BlueRay, RIP? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2017, 07:27:15 pm
content: With streaming seemingly taking over, and with Sony apparently not planning on doing a new 4K format for BlueRay...Do you think BlueRay is dying? Would you miss it?I personally found DVD rather adequate for movies. When DVD was new, I upgraded many of my VHS tapes to DVD version. Seeing some of those movies on BlueRay disc in store-displays, I have not found the small incremental gain BlueRay has over DVD worth the extra $. Personally, I would miss DVD when it dies. I would not miss BlueRay as long as DVD can still be purchased.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2017, 07:47:37 pm
content: Quote from: Rick Law on October 30, 2017, 07:27:15 pmI think the disappearing of physical media will mean another chapter in DRM and how the consumer suffers thanks to it.

author: Barryg41
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2017, 08:10:55 pm
content: I can't remember the last time I bought, rent or even played a DVD of any type. We stream 100%! Everything is at our finger tips.

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2017, 08:21:26 pm
content: Blueray and the 4K blueray is only there for those who want the picture and sound quality of the high bitrate. If you didn't put the money into the super expensive large screen and sound system, or you are happy with youtube quality, blueray is a waste of money.

author: ElektroQuark
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 30, 2017, 08:28:23 pm
content: Blueray shines in projection.A HD projector is not that expensive, and a 100" image size at home is really an immersive experience.I love it.

author: metrologist
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2017, 08:46:33 pm
content: Quote from: Rick Law on October 30, 2017, 07:27:15 pmWhat display device are you using? I can plainly see the increased resolution and apparent increase in color depth with blueray.

author: Jeroen3
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2017, 08:54:42 pm
content: Blu-Ray never took off imho. I asked around at work recently, nobody had Blu-Rays or a player. Some did have a console but didn't know I could play Blu-Ray movies.With the ever increasing average bandwidth of consumer internet, I imaging physical media being gone soon. Unless failed net neutrality starts the dark ages of the internet.

author: AndyC_772
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2017, 08:55:43 pm
content: When I buy a movie, I want it on a real, physical object that can't be taken away from me because I stop subscribing to a service, or the internet connection goes down somewhere between me and the server where the content is stored, or it otherwise becomes unavailable for some reason outside of my control.I also want to be sure that it'll play continuously from start to finish, only stopping when I want to pause the action to get more popcorn or go for a p*ss. When I'm settled on the sofa with my wife, beer and cat, the last thing I want to do is get up to reboot some piece of network equipment.Blu-ray has its faults, but picture and sound quality are first rate and I don't think I've ever had one skip or stutter. My experience of on-demand TV is quite the opposite; reduced bit rate and "this show is temporarily unavailable" are all too common.(yes, I know I could probably enter into a long and fruitless debate with my ISP's call centre, and/or punch holes in my walls to run ethernet cables instead of using powerline or wi-fi, but... NO. Not when I can just buy content on disc).

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2017, 09:02:50 pm
content: Regardless of how good a blu-ray is, you will NEVER be able to beat the quality of a high bitrate digital file on a hard drive. It's what I use, it's what a lot of people use, and it is the world's best. Even streaming starts on a hard drive.I don't stream movies. When I buy a movie it's first destination is on some sort of contraption to be ripped directly to drive in whatever way is possible. It goes on a drive, and I watch it there or anywhere I want.

author: Zbig
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2017, 09:47:38 pm
content: Funnily enough, I had a lunch break conversation with a colleague on this very subject today. And contrary to you, I'd like to see DVD format go ahead and die already as it has ovestayed its welcome by some 10 years, in my opinionI find the quality difference between the two immediately obvious, there is no contest for me, really. And I watch on my average, lowish-end, 48" Sony Bravia, using my crappy eyesight. My personal pet peeve is still referring to 1080 material as "HD" over ten years down the line. I refuse to call it that - it's SD or TOAD (The Only Acceptable Definition) as far as I'm concernedIt's high time we move on and stop treating ancient PAL/NTSC resolution as some kind of reference. To the defense of BD (by the way, it's "BluRay" - not "BlueRay"; yeah, kina stupid) versus streaming: although it's hard to beat streaming services' accessibility and convenience, BD stream is almost always of higher bitrate, tuned to higher quality while it's the lower bandwidth that's the priority when movie is (re)encoded for streaming.

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2017, 10:10:05 pm
content: Blu-Ray is not the name of a video format, just a type of digital disc storage. The highest capacity per disc is 128 GB for BDXL recordable discs.H.264 and H.265 are the video formats that are most used for high-resolution video content. H.265 provides about twice as much compression as H.264 or SMPTE 421M, with a data rate of 25 to 100 Mbits/s at 4K, 30 Hz video.128 GB divided by 100 Mbit/s gives you 2 hours, 50 minutes of 4K video per disc. In practice the bitrate will be less for less complex scenes, so you can store more than 3 hours on a disc. There is no need for Sony to do anything, this is already possible using existing Blu-Ray drives and existing software.

author: PlainName
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2017, 10:15:37 pm
content: As someone notes above, Blueray was still-born because Sony determined to a) win the optical disk wars this time around, and b) milk it for every penny they could. The result was the need for new players and artificially high media and hardware costs. Personally, I am glad it's bit them in the arse and maybe next time they'll have second thoughts about having to be top dog.I used to dump backups to DVD periodically for long-term storage, but that became impractical. The successor to DVD looked like it would continue the job, but then Sony spent many, many millionson stiffing that. I've never owned or used Blueray and instead found alternative storage, so even if HD-DVD made a comeback it's too late now.-- Sony's method was similar to asset strippers taking over companies. Typically, they will borrow against the company assets to acquire the dosh to make a buy-out, then repay the loan from the company. It costs them nothing but completely fucks their target, and they walk away with mucho wonga in the end. Sony basically gave away free Blueray players to saturate the market and funded that largesse by raising prices once the competition was done for. Basically, they made us pay for them taking over.

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2017, 10:30:13 pm
content: From the above discussion you might think Blu-Ray drives were expensive, or exclusive to Sony.You can find drives at less than $100 from LG and Pioneer at any computer retailer.

author: PlainName
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2017, 10:52:53 pm
content: Prices of Blueray drives have been coming down - they were definitely not cheap to start with, and $100 is quite a bit more than the $10 a writable DVD drive costs!How about media costs? This is typical:https://camelcamelcamel.com/Verbatim-BD-R-25GB-Branded-Surface/product/B00471HK0Q?context=searchNote that only 2 years ago they were $60. Blueray has been out for quite a bit longer than that, and the prices have only trended down. Do the maths.

author: abraxa
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2017, 11:05:41 pm
content: Quote from: Zbig on October 30, 2017, 09:47:38 pmWhile I see your point from a A/V quality point of view, I absolutely refuse to spend any money on pre-recorded blu-ray media. The reason is copy protection. If I am not allowed to do with this media whatever is convenient to me and the few rights I do have as a consumer can be taken away at any moment for any reason, I simply refuse to take part in this. DVD is "open" in the sense that if I buy a DVD, I can copy it to my NAS and "own" the movie. Streaming services are even worse but the fact that they produce exclusive shows that other people in my household want to watch makes them much, much harder to avoid. I still do try, though I do begin to wonder if it's futile. The general masses love convenience and choice more than they value their own rights and freedoms.

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2017, 11:48:24 pm
content: Quote from: dunkemhigh on October 30, 2017, 10:52:53 pmI think most people would expect that a product with greater capability costs more.Quote from: dunkemhigh on October 30, 2017, 10:52:53 pmIs that supposed to be supported by the graph? It covers 6 years, not 2. Two years ago, the line was around $24.

author: timb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2017, 11:53:12 pm
content: Quote from: abraxa on October 30, 2017, 11:05:41 pmFYI, BluRay discs can be ripped if you know what you’re doing.There was once a time when DVDs could only be played with official, authorized hardware and software players and digital ripping was impossible. It took three years before the CSS was cracked, and that’s only because DVDs used a weak form of 40-bit encryption, which even in 1999 could be brute forced fairly quickly.Despite that, it still took until 2007 or so before it became space efficient and fast to rip and store DVDs, due mainly to software like Handbrake making it easy to transcode several gigs of MPEG-2 data into less than 1GB of MPEG-4 or H.264 video. By 2010 you could buy 2TB drives, so you didn’t even *need* to transcode the DVDs you ripped; you could literally copy the entire VIDEO_TS folder and have access to menus and special content, if you wanted to.Hell, with Netflix’s 5 DVD plan, a 10TB NAS system (in RAID1 for redundancy) and about a year’s time, you could have just about every episode of every TV series you want stored away, your own local streaming service. Not that I’d recommend anyone do this, of course.That’s the main issue with ripping a BD, storage space. It’s still not quite practical, unless you can throw some serious money into a NAS setup. You’d need hundreds of TB of online storage for any practical collection of 4k content (there’s no better, smaller format to transcode to, like there was with DVD ten years ago, for example).

author: PlainName
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2017, 11:56:30 pm
content: QuoteMy mistake, sorry. I saw the 'Jan 15' and assumed a year, not spotting the much smaller a feinter print below

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 01:58:30 am
content: For archival purposes - data as well as video, people need physical media to remain available.Otherwise it becomes too easy to wipe out the past, wipe out knowledge.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 02:17:42 am
content: Quote from: Rick Law on October 30, 2017, 07:27:15 pmI remember watching Back To The Future on Bluray for the first time, the difference in detail was staggering!I saw all new detail I'd never seen before.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 02:24:33 am
content: Quote from: AndyC_772 on October 30, 2017, 08:55:43 pmAbsolutely 100% agree. I want media that I can play when *I* feel like playing it, regardless if my NBN is down or not (which is a common occurrence). I can also keep it and play it forever and not be at the mercy of the streaming provider when they feel like making titles unavailable to free up some disk space on their servers. Physical media/rips stored on my NAS also guarantee it's 100% ad-free forever.As a secondary thing, I enjoy the quality that Bluray brings. As Dave said, Back to the Future is a great example of what most people miss out on. Even on good quality rips, it's still not the same.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 02:25:59 am
content: Quote from: Halcyon on October 31, 2017, 02:24:33 amWelcome to the post 2015 era, where everything is a service and nothing is your own.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 02:28:43 am
content: Quote from: Mr. Scram on October 31, 2017, 02:25:59 amYep! And I bloody hate it! Most rediculous thing ever (from a consumer point of view) but the companies are loving the on-going revenue stream.Take Microsoft Office 365 for example, why on earth should a simple office suite of applications be a "service". I'll go back to an old-fashioned type writer long before I use any of that crap!

author: aandrew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 02:32:55 am
content: Quote from: helius on October 30, 2017, 10:30:13 pmIt's not about cost. It's about another bloody box on the cabinet that needs another damned remote to lose and most likely line of sight to the box to operate. It's about storing physical media, fingerprints on discs, kids stuffing the wrong disc into the wrong cover and user option overrides that make you watch the FBI warnings or in some cases entire trailers for movies ten years gone from public interest. It's about the eventual failure of the spindle motor or laser which requires a new unit to be purchased because you can't fix the damn things anymore seeing as parts are impossible to source, which means a new UI and remote to learn to use.No thank you!RAID6 in the basement running Plex, Chromecast plugged in behind the TV. Any phone or tablet or even laptop becomes the remote, one of which will be within arms reach since they're used for a lot of other things besides TV. Every movie I've ever owned is instantly available and searchable. No additional remote, no ugly box sitting on a shelf in plain view. The exact same access device (the Chromecast) lets me watch netflix or youtube or even home videos of Christmasses or birthdays past, all with the Exact. Same. Interface.And it's $30. $30!Physical media for entertainment is long dead. Broadcast and cable television is even deader and has been for much longer. Zero commercials. Zero ugly boxes. Zero shelf space. Zero hassles!

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 02:33:45 am
content: Quote from: TwoOfFive on October 30, 2017, 09:02:50 pmI dunno. A good 70mm print will walk all over anything you have on your hard disk. Actually, a good 35mm print will also.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 02:37:43 am
content: Quote from: aandrew on October 31, 2017, 02:32:55 amEvery movie you ripped from BluRay is instantly available, I presume? Nexflix is known for pulling series, or having part two of a movie but not part one. You don't own any content and should be happy as long as it's available. Here today, gone tomorrow. That's the price you pay for not having physical media.Oh, don't forget the incessant logging of your behaviour when using a Chromecast.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 02:43:05 am
content: Quote from: Halcyon on October 31, 2017, 02:28:43 amAdmittedly, for companies it can actually make sense not having to pay a huge upfront cost for a server park and then having to maintain it too. Just pay an amount per employee and everything is taken care of. However, making it the only option, or other options being strongly discouraged by crippling them or making them unreasonably expensive, is a terrible practice.Cloud based services are a great tool to have in the toolkit. Making it the tool of choice for every problem is a huge mistake. Horses for courses and all that.

author: hamster_nz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 02:45:46 am
content: Quote from: Halcyon on October 31, 2017, 02:28:43 amAs we all know, it is to provide a continuous stream of revenue for the vendor.Early on software companies thrived based on release cycles, and new, improved packages that were not backward compatible and licensing for hardware refreshes.Now that is all over, and the aim is to get recurring revenue streams by providing 'essential' services.

author: aandrew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 02:46:23 am
content: Quote from: Mr. Scram on October 31, 2017, 02:37:43 amDVD, not Bluray (never owned one), but yes. And your point about Netflix is valid and why I use it primarily for kid's TV shows (again with zero commercials). The movies I want to watch once I'm happy to stream, just as I'm happy to go to a movie theatre once in a while; there aren't THAT many movies worth owning. Between Netflix, Amazon prime (which doesn't work with Chromecastand Google Play... I'm good.I'm not terribly concerned about Google knowing what I watch. Your cable box would be mining you for the same info. Much the same as I'm happy to exchange my shopping habits for coupons which are actually useful and meaningful to me, I feel that is a fair exchange of data. I feel quite differently about Windows 10 or general browsing habits.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 02:50:38 am
content: Quote from: aandrew on October 31, 2017, 02:46:23 amMy cable box certainly won't be mining the same information, as I've taken care to select a variant that's broadcast, rather than IP or stream based. I get every signal delivered to my house and the cable company won't ever know what I do with it.

author: aandrew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 02:59:27 am
content: Quote from: Mr. Scram on October 31, 2017, 02:50:38 amAt least in Canada, you don't have any such thing as analog cable TV anymore. It's all digital, and yes, those cable boxes have an upstream channel back to the mothership...

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 03:07:40 am
content: Quote from: aandrew on October 31, 2017, 02:59:27 amGood thing I'm not in Canada then

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 03:44:38 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on October 31, 2017, 02:17:42 amBlu-ray discs are highly variable. If you are in an NTSC zone, a large number of Blu-rays show a distinct improvement over the DVD (480 lines -> 1080 lines). If you live in a PAL zone a large number of Blu-rays look little different from the DVD (576 lines -> 1080 lines). Its not just old material, either. So much stuff just isn't that sharp. Modern animation looks consistently impressive on Blu-ray, though.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 04:04:55 am
content: Quote from: hamster_nz on October 31, 2017, 02:45:46 amI'm all for companies making money, but there is a lot that doesn't need to be in "the cloud". A lot of the software I use is dongle-based, even the latest versions today. But it means I can run it on any machine I like and can even "share" dongles on a network with other users through a dongle server.I would much rather something tangible like a disc and a dongle that I can use anywhere, any time, than rely on the internet.Quote from: coppice on October 31, 2017, 03:44:38 amBlu-ray is very capable. I often find the old film-based recordings look fantastic (again, Back to the Future is a great example of that). It just depends on how how it's all mastered and produced.

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 05:35:52 am
content: Quality wise, you cant compare at the consumer end. Cable/Netflix/Sat dish HD sucks shit, even 4K variants are shit next to BD releases in picture and sound. If you want to avoid the BD FBI junk and adds, you best bet is'MakeMKV'It will copy without any transcoding. The true BD .h264 stream of just the movie portion itself copied to your HD within 15 minutes (depends on the speed of you BD-ROM) as a single 18-40gb ***.mkv file. No adds, no warnings, stupid HDCP enable flag disabled so you can use older video projectors before HDCP compliance, streams perfect through any fast enough network connection. Movie pause/seek to any point is instantaneously fast and with a good videoplayer, time-stretch playback I find useful for documentaries. Using a CPU software non-accelerated public domain written to commercial industry spec decoder means guaranteed full picture quality (though such players eats CPU cycles and heats up laptops galore). There is more, but, again, a slim 0.00001% of consumers use a PC as their main video and even have it properly setup to deliver.4K bluray, with the new HDCP, well, that's currently a new F---fest with proper compatibility and all the variants of extended color gamut features from what I hear, you cant be assured of anything yet, but, I sure in time, it will all iron out. Probably right after it has been hacked...

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 06:11:34 am
content: Quote from: Rick Law on October 30, 2017, 07:27:15 pmWhat are you talking about? UltraHD Blu-Ray is already on the market.Quote from: coppice on October 31, 2017, 03:44:38 amThe difference between PAL and NTSC DVD is negligible. 1080p is infinitely better than either. If a movie looks insignificantly better in 1080p, then it's because the 1080p copy you have (or possibly even the source film) stinks.

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 06:32:38 am
content: Quote from: Halcyon on October 31, 2017, 02:24:33 amAnother vote for the "I own it" camp.I don't spend a lot of time watching movies - but when I do, I like the certainty of ownership of physical media. I've paid the creators for the privilege and am happy to have all the delivery tech under my control. If something goes wrong - I can actually fix it.

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 06:37:54 am
content: Quote from: tooki on October 31, 2017, 06:11:34 amOr you have a fake up-sample version of the movie. Or a cheap transcode to a lousy bit-rate with noise removal algorithms necessary for broadcasts like cable/dish/netflix to allow lower bitrates... And so on...How about even a faulty HDCP key in your TV. In some circumstances, the video is allowed, 'BUT', down-sampled to 480p.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 06:58:51 am
content: Quote from: Barryg41 on October 30, 2017, 08:10:55 pmSame here. Don't even own a DVD player anymore and never even owned a bluray player.

author: hamster_nz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 07:33:16 am
content: I am just waiting for hipsters to discover the joy of analog video, before I sell them my VCR and art-house tape collection...

author: ElektroQuark
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 07:43:56 am
content: Quote from: coppice on October 31, 2017, 03:44:38 amYou're forgetting about mpeg2 and mpeg4 quality difference here. And bit rate too.

author: vealmike
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 08:48:20 am
content: If ever a thread needed emojie, this is it:I upgraded almost exactly one year ago. I swapped a 28" CRT for a 55" OLED so called 4K (it's not 4K dumbo, it only has 2160p vertical lines) set. I also bought a so called 4K HDR BluRay player. I know 55" is a bit small for 2160p, but I only have a small lounge.The TV set and the player are stunning. The TV really shows how bad Sky Satellite 1080p is when compared to terrestrial digital. Even Sky audio is awful. Given how bad Skys' 1080p service is, I certainly won't be subscribing to their 2160p service.I stream ripped video from my NAS through a Pi running Kodi at 1080p with a quality equal to the terrestrial digital transmission.But when you slam a so called 4K HDR disk into the player, oh wow! The picture quality jumps another level.I can also stream video directly on the TV. It supports 4K streaming, but I've yet to find another source that comes close to a so called 4K HDR BluRay, nothing's even in the same ball park.So is BluRay dead?No, not by a very long way. The quality offered far outstrips any (current) streaming service. There's no technical reason why streaming services shouldn't be able to catch up, but we need a large jump in infrastructure performance to achieve this.And as for the guy who get's better quality from a ripped BluRay on a NAS than the original BluRay had, not sure whether I shouldor.

author: grumpydoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 08:56:30 am
content: Quote from: coppice on October 31, 2017, 03:44:38 amThere is something going on if you can't see the difference between 576i and 1080p - however, good upscaling players/TVs can make DVD content look surprisingly effective - are you sure you were not comparing upscaled 576i content with native 1080p?That said you can't substitute for resolution - having more pixels is always going to look better, no matter how good the upscaling.But, and it is a significant but in my opinion - the number of pixels does not change the quality of the writing, acting, direction or production of a film. At most I'd say 1080p compared with decent 576i is maybe a 5%, 10% at most contribution to the overall enjoyment of a film. 576i will not wreck a classic, 2160p will not make the remake of "The Italian Job" a patch on the original.

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 09:15:32 am
content: Quote from: vealmike on October 31, 2017, 08:48:20 amThe quality will never get better on the streaming services. It has nothing to do with infrastructure. The vast majority of us have never experienced the authentic high bit rate properly setup UltraHD, never will, and don't care. We will just keep on giving money to the convenient streaming services and they will continue to deliver the minimum bitrate possible which consumers will pay for, and not a bit-per-second faster. This is all profit for them and every bit they transmit too much costs them money in 2 ways, 1. Actual transmition of said bits, 2. if the end user has a poor connection, or their ISP adds charges per bit, the streaming provider may loose a potential sale.I personally demand only high quality high bit rate, but, my kind is in the minority...

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 11:50:43 am
content: Quote from: grumpydoc on October 31, 2017, 08:56:30 amI agree. High resolution is nice, but the quality of of the film is much more important.As far as owning vs renting it is concerned, with films I'm happy renting, since I seldom watch the same film more than once. For software, I hate anything which must be have the Internet to work, so I have to own it.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 01:05:33 pm
content: Quote from: Hero999 on October 31, 2017, 11:50:43 amRegarding owning software and the internet, one does unfortunately not preclude the other. There are plenty of games that you buy, yet stop working almost as soon as the first packet drops.I consider games on services like Steam to be rentals. I get to use them for a while, until Valve calls it quits and I lose access. I'd rather own them and buy them from the developer or without DRM wherever I can, but that isn't always an option.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 03:04:27 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on October 31, 2017, 06:11:34 amYou are missing the point. 4k Blu-ray has been around for quite a while now, and many consumer electronics makers haven't bothered releasing a single model of player. Few places stock the discs. It isn't going anywhere.Quote from: tooki on October 31, 2017, 06:11:34 amAgain you are missing the point. End users don't care what the systems are technically capable of. They care about what they can buy and use. What percentage of actual Blu-ray discs in the shops look materially better than the DVD version that costs half as much? It isn't that high. It isn't nearly as high a percentage as it could be, if the people mastering the discs did the maximum they could to get the best results. The reality is that not enough people care. Its a similar picture with NTSC and PAL DVDs. The PAL version is capable of substantially better results. 480 to 576 lines is a significant step up in resolution, and many PAL DVDs look considerably better than the equivalent NTSC version. A lot don't, though. A lot look like the PAL version was fudged from the NTSC one.

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 03:16:46 pm
content: Quote from: metrologist on October 30, 2017, 08:46:33 pmI don't own a blueray player. I only see them playing in stores. Yes, I do notice improvements - just not enough for me to upgrade from DVD. At home, I usually watch in the kitchen with a smaller 720p (22inch, I think) - the larger/better player is in the living room. So, that further reduces the value of high resolution/quality to me. It would have to be a lot lot better resolution/playback-experience for me to giving up my convenient access to snack and drinks.Quote from: Hero999 on October 31, 2017, 11:50:43 am[bold added]I sure am with you on this one! The quality of recent movies are much much lower than before in my opinion.Quote from: nctnico on October 31, 2017, 06:58:51 amEver gone back to Netflix streaming to re-watch something and found it gone?There are some classic that I feel compelled to own:"A Bridge Too Far","2001: A Space Odyssey","Ben Hur","Terminator II","The Thing (1982)","The Sounds of Music","My Fair Lady","Gone With the Wind","Bizet - Carmen","We Were Soldiers","Downfall" ... ... ...

author: Zbig
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 03:22:09 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on October 31, 2017, 03:04:27 pmI have yet to see a BD release botched so badly that I couldn't immediately tell the difference between that and the DVD quality. Well, maybe there are some BD re-releases that are straight re-encodes of the PAL/NTSC material but personally, I haven't encountered any.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 04:22:35 pm
content: I dont even have a computer with ODD anymore. I had to write CDs for the car at work. And then I realized that I can just play everything I want on Bluetooth. Such a waste of time.Everything I want to watch is online. It is on Netflix, or Yarr. Withouth the all the ads, FBI warning, intro video to the intro video bullshit, that is on a physical disk. And they dont stop working in a decade.Yes, and good luck buying a BD player in 10 years, when the current one dies after warranty period+1 day. Probably due to a firmware update.Yarr: That is the sound a pirate makes, when he takes your data and shares it with everyone.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 04:24:44 pm
content: Quote from: NANDBlog on October 31, 2017, 04:22:35 pmI really hope you don't expect Netflix to be more reliable in the long run than optical media. That can only end in disappointment.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 05:23:59 pm
content: Quote from: Mr. Scram on October 31, 2017, 04:24:44 pmI trust that online streaming will have something worth watching in 10 years. I am quite sure, that my Blue-ray library wont.And I'm not fan of the "let's re-watch this movie thousand times". I watched Empire Strikes Back a total of 4 times. From this, 4 was on different medium.Who said, that blue-ray will be the one optical disk to end all optical disks?

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 07:12:56 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on October 31, 2017, 03:04:27 pmYou can’t accuse me of “missing the point” when the point in your brain, and what you actualy write, are completely different things!!!You said that Sony didn’t make a 4K Blu-Ray format, which is demonstrably untruebecause the format exists, and Sony sells a player. It’s absolutely true that far fewer vendors are selling 4K Blu-Ray players, but that’s not what you said originally!Quote from: coppice on October 31, 2017, 03:04:27 pmI’m not missing the point at all: I saw your point, and I am calling it out as bullshit.Quote from: coppice on October 31, 2017, 03:04:27 pmI call baloney on this, too. I have yet to see a Blu-Ray release that didn’t live up to my quality expectations, and I’m fairly demanding. I have no idea where you’ve gotten this idea about how unimpressive Blu-Ray is; ignoring the stupidity and slowness of the menus, the actual film content is great!Quote from: coppice on October 31, 2017, 03:04:27 pmYou’re assuming that becauseyoudon’t notice the difference, that nobody else does, either. I reckon that it’s you who is the outlier, and that most people will notice a bigger difference than you do.Quote from: coppice on October 31, 2017, 03:04:27 pmThis is mostly nonsense. Yes, PAL is a higher resolution than NTSC, but not enough to make a big difference. (It’s just 20% more lines. It’s not like 1080p which more than doubles the resolution in both axes, or UHD which does doubles both again.) And it comes at the cost of frame rate.As an aside, it’s worth mentioning that regardless of whether NTSC or PAL, DVD is always 720px wide. Depending on whether the content is 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratio, the pixels are either taller than they are wide (4:3), or wider than they are tall (16:9). This makes more difficult the conversion to “normal” displays and video file formats that use square pixels, since the need to interpolate one axis or the other is unavoidable.As for whether a PAL release is copied from NTSC: that’s only done in a pinch, like with TV shows that were shot and/or edited on video. Films aren’t done this way, because the SD video masters of film originals (whether TV or movie) are done radically differently for PAL and NTSC. For NTSC, 24fps film needs to become 29.97fps of video, which is done using a process called 3:2 pulldown, which pays the film back at 23.976fps and uses 5 video fields (odd/even half-frames) for two frames of film. The fact that some film frames are shown for 3 fields, and others for just 2, can cause some roughness in motion, but the advantage is that the playback speed remains untouched. For PAL, the 24fps film needs to become 25fps of video. In the tape era (both at the consumer and broadcast level) this was normally done by playing the film back sped up to 25fps, which has the advantage that 1 film frame corresponds to 1 video frame, but has the huge disadvantage that the sound is 4% higher pitched than normal, which many people (such as myself) can readily detect. Early DVD releases tended to be produced from the master video transfers, but later they moved to doing new, clean scans of the films, saved on the DVD disc as native 24fps, and leaving the 3:2 pulldown and frame rate conversion to the DVD player, but also allowing native 24fps output for TVs that support it. Later DVD players also often perform reverse 3:2 pulldown, converting the rickety 3:2 fields back to clean, smooth 24fps.In any case, Blu-Ray releases are done by re-scanning the original film, and often combined with some degree of restoration in older shows and movies. 35mm film, the standard in Hollywood for almost everything, has more than enough resolution to merit being shown in 1080p, and often it’s good enough for 4K, too. With movies, this works fabulously, you just re-scan at the resolution needed. For TV shows, it can be successful, but often showcases the lower production value of TV shows, because in the SD days, the sets, makeup, lens focus, etc were done for SD broadcast, even if the film captured more detail. That’s why in the 1080p release of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the makeup looks troweled on. SD blurred the makeup, HD shows off every crease and pimple. But it also shows off extra detail in everything on-screen, like the sets and props. (The entire TV industry had to upgrade its set construction and makeup for HD. Lots of makeup is now airbrushed on, because HD is so unforgiving! They basically have to operate nearly at movie standards.)

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 07:26:29 pm
content: Quote from: NANDBlog on October 31, 2017, 05:23:59 pmI don't say that, but at least I know it'll be there in 10 years. Online services pulling the rug out from under me irk me. It wouldn't be the first, nor the tenth time that I'm looking for something, only to see it has been removed. When it comes to music, it's even more annoying, since one tends to repeatedly listen to music much more often.If you are only looking to something akin to renting, I guess cloud services are okay.

author: metrologist
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2017, 07:54:47 pm
content: Quote from: Rick Law on October 31, 2017, 03:16:46 pmYou would never notice the improved visual quality on that display. Even some of the larger full HD displays are not that great, IMHO. My 52" display is barely passing.I agree with your other point, you cannot compensate for poor content quality, and you'd hardly miss any less resolution otherwise.