Not Music Related But…
I am concerned that some film studios are ending their releases on hard copy.
I was waiting for a new 4K release of the Wallace and Gromit series that would include their latest full length film, “Vengeance Most Foul“. But noticed that a pre-order for everything but the latest film was available on Amazon Canada.
This Shout Studios release is also listed on Amazon U.S.A but isn’t available as a pre-order for July 15th yet and appears to be short the “Curse of the Were-Rabbit” blu-ray that was released by Dreamworks Animation in July 2019. And it looks like the blu-ray of that film has been pulled from Canadian shelves.
The Collector’s Edition Boxed Set released last December does include that film but “Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl” is on Netflix and they only released two seasons out of four of “Stranger Things” on blu-ray.
Are they holding out hoping more will join their streaming service or are blu-ray and 4k hard copies no longer on their table?
“The Curse of the Were-Rabbit” is available to stream and purchase on Prime Video so I can hold off on buying a hard copy until early July if I don’t find that film in Canada beforehand. But it would be great to be able to buy everything in one package.
Now that would be “Cracking”.
(P.S More details on the new Shout Factory release is available by clicking here)
Sony Blu-Ray Production To End?
I thought I’d confirm that Sony Entertainment is NOT ending the production of blu-rays.
Sony Storage Media Solutions Inc is ending “the production of all models of Blu-ray disc media, mini discs for recording, MD data for recording, and mini DV cassettes” in February 2025 according to their January 23rd, 2025 press release.
They had ended production of blank recordable CD-R and DVD-R on July 1st, 2024 in response to the drop in demand for optical discs, ending some of their BD-R production at their Tagaze, Japan manufacturing plant. And consumers now mostly backup their music and film on Cloud Storage services, external hard drives and solid state drives, because these offer more storage and have dropped in price in some countries.
Yes, LG had decided to no longer manufacture blu-ray players last month so people had believed Sony Entertainment had ended manufacturing Blu-rays in response to the popularity of streaming. But physical media remains popular in areas with little to no high speed access to the streaming services, which are getting more and more expensive and fail to provide access to all music and films.
I’m cancelling my Netflix subscription soon because of their price hike and I’m sure I wont be alone in looking for better options.
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Speaking of streaming services, you should note that a 5,000 PC Optimum point offer is available to individuals purchasing $50 Apple Gift Cards from participating Shoppers Drug Mart and Pharmaprix stores until January 31st, 2025. And Apple Music & Apple TV offers are available from PC Optimum.
Alternatives To Zip.ca
Now that Zip.ca has closed its doors I’m sure some of you are looking for alternatives, so I thought I’d provide a few.
Unfortunately there are few alternatives when it comes to rentals by mail now that zip.ca is gone.
It appears that only DVD Link is offering a mail rental service at the moment. But their rates are pretty good at $9.95 to $54.99, depending on how many DVDs or Blu-Rays you want to rent per month. And unlike zip.ca, this Vancouver based company rents games and don’t charge more for Blu-Ray rentals.
People who like renting from kiosks will of course fare better because Redbox just recently expanded into the Atlantic Provinces and Western Canada.
Redbox kiosks have pretty much invaded my city (Ottawa), and can be found at most Sobeys, Loblaws/Real Canadian Superstore, Walmart and Giant Tiger stores.
They’ve placed kiosks at quite a few of those stores through-out Canada, both indoors and outdoors. And I like them because you don’t need to return your discs at the specific Redbox kiosk they were rented from.
I believe they’ve replaced most of the Bestbuy Movie Kiosk locations at the 7-Eleven, Mac’s, Safeway, Real Canadian Superstore and Walmart stores in western Canada. And possibly the Moviemagic kiosks in Ontario as well.
In the Montreal area they have opened locations at IGA stores. But until they expand further the best solution for rentals in the province of Quebec are the Superclub Videotron stores.
Independent stores can still be found in the largest cities, through-out Canada. But the largest video rental store chain in Canada is now Jumbo Video/Superclub Videotron, which operate stores in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes.
Quebecor Media owns both of these chains along with Microplay, a chain that rents videogames from some of the Jumbo Video/Superclub Videotron locations. But whether these chains will fold like Rogers Video and Blockbuster Video is unknown.
High speed internet remains prohibitively expensive in many areas, especially in rural communities, so renting individual films from iTunes, Netlix, Cineplex or Cinemanow may still not be a viable option for some.
Another option is to bite the bullet and rent films via the on demand and pay per view services offered by the cable and satellite companies. But at $5.99 to $7.99 per film this can get quite expensive.
They do occasionally offer some discounts on The Movie Network/TMN Encore and Super Ecran but the delays on new films remain on those channels and I’ve found that the Hollywood Suite package is much better if you’re mostly interested in classic films. The later is much more affordable at the moment.
Those are pretty much my suggestions on this matter. I will of course post updates, if some occur. I hope that you found this information useful.
UPDATE : Redbox left the Canadian market in Early 2015, significantly reducing our options. Some public libraries have limited selections of rentals offline but it appears that online film rentals have killed off the physical rental market in Canada. Click here for my first impressions on the Shomi service.
Bill C-11’s Digital Locks Provisions – Why ?
The digital lock provisions included in Bill C-11 are meant to curb the circumvention of “technological protection measures“, to halt piracy. But unfortunately many consumers currently circumvent digital locks to perform private copies of music recordings or to view films that are unavailable in their region.
At the moment Canadians are able to purchase music on iTunes and use this
program to convert their legally purchased ACC files to the mp3 format.
These consumers can also purchase region free DVD or blu-ray players from Amazon.com
Neither of the above acts result in the unauthorized, uncompensated distribution of copyrighted works to third parties yet these acts could technically be forbidden by Section 41 of the Copyright Act if Bill C-11 passes.
Private Copying, as defined in Part VIII of our Copyright Act, is not exempt in Bill C-11. And Section 41 explicitly forbids the manufacturing, importation, sale or rental of technologies, devices or componants whose primary function is the circumvention of copy protection.
It appearently doesn’t matter that the copyright owners were compensated when the recordings were legally purchased from legitimate vendors and that if it weren’t for copy protection that these acts would be considered private copying in law.
The authors of Bill C-11 insist on labeling these acts “piracy”, even when consent is implied by the sale of these recordings to law abiding Canadian consumers.
The American entertainment industry has yet to specify what losses are incured in the private copying of copy protected works. They also failed to specify how they are loosing funds on legally purchased foreign recordings they refuse to sell in Canada.
Why are we allowing this undue, unjustified foreign influence on our Parlamentary processes ?
LOTR on Blu-Ray Tomorrow
The Lord Of The Rings trilogy will be released tomorrow on Blu-Ray, though I should mention that these are the theatrical releases and not the Special Extended Editions , whose Blu-ray release date is unknown at the moment.
Amazon.com The first installment of The Hobbit films is scheduled for release in 2011 according to IMDB.com and they could easily use the release of the extended version on Blu-Ray to build up a summer release of the first Hobbit film. |
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| But of course this is speculation on my part and the press release scheduled for release tomorrow might shine some better light on the subject.
Having not upgraded to Blu-Ray yet i’m not in a rush to get the Blu-Ray release of the extended versions. And I am quite content in watching the special edition DVDs upconverted until it is released. |
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states that the extended trilogy will be made available in 2011 or 2012, though I suspect they will release it during this year’s Christmas holiday period.