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

[crutzulee]

Originally Posted by sapiendut

Alchav said “imo it’s disc quality”. LOL. What disc look as bad as streaming?

To be fair, one of the problems I'm having with the general tone of the discourse on this sight lately is that, in some strange fervor to be "right", many members make disingenuous claims and infer ridiculous conclusions from information that confirms their biases...

Physical media is clearly capable of superior A/V performance, and in the overwhelming majority of cases, lives up to that promise.... but I definitely have blurays in my collection that fall far short of some of the very best streams that I've watched...

I've read someone in this forum defend upscaled DVD as superior to streaming...if I'm not mistaken, that person somehow argued that it was their superior hardware that made this so...sound familiar?

As for me, with this year's top billed movies, I streamed BARBIE in 4K DV/ATMOS, I watched the UHD of OPPENHEIMER formatted perfectly for my screen with sound upmixed for my 7.4.4 setup with transducers and I have owned MAVERICK for months without watching as I haven't had the time or inclination to watch it yet as a double bill with the original... the former two were fantastic on my setup.

As a horror fan, some of my favourite presentations this year have come from SHUDDER, which easily has the worst quality of anything I watch... yet it's still better than any upscaled DVD

[Wendell R. Breland]

Originally Posted by crutzulee

To be fair, one of the problems I'm having with the general tone of the discourse on this sight lately is that, in some strange fervor to be "right", many members make disingenuous claims and infer ridiculous conclusions from information that confirms their biases...

Forget about who is right or wrong. There are some well known facts about data reductions for audio and video. One of the most important parameters is the data rate that is available for any given codec (H.262, H.265, H.266) and the intended medium. In general, for any given codec the higher the bit rate the less will be the artifacts. Its just a technical fact and one some seems incapable of grasping. I have posted examples and links to these facts but it appears lost on some and will not do again.

Here is another fact, some believe they can see artifacts just as well as the next person. In my personal AB test with professional video people that just is not the case. Highly doubt 99.5% of the laymen would see artifacts trained professional video people would see. A few non professional video people do have eagle eyes and are really good a spotting video aberrations.

Can a given title look bad on disc, yes it can but that most likely is not the fault of the medium. With streaming there are many considerations to take into account when deciding on the encoder settings for any given title. Amazon Prime: Their originals have pretty good video and audio. Most other content sucks in the technical department, most specifically, the audio. If you have an ATV4K (HUD) then you can see for yourself, if not but have Android then you can still see the diagnostics screen.

[bhampton]

Originally Posted by crutzulee

I've read someone in this forum defend upscaled DVD as superior to streaming...if I'm not mistaken, that person somehow argued that it was their superior hardware that made this so...sound familiar?

Right. I don't know if you are referring to me but I have said in the past upscaled DVD is better than HD streaming. I don't know about every example but in some cases this is clearly true. Superior hardware not required just honest perception.

I have 1350 movies in iTunes and a few TV series. I tell you some of it looks terrible. In particular the TV shows LOST and Weeds in my opinion look very bad. I had sold my complete set for Weeds back in the day because I tried the go digital thing. I rebought it because none of it is worth watching on iTunes.

[crutzulee]

Originally Posted by bhampton

Right. I don't know if you are referring to me but I have said in the past upscaled DVD is better than HD streaming. I don't know about every example but in some cases this is clearly true. Superior hardware not required just honest perception.

I have 1350 movies in iTunes and a few TV series. I tell you some of it looks terrible. In particular the TV shows LOST and Weeds in my opinion look very bad. I had sold my complete set for Weeds back in the day because I tried the go digital thing. I rebought it because none of it is worth watching on iTunes.

Yeah, it definitely wasn't you I was referring to as I would have engaged in that discussion. If memory serves (which it rarely does these days), it would have been in the context of someone so desperate to extoll the virtues of physical media that they were claiming that their player upscaled a 480p DVD so well that it looked better than a 4K stream.

As we can all agree, garbage in equals garbage out. So while it is theoretically possible for a VHS tape of a movie that you bought at a rental store closeout to look better than a terribly mastered UHD, by and large the latest is generally IMHO the greatest - To that point, by and large, my experience has been that the 1080p streams I have seen generally beat out any of the upscaled DVDs I've had... but I'd have to go on memory as it's been years since I've watched any 480p content.

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by crutzulee

To be fair, one of the problems I'm having with the general tone of the discourse on this sight lately is that, in some strange fervor to be "right", many members make disingenuous claims and infer ridiculous conclusions from information that confirms their biases...

While there are a few awful discs that truly perform down on the level of streaming, it's not because streaming is so good, it's because the discs are so bad. Whether it means they have horrible bitrates (The Craft) or have a truly dreadful transfer (Pirates Of The Caribbean), the fact remains that the stream's not good, the disc's bad.

Originally Posted by crutzulee

Physical media is clearly capable of superior A/V performance, and in the overwhelming majority of cases, lives up to that promise....

Absolutely. There's no way in hell that streaming can ever catch up to discs. If you sent a 100GB movie over the internet, even if you were the only one on earth online, just streaming that movie would probably crash the entire world, because no system that exists now or ever will exists could handle something that massive. That's why they have to compress it to within an inch of its life. I've watched three movies on streaming in my entire life: Reservoir Dogs, A Clockwork Orange, and Scarface. All three times I could see and hear a massive dip in quality between streaming and even DVDs. It wasn't just "it's a little weaker, but it's still close". It was massive. Watching a movie jammed into a couple-hundred-mbps stream is like listening to Handel's "Messiah" played on a kazoo.

Originally Posted by crutzulee

I definitely have blurays in my collection that fall far short of some of the very best streams that I've watched...

Again, if the discs absolutely suck, then they will be in streaming quality. I'd put streaming and DVD at about even. Sometimes streaming beats DVD, sometimes DVD beats streaming. Both are a serious step down from what we consider quality. In fact, the only 4K or Blu-ray I can honestly say "it's about the same as streaming" is Pirates Of The Caribbean, which is considered one of the worst home video releases ever.

Originally Posted by crutzulee

I've read someone in this forum defend upscaled DVD as superior to streaming...if I'm not mistaken, that person somehow argued that it was their superior hardware that made this so...sound familiar?

I have no idea if an upscaled DVD is better than streaming, but my guess would be it has to do with the quality of said DVD and the quality of the upscale. My 4K player makes old DVDs look amazing, but they're still just that: old DVDs being upscaled.

Best case scenario, you're talking about nine gigabytes of data. That's not a lot to work with. If you have a crap DVD (for instance, my public domain DVD of Nosferatu), all the upscaling in the world won't make that disc look any less awful than it is. Garbage in, garbage out.

With the two discs I mentioned (The Abyss and The Wall), my response to seeing them on my TV wasn't one of amazement, it was more "Oh, this isn't that bad. I can do with this for a while." Streaming would inevitably be worse, since you don't have a hard file to work with and sending the file from point A to point B just shears off more and more data as it goes, until you have maybe a few gigabytes left (if that).

The upscaled presentations being superior to streaming - at least in my opinion - also doesn't change the fact that a proper Blu-ray release would blow both out of the water. Considering The Abyss might finally be here in March, it shouldn't take more than ten seconds for that 4K to trounce my DVD, and any streams of the film that exist.

Originally Posted by crutzulee

As for me, with this year's top billed movies, I streamed BARBIE in 4K DV/ATMOS, I watched the UHD of OPPENHEIMER formatted perfectly for my screen with sound upmixed for my 7.4.4 setup with transducers and I have owned MAVERICK for months without watching as I haven't had the time or inclination to watch it yet as a double bill with the original... the former two were fantastic on my setup.

Good to know you had no problems with them. While the discs still give a better performance, that doesn't mean that we want streaming to be less. Since they ruled, good for you.

Originally Posted by crutzulee

As a horror fan, some of my favourite presentations this year have come from SHUDDER, which easily has the worst quality of anything I watch... yet it's still better than any upscaled DVD

Is Shudder worse than Peacock? I've always thought Peacock was the worst, especially since most of their users do the free stuff (again, you get out what you put in).

Originally Posted by crutzulee

Yeah, it definitely wasn't you I was referring to as I would have engaged in that discussion. If memory serves (which it rarely does these days), it would have been in the context of someone so desperate to extoll the virtues of physical media that they were claiming that their player upscaled a 480p DVD so well that it looked better than a 4K stream.

All I can say is it worked for me. When I do watch stuff on streaming, it gets blocky at least once per half-hour, and the three films I watched had these intermittent DNR spells that I knew were not baked into the transfers. I try to use streaming only when I truly don't care about the quality of what I'm watching, which isn't very often.

So if streaming truly is better than a DVD (upscaled or not), I don't know what's weird on my end.

Originally Posted by crutzulee

As we can all agree, garbage in equals garbage out. So while it is theoretically possible for a VHS tape of a movie that you bought at a rental store closeout to look better than a terribly mastered UHD, by and large the latest is generally IMHO the greatest - To that point, by and large, my experience has been that the 1080p streams I have seen generally beat out any of the upscaled DVDs I've had... but I'd have to go on memory as it's been years since I've watched any 480p content.

In terms of physical media, the only times I've ever seen a lower format top the higher one is when something goes seriously wrong with the superior format. The fact that my tapes of T2 and Pirates and LOTR have more film grain and a more realistic appearance than the 4Ks is not a win for VHS, it's a sign that something's seriously wrong with the 4Ks that needs to be fixed.

On the KL forum, there's been talk about For Whom The Bell Tolls, and I made a comment that that VHS tape is one of very few in my collection that in terms of PQ it's actually a step up from the Blu-ray. It's not because the tape is so great, it's because the Blu-ray absolutely sucks.

With streaming, it rarely if ever beats a DVD at native resolution or upscaled resolution, and it absolutely never beats a good Blu-ray and a good 4K.

When Disney was phoning in some of their MCU 4Ks for a while (allegedly this stopped, we'll see), they were within an inch of Disney+, but that's because the 4Ks were weak, the studio was pushing streaming like it was a godsend, and they were intentionally making weak discs to push people to make the jump. Streaming didn't suddenly become so good that it was on par with discs, the discs were just such a massive step down from their full potential that you could've got away with streaming the movies.

[Steedeel]

https://www.slashfilm.com/1374106/ti...ken-hollywood/


More disturbing trends.

[Boccaccio]

Originally Posted by Shane Rollins

Again, if the discs absolutely suck, then they will be in streaming quality. I'd put streaming and DVD at about even. Sometimes streaming beats DVD, sometimes DVD beats streaming. Both are a serious step down from what we consider quality. In fact, the only 4K or Blu-ray I can honestly say "it's about the same as streaming" is Pirates Of The Caribbean, which is considered one of the worst home video releases ever.

There definitely are some bad discs out there. I don't have Pirates of the Caribbean son can't comment on that.
I do have the German BD of A Simple Plan and it just looks like a DVD slapped on a BD disc. Barely any difference, if at all.
If they would've remastered it, it would definitely look better than a stream. Now it's just a mess.

[cgpublic]

Originally Posted by Shane Rollins

With streaming, it rarely if ever beats a DVD at native resolution or upscaled resolution, and it absolutely never beats a good Blu-ray and a good 4K.

There are no absolutes for most aspects of life, and same is true for home media playback.

If you lack a proper setup for streaming, the quality will be lacking; conversely if you lack a proper setup for physical media, especially UHD/HDR, the quality will also be lacking.

On my setup, a quality 4K Dolby Vision/Atmos source will be superior in most aspects of the presentation, but not all, in an objective side-by-side comparison to a Blu-ray on an inferior setup.

I sure we can all agree that if you are watching The Crown on a 2023 LG C3 with a quality 5.1.2 setup streamed with Verizon FiOS GigE connected to a quality router, the quality of the presentation will be superior to the same content streamed to sub-$500 4K TV, with HDR in name-only and TV speakers, streaming with a non-fiber, lower-tier package from a local provider. Only more so if you lack a 4K TV.

It stands to reason that a household with a top-tier setup, as noted above, will prefer a quality stream over a Blu-ray. UHDs? Well, you need a special player, and let's face it, there are playback and player issues. DVDs? You're joking, right?

Because the experience of watching a film or show is much, much more than simply audio and visual quality, which is frequently indistinguishable for most modern content when viewed on same setup, stream vs. disc, for the overwhelming number of consumers.

Which is why streaming, when combined with exclusivity, convenience and cost benefits, is dominant, and why brick and mortar along with rental retailers are getting out of the physical media mass market. We're in the endgame now, and the micro-market is well underway.

The good news is once we unlock future, superior codecs hand in hand with faster infrastructure, even greater gains will be attainable for streaming quality, especially for sports programming. And there will always be the consumer that prefers titles not readily found via streaming, the benefits of ownership and the tactile experience of playing a disc to maintain a micro-market.

But we've all known this for years.

[sapiendut]

Not this again

You can have 300 mbps speed, or 600 mbps, or 1 gbps, or in my case 1.5 gbps connection. The quality of your streaming WILL NOT CHANGE. The bottle neck is in the bitrate of the movies streamed by the streaming company. 20 mbps movies will still be 20 mbps regardless of your internet speed be it 100 mbps or 1.5 gbps.

[cgpublic]

Originally Posted by sapiendut

Not this again

You can have 300 mbps speed, or 600 mbps, or 1 gbps, or in my case 1.5 gbps connection. The quality of your streaming WILL NOT CHANGE. The bottle neck is in the bitrate of the movies streamed by the streaming company. 20 mbps movies will still be 20 mbps regardless of your internet speed be it 100 mbps or 1.5 gbps.

Sure, that's true. But it's also true that fiber optic connections don’t degrade over distance, unlike cable broadband and DSL, allowing for consistent premium data transfer speeds, as they are resistant to electromagnetic interference and have a low rate of bit error.

When combined with a quality microprocessor, e.g., Apple TV, a quality streaming setup is free of many of the issues which once significantly impacted streaming, never mind cable, content.

So, yeah, a disc can deliver a higher bit rate. But does the higher bit rate result in significant difference in what the human eye can capture when watching an image in motion?

It's very easy to test.

Sample a thousand consumers in a blind setting, have them watch two of the same setups, one streaming 4K HDR, the other a 1080p disc, from a typical, real-world distance, and ask them to rate the respective audio and visual.

Then, same as above, this time with a top of the line Sony, LG or Samsung OLED, versus a TCL, Vizio or Hisense LCD, the OLED streaming 4K HDR, the LCDs showing disc-based 1080p.

There's your answer.

[sapiendut]

That irrelevant. If you can already get constant download speed of (say) 100 mbps, nothing above that matters. Constant is constant; continuous; whether it’s copper, fibre, pixie dust. My constant 1.2 gbps (1.5 gbps burst) is not going to look better than someone with a copper constant 100 mbps connection. You are reaching just like alchav.

[cgpublic]

Originally Posted by sapiendut

That irrelevant. If you can already get constant download speed of (say) 100 mbps, nothing above that matters. Constant is constant; continuous; whether it’s copper, fibre, pixie dust. My constant 1.2 gbps (1.5 gbps burst) is not going to look better than someone with a copper constant 100 mbps connection. You are reaching just like alchav.

It's not only relevant, it's all that really matters, even more so as we adopt newer codecs.

What most consumers really desire above all things is a consistent, trouble-free streaming experience. No stuttering and no pixelation. 4K, spatial audio, abundant detail, WCG, HDR?

That's the icing on the cake.

[sapiendut]

Dude. Explain to me how a 20 mbps movie can look better on a 1.5 gbps connection than on a 300 mbps connection (both at CONSTANT speed). Using your logic I should already have better picture quality than disc as disc can only do 100 mbps.

SMH. ��

[alchav21]

Originally Posted by cgpublic

If you lack a proper setup for streaming, the quality will be lacking; conversely if you lack a proper setup for physical media, especially UHD/HDR, the quality will also be lacking.

Originally Posted by sapiendut

You can have 300 mbps speed, or 600 mbps, or 1 gbps, or in my case 1.5 gbps connection. The quality of your streaming WILL NOT CHANGE. The bottle neck is in the bitrate of the movies streamed by the streaming company. 20 mbps movies will still be 20 mbps regardless of your internet speed be it 100 mbps or 1.5 gbps.

Yes the setup and Quality of your Streaming Devise and UHD TV is very important. You're right on a 20Mbps Movie this is all you are going to get, but if your setup is WiFi and not Ethernet you'll probably have some problems. Also IMO if you have 300Mbps down and only 5 or 10Mbps up you might not maintain Solid Communication with the Streaming Server, and get Buffering or those Artifacts that you guys talk about. With Symmetrical Fiber I don't see any of that!

[sapiendut]

As usual, you’re wrong. Constant is constant. If you claim wifi will be losing connection, then that’s not constant is it? Come on. English is my 3rd language and you claim that uou are an engineer. You don’t know the meaning of the word CONSTANT ?

Handshake to the server? Even 1 mbps burst speed up is more than enough.

Case in point? I have both 300 mbps down / 20 mbps up service from a different provider (copper cable) and 1.5 bps down with 500 mbps up from a fibre provider as my main system. Comparing both systems using Netflix, Amazon Prime, Shudder, Britbox, AppleTV+, Disney+. Any difference in quality? Absolutely nada. Even in my fully calibrated home theatre with 113” screen viewed from 9ft away.

[Wendell R. Breland]

Originally Posted by sapiendut

As usual, you’re wrong.

Those two are peas of a pod. Trying to talk technical when they are nothing more than layman. They do provide a good now and then.

[cgpublic]

Originally Posted by sapiendut

Dude. Explain to me how a 20 mbps movie can look better on a 1.5 gbps connection than on a 300 mbps connection (both at CONSTANT speed). Using your logic I should already have better picture quality than disc as disc can only do 100 mbps.

SMH. ��

First, you need to re-read my post and re-consider your singular focus on bitrates as the determining factor, and accept that speed doesn't preclude bit errors and stream reliability for non-fiber sources.

But consumers don't watch bitrates, they watch an image in motion.

Not to put too fine a point on it, how many people are complaining about how the countless, not to mention exclusive, shows on Apple+, Disney+ and Netflix appear in 4K Dolby Vision and Atmos? The Killer and The Crown on Netflix? Stunning. The new Monarch series on Apple+? A knockout. Loki on Disney+? Staggeringly beautiful.

Equal to an 1080p disc-based image? On my setup? Yes. Superior? In certain instances, also yes.

So, I'm not sure what your issue is specific to streaming when it comes to image quality. Do you have a consistent, trouble-free streaming experience with no stuttering and no pixelation? Is your projector capable of 4K, WCG, HDR including Dolby Vision? Is your audio setup capable of spatial audio?

What's the problem?

A UHD disc, if it was available for the above shows, will most likely offer an incrementally superior image and audio quality in a side-by-side comparison, if a disc was available. I have the Loki S1 UHD, and yes, the disc is incrementally superior to the stream.

$50 superior? Not for most people.

[sapiendut]

I’m not talking about other people. I’m talking about me. Even my wife (as recently as watching Killer) said “can’t we not watch Netflix? It’s blurry”. Yeah. All of the ones you mentioned except for Monarch sucks on my fully calibrated screen. While Monarch does not suck, it’s merely acceptable, not great. If you watch the movies on a 65” TV from 6ft away, of course you can’t see the crappiness. And that’s only the video. The sound is yet another story.

My latest test was Saw X in 4K rental from AppleTV vs Kaleidsecape vs disc. Damn the difference is HUGE !!!

You and alchav keeps talking about the future and about “most people” Honestly I don’t give a sh!+ about the future. If the future can give me picture and audio quality good enough to stop me from buying diac and Kaleidescape then so be it. Right here right now, their quality, at best, are merely acceptable.

[bhampton]

The one good thing about streaming is the better shows often get released in even higher quality on disc.

[cgpublic]

Originally Posted by sapiendut

I’m not talking about other people. I’m talking about me. Even my wife (as recently as watching Killer) said “can’t we not watch Netflix? It’s blurry”. Yeah. All of the ones you mentioned except for Monarch sucks on my fully calibrated screen. While Monarch does not suck, it’s merely acceptable, not great. If you watch the movies on a 65” TV from 6ft away, of course you can’t see the crappiness. And that’s only the video. The sound is yet another story.

Blurry? Perhaps you need someone else to come over to give your setup a fresh look with a new set of eyes. Jeez.

To be completely honest, it's very difficult to take anything you state seriously when you make statements such as 'If you watch the movies on a 65” TV from 6ft away, of course you can’t see the crappiness.' What?

The closer you are to the image source, the greater the likelihood to perceive detail and identify flaws in the image, not the other way around. Holy moly.

From far enough away, the human eye perceives the illuminated pixels as a smooth image. As one gets closer, a point occurs where the blocky appearance of individual pixels becomes apparent. The image then loses its smoothness, its perceived quality drops, and the advantage of closer viewing becomes a disadvantage.

While watching a 65" 4K set at 6' is at the lower end of the recommended distance and not one that I would personally recommend, it certainly won't give streaming any benefit.

Originally Posted by sapiendut

My latest test was Saw X in 4K rental from AppleTV vs Kaleidsecape vs disc. Damn the difference is HUGE !!!

What does that goal post have to do with the goal post that DVDs and Blu-ray offers a superior image to a 4K UHD HDR stream with a quality setup? No one is suggesting that a 4K UHD HDR stream is superior to a UHD disc, provided a disc exists, but let's be clear, for many consumers the benefits of streaming including cost outweighs the negatives.

It's not a question of my personal preference, that's just the way it is.

Originally Posted by sapiendut

You and alchav keeps talking about the future and about “most people” Honestly I don’t give a sh!+ about the future. If the future can give me picture and audio quality good enough to stop me from buying diac and Kaleidescape then so be it. Right here right now, their quality, at best, are merely acceptable.

To you, and guess what, nobody else cares.

Why should they? They're not watching Saw X at your house, they're watching it at their house, and if they're not streaming it they're renting it for a few bucks because with all of the content that it being produced, it's unlikely they'll ever watch it again.

Listen, I buy discs for films that are important to me because that's my preference, and on occasion I purchase digital when it's a film that will be shared within my family via Apple to compliment the long list of codes I've collected with MA and Vudu over the past decade, and I watch content including sports programming via streaming with a quality setup when it suits me.

I don't need to dump on streaming or digital to justify my preference for physical media, and likewise I don't believe preferring physical media makes me a superior person, so much so that I would ever disparage a person who for whatever reason prefers to stream or buy digital.

As far as the future, and in The Future of Home Video, while I'm living in the now, I won't deny that I'm very excited about that Apple 8K Vision Pro future that's happening as I post.

Won't be long now.