A couple of weeks ago, I posted a tongue-in-cheek editorial on The Digital Bits website reflecting on the state of physical media from the major Hollywood studios. The piece gained a lot of attention, so I thought I’d share the full text of it again here for all to read more easily. If you enjoy this type of content, please consider liking and retweeting it, and especially following me here on X/Twitter @BillHuntBits, as well as following @TheDigitalBits. You will find more editorials of this kind on The Bits website. And from time to time, I’ll share them in full here as well. Cheers! Some Thoughts for Hollywood on the State of 4K and Physical Media: August 2, 2023 Edition by @BillHuntBits Today’s editorial is going to be brief, because frankly some of us here at The Digital Bits have grown a bit frustrated at this point. Disheartened by the state of things, as it were. So too—we suspect—have many of you, our dear readers and fans of physical media. But lately, after nearly twenty-six years of passionate advocacy for film, TV, and special edition content on disc, it’s come to our attention that a couple of the major Hollywood studios don’t seem to have quite that same passion for the subject anymore. One of these—let’s call ‘em Garner Brothers—just announced a long awaited 4K Ultra HD catalog release with almost no special features. Certainly no newly-created special features, because this studio doesn’t seem to do many of those anymore, and almost no special features on the actual discs, which is where disc fans tend to prefer them. Instead, most of this title’s special features are included as Digital extras only. Nor does this title include the most obvious extra that fans have been wanting for years, which is the uncut 81-minute “Festival Version” of a certain making-of documentary about this film. Why? Honestly, we’re not sure there’s many people left at this studio who even know that it exists or why fans might care about it. (And if there is, that person should definitely be given a bigger role in making these decisions.) Now, all of this is particularly frustrating, because if you pre-order this same title on 4K UHD in the United Kingdom, you do get those extras on disc. What’s more, you get a couple of different deluxe packaging options with swag in the UK, both of them terrific, whereas here in the States, the packaging’s artwork simply makes fans of this film weep, created—as it seems to have been—by an intern and novice Photoshop user for reasons unknown (rather than using the film’s already existing poster or production art, which… again… is the kind of thing this studio’s best customers would actually prefer.) And it should be noted that all of this comes in the wake of this same studio having released at least three other major 4K Ultra HD catalog titles this year with significant audio and quality control errors—not to mention an important and long-awaited Blu-ray animated title with obvious video compression issues. And when Garner Brothers was informed of all of these issues, rather than correcting them and making their best customers whole with fixed discs, the studio seems simply to have stopped responding to inquiries about it. Will any of these issues ever be fixed? Our suspicion is that some of them might eventually be, so that if you buy these same titles again... say in a year... the issues will simply no longer be there. Maybe. But none of this is particularly encouraging to Garner Brothers’ best customers. You know, the people who actually pre-order these discs, rush out to buy them on street date, and know and love these titles best. So as not to lay all the grief at the feet of the Brothers Garner however, let’s move on to another major Hollywood studio. We’ll call this one Vault Bisney. Now… here’s a studio that’s really spent the last several years convincing avid consumers of physical media that they make inferior 4K UHD product! Not only do they refuse to include Dolby Vision HDR on any of their discs—to the extent that they actually had it removed on a later pressing of one their “Space Wars” titles—they intentionally squeeze every 4K title onto UHD-66 discs just to save a buck, when most of the films in question would greatly benefit from UHD-100 discs instead. You know… so as to actually deliver a premium product. The result is 4K video that appears lifeless and over-compressed compared to similar titles from other studios. And not content to compromise its 4K video quality alone, this same studio also deliberately takes the Dolby Atmos mixes it includes on its discs and waters them down by weakening the bass and dynamic range to create milquetoast sonic experiences targeted to casual steaming customers watching on mobile devices, rather than the avid home theater fans who constitute the bulk of the 4K format’s customer base. Strangely, Vault Bisney does this even on their biggest and best discs—including over thirty “Marvelous Cinematic Universe” titles—unless specifically tasked to actually do a good job with the 4K format by a filmmaker with the power to command it. (Thank you, @JimCameron.) So whereas 4K Ultra HD should always be a premium product, and the format’s most avid fans and reliable customers expect it to be a premium product, good ol’ Vault Bisney considers its streaming service to be the real premium. Which would be great if streaming was actually profitable, but as we all know now that isn’t the case. (And it’s not ever going to be the case—more on that in a minute.) But now, every 4K Ultra HD customer on the planet knows that this studio sells low quality discs for a premium price. So the 4K team at Vault Bisney has tarnished the reputation of their own—and once highly-regarded—home entertainment brand. And even when both of these studios are presented with multiple opportunities to rebuild their reputations with 4K UHD consumers by delivering great error-free titles, in exquisite A/V quality, with features and extras that fans actually care about, Garner Brothers and Vault Bisney can’t seem to stop tripping over their own feet. Each of these studios has a catalog filled with titles that avid 4K fans would kill to own on the format, and yet the studio decision-makers can’t seem to figure out what fans might actually want or why... even when those fans are practically begging to tell them. What has happened to this industry?! It didn’t used to be this way. Well, of course we know exactly what happened: The major Hollywood studios put all their chips in the streaming business, let their reliably profitable physical media operations waste away, and suffered a series of disastrous mergers and acquisitions. They fired almost everyone on staff who knew anything about the physical media business, or even their own film catalogs. They lost a wealth of institutional knowledge. And now, most of the genuinely good and well-meaning folks who are left are scared for their jobs and just doing their best to get by, essentially trying to fake it until they make it. And their employers are praying that Digital is going to save them. It may have escaped Hollywood’s notice, but there are only about 124 million TV households in the US. Many of them don’t subscribe to a Digital streaming service. Of those that do, most only subscribe to a handful at a time. And they tend to turn services on and off regularly—a habit known in the industry as churn—to enjoy only the occasional content they want, rather than subscribing long-term. It may also have escaped Hollywood’s notice—through we’ve long been trying to warn them otherwise—that once a customer abandons physical media, you’ve lost them forever. Let us explain: When you offer an avid physical media consumer a new version of one of their favorite films on disc—and you give them a genuine reason to upgrade, say with notably better A/V quality, new special features, and deluxe packaging—they might spend $40-50 to do so. But once that person has abandoned physical media—and spent $9 to buy their favorite film in 4K Digital—they will likely never buy it again. You see where we’re going here? By pushing your customers toward Digital, and knee-capping your physical media business, you’re essentially killing your own profit model. The goal is to sell movies to customers... right? And don’t look to new generations of movie fans to save you—they don’t care about loyalty to your brand, they’re not spending money building large movie collections, and most of their time and attention is focused on more compelling video game and YouTube content. Don’t count on international customers to save you either—that might work for a little while, but eventually that market is going to evaporate too. And pinning all your hopes on customers that don’t share your values—and censoring your content to appease them in the meantime—is both ill-advised and begging for trouble. Nor will AI save you—nobody wants to watch soulless content written, produced, and directed with no actual human artists in the loop. On that topic, how about paying your talent a living wage rather than playing an endless bookkeeping shell games with them? You should be giving them an equity stake in your studios and productions, not trying to exploit their creative work in perpetuity without just compensation, especially when you keep coming back to movie fans hat in hand to give you money for said content. But we digress… The bottom line is that the state of physical media with studios like Garner Brothers and Vault Bisney is currently a bit depressing, especially for those who appreciate the 4K Ultra HD format. Thankfully though, there are great indie distributors like @KLStudioClassic, @Shout_Studios and @Scream_Factory, @WarnerArchive, @ArrowFilmsVideo, @VinegarSyndrome, @synapsefilms, @Criterion, @imprint_films, @indicatorseries, @blunderground, the 3-D Film Archive, and more that do still care passionately about physical media and actually are kicking ass with their #Bluray and #4K #UltraHD releases. Kino Lorber Studio Classics, for example, includes Dolby Vision HDR on nearly every 4K title they release. They include a remastered Blu-ray in almost every 4K package as well. They actually work hard to create new special features, while also carrying over as many of the title’s legacy special features as possible. Their packaging uses original poster artwork. And they use triple-layered UHD-100 discs for almost every 4K title, ensuring the highest possible video quality. Moreover, they’ve been doing this for so long now that every avid home theater fan and disc consumer knows that Kino Lorber Studio Classics delivers a premium 4K Ultra HD product! KLSC has even quietly been re-issuing some of their older Blu-ray titles, which had been released originally on BD-25 discs, on BD-50s to improve the HD image with less compression. That’s what dedication to quality on physical media looks like. And on the occasions that they do make a mistake, these indie distributors almost always make a sincere effort to acknowledge it, correct it, and make their customers whole with fixed discs. So the question is: If indie distributors can do this, why the hell can’t Garner Brothers and Vault Bisney? And the even more important question is: If major Hollywood studios like Garner Brothers and Vault Bisney can no longer seem to care passionately about the quality of their own physical media product, why the hell should anyone else? You need to do better “Garner Brothers.” You need to do better “Vault Bisney.” You need to do better major Hollywood studios. Your longtime and loyal 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray customers definitely deserve a lot better than you’ve been giving them. We know it’s hard, especially when your budgets have been slashed, your staffs have been gutted, and one pirate-like studio boss or media-conglomo parent company after another has treated you like the bastard child of the family. But you need to do better. We want you to do better. Hell, we’re rooting for you and would gladly sing your praises from the rooftops! But you’ve been making it so very hard these last few years. Thus, we’ve offered you this gentle reminder. Consider it a friendly and loving nudge of encouragement in the right direction. We know you can do better. Please do. Hey, what do you know: This editorial wasn’t so brief after all! Hugs and kisses, Your pals at The Digital Bits –Bill Hunt, Editor-in-Chief Originally posted on The Digital Bits website here (8-2-2023): thedigitalbits.com/columns/m…