back to article 'Insatiable' Brits gobble Blu-Ray, deserve reward

Britain's appetite for buying movies makes it a lively laboratory for Hollywood's marketing experiments. One of these is the "triple play" bundling of a Blu-Ray disc, regular DVD and digital file in the same package - a practice now standard here. Unfortunately, however, we won't be at the forefront of UltraViolet just yet, …

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  1. Tringle

    Maybe it's a price thing?

    Blu-Ray disks cost on average about €35 each here. DVDs are almost all over €20, new releases often much more.

    Hmm, I wonder why no-one buys them?

    Vive la France!

    1. geekguy
      Thumb Up

      Price

      Someone said €35 euros for a blu ray thats just not true, not anymore but perhaps people just don't know, at its most expensive online it is now only €20.

      Digital copy online for something I have bought is something I WANT as a consumer, I want to be able to buy my discs, register them then put them in the attic. The end game for me is no disks and everything streaming, but until the entire market has the broadband I have I am willing to accept that's a way off

  2. groovyf

    Triple Play = Triple Fail

    Personally, I hate this Triple Play idea. If I wanted a DVD version I'd buy the DVD version on its own. The Triple Play simply allows them to pump up the price over and above what you'd pay for a Blu-Ray version alone.

    1. Jedit Silver badge
      FAIL

      Except they don't.

      Triple-Play packs are often no more expensive than BD-only packs. And if they are a few quid more, so what? Find a friend who doesn't have a BD player and get him to kick in a fiver. You get your BD for the cost of a DVD, he gets his DVD for half price, and you both win.

    2. DrXym

      It's an excuse to boost the price

      Triple play is just a lame justification to slap a large markup onto the price. There is no reason whatsoever that Blu Ray disks should cost so much more than DVDs.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    but I thought piracy was killing the movie industry and all the actors were starving and they needed more laws to protect themselves in these perilous times?

    1. MJI Silver badge

      No - bad films are

      Why buy a bad film?

      Might as well buy a decent one!

  4. leon stok
    Stop

    Don't forget where the rest of Europe is buying

    With the current pound-euro rate, most people I know here in the Netherlands who buy Blu-ray, buy them in the UK at play.com/amazon.co.uk/blahdvd or sites like that.

    Just to give some perspective to that number.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Despite a peso:pound rate worse than 6:1, most people I know in Argentina do the same as me - buy from amazon UK. Even HMV's online store plus postage is by far cheaper than anywhere here. I wonder if that shows up as a UK sale? Z shops post here too now, the postage is often 3 times the cost of the product but a total spend per item is about a tenth of a local shop.

      Incidentally, I just bought two triple play BRs from Amazon, in both cases they were cheaper than the BR-only from the same site.

    2. Greg 16

      Not the exchange rate

      Its the tax free shopping - all the UK Disks from play.com etc are shipped from the channel islands tax free. So we get a slightly better deal on the disks but the tax man gets nothing and our shops close down because they can't compete.

      There also seems to be a bit of gouging in Europe too - I know that PC games cost double in the EU - and that can't be down to exchange rates or taxes!

  5. agentgonzo
    WTF?

    It always makes me laugh at the 'digital copy' you get, as if the DVD and Blu-ray versions are analogue...

    1. tony
      Happy

      You sound like somebody whose never enjoyed the full audio / video quality of a Blu-Ray disc played on a analogue turntable.

    2. MJI Silver badge

      Digital copies are a PITA

      Need latest, this latest that, needs Windows, needs WGA.

      I do not do WGA.

      I cannot use them.

      Mind you the PC has a DVD and a BluRay drive.

      1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

        "Digital copies"

        Are DRMed crap. Plays-for-sure-not.

        I can make my own copy from a DVD more easily, if I need to.

  6. J Lewter

    Ownership

    How does ownership of these "Triple" things work...

    What I have wondered is if you could buy them together, and split them up to sell them. Is this a sigular lisence where you (the consumer) are not allowed to split the product?.

    1. DrXym

      Nothing

      You could just give the DVD to one person, the code to another and keep the Blu Ray yourself. I expect the DVD is emblazoned with a "not to be sold separately" text and a warning when you play it. I also expect that once you redeem your download it is tied to the one account / service and is non transferrable.

      Personally I consider digital downloads to be a pox on humanity. I do not understand who is shortsighted or dumb enough to buy audio / video which tied to one kind of device from one manufacturer. Even worse if the download is "free" with the disk but is actually only there to weakly justify the price disparity between the DVD and Blu Ray copy.

      1. geekguy
        Flame

        DRM

        The fact is that DRM is an issue but we should be able to register and deregister our devices, we have bought content, and a dvd or bluray plays on every format that has one of those drives. We should NOT be made to lock our copies to say ITUNES or WINDOWS or PS3.

        I should be able to register my devices and play all content on all, maybe not at the same time, I'd not mind paying a LITTLE extra for multiple play capability (playing 1 movie on 2 different devices at the same time), but the current trend of saying ITUNES or WINDOWS means that people will avoid online digital stuff and just continue to torrent and newsgroup everything.

        Common its not hard, let us play the film on any device and stop milking us for everything, there are more revenue streams you are missing

  7. Detective Emil
    FAIL

    UltraViolet ultra tedious?

    The UK may not be missing much: it seems that a lot of hoop traversal is required before one can actually get hold of a something that is only a standard-resolution, application-specific, version of the HD content you paid for: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/11/your-movie-on-every-platform-sort-of-for-a-while-how-the-new-ultraviolet-drm-fails.ars

    1. DrXym

      And the sad part

      Anyone can rip a DVD with a PC and Handbrake. It's straightforward and delivers a copy of the movie without any stupid restrictions. Ripping HD content is slightly more difficult, requiring a commercial tool, a more powerful CPU and deftness with some hairy options in MeGUI but it's not an insurmountable either.

      Given the fact I've I bought a movie on DVD and can rip it, why don't they just hand out an MP4. Why bother with all this DRM crap? They may as well hand out an un-DRMd copy. They could still protect it with watermarking, e.g. a user must register on the site, must register a phone, type the SMS they receive on their phone and then they can grab their MP4. The registration process would mean in most cases the identity of the person is reasonably well known which along with watermarking would keep people honest.

  8. HP Cynic

    Ultraviolet sounded decent on paper at first then they started to get meaner with it and some American friends are already declaring it "Just DRM Bullshit".

    Another reason we don't have such a large rental market here is the lack of Netflix which dominates (or did) in the USA?

    I personally am now in one of the Film Clubs (the only I've found which is not Love Film by another name).

  9. Scott 62

    i like the triple play stuff, it means I can keep the blu ray downstairs and the kids can take the dvd upstairs, fuck it up, draw on it whatever, and I still have a copy

    for an extra quid of two, its definately worth it

    its totally believable that we buy more BD's per head in the UK, i've always preferred a shelf full of actual things rather than files on a pc, and most people i know are the same, only resorting to shadier methods if something is ludicriously hard / needlessly expensive to get hold of (eg disney blu rays were £30-£35 EACH in HMV a year or two ago...and they wonder why most of their shops are in the shit financially)

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Like it or not BD was dead upon release. Wow it's as dead as VHS. Of course Brits tend to catch on that little bit (or massively) later.

    Haw Haw outdated medium, nuff said.

  11. Matt Hawkins
    FAIL

    The digital copies on triple play discs are useless. You are better off just ripping the DVD and making a portable version yourself in your chosen format.

    As for the movie industry rewarding its customers? don't be silly. They have a proven track record of milking genuine customers. They want you to buy multiple copies of the same film so they've got no wish to offer Brits a "buy once watch forever" service.

    I was surprised to hear Bluray sales are increasing. According to the movie industry they went bust back in the days of VHS.

  12. James 100

    I remember one company had a promising-sounding technique for doing a combined BluRay/DVD disc - the BluRay layer is closer to the surface than the DVD one, and is transparent enough to the wavelength of light DVD uses that either layer will work properly. I can imagine studios jumping at that - particularly if it's cheaper than, or just the same price as, separate DVD and BluRay discs, because of exactly the cost-sharing Jedit mentions: with a combined disc, you can't both end up with a copy, all you can do is share a single physical item between you. (No doubt they'd stop that as well, if they could!)

    Combined packs seem popular with the publishers now, though: I've just ordered a pair of CDs for my brother's birthday, both of which come in a "deluxe edition" with a DVD as well as the CD. The CD+DVD's suspiciously cheap compared to the CD on its own...

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Back in the 'owd days....

    I bought my music on cassette and vinyl.

    Then i bought it again on CD.

    Then i bought my films on VHS

    Then i bought em again on Doovde.

    I'll be buggered if they think im buying the same stuff again with a sharpening filter applied.

    It wont be long before you buy a memory card with content on, the card wont be locked to the product and your device will have a reader built in. Insert card, watch/listen at will.

    Place card in other device, watch/listen at will. Copying the card will fail as it will have protection. That will last (with the best DRM) no longer than 12months before its broken. Then a new file sharing system will be available and we are all back to square one.

  14. MJI Silver badge

    BluRays

    I was a bit of a DVD addict but stopped dead when the triple killer of rubbish films, locked trailers you cannot skip and that anti piracy advert (which is missing from obtained downloads).

    I have now got a smallish collection of BluRays mainly Pixar (Up ect), non Hollywood (eg District 9, Gran Torino) and a few classics (eg Blade Runner). Our split on BluRays is roughly 65% games, 30% films, 5% Holiday videos (I use HDV).

    Biggest problem is that the game DVDs can be better films than the film DVDs, only I have to control the star.

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