KLIZ, by way of Billboard, is reporting that a documentary on the Fillmore West is going to be released from Rhino on November 11th. It will include footage of The Grateful Dead, Santana, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Hot Tuna and others.

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http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001FWRZ14/?tag=imwan-20

I've been waiting for this.

Federico,
Gee, you seem so subdued by this announcement. LOL! I'm glad to see this as well. You and I will inevitably be comparing notes after we've viewed it.

I second Federico's post!

Looks awsome

I have all the audio of these shows

I will wait for a Blu-Ray release.DVD is dead.

1. DVD is most certainly not dead. There are plenty of DVDs being released that will not be made available on Blu-ray, and of course many, many more existing releases that will also not be ported over to Blu-ray.

2. I'm still not 100% convinced that Blu-ray will be the next mainstream long-term (10-15 years) video storage format. We still need to see where price point and adoption rates go over the next 1-2 years.

Lets face it, DVD is the new VHS.Why would I want a DVD that was film based or shot in High Definition dumbed down to DVD resolution.It is akin to a CD ripped to MP3.If I am paying for something to put in my collection,I want it in the best quality available.There is no other competing format for hi-def storage.HD-DVD is no longer supported.Blu-Ray players are dropping in price and being manufactured by every electronics company in business.I own a 1080p display and a PS3.I can tell you that once you see a Blu-Ray release, there is no going back to DVD.Even an upconverted DVD to 1080p looks grainy when played on the best upconverting DVD players.Once Blu-Ray recorders hit the street, adoption of the format will really take off.

I'm a long ways from changing to Blu Ray. At this point, I'd like my next television upgrade to be from my 32" full screen crt to a larger size. Old big screen CRT's (which last almost forever) are going for almost nothing. All that's stopping the upgrade is lack of a truck & lack of a few friends to help me carry the puppy.........

From a general user standpoint, the leap from DVD to Blu-ray is not as large as it was from VHS to DVD. Furthermore, the difference was significantly noticeable without having to upgrade display hardware; to take advantage of Blu-ray essentially requires the purchase of an HDTV.


You sure you want to use the mp3 analogy? You might want to take a look at music sales trends over the past few years... consumers seem quite happy with "dumbed down" technology as a tradeoff for portability, smaller file sizes, and in some cases lesser DRM.


Blu-ray's true competition is no longer another optical storage format (HD-DVD R.I.P.), but growth in the on-demand/download arena. And if the economy really goes into the toilet, hardware price decreases alone may not be sufficient.

Here's a recent article which touches on this and related topics:

Blu-ray stutters in face of tough economy, HD downloads

By Jacqui Cheng | Published: September 23, 2008
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20 ... loads.html

Blu-ray's hold on the plastic video disc market is slipping—the opposite of what everyone expected once HD DVD bowed out of the competition. Blu-ray's market share fell to eight percent during the week ending on September 14, according to the latest data from Nielsen VideoScan, with regular old DVD making up the other 92 percent. And with the US economy now on even shakier ground than usual, Blu-ray's chunk of the market looks likely to stay low for some time.

The numbers show that Blu-ray's market share dropped 13.39 percent from the previous week, and that DVD's numbers actually went up by 0.15 percent. Netflix CEO Barry McCarthy recently told Home Media Magazine that he didn't expect Blu-ray to have much of an impact on the company's DVD business in 2008 at all. Citing high player prices, he said that only a fraction of Netflix subscribers currently rent Blu-ray disks.

"It may grow after the holiday selling season, if sales are slow and prices are cut more aggressively," McCarthy said.

It doesn't take a mathematician to note that eight percent is quite a bit lower than the 50 percent market share Sony wanted by the end of the year, at least according to Sony President Ryoji Chubachi this past April. Even though one or two Blu-ray players have finally dropped below the $200 price point—check Amazon for Sony's BDP-S300—they're just not being snapped up like some expected. Blu-ray's slowdown is a quite a change from earlier this year, when Blu-ray was seen as outpacing DVD.

Now that pocketbooks are feeling lighter than ever, it's unlikely that Blu-ray will do much better through the end of the year, either. People are happy enough with the way regular DVDs look on their HDTVs that it's not worth dropping another $200+ (plus even more to cover the more expensive movie purchases and rentals) on a Blu-ray player. And HD movie and TV downloads are becoming more popular than ever—many of them are even free, thanks to ad-supported streaming—and the short-term outlook for Blu-ray looks a little grim.


You (and I, albeit to a lesser extent) are early adopters and not reflective of the general market. Don't get me wrong; I want to see Blu-ray succeed, but I think it still faces a lot of challenges. Let's see where the numbers are in another 6-12 months.


If anything, recordable Blu-ray is even more of a stretch than Blu-ray video, facing increasing competition from flash drive technology and especially external hard drives (for example, you should be able to purchase 1TB drive for $200 by the end of the year).

Allow me to re-phrase my post: DVD is dead to ME! I will not buy any new release on DVD that is film based or shot in High-Def.I do not want to have to replace the inferior DVD's when a Blu-Ray of the same title is eventually released.I have already had to replace my "Last Waltz" DVD and the upgrade is remarkable.I don't collect movies,only music video and film.I rent Blu-Ray movies of recent movie releases.I rarely watch a film more than once.I have only made the exception on buying DVD's for my collection for old TV broadcast material such as the Tom Snyder Late show series and such since it was recorded in standard definition and would not be in any better quality in Blu-Ray format.I also made the exception for the recent David Gilmour release to get the packaging and bonus CD.As for On demand or downloaded movies, the quality currently offered from cable or small dish sattillite HDTV is horribly compressed and loaded with artifacts at 1080i, not to mention only compressed DD 5.1.audio.A Blu-Ray disc has 1080p video and uncompressed Dolby HD and DTS Master Audio.Dish has promised 1080p broadcasts in the future but we will have to wait and see.I also have to mention that I shoot home video on widescreen Digital 8 ,which is in standard def but I can keep my tapes archived until I can get a PC based Blu-Ray recorder when prices drop.Then I will upgrade to a Hard Disc based HD camera so that I can transfer my video to my PC,edit it, and then archive it to recordable Blu-Ray discs.I would not want my precious family memories sitting on a hard drive that could crash and be lost forever no matter how cheap it gets.I had the patience to wait out the HD-DVD vs.Blu-Ray format war.Blu-Ray has won so that's where I put my money.It is the present and the future.

I hope you're right. Personally, I'm going to wait on this particular format for a while, although I'll admit in some cases I'm now loathe to purchase standard DVD knowing that a hi-res version (be it Blu-ray or something else) is inevitable.

Bump: this release has been pushed back to April 7th.

I want it now.

Blu-ray Players Sell Big on Black Friday
Posted December 10, 2008 08:33 AM by Josh Dreuth

According to a report from NPD Group unit DisplaySearch, consumers purchased 147,000 stand-alone Blu-ray Disc players during the week of Thanksgiving, which includes the popular Black Friday. These sales generated $30 Million in revenue (averaging to a little more than $200 per player), which was triple from a year ago even though prices have significantly dropped.

Additionally, 25% of all optical disc players purchase were of the Blu-ray format, up 6% from a year ago. By the end of the shopping season, manufacturers will ship 911,000 Blu-ray Disc players during the fourth quarter, for a total of 2.2 Million players on the year.

These numbers do not include the Sony PS3, which is one of the most popular Blu-ray Disc players on the market.

Netflix Sees Blu-ray Adoption Explode
Posted December 9, 2008

Despite raising rental fees for Blu-ray users, the popular online movie renter has seen the number of Blu-ray users explode over 500,000, meeting year-end projections over a month early. The company believes that cheaper Blu-ray players along with a struggling economy mean that more users are opting to stay home and watch movies rather than venturing to their local theaters.

Barry McCarthy, CEO of Netflix, commented, "The economy's been very much our friend. We've had a remarkably strong quarter. There's no downward migration of price points by existing customers."

Blu-ray Surpasses DVD in Japan
Posted December 9, 2008

According to the latest GfK Retail and Technology Japan data, Blu-ray recorders broke the 50% barrier during the first week of November, meaning that unit sales of Blu-ray recorders surpassed that of DVD recorders for the first time ever. Compared to the same time last year, when Blu-ray's market share was only 10%, the format has shown rapid growth.

Additionally, statistics show that the Blu-ray format is outpacing DVD in replacement speed as well. The high definition format is replacing DVD recorders 1.5 times faster than DVD recorders replaced VHS decks. The trend is expected to continue as recorder prices continue to drop.

Mitsubishi Releases Blu-ray DVR in Japan
Posted December 8, 2008 09:22

Mitsubishi Electronics has released the 'DVR-BF2000', a Blu-ray Disc DVR with the ability to write files recorded on the internal 500GB hard drive to a BD-R/BD-RE disc. The devise also features two digital tuners so that you can watch one program while recording another. Additionally, the DVR supports DVD and features an SD card slot.

Mr Fuse, I take it you're solidly in the Blu-Ray camp??

Soon it will be the ONLY camp!

Hope you can wait 'til June 2nd, Rick, 'cos it's been pushed back again.

As long as it gets released at some point. Sometimes these release date changes spell permanent trouble.