Playstation, X-Box, 4K, and the Home-Theater Thneed

It's hard to keep up with gaming news.  As a rule, I don't bother. 
I've got a Playstation 3, but only because back in 2008, they were the only affordable way of becoming a first Blu-ray disk adopter without frustration or headache...Although the fact that I used to have a Sega Genesis in college, and my parents never got me an Atari 2600 when I was a kid, didn't hurt the sales pitch either.  With the news of the latest Playstation 4 models, I'm still back a few years ago wondering whether they still catch on fire, and didn't even pay attention until they announced an upgrade for Blu3D capability.

Even last Thursday's big event for the two major game console players--timed to coincide with Apple's big iPhone 7 presentation--seems like "old news" to the core gamer community by now, but in my corner of the living-room-box industry, it still has hints of being a happening of major repercussions.
The big headline was that both Sony and Microsoft intend to roll out the "next generation" of their respective Playstation and X-Box One consoles--With the new advancement that both will now have a "regular" mass-market version, the PS4 Slim or X-Box One S, streamlined for the first-timer buyer, and an "advanced" version, the PS4 Pro or an in-development X-Box Scorpio, both now with 4K capability for ultra-high-definition UHD and high-dynamic-range HDR TV screens.
Playstation.Blog US, 9/7
With just one major difference:  Microsoft's Scorpio will be able the play the new 4K UHD Blu-ray disks.  PS4 Pro won't.

Sony stated why:  They wanted the Pro to be more efficient, without the added hardware of a UHD disk drive, to focus on its gaming capabilities and audience.
The new interest to both companies is not so much the consoles, but how each will be able to tap into the new market for virtual-reality player headsets--With Sony offering its own VR goggles, and MS hoping to be compatible with Oculus Rift's.

Most non-gamers will be asking the obvious questions about the new 4K/UHD news:  "What is that, anyway?", and "Who cares?"  To the gaming community, it's a make-or-break deal, leading to the same questions of who's going to "win the war" that's been fighting for eight years.  
Core technical gamers even point out the technical problems, such as the additional "lag" that can occur when ultra-high-definition graphics have to be translated to larger size screens.
(5 Reasons to Be Concerned About the PS4 Pro, Cinemablend 9/8)
But the real problem here lies in between:

4K UHD, a new higher-definition video format for larger-size flatscreens 48" and up (way up) has been the main central focus of the entire home-industry market at the moment, along with a new format of Blu-ray disk that will be needed to measure up to the new larger clarity--Some player/screen companies, like Samsung, even tossed over the previous push for 3D capability, quick to claim it was "dying", just to jump on the new express train.  After all, here came the new format, so time for the old to go into its dance off stage...Isn't that what's always supposed to happen?  And just wait till those VR headsets arrive, amirite, folks?
As Sony and Samsung roll out the first new lines of 4K large-size flatscreen, the picture quality clearly looks sharper and more amazing, but the public's reaction has largely been that they don't know exactly WHY they're meant to buy it.
Which has earned 4K UHD the nickname of "the Home Theater Thneed".  A word, of course, that comes from Dr. Seuss, for something that no one knows what exactly it is (it's a shirt, it's a sock, it's a glove, it's a hat!--But it has other uses, yes, far beyond that!) but good old fashioned Yankee entrepreneurship and marketing can persuade us is something that everyone, everyone, everyone needs. 

Like most formats, Blu-ray, VHS and DVD before it, UHD has to pass the three tests that any new technology has to overcome to drill and root itself into the public's mind as common:

1. It must solve a consumer problem, 
2. it needs a Killer App to hook us like bait, and 
3. it needs to be accessible with fans of an existing technology to use it.

From the looks of things, the first test isn't going very well--The public doesn't quite seem to have a grasp of exactly what 4K is or why it differs from the 3DTV sets they were persuaded to invest in a few years earlier.  3D you can explain to any low-tech layman--"Watch movies the same way you can in theaters"--but 4K is a bit of a tougher sell to hesitant, tight-fisted audiences:  "It looks better!  On bigger sets!"  
To overcome the first test is the first crucial battle of the war, namely in not making the technology look like a BMW "toy" for conspicuous-consumers with too much disposable income and free time, and trying to make it look like something that would be in every sensible home.  UHD is a format whose very concept depends on the urge to go Bigger Is Better, pretty much a First World Problem which the public can often become a little morally judgmental about.  Especially if they don't have to pay for it.

The second test has been a bit, well, embarrassing.  As a new home-video format is being readied to roll out, most of the licenses for hot, hip, happening first-release titles have to be in current negotiation to include the new-format disk rights before the movie is released, which means mostly new movies from the last year or upcoming summer blockbuster season.  
And while Warner, Sony, Paramount and Fox continue to relicense old dependable genre titles for the new format--especially ones like ID4, Star Trek and the 80's Ghostbusters that can be used to tie into their new summer-'16 followups--the new UHD consumer can already enjoy 4K-upgraded disk releases of Pan, San Andreas, Exodus: Gods & Kings and Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice in never-before-seen sound and picture clarity.  Er...I pass, thanks?

As for the third test...that's where Sony may have finally tripped.  
Microsoft doesn't make standalone UHD players or 4K Blu-ray disks of the Ghostbusters remake, Sony does.

Up until now, Sony has virtually defined the idea that a format has give its low-tech users a "free taste", by cross-promoting its video software with its game hardware--In the late 90's DVD was still a struggling "toy" for home-theater nuts, until Sony included an adapter to the Playstation 2, and kids who would have never bought laserdisc in their life were snapping up any used DVD disks of Twister and Batman & Robin on discount at Software Etc. just to have something cooler to play.  In the format wars that lasted from 2006 to 2008, the battle between Blu-ray and HDDVD came down to a loyalty battle of hardcore Playstation vs. X-Box gamers (and those who adopted Microsoft's game box for HDDVD were warned of the dreaded "Red Ring of Death", X-Box's guarantee to break down within three years), while the rest of the uninterested mainstream public cracked tired jokes about which format "was sure to win because it had porn".  
Home theater fans who would never think of being associated with "gamerz" bought fast, efficient Playstation 3 consoles when Sony's own first affordable model of standalone Blu-ray hardware, the S360, seemed to have been rushed out with technical flaws and took nearly a half hour to load Blu-ray disk menus.  Had it not been for the PS3, Format War II would have been over in six months, with no winner.

But that was THEN.  Sony today is not quite as interested in giving free samples as it used to be.
As The Digital Bits speculated in its coverage of the gaming headlines, parent-company Sony may be having a bit of irreconcilable differences between two of its hardware divisions:
Sony Consumer Electronics handles the sales of standalone home-theater hardware and movies, Sony Interactive Entertainment handles the consoles and gaming, and it's SCE that's got it's money bet on the horse race.  The two divisions no longer work with an aim for cross-promotion--Hardcore gamer fans, focused on more and more technical quality for their immersive online gaming, jumped on the idea that it had been a, quote, "mistake" for Playstation 3 to be more of an all-media set-top box and Blu/3D player than the accelerated game experience they wanted, and Sony Interactive promoted the technical game speed and graphics when it first rolled out the new-generation model three years ago.  SCE, on the other side, has an entire industry riding on all three aspects of the hardware, players, software titles and screens.  Sony has its stake on consumer interest in the new standalone UHD players as the center of the market--both disk and streaming--and anything that sells one less player is an enemy to that already shaky goal.
Which puts Sony in the position of being a house divided, creating two ultra-niche divisions with no interest in the other, and neither one curious to try...That could be one reason why such houses don't usually stand.  (Or did some tall guy in a hat say that already?)

Microsoft had more than a little stake in the previous format war:  Blu-ray vs. HDDVD was not just about a fancy disk, or whether the cases would be red or blue, but were fighting over the future of the industry--HDDVD supported a MS-based code for their movies, while Blu used a more universal cross-platform variation on MP4.  Even when Sony was dropping the ball on their own Blu format, trying to sell action titles to those same gamers, Disney had the advantage of Pixar and Apple's own Steve Jobs on the board, who gave the studio a very involved interest to make sure Blu won the battle.  Had HDDVD won, Microsoft would have an almost literal monopoly on how all disks and online movies were digitized, and when they didn't get it, may have actually started the whisper-campaign that "Who cares, everyone knows disks are dying anyway!"  If they couldn't have disks, no one could.

But MS doesn't have a stake in this battle.  There's no consumer war being fought between rival developers over one format of UHD versus another, just one war of Interest vs. Apathy.   If Microsoft wins the console war over Sony for 4K customers who want a game-and-disk machine, they don't have any disk line to sell or get to enjoy any particular prize in the home-theater market beyond their usual Popeye-vs.-Bluto game-console rivalry.  
Sony, OTOH, may see the same problem that has hampered every new format:  Customers just plain don't want one more living-room machine until they can see what it does.  Hardware companies sell new formats on the players, and they sell the players on faith, hoping shininess and a big January CES demonstration alone will sell $700-1200 conspicuous purchases.  When hardware players ultimately become the lowest initially-selling item of the format, and take longer than usual to catch on (namely with the people who had to be convinced by other methods), companies usually grab the quickest explanation that will free themselves from blame:  "Guess the public wasn't interested after all!"

4K UHD is already facing its own confused schizophrenia between the hardware companies that want to sell the new movies on a disk format, and the studios that want to sell the new movies on a streaming format, and those who happen to be both trying to sell both.  If Sony has, in fact, cut off its own format to spite its face, the real question isn't about whether gamer kids or home-theater fans lost out--It's about WHERE the company ultimately decides to place the blame when a new line of hard physical-disk players didn't sell as well as the corporate heads imagined they would.  Safe bet they won't be looking in the mirror when they search for a scapegoat.
And that, friends, is no game.

What If They Gave a Digital-vs-Disk War, And...

For a big splashy illustration at the top of the column, I did a search for home-theater clip art, and for some odd reason known only to Google's image-search, a Green Eggs & Ham image came up--Given the headline, that turned out to be more uniquely appropriate.

Over the last two to three years, studios facing what they believe are declining Blu-ray sales (caused, mostly, by a decline of Best Buy stores), thrilled by the new possibility of selling their movies directly to the public online through Ultraviolet distribution services, and buoyed by streaming Netflix's "cord-cutting" success against cable, have been scaling back their wide mainstream retail disk sales for the coming "Digital revolution".
Fox and Sony have just announced plans to further back Warner Archive's MOD model for catalogue Blu-ray/DVD disks, since physical media, we're told, is "on the way out"--It's part of that new Millennial mindset of the 21st-century generation, social critics theorize, that the 18-24 demographic doesn't want to tie themselves to personal possessions, since they see it as a "mistake" of the earlier generation, and grew up more instinctively tuned to the convenience of renting their needs or getting them online instead.

And as new findings came in this past week, turns out there's just one little hitch to that long-range strategy:   It's NOT HAPPENING.  

The studios' biggest current obstacle to the "New digital revolution" and the "Decline and death of physical Blu-ray disk" seems to be more that universal problem of "'Reality', that's the part on the outside of the head."

Last Tuesday (8/23), data research site GfK published their latest survey findings on the public's acceptance of digital downloads.

A few samplings, from 1,009 customers surveyed in spring 2016:
- Less than half of viewers today rent digital movies compared to DVD and VHS at their highest point.
- The peak customer has about 23 digital titles in his collection, either purchased or free bonus digital-copies included with the disk, while the peak DVD/Blu disk collection had 89 titles.
- 68-70% of customers surveyed have never bought or rented a digital title.
- When surveyed the reasons why not, the 18% majority opinion was "Availability of hard copy", followed by the 11% "No need/Not interested".

To extrapolate a more simplified observation from the data, it can be theorized that the larger home-theater public simply does not want Green Eggs and Digital-Lockers, whether they're "convenient", "the Future", or no. 

They do not want them in their home, they do not want them on their Chrome.  
They do not want them fast or slow, they do not want them on the go.  
They do not want downloads to try, they do not want Blu-ray to "die".  
The public does not LIKE digital downloads, they do not want them, Warner-the-Market-Cornerer.

"Try them, try them and you will see?"--Well, that's the prob, from the data, they're not doing that either, and even those that did try them don't really quite seem to be getting the point with any palpable degree of enthusiasm.  
What words can we use?:  They just don't appear to be that flippin' popular.

So why does the industry put such near-religious faith in the belief that Blu-ray is "dying" and that digital is catching on "like wildfire"?  Like most faith, wishful thinking.  It would be a more useful world for the studios if all movies could be sold online without the production expenses of plastic, cardboard and mass-retail rollout, and even pre-ordered while the movie was still playing theaters, so they wouldn't have to wait to start recouping on it.  And any reason that particular utopia isn't happening yet is simply an "unfortunate" obstacle.
Another reason is the search for questions they're unable to answer:  Studios are not subtle thinkers, leap quickly to any rescue, and believe one found explanation will work for all, regardless of context--Because of MP3, there are no more CD's, ergo, if Digital exists, there must be no more Blu/DVD's.  This to them is logic, unlike the nervous fears and business hyper-defensiveness of the earlier posted "Welcome our new Overlords" theory.
All execs know, from a tech-luddite layman's viewpoint, is that the strange trendy-announced New Thing always comes along and crushes the previously accepted Old Thing that everyone made the stubborn, expensive mistake of clinging to. So, c'mon, why hasn't Digital done its duty and crushed physical Disk off the face of the earth yet, like it says so right here in the script?--I mean, print magazines and E-books, fer cryin' out loud!

To answer the question of whether any new format or technology will become the Next Big Thing as a "replacement" technology, making the old one culturally and technologically obsolete, depends on three test conditions:

• 1) It must solve a problem:  Usually, an annoying problem of physical barriers that was the tradeoff of enjoying it.  DVD had this when it first caught on after the format war--Most here of the right age remember where they were when they first saw a DVD at a friend's house, and marveled not so much at the picture and sound quality of the disk, as the miracle that you...(happy tears)...didn't have to REWIND it!  MP3 music on your iPod not only didn't snarl like cassette tapes, or jog like heavy portable CD players, it also allowed you to buy only the song you wanted, without album filler.  And the cellphone in your pocket not only meant that you would never be stranded for pay-phones again on the street, you didn't even have to run for that landline phone in your kitchen.

• 2) It needs a "killer app":  Namely, the one title that not only demonstrates what the format can do that the others can't, it so tantalizes you as a must-own, you would gladly make the sacrifice to try the new format, rather than suffer through seeing it on your own existing inferior one--A generation of teens suddenly devoted themselves to DVD with fierce passion once they learned that The Matrix would not be premiering on VHS.  

And if you had that '10 passion for Avatar, there was no way in heck you would be watching it on "flat" 2D Blu-ray if you knew a real 3D version existed for the home.  (And just how Fox and Panasonic, among others, nearly sank the Blu3D industry overnight by holding their killer-app "hostage" to hardware sales is something for another column.)

And

• 3) It needs to be accessible:  Very few people go to the January CES and buy the latest curved 4K UHD screen for four-figure sums simply because it's New or Looks Cool.  Most people are, I think the proper word we can choose is, stingy.  They don't want to buy new things, especially if it's a technology that followed too quickly upon the last one and didn't allow the previous honeymoon to cool--Even with the FCC-ordered changeover to digital HDTV in '08, Blu-ray had quite an uphill battle coming eight years after we all suddenly realized "why" we should change our lives and throw out our VHS tapes for DVD, and when Blu3D came out two years after Blu-ray, after most of us had literally just paid for our 2D Blu player and flatscreen, there was some...stubborn resistance.  

What most hesitant adopters want is a "test run"--They want to be able to experiment with one part of the technology and use it on the equipment they already own, and if it's got that sell, it'll hook them into making the upgrade.  New standalone hardware players, which hardware companies believe will make them an instant phenomenon, is usually the very LAST thing to be bought, and only by those already converted through other low-tech means.  DVD knew this when most users were watching those strange new disks on their desktop and laptop computer disk-drives--turning it into the first portable movie technology--and a generation was hooked early when more kids with Playstation 2 game consoles were playing the disks than early player owners.  Even the Blu-ray vs. HDDVD war of '05-'08 soon descended into a gamer-war between the Playstation 3 and the X-Box console owners, and gamer passion can get a little out of hand sometimes.

Okay, there's the obstacle course, laid out nice and pretty.  How does locker digital-to-own stack up?

- Accessibility--YES:  This seems to be the main selling point, as most everyone has a smartphone or tablet computer by now, with an OS that at least has some app for Amazon, Google or Vudu.  It's the bragging-rights of taking video on the go, even if there's not as many commuter situations that would involve an hour of staring at one's tablet (in bed, OTOH...)--And most airline flights do not offer enough wi-fi to stream the movies in-flight, in which case most have to download the entire movie before takeoff, or just bring the laptop with the DVD drive.  But at least users can get a taste.
- Killer app--NO:  With digital offering only a scaled-down "travel" option of disk titles already available, with no bonus features and less scene access, there is no carrot on the stick.  Either you own the movie already, or you don't care how you get it.  
And the big one:  
- Solves problem--No.  No, no, no, no.  NO.  The complete and utter lack of an everyday technical problem for digital libraries to solve has made any attempt to even think of a problem sound like First World Problems.  If we happen to like them, that's fine, but Tastes Great did not singlehandedly wipe Less Filling off the face of the earth.  Digital libraries have found their niche in travel trips where a data-plan smartphone or tablet would come in handy, but have not demonstrated one single technical advantage for the in-home living room beyond "My shelf looks cluttered" or "Not wanting to leave your chair to change disks."  Disk users who have used their digital codes on long trips have accepted the idea of co-existence--and that home and travel entertainment each need the right tool for the right job--but in the business world of corporate studios, there is no concept of Co-existence...Only the Darwinian fear for one not to be crushed by the other.
Which is why Warner, in their ad copy for Flixster, has literally had to INVENT problems for digital to "solve"--Otherwise, it would be a solution without a problem.  If we do not believe, like the hypnotist's willing subject, that every disk we buy is a millstone material possession around our Millennial neck, that we lie awake at nights fearing they will break or be misplaced, or that we watch movies and TV shows everywhere we go, but groan in frustration at how we can't tote our entire living-room shelf with us and wish someone "could take care of it" for us, then the pro-digital argument that physical disks are "Losing popularity with the public" disappears like smoke into thin air--As do Warner's hopes of never having to risk selling a mean-ol' wide-retail non-MOD Blu-ray at Best Buy ever again.  If we, in fact, have no actual demonstrable, tangible reason to hate physical Blu-ray disks, then, um...I guess we don't hate them or want to get rid of them, do we?  Seems to stand to reason.  Aren't we such spoilsports for not playing along?

How about digital Rental?:
- Accessibility--YES:  Titles can be rented on existing set-top, phone/tablet and TV smart-apps for Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.
- Killer app--Not as such:  Some titles may be promotionally available a week or month before their disk release, but rarely offered for rental.
- Solves problem--YES:  A rental is a movie we probably haven't seen yet and don't know whether we want to keep, and if we do, we'll buy it later if we feel like it.  And if being able to enjoy the movie with a click, and then eliminate it with a click, is easier than making a separate Redbox or library trip to return a disk, that's just as handy in the summer as in a snowy winter where we might not want to make that second trip.  If digital gives us our fear of "What if the title disappears later?", well, not having it around later was pretty much the idea all along.

Now, y'see, here's where the confusion gets even worse--How does the monthly SUBSCRIPTION STREAMING of Netflix or HuluPlus make it past the test?

- Accessibility--YES:  Subscription services had no actual device of their own, and only came in on existing set-top boxes such as AppleTV, Roku, new generations of smart-TV's and Blu-ray players, and of course the major game consoles of PS3 and X-Box.  If you had something to play disk, it's likely you already had something to play Instant Netflix, and if you were using the mail service in the early days, you already had a subscription to the streaming service. 
- Killer-app--POSSIBLE:  I hesitate to say "Yes", as I'm not a fan of original subscription series (I prefer movies on the services, myself, if you can still find them) but if Daredevil or Man in the High Castle influenced your main reason in choosing Netflix over Amazon Prime, or vice versa, or both, then their work was done.  You were hooked into buying something you couldn't get anywhere else.
- Solves problem--YES:  Ohh, did it ever.  Up to that point, network cable was like the weather--Everyone complained about it, but nobody could ever do anything about it.  It's one thing for the public to thumb their nose at cable networks losing their compasses and identity to become a half-dozen corporate masses of marketed reality shows, but now bring in the possibility to choose shows with no set start or stop time, and the writing was on the wall.  Suddenly, "Cutting the cord" became the new trendy term, and everyone started looking at their bill to see what exactly they were paying $99/mo. for, when the same shows were available for the one cover-charge of $10/mo. or less.  Never underestimate the combined customer forces of Angry and Stingy.

From what we've seen over the last few years, and studios have gotten a bit overconfident from, Subscription and Digital Rental have passed their obstacle tests and become replacement technologies while Redbox and network-cable paid the price.  Digital Ownership, it seems, couldn't quite pass its tests.  They're not quite the same thing as Rental and Subscription, you see, and can't quite measure up where it counts.
And that's why, apparently, from GfK's data, nobody likes it.  At least as much as they like the others.  As Charlie Brown once observed, statistics don't lie, but they do shoot off their big mouths a lot.