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

[bhampton]

As long as it remains the future and we never actually get there.

My kids have online school 3 days a week and I love not using the bandwidth they need.

[Wendell R. Breland]

Originally Posted by alchav21

Here is an Article from Dennis Burger Home Theater last Dec 2019:

Like you, he does not know what he is talking about. Netflix and Roku is a bad combo, does not output original frame rate and no Dolby Atmos.

I posted this several times but if anyone ones to look into video data reduction (compression) then I would start by with the x265 project.

If bit rates did not matter then the Sony F65 would not use 1TB per hour.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by alchav21

You guys keep going back to the same argument, "More Bits is More Better," but it's not about Bits anymore. Here is an Article from Dennis Burger Home Theater last Dec 2019:

"So, don't yell at Andrew when he mentions using Vudu to review a TV. Don't yell at Jerry when he tells you he sold his Oppo (especially when there are so many other valid things to yell at him about). And don't yell at me when I tell you that discs, as good as they've been to this hobby for decades, are teetering right on the edge of being a relic of the past, or, at best, a collector's item. We're not trying to insult anyone. We're not "settling for good enough." We're simply trying to make the future a bit less of a bitter pill to swallow for those of you in the back row who hold up your "Streaming Sux!" signs every time we mention Netflix in passing. We're trying to keep you in this hobby and turn you onto some of the amazing home cinema demo material you're refusing to embrace.

Streaming is the future of home cinema, full stop. Hell, in many ways it's already the glorious now of home cinema. All we ask is that if you rage against it, at least use valid arguments. And sorry to say, but "less bits" is not a valid argument anymore."

https://hometheaterreview.com/home-c...future-is-now/

Nothing that you posted refutes the importance of bitrates when encoding video and sound. With any codec used, the more compression that is used the more compression artifacts that result. When content is compressed as heavily as streaming compresses it, it comes at the expense of quality.

Streaming's compression artifacts become even more apparent as your screen size increases. On my 60" TV the limitations of streaming are noticeable. On my 85" TV they are obvious.

At one time even you recognized the importance of bitrates:

Originally Posted by alchav21

It's a known fact that BitRate is the controlling factor for Streaming Video Quality.

Almost four years later and you know less now than you did then.

[bhampton]

Why do people not want the highest quality media?


This I don’t understand. I take the best I can get.

I guess it’s cheap and that’s the draw.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by bhampton

Why do people not want the highest quality media?


This I don’t understand.

I take the best I can get.

Same here. I guess there are just not enough film lovers out there.

[Vilya]

I watched blu-rays until 1 AM last night, but then I went and played video games until 4 AM.

Ugh.

Expect me to be moderately incoherent until my intravenous course of caffeine is completed.

[Wendell R. Breland]

Originally Posted by bhampton

Why do people not want the highest quality media?

From my experience, jealously! Replace Blu-ray with LaserDisc, streaming with VCR's (and premium pay TV) and the argument is the same as the ones from yesteryear.

Always found it weird that people that could not afford, see, hear, taste, etc. the better things were so jealous of the ones that could.

[Lee A Stewart]

Originally Posted by bhampton

Why do people not want the highest quality media?


This I don’t understand. I take the best I can get.

I guess it’s cheap and that’s the draw.

What is the cost of having the highest quality media?

[Wendell R. Breland]

From the Apple Compressor Guide:

The number of bits per second that makes up a digital video or audio signal. The higher you set the bit rate, the better the quality of the output file. However, higher bit rates require larger file sizes.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by bhampton

Why do people not want the highest quality media?


This I don’t understand. I take the best I can get.

I guess it’s cheap and that’s the draw.

Sometimes what a person wants is beyond what they can afford. Not everyone calls for a price quote on The Wall TV with a straight face.

Some people do appreciate the higher quality, but do not like the aesthetics of owning a large collection of discs. Even if they have plenty of room, some people don't like the look of shelf after shelf filled with discs. While that is an alien concept to me, it is one grasped by others.
When people see my collection for the first time, you should see the looks that they give me!

Still others do not like the aesthetics of owning a home theater and all of the gear that that entails. A room full of speakers and subwoofers (looking at you gotmule ) is another turn-off for some. My sister, who could buy and sell me many times over, often reminds me of how ugly my home theater looks to her. To her credit, she only buys content on disc, but home theaters are an eyesore to her.

Some people have spouses that veto any attempt to turn their home into a cinema and video store.

Some people just don't care enough to spend what we are willing to spend to buy content, either on disc or digitally. The purchasing of content has been declining every year since 2011 as people increasingly rely upon services that provide access to lots of stuff for a recurring flat fee, be that service an SVOD or traditional Pay TV or both.

This hobby of ours gets expensive fast and some people have other priorities and/or hobbies that interest them far more than this one.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by Lee A Stewart

What is the cost of having the highest quality media?

For me, it is running about $500 per month on average.

And yes, I know how I am.

[stonesfan129]

iTunes does not have LOSSLESS Dolby Atmos (the one that is an extension of Dolby TrueHD). It has Dolby Digital Plus with Atmos metadata added in so basically just slightly better/different than Dolby Digital EX.

[JohnAV]

Originally Posted by stonesfan129

iTunes does not have LOSSLESS Dolby Atmos (the one that is an extension of Dolby TrueHD). It has Dolby Digital Plus with Atmos metadata added in so basically just slightly better/different than Dolby Digital EX.

It should be noted that you'd get Atmos in association with multichannel PCM if using the ATV due to it relying upon Dolby MAT:

Dolby Atmos in Dolby MAT

The Dolby Metadata-enhanced Audio Transmission (Dolby MAT) encoder resides in a Blu-ray player to pack the variable bit-rate Dolby TrueHD bitstreams for transmission over the fixed bit-rate HDMI connections. A MAT decoder is subsequently employed in an AVR to unpack the Dolby TrueHD bitstreams. With the introduction of Dolby Atmos, we have expanded this technology to support encoding of Dolby Atmos content as lossless pulse-code modulation (PCM) audio.

A key benefit of Dolby MAT 2.0 is that Dolby Atmos object-based audio can be live encoded and transmitted from a source device with limited latency and processing complexity. Among the possible sources are broadcast set-top boxes, PCs, and game consoles. The Dolby MAT 2.0 decoder in an AVR outputs the object-based audio and its metadata for further processing. The Dolby MAT 2.0 container is scalable and leverages the full potential of the HDMI audio pipeline.

see https://www.dolby.com/about/support/...speaker-setup/

Even though Apple states they support Dolby Digital Plus with both the 4th and 5th ATV generations, they are incapable of sending a DD+ stream out of HDMI port to your AVR, it is Dolby MAT2.0 that contains the Atmos metadata. This gives some background why the highest quality is PCM with the audio settings for the APPLE TV HD and 4K.

[Vilya]

My copy of 12 Monkeys The Complete Series blu-ray arrived from Amazon today with a broken case. Don'tcha just loving opening a new blu-ray and to have pieces of blue plastic fall out? The morons in Amazon's warehouses shipped this 8 disc set in a flimsy paper envelope.

Amazon is sending me a replacement, which they will almost certainly ship in another flimsy paper envelope; it's like playing the lottery with them. If your item arrives intact, yay!; you won!

They also gave me a $15 credit. Apparently, I am a more effective complainer when I am tired and cranky.

[PenguinInfinity]

Originally Posted by Vilya

My copy of 12 Monkeys The Complete Series blu-ray arrived from Amazon today with a broken case. Don'tcha just loving opening a new blu-ray and to have pieces of blue plastic fall out? The morons in Amazon's warehouses shipped this 8 disc set in a flimsy paper envelope.

Amazon is sending me a replacement, which they will almost certainly ship in another flimsy paper envelope; it's like playing the lottery with them. If your item arrives intact, yay!; you won!

They also gave me a $15 credit. Apparently, I am a more effective complainer when I am tired and cranky.

That sounds like a great deal, you got a ~34% refund just because the case was broken. As long as the discs aren't damaged a broken case wouldn't even bother me.

[Cevolution]

There is some truth in the statement that a higher bitrate doesn't necessarily mean higher/better quality.

I own 2-5 versions from multiple countries of plenty of titles on Blu-ray disc (I have a good 500 duplicates that aren't listed in my collection on this site), that share the same master, but have a different encode, and the quality varies between them... (The same codec was used for some of them, for instance AVC, and there are also some where VC-1 encodes are superior to AVC encodes) some have a lower bitrate, but the PQ is superior to another version with a video higher bitrate.

I noticed that someone said a little bit up the page that, "whatever the best quality disc that's available is what my money will be spent on" - I've looked at that persons collection, and that is not accurate...There is a UHD version, or an international standard Blu-ray counterpart available with superior PQ for some of the titles.

I mentioned in this thread not too long ago about owning 2 versions of Midsommar on standard Blu-ray, the U.S. theatrical cut disc as well as the Australian director's cut disc, and there being a difference in quality between them... The U.S. theatrical cut disc has a higher video bitrate than the Australian director's disc, and is the shorter cut by approximately 30 minutes (the Australian version is almost 3 hours long), however it's vastly inferior to the Australian disc. Since last mentioning it, I have also acquired the UK version (2 or 3 members that post in this thread have in their collections, but couldn't really tell me anything about the quality of it), so that I could compare it:

IMG20200909105137.jpg

How many of you actually go to this extent? Because unless you do, you are just really making generalised statements about video quality, that are certainly not facts.Titles need to be evaluated on a case by case basis, streaming or disc.

[JohnAV]

Originally Posted by alchav21

https://hometheaterreview.com/home-c...future-is-now/

Having a sizable collection of media to compare, I can honestly state I haven't found any 4K streaming examples that equal the playback quality of well mastered 2K DI and 4K DI physical media release's of the same title. I regularly did this to compare Oppo players performance compared to other players during the time they were active.

Yes used both Roku and Apple TV set-top boxes was as well multiple 4K TVs brands using their build in streaming apps compared to multiple connected UHD BD players.

I still use streaming to look at content not available on media, as well as regularly compare A/B the differences between streaming and media of titles I own.

I keep trying to remind you there is no streaming vs physical media war here, but you continue to try tell us that we all need to lower our standards to accommodate your view of things.

Perhaps you should invest in a UHD BD player if you want to view current titles in the best possibly way. Otherwise without being able to compare, everything you inject here is not of your own expertise really such as that misguided article.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by PenguinInfinity

That sounds like a great deal, you got a ~34% refund just because the case was broken. As long as the discs aren't damaged a broken case wouldn't even bother me.

The discs appear to be fine, but I do not accept broken cases. The hub that holds disc #1 was damaged and it barely holds the disc in place.

If it was just cosmetic damage, I would be more forgiving, but I consider this to be more serious as it will not hold a disc securely thereby making it prone to damage.

I expected the replacement when I called Amazon; the $15 credit was a nice surprise. Maybe they gave me the credit because I spend so much with them and have done so for 16 years?

[TrackZ]

I think many folks think they see/hear a lot more difference from physical to iTunes than actually exists. Streaming quality is less, yes, but it's not quite as far behind as folks often claim. Also keep in mind that all streaming sources are not the same.

That said, supplement your iTunes with Kaleidescape and you can go all digital, have higher quality when you want it, and convenience. There's a new published review on Kaleidescape in Sound & Vision if you're interested.

https://www.soundandvision.com/conte...-player-review

[bhampton]

Originally Posted by Cevolution

There is some truth in the statement that a higher bitrate doesn't necessarily mean higher/better quality.

I own 2-5 versions from multiple countries of plenty of titles on Blu-ray disc (I have a good 500 duplicates that aren't listed in my collection on this site), that share the same master, but have a different encode, and the quality varies between them... (The same codec was used for some of them, for instance AVC, and there are also some where VC-1 encodes are superior to AVC encodes) some have a lower bitrate, but the PQ is superior to another version with a video higher bitrate.

I noticed that someone said a little bit up the page that, "whatever the best quality disc that's available is what my money will be spent on" - I've looked at that persons collection, and that is not accurate...There is a UHD version, or an international standard Blu-ray counterpart available with superior PQ for some of the titles.

I mentioned in this thread not too long ago about owning 2 versions of Midsommar on standard Blu-ray, the U.S. theatrical cut disc as well as the Australian director's cut disc, and there being a difference in quality between them... The U.S. theatrical cut disc has a higher video bitrate than the Australian director's disc, and is the shorter cut by approximately 30 minutes (the Australian version is almost 3 hours long), however it's vastly inferior to the Australian disc. Since last mentioning it, I have also acquired the UK version (2 or 3 members that post in this thread have in their collections, but couldn't really tell me anything about the quality of it), so that I could compare it:

Attachment 246978

How many of you actually go to this extent? Because unless you do, you are just really making generalised statements about video quality, that are certainly not facts.Titles need to be evaluated on a case by case basis, streaming or disc.

Ok.

I think you’re reading too much into that persons collection. For example, maybe some of the titles were free or available before a better version was released.

My Blu Ray and DVD’s came often from closing video stores like Hollywood video and blockbuster and some titles were under a buck. Basically there’s a story behind every purchase and I will even pick something up I may not like if I think someone else may like it. I’ve got a few movies I can NEVER find myself in the mood to watch but maybe some day.

I think what that person meant is he will try to buy the best version from what is available. That doesn’t mean the whole collection is the best version available now.