cloud service for digital copy downloads is much tough, there is DRM which costs a bomb, relevant client hardware that can honour this DRM. Every download costs them, not only us. It’s like a digital warehouse, they need to pay rent. Why will they do all this if very very very few people like us wanted. Besides me hardly anyone in my home even know how to power on HT if there is more than one remote . Now the King of everything, that is content. We already discussed how bad the content is. Not watchable more than once. None of them are archive worthy. Industry knows this very well. It is now more of gambling for quick money. OTT has made it worse, OTT needs content to feed us, else we will unsubscribe.

I have started this journey even before YouTube first announced movies. Producer asked me who will buy if YouTube is streaming for free. This rings in my ears even today. But today we are paying for the same content. I kept going, we are still not matured enough or our HT foot print has not grown enough. Revolution is not far, there come a day movie can be enjoyed on the same day of its release with the same quality siting at home with family. Dynamics changing across the world. Right people and investment makes it happen. If someone thinking on same line I’m more than happy to collaborate in this vision.

Thanks
Ram.

Thanks for the detailed explanation.

I was not aware of this that even for digital copies; many process goes on at the back end.
It was only because of an article in which someone mentioned that due to piracy; indian film industry has stopped making blu rays. It struck me that there will be many HT enthusiasts like me who are willing to pay a premium for direct downloading the movies legally from the sites instead of waiting for the blu rays; because it is costly to manufacture blu rays.Compared to that, making it digitally available will be much cheaper.
As you mentioned, let's wait for few more years. That day will come when the movies will be available with lossless soundtrack digitally too.
Maybe, the economics should work somehow for all the parties involved in it.

 

[msankadi]

On top of it we live in a land of scammers and Pirates [no disrespect to either of them]

Sir this is not specific to India in any sense. I am sure you are aware all Hollywood movies and TV series are available same day within minutes and sometimes before the official bluray releases.
Piracy is a concern but not just in india so i dont think that help highlight why only Bollywood movies don't release brays.

Anyways I am not fussed. It is just a matter of time. Bollywood will have to release brays to survive or just rely completely on OTT, upto them. Remember when they cried about ott for so long and then embraced it. I think they will soon be forced into brays not by goodness of the heart etc but because they would need additional revenue streams.

Piracy will still be there when they take this decision so it is just that they will have to accept lower revenue and stop crying about piracy. It is like me crying about traffic everyday. If I reach office everyday late and keep crying about traffic, which is like gravity, eventually I will have to leave early to account for that

 

[Amarendra]

A

Looking at the thread, you all have a reason . I have been working to get a similar solution for HT enthusiasts for a long time as being one among you all. I spoke to many production houses in South India. Let me break it down.
1. Economics: no producer is willing to go beyond what makes him money. No passion, those words are only for press meets . This stops everything moving to advanced tech etc.
2. Syndicate: Television industry is major, bigger that any entertainment in India. Producers wanted to sell the rights and make money. All financial transactions are completed even before the movie is released. They will look at max returns before it’s out. Exhibit rights are not with producers, middle men called content aggregators. If some one observed Netflix and SUNxt release same titles. Sun network is one of the aggregators. OTT is seen as just another version of local theaters, nothing more. From there on they are actually rented to OTT on agreement. Later those titles will be removed.

3. Technical challenges: it is not easy to find a perfect balance for content quality vs distribution. More the quality lesser the people that can afford the required hardware to playback. I have been researching on this. Commercial theaters have DCP compliant projectors and servers to playback original content, no device in our home can even play few frames continuously when feed with rich content. This is where most of the content stop including Bluray. Every media here is produced and is a packaged differently. Bluray needs separate encoders to make the content ready for its format, similarly for VCD, CD, even OTT. This determines quality which is governed by studio cost, time, bandwidth, and format limitations. Amazon takes 2 weeks to make the movie ready in their platform. Similarly Netflix. All this costs money, all are proprietary softwares and system does the job. Some one have to invest. Maintaining cloud service for digital copy downloads is much tough, there is DRM which costs a bomb, relevant client hardware that can honour this DRM. Every download costs them, not only us. It’s like a digital warehouse, they need to pay rent. Why will they do all this if very very very few people like us wanted. Besides me hardly anyone in my home even know how to power on HT if there is more than one remote . Now the King of everything, that is content. We already discussed how bad the content is. Not watchable more than once. None of them are archive worthy. Industry knows this very well. It is now more of gambling for quick money. OTT has made it worse, OTT needs content to feed us, else we will unsubscribe.

I have started this journey even before YouTube first announced movies. Producer asked me who will buy if YouTube is streaming for free. This rings in my ears even today. But today we are paying for the same content. I kept going, we are still not matured enough or our HT foot print has not grown enough. Revolution is not far, there come a day movie can be enjoyed on the same day of its release with the same quality siting at home with family. Dynamics changing across the world. Right people and investment makes it happen. If someone thinking on same line I’m more than happy to collaborate in this vision.

Thanks
Ram

Looking at the thread, you all have a reason . I have been working to get a similar solution for HT enthusiasts for a long time as being one among you all. I spoke to many production houses in South India. Let me break it down.
1. Economics: no producer is willing to go beyond what makes him money. No passion, those words are only for press meets . This stops everything moving to advanced tech etc.
2. Syndicate: Television industry is major, bigger that any entertainment in India. Producers wanted to sell the rights and make money. All financial transactions are completed even before the movie is released. They will look at max returns before it’s out. Exhibit rights are not with producers, middle men called content aggregators. If some one observed Netflix and SUNxt release same titles. Sun network is one of the aggregators. OTT is seen as just another version of local theaters, nothing more. From there on they are actually rented to OTT on agreement. Later those titles will be removed.

3. Technical challenges: it is not easy to find a perfect balance for content quality vs distribution. More the quality lesser the people that can afford the required hardware to playback. I have been researching on this. Commercial theaters have DCP compliant projectors and servers to playback original content, no device in our home can even play few frames continuously when feed with rich content. This is where most of the content stop including Bluray. Every media here is produced and is a packaged differently. Bluray needs separate encoders to make the content ready for its format, similarly for VCD, CD, even OTT. This determines quality which is governed by studio cost, time, bandwidth, and format limitations. Amazon takes 2 weeks to make the movie ready in their platform. Similarly Netflix. All this costs money, all are proprietary softwares and system does the job. Some one have to invest. Maintaining cloud service for digital copy downloads is much tough, there is DRM which costs a bomb, relevant client hardware that can honour this DRM. Every download costs them, not only us. It’s like a digital warehouse, they need to pay rent. Why will they do all this if very very very few people like us wanted. Besides me hardly anyone in my home even know how to power on HT if there is more than one remote . Now the King of everything, that is content. We already discussed how bad the content is. Not watchable more than once. None of them are archive worthy. Industry knows this very well. It is now more of gambling for quick money. OTT has made it worse, OTT needs content to feed us, else we will unsubscribe.

I have started this journey even before YouTube first announced movies. Producer asked me who will buy if YouTube is streaming for free. This rings in my ears even today. But today we are paying for the same content. I kept going, we are still not matured enough or our HT foot print has not grown enough. Revolution is not far, there come a day movie can be enjoyed on the same day of its release with the same quality siting at home with family. Dynamics changing across the world. Right people and investment makes it happen. If someone thinking on same line I’m more than happy to collaborate in this vision.

Thanks
Ram.

What you say is true. There are very few movies which are archival worthy. I was watching Suryavanshi yesterday on Netflix and started wondering whether I should have even wasted my bandwidth on it. Was even 4k streaming necessary for this kind of movie ! In contrast I watched a copy of Dune (2021) which made me think about the story, about the sound involved and the myriad shades of color involved. This is the kind of movie for which a blu ray could be justified (just IMHO). But this kind of content is rare and may be one or two movies a year. I was in HK recently and thought that I would buy BDs, ACDs etc there and grow my collection. BDs/ ACDs/ Vinyls are easily available there since people are passionate about physical media. However the cost is prohibitive- a 1080p BD costs around HKD 200 (INR 1900) onwards. CDs are also expensive and vinyls are no less than INR 2k each. But end of the day there is a large enough market for quality content in HK which is not in India. Here people dont even know HD forget bit rates !