We're the 1 percenters in this little hobby of ours, and we all love it. Until the last few years, that was just fine because the industries our hobby revolves around carried along just fine among the general populace of audio and video entertainment.
But I now find myself concerned about where that is headed. Those same industries now appear a bit untracked and uncertain on many fronts, and they're searching for their place in a murky future market. What exactly needs to happen to give them confidence going forward to stay on board and continue to invest the time and money in the AV world?
Here's 5 observations that I see critical to keeping the party going.
1. Streaming has to achieve cutting edge audio and video. Whether it's HDMI 2.1 or whatever, streaming is an ugly compressed mess of audio mixed with typically lackluster resolution and depth in video. Imagine if streaming could match what a good 4K/Atmos disc could do. That's important because I don't think this $25 4K blu ray market is long for this world. People are buried in boxes of DVDs and blu rays that they wish they would had never bought. They've wised up while the prices have risen, not dropped.
2. Winners need to surface among the HDR/Dolby Vision and the Atmos/DTS:X/Aura 3D battles. We watched Blu ray defeat HD DVD, and DTS Master-HD squash Dolby TrueHD; however, technology changes and broadens so fast these days, I'm not sure how this impacts the stability of R&D for today's manufacturers. What exactly are these blu ray player and AV amp manufacturers supposed to do? Where do they spend their time? It's got to be frustrating because as the technology continues to advance, they have to pick winners in effect and hope they choose right. This is just a big pissing contest, with a lot of money at stake, and we're stuck in the middle just like the brands we love. We don't even care who wins; we just want to know what to buy just like the manufacturers need to know what to build. What's worse is, for the newbies and casual folks, this stuff gets really damn confusing. It's like teaching your aging father how to use a smart phone, except that they're 30 years old.
3. Hollywood needs to re-find itself. Where are the great movies these days, and will this PC era ever end? Hollywood remains far more interested in preaching than making good films, and yet they wonder why their box offices are drying up, as well as their blu ray sales. Some of our favorites couldn't even be made today. Could Longshanks' effeminate son be depicted in 2019 without an outcry? Would Risky Business even get past a first discussion? Where are the good war movies if Mel Gibson isn't making them? Porky's, Animal House or Blazing Saddles, Revenge of the Nerds, or Ghostbusters? LOL, not a chance in hell. We just watched Luke Skywalker get publicly castrated in the last Star Wars as the rebellion leadership was reduced to a team of about 10 women. The same appears to be happening to Star Trek as rumors suggest. Game of Thrones tripped all over itself in the end trying to cover all its PC bases, and it suffered accordingly. Today, literally everything seems to have a political message or a social conscience, for fear of cable news and Twitter ripping them to pieces. Just telling good stories has become secondary. How can you make a good movie while circumnavigating the MeToo, racial, liberal, conservative, and feminist landmines laying about everywhere? I miss the days when we just simply had great movies around every corner, and we looked at them for what they were alone. Now, there's about two good movies made a year, and even those are often re-makes. The industry is either scared or doesn't care.
4. Broadcast TV to graduate beyond 1080i. It was a good long while ago that 1080p arrived on the scene, and now 4K is front and center with 8K around the corner. HDR is now undergoing its second iteration improvements. Dolby Atmos has arrived. And yet, the Super Bowl is still being broadcast in 2004 audio and video. Everything is. If that changed, I think a HUGE surge in our hobby would ensue. Cable and satellite TV is spiraling downward quickly, and that's too bad. Are they going to just attrit their way out of business, or are they going to rebuild their industry to get with the technological times?
5. Millenials need to discover this hobby, and fast. The future looks glim. Oppo already opted out. Many of the tried-and-true brands are hinting of getting out of the AVR industry, and you see these mega mergers everywhere. The array of choices could narrow quickly as parts get "shared" and homogeny seeps in. Outfits like NAD and Anthem could be greatly threatened if a "Walmart" company takes over and corners everything. I pick on millenials for their accepatance of watching Netflix on a 6-inch phone with ear buds, but when you look at 1 through 4 on my list, it's easy to understand why. They don't have the bank yet to take blind shots at these purchases like we do. They stick with what they know and what's affordable for them today.
I'm sure you guys can build on this list, but I'm hoping some sanity and stability returns to both the Home Theater industry and the movie industry in general. I hope my theater doesn't get reduced to a sports and YouTube viewing room alone, and I hope the technology remains viable for our favorite brands to keep pushing for better picture and sound for many years to come.
