Physical & Digital EST: The Future of Home Video Discussion Thread

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by sapiendut

Most of them are fake directional. You can use them either way.

It never occurred to me to test that; I always obeyed the arrow.

[Vilya]

I fixed my eARC problem. Connecting my directional hdmi cable to the correct "monitor out" port on my AVR was all that was needed.

What can I say? I said I was tired!

[Vilya]

I get 10 credits to use with the Sony Picture Core service, formerly known as Bravia Core, but so far I have only picked one title from among the choices provided.

I was still browsing the selection when my internet service decided to intermittently disconnect and reconnect, but most of what I saw were movies that I already owned or that I had no interest in seeing. I will try again later. Oh, and just to be clear, my new TV IS hardwired to the internet. My ISP periodically just good old fashioned sucks, no matter how you connect your stuff.

Beyond the 10 credits that I was given, I can also stream from a selection of a whopping 100 or so titles that change whenever Sony "curates" a different selection. Both the movies that I pick with my credits and my access to the Sony Picture Core service expires after 2 years. Some models of their TVs only provide 5 credits and 1 year access. It is possible to get 15 credits, but apparently a TV costing $4799 isn't good enough for that level of credit.

The whole service seems underwhelming to me beyond the curiosity to see what high bitrate streaming can look like. Sony claims bitrates in the 80 Mbps range.

https://electronics.sony.com/sony-pictures-core

[Boccaccio]

Originally Posted by Vilya

I get 10 credits to use with the Sony Picture Core service, formerly known as Bravia Core, but so far I have only picked one title from among the choices provided.

I was still browsing the selection when my internet service decided to intermittently disconnect and reconnect, but most of what I saw were movies that I already owned or that I had no interest in seeing. I will try again later. Oh, and just to be clear, my new TV IS hardwired to the internet. My ISP periodically just good old fashioned sucks, no matter how you connect your stuff.

Beyond the 10 credits that I was given, I can also stream from a selection of a whopping 100 or so titles that change whenever Sony "curates" a different selection. Both the movies that I pick with my credits and my access to the Sony Picture Core service expires after 2 years. Some models of their TVs only provide 5 credits and 1 year access. It is possible to get 15 credits, but apparently a TV costing $4799 isn't good enough for that level of credit.

The whole service seems underwhelming to me beyond the curiosity to see what high bitrate streaming can look like. Sony claims bitrates in the 80 Mbps range.

https://electronics.sony.com/sony-pictures-core

I've already used up 6 credits of the Bravia Core.
The first credit I used was Gran Turismo but I still had problems because of that cable and wasn't too impressed with that service.
So after I switched to the right cable I decided to give it another go.
I must admit I was rather surprised with what Sony achieved with this.

You can't really check the specifications on Core but I don't think that 80 Mbps is a huge exaggeration. The sound on this was phenomenal.
The movie wasn't really good but I recommend it for the sound alone, Vilya.
You should really check this out.
Otherwise their selection isn't great but this is Sony showing what is actually possible with A/V if they really want to.

[Wendell R. Breland]

Originally Posted by Boccaccio

Well, you learn something new every day. I had no idea one way HDMI cables were a thing.

Always assumed it didn't matter how you connect them.

In general, wire type HDMI cables will be two types, active and passive. Active types will have electronics in the source connector, the electronics is one way buffering/amplifying hence will not work if the “source” connector is plugged into a sink device (AVR, AVP, projector, flat panel, etc.)

I use this cable because it is > 36 feet from the equipment rack to the projector as cable dressing dictates. I just hedged my bet just in case of procuring 8K source(s) and sink. I do not see that actually happening anytime soon but I will not have to replace the cable for a 4th time if I do add 8K.

[alchav21]

Originally Posted by Boccaccio

I must admit I was rather surprised with what Sony achieved with this.

You can't really check the specifications on Core but I don't think that 80 Mbps is a huge exaggeration. The sound on this was phenomenal.
The movie wasn't really good but I recommend it for the sound alone, Vilya.
You should really check this out.
Otherwise their selection isn't great but this is Sony showing what is actually possible with A/V if they really want to.

Well you guys are Living the Dream, I can't wait to get my 75" Bravia 9 Mini LED I'm still saving my Pennies! With Sony Picture Core I'm sure you are getting Disc Like Quality!

[Wendell R. Breland]

Originally Posted by Vilya

The whole service seems underwhelming to me beyond the curiosity to see what high bitrate streaming can look like. Sony claims bitrates in the 80 Mbps range.

IIRC, in the early days of Sony Bravia the audio was lossy DTS, I see they have added DTS:X and Dolby Atmos. They do not state if lossless or lossy.

Ethernet spigot - appears to still be 100Base-T, are you going to connect with 802.11 AC Wi-Fi? Does this model provide any diagnostic info?

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by Wendell R. Breland

IIRC, in the early days of Sony Bravia the audio was lossy DTS, I see they have added DTS:X and Dolby Atmos. They do not state if lossless or lossy.

Ethernet spigot - appears to still be 100Base-T, are you going to connect with 802.11 AC Wi-Fi? Does this model provide any diagnostic info?

I see no reason to switch the TV to wifi; a 100 Mbps ethernet connection should be perfectly fine to stream a service that maxs out around 80 Mbps. Plus, my current internet plan is only 100 Mbps, so there's that, too.

I am still learning my way around my new TV, so I don't know if it will provide any streaming diagnostic info or not, but I would be surprised if it did.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by alchav21

Well you guys are Living the Dream, I can't wait to get my 75" Bravia 9 Mini LED I'm still saving my Pennies! With Sony Picture Core I'm sure you are getting Disc Like Quality!

You're due for a TV upgrade and I think that you will be extremely pleased with a 75" Bravia 9. I hope that you can make it happen soon. My Bravia 9 continues to impress me; it is a vast improvement over my old X900F.

I am genuinely curious to see what Sony has accomplished with their high bitrate streaming. If the quality is as good as I have heard, then other streaming services should offer comparable quality- at least with their premium plans.

[veritas]

Movie rentals of physical media never made much sense to me anyway. Media is pretty cheap already and a lot of it gets picked up by libraries. I just bought lego batman 4k and sing 4k for 2 dollars a piece.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by veritas

Movie rentals of physical media never made much sense to me anyway. Media is pretty cheap already and a lot of it gets picked up by libraries. I just bought lego batman 4k and sing 4k for 2 dollars a piece.

Yep, I’m with you. I want it in great quality because I want it in my collection. I blind buy, but even for those that don’t, there are plenty of streaming services where you can check out inferior A/V copies before you decide to buy.

[Vilya]

Five hours of total travel time and six hours of appointments and treatment will make for a very long and tiring day today. I leave in about 25 minutes.

I hope to watch my first movie on my new TV this Saturday. I still haven't decided what to watch, but if I can't make up my addled mind by then I will just default to watching The Hobbit and/or Lord Of The Rings trilogies again.

Up until now I have just sampled a few of those 4K, 8K, 12K, and Special K, scenic youtube videos, most of which seem to deliberately exaggerate the colors. They also seem to all have the same generic elevator music soundtrack.

I am trying to decide if I should change the settings on my Oppo 203 to "source direct" and thereby let the new TV do all of the upscaling and image processing magic. Maybe even set "Dolby Vision Processing" to TV-led? With the TV being far newer than my Oppo 203, I am wondering if it would be best to let the TV do all of these things. I guess I should ask these questions in the Oppo 203 thread, but right now I am here and not there.

If anyone has any movie suggestions or thoughts about settings for my Oppo 203, please let me know.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by Vilya

Five hours of total travel time and six hours of appointments and treatment will make for a very long and tiring day today. I leave in about 25 minutes.

I hope to watch my first movie on my new TV this Saturday. I still haven't decided what to watch, but if I can't make up my addled mind by then I will just default to watching The Hobbit and/or Lord Of The Rings trilogies again.

Up until now I have just sampled a few of those 4K, 8K, 12K, and Special K, scenic youtube videos, most of which seem to deliberately exaggerate the colors. They also seem to all have the same generic elevator music soundtrack.

I am trying to decide if I should change the settings on my Oppo 203 to "source direct" and thereby let the new TV do all of the upscaling and image processing magic. Maybe even set "Dolby Vision Processing" to TV-led? With the TV being far newer than my Oppo 203, I am wondering if it would be best to let the TV do all of these things. I guess I should ask these questions in the Oppo 203 thread, but right now I am here and not there.

If anyone has any movie suggestions or thoughts about settings for my Oppo 203, please let me know.

Best of luck, hoping for the very best of outcomes as always,

As you are always asking via pm, just to let you know my sister is back in hospital with sepsis. This is now ten times, so she is having dialysis while she is in there. It’s a huge concern every time this happens.

[cheez avenger]

Originally Posted by veritas

Movie rentals of physical media never made much sense to me anyway. Media is pretty cheap already and a lot of it gets picked up by libraries. I just bought lego batman 4k and sing 4k for 2 dollars a piece.

$2 where? Thrift shops, right? Good luck getting it at that price when it's released. Stuff is generally $20+ per title upon release day.

[bhampton]

Originally Posted by Vilya

If anyone has any movie suggestions or thoughts about settings for my Oppo 203, please let me know.

I recommend using the Spears and Muncil Test patterns.

https://spearsandmunsil.com/3rd-edition-articles/

This one is about choosing the color space output from your player.

https://spearsandmunsil.com/portfoli...color-space-3/

For a movie suggestion -



.

[Wendell R. Breland]

Originally Posted by Vilya

I see no reason to switch the TV to wifi; a 100 Mbps ethernet connection should be perfectly fine to stream a service that maxs out around 80 Mbps. Plus, my current internet plan is only 100 Mbps, so there's that, too.

Sony says, “To access highest quality Pure Stream™ available at 80Mbps you must have a minimum internet speed of 115Mbps.” Last night I did a little checking of video data rate vs incoming peak data rate.

Movies Anywhere - Video 25 Mbps, peak data 33 Mbps
Amazon Prime - Video 15 Mbps, peak data 20 Mbps
Fandango - Video 10 Mbps, peak data 19 Mbps

For streaming the incoming data comes in burst, there can and will be short periods of time where no data is incoming. This is the reason why the bandwidth needs to be a fair amount more than the video data rate.

Your Oppo and DV: IIRC you can select Player-LED or TV-LED but all other video settings are locked out when playing a DV title. I would use some test patterns from HD test disc to compare HD to UHD scaling. In source direct DVD content will not work with my Sony projector so I let the Oppo scale SD and HD content to UHD.

[alchav21]

Originally Posted by cheez avenger

$2 where? Thrift shops, right? Good luck getting it at that price when it's released. Stuff is generally $20+ per title upon release day.

At $2 the Studios are just trying to get some money back, Discs won't last long at those rates!

[cheez avenger]

Originally Posted by alchav21

At $2 the Studios are just trying to get some money back, Discs won't last long at those rates!

The point is that studios aren't selling discs for $2 a pop.

[alchav21]

Originally Posted by Wendell R. Breland

Sony says, “To access highest quality Pure Stream™ available at 80Mbps you must have a minimum internet speed of 115Mbps.” Last night I did a little checking of video data rate vs incoming peak data rate.

Movies Anywhere - Video 25 Mbps, peak data 33 Mbps
Amazon Prime - Video 15 Mbps, peak data 20 Mbps
Fandango - Video 10 Mbps, peak data 19 Mbps

For streaming the incoming data comes in burst, there can and will be short periods of time where no data is incoming. This is the reason why the bandwidth needs to be a fair amount more than the video data rate.

You're right for Cable Companies you need the higher speeds to Average Out at around 80Mbps. Not so with Fiber, especially if you are Hard Wired with Ethernet. My new ISP InfoWest put me on WiFi, to keep Cable Systems IPTV separate. Streaming works good most of the time, but not as good as Ethernet because I do see PQ Problems!

[Wendell R. Breland]

Originally Posted by alchav21

You're right for Cable Companies you need the higher speeds to Average Out at around 80Mbps. Not so with Fiber, especially if you are Hard Wired with Ethernet. My new ISP InfoWest put me on WiFi, to keep Cable Systems IPTV separate. Streaming works good most of the time, but not as good as Ethernet because I do see PQ Problems!

Has absolutely nothing to do with how streaming protocols work.

Wi-Fi: Problems appear to be directly related to the knowledge of the person setting up and/or using Wi-Fi. People that know what they are doing seem to have no problems using Wi-Fi.