[78-L] New Fienstein American Songbook series

[David Lennick]

As I've discovered, even renting a DVD is getting to be a problem, and I'm in a 
city of about 150,000. One of the major rental sources folded up (Blockbuster) 
and the other closed all but one of its locations, which is 5 miles from me 
(Rogers). Last week we wanted to see "Midnight in Paris". Rotsa ruck. It was 
out of stock in the Rogers store, rented in the little machine in the A&P 
(which, by the way, may only charge you $2 for the rental but which debits your 
credit card $30 because it assumes you're going to steal the video). We finally 
found a good independent store not far away which has a great selection and 
still has VHS on the shelves. And by the way, we both absolutely HATED the 
movie. Hated it. Did I mention that we hated it? Kathy Bates was okay.

Incidentally, I now look closely at the VHS tapes in every thrift store, since 
they're usually a buck. I've picked up several unused blanks lately, as well as 
movies I have no problem paying $1 for like "The Muse" which turned out to be 
widescreen and a screener copy.

Midnight in paris? Hated it.

dl

On 2/5/2012 5:24 PM, Michael Biel wrote:
>
>
> On 2/5/2012 3:58 PM, Steve Ramm wrote:
>   >   BTW, even Bluerays will go away. Based on Home Media mag the new
> thing is Ultraviolet:
>   >
> http://www.homemediamagazine.com/tks-take/complaints-are-short-sighted-regarding-ultraviolet
>   >   Steve
>
> This is a cloud-based system where you access the program you "own" from
> storage which is controlled by the rights owner you "bought" the program
> from.  Do you REALLY trust the stability over time of these companies?
> Sure, our videocassettes can deteriorate and people might not have
> machines after 20 years, so past experience shows that for the average
> public itmight not be a problem when 20 years from now the video you
> "own" becomes unavailable. Butto US, it matters.  You need high-speed
> internet access.  There will be fees, or if there aren't now, there
> might be in the future -- watch them try to pass a law requiring
> periodic "renewals" of "ownership".  Plus, as of now none of the
> distribution services has as high a video resolution as Blu-ray.  It is
> 1080p.  Broadcast is 720i.  Cable and satellite "might" be 720i, but not
> necessarily for all channels.  They never cite their resolution figures
> -- never have, never will.  It's digital -- why do you need to know
> more?  Same for Netflix, Hulu, etc.  I doubt the UV service is 1080p.
>
> Of course, we are at the mercy of the popular market.  If anyone wanted
> to stay with Betamax, tough.  Same with VHS although blanks are still
> available -- for now.  If the stop making DVDs everybody will have to
> switch to blu-ray for new content.  So if the industry abandons blu-ray
> for UltraViolet, that would be it.  But until the U.S. is COMPLETELY
> wired for high speed internet (and the Republican'ts will never allow us
> to be like France) we can't move to an internet-based distribution.
>
> Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com
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>