Last week , whilevisiting Criterion Collection headquarters to observe their transition to Blu - ray , I brought up the subject of digital downloads . To my surprise , they allow slip a little detail that drop light on how a master phonograph recording manufacturing business like Criterion will manage in an all - download hereafter . As we ’ve see , even “ HD ” digital downloads are far from the quality of Blu - ray , so there ’s a hesitancy to offer up their restorations in a format that does n’t live up to their very high standards . Lee Kline , Criterion ’s Technical Director tell “ I would be depressed if we just went from stock - def DVDs to standard - def downloads . ” David Phillips , who operate in DVD development at Criterion , explain further :
When you ’re talk about a dual - bed Blu - ray disc , you ’re talking about 50 GB of data . Now , a deal of our films might not necessarily take up all that outer space , but even if they ’re aim up 25 GB on a undivided layer disc , you ’re still talk about a heck of a lot of data to download . Now , the direction that broadband substructure is in this country , any motion picture you ’re download are n’t going to have the datum charge per unit or resolution of Blu - beam .
When you ferment on the mastering part of it and the restoration and you see how good that image take care , it ’s really hard to say , OK , we ’re going to mash this down to the point where it ’ll fit through everybody ’s organ pipe .
However , according to Kline , digital downloads are on Criterion ’s radar .
We ’re pretty closelipped to figure out what we want to do with downloading , and I think our new site will cover up that , which you ’ll see in a few months . I do n’t want to give any point yet , but we ’re not dismissing that as a viable selection right now . But until it ’s quicker and we ’re trusted that we ’re going to give citizenry a download that works in an acceptable amount of time , we ’ll go there when we call for to go there . We ’re not scared of it , but we ’re also not ready to do it yet .
There ’ll be some variety of downloading and some sort of information regarding … OK , I ’m lead to stop , I ’m throw away too much .
My guess is that there will be download of some form , but it may or may not be full films . Who knows ? peradventure it will be short scenes from classic movies , shown at higher - than - ever - before bitrates . Would you be interested in download Criterion ’s restorations even if the quality was n’t that great ? Or does that kind of go against everything that Criterion is about ?
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