I Just Tried to Watch a Streaming Movie, And…

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by Fiffy

And this is the Digital Movies section.
There's already a perfect thread where you can validate your feelings:

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=259675

90% of the disc fans in (our) thread also stream. People just know the truth, that Blu-ray and UHD is vastly superior and future proof.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by BrokenGlass41

Yes, the internet in my area is terrible. The content is Dune.

It doesn’t matter how good your internet is, some content, on some services looks awful. Streaming tech struggles with dark scenes, for example. There are usually complaints when a really dark episode of a really popular series streams. I think Game Of Thrones had a record number of complaints for this reason.

Streaming services look to shave their bit rates as much as possible to save money and handle data server restrictions that are coming in next few years due to Carbon restrictions. I don’t think Netflix bit rates have changed much in ten years.


No such issues with UHD.

In terms of digital sell through, I genuinely hope people do have access to their collection for a long time, still movie fans at end of day. But digital is not for me.

[CatBus]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

It doesn’t matter how good your internet is, some content, on some services looks awful

Sadly, this appears to be the case. I'm just reporting my results as I promised earlier. Now, I've seen the occasional macroblocking on bit-staved content, and the occasional out-of-sync audio, but those seemed very service- and content-specific as you said. The more general issues I've been having with subscription streaming are that subtitle quality is poor (example: subtitles for Ed Wood replaced swear words with clean versions), and credit sequences are minimized as the movie stream exits several minutes early and goes back to the service's navigation screen.

Although I've got gigabit Internet (fiber, so with low latency and a nice stable connection) and a wired connection to my streaming box, and most streamers recommend only 50Mbps for high-quality 4K streaming, I was assured by some community members that gigabit wasn't good enough. The way to get subtitles that reflect what people are saying, and credits that play all the way through, I was assured, was to subscribe to AOL.

Well, I'm here to report that this does not work. AOL offers five different plans, and none of them, nor any combination of them, makes even the slightest change to the subtitles or credits of a streamed movie. I don't doubt that the advice here was offered out of a genuine interest in solving the poor streaming experiences I reported -- but out of a desire to save other community members from the time and expense I put into this, this advice does not appear to be correct anymore.

As far as I can tell, if you're experiencing poor subtitles or minimized credit sequences on any or all of your subscription streaming services, there is currently no known way to fix it on your end. It appears to simply be a characteristic of that service.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by CatBus

Sadly, this appears to be the case. I'm just reporting my results as I promised earlier. Now, I've seen the occasional macroblocking on bit-staved content, and the occasional out-of-sync audio, but those seemed very service- and content-specific as you said. The more general issues I've been having with subscription streaming are that subtitle quality is poor (example: subtitles for Ed Wood replaced swear words with clean versions), and credit sequences are minimized as the movie stream exits several minutes early and goes back to the service's navigation screen.

Although I've got gigabit Internet (fiber, so with low latency and a nice stable connection) and a wired connection to my streaming box, and most streamers recommend only 50Mbps for high-quality 4K streaming, I was assured by some community members that gigabit wasn't good enough. The way to get subtitles that reflect what people are saying, and credits that play all the way through, I was assured, was to subscribe to AOL.

Well, I'm here to report that this does not work. AOL offers five different plans, and none of them, nor any combination of them, makes even the slightest change to the subtitles or credits of a streamed movie. I don't doubt that the advice here was offered out of a genuine interest in solving the poor streaming experiences I reported -- but out of a desire to save other community members from the time and expense I put into this, this advice does not appear to be correct anymore.

As far as I can tell, if you're experiencing poor subtitles or minimized credit sequences on any or all of your subscription streaming services, there is currently no known way to fix it on your end. It appears to simply be a characteristic of that service.

You are completely at the mercy of these services and their whims.

Disc for the win.