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

[Wendell R. Breland]

Originally Posted by cheez avenger

I just saw the Kino announcement that they will be releasing To Live and Die In L.A. with a brand new 4K Dolby Vision transfer. Kino obliterating the competition with these new release announcements.

Do you buy direct from KL or another vendor? I just added 3 westerns to cart. About the time I believe purchasing will slowdown I get a reminder like your post and find more titles of interest.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by Wendell R. Breland

Do you buy direct from KL or another vendor? I just added 3 westerns to cart. About the time I believe purchasing will slowdown I get a reminder like your post and find more titles of interest.

Then surely you decided to get Big Ass Spider, too?

There doesn't seem to be much love for my latest movie mention; its perplexing. Maybe another screenshot will help:

[Wendell R. Breland]

Just received my Apple TV 4K (2021 64GB version). Will add to rack soon and see if it plays with my devices.

[Wendell R. Breland]

Originally Posted by Vilya

Then surely you decided to get Big Ass Spider, too?

There doesn't seem to be much love for my latest movie mention; its perplexing.

Showed your previous BAS post with picture to the spouse last night and we both got a big chuckle out of the title and picture.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by Wendell R. Breland

Just received my Apple TV 4K (2021 64GB version). Will add to rack soon and see if it plays with my devices.

Please give us your full review when you can; I am still considering getting one if it will give me better audio results than using my TV's ARC function and its built-in apps.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

I find it incredibly hard to believe that that film is worth 5/10 and Old is only 2/10. That is a laughably bad review to me. So much so, I’m not going to bother with any more reviews from that guy.

But why? You seem to have a high threshold of pain over in the Old (M. Night Shyamalan) thread. His reviews are tame in comparison to the flack you're taking over there.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by Vilya

But why? You seem to have a high threshold of pain over in the Old (M. Night Shyamalan) thread. His reviews are tame in comparison to the flack you're taking over there.

We have a couple of trolls who haven’t seen the film pretending they have. It’s threadcrapping and they have been reported by several members. As of yet, no action.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

We have a couple of trolls who haven’t seen the film pretending they have. It’s threadcrapping and they have been reported by several members. As of yet, no action.

I would suggest that you step away for a bit then. Confrontational threads often get cleaned with a very wide broom sweeping away ALL that are involved.

[cheez avenger]

Originally Posted by Wendell R. Breland

Do you buy direct from KL or another vendor? I just added 3 westerns to cart. About the time I believe purchasing will slowdown I get a reminder like your post and find more titles of interest.

I usually just go with Amazon. They've never let me down with titles on release day either (from KL).

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by cheez avenger

I usually just go with Amazon. They've never let me down with titles on release day either (from KL).

I would recommend keeping an eye on KL's website as they often have good sales and you don't have to spend all that much to get free shipping.

https://www.kinolorber.com/shop

[gotmule]

Originally Posted by Wendell R. Breland

Thanks for that, saved us a wasted rent. At the first sign of tilt, pan, zoom, shake, and rapid cuts gets a movie ejected most of the time.

I may have asked you this in the past, so apologize if that is the case, but how do you feel about the Bourne series? Even though it can be tough to watch at times for me, I still love them all.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by Vilya

I would suggest that you step away for a bit then. Confrontational threads often get cleaned with a very wide broom sweeping away ALL that are involved.

Have done.

[Ender14]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

I find it incredibly hard to believe that that film is worth 5/10 and Old is only 2/10. That is a laughably bad review to me. So much so, I’m not going to bother with any more reviews from that guy.

Yeah, I can't imagine Old being worse than Snake Eyes. Even though I think The Happening is one of the worst movies I've ever seen, I still like M. Night and have faith I will enjoy Old. Some people just like to jump on the hate train.

[Ender14]

Originally Posted by Wendell R. Breland

Thanks for that, saved us a wasted rent. At the first sign of tilt, pan, zoom, shake, and rapid cuts gets a movie ejected most of the time.

I was shocked at how bad some of the fight scenes were. These type of movies live or die based on the fight scenes and while there were a couple of decent ones, for the most part they were just laughably bad.

[Wendell R. Breland]

Originally Posted by gotmule

I may have asked you this in the past, so apologize if that is the case, but how do you feel about the Bourne series? Even though it can be tough to watch at times for me, I still love them all.

IIRC we tried to watch the first two but they were ejected, have not bothered with the other 3. That is my/our take on them. I would wager we have titles in our collection that would make you .

Sometimes I do tolerate bad shake, rattle and roll movies as in The Expendables 2 & 3, , just could not deal with first one. Have Mission Impossible (Cruise) 4, 5, & 6), could not deal with 1, 2, or 3. Casino Royale and Skyfall are two of my favorite Bond movies ever but have passed on the other two Craig Bond movies.

My movie recommendation: view any title for yourself and see if you like it. It is the reason we have paid Netflix all these years to send us disc in the mail, try before you buy.

[bhampton]

Originally Posted by Wendell R. Breland

Just received my Apple TV 4K (2021 64GB version). Will add to rack soon and see if it plays with my devices.

I hope you like it.

[bhampton]

Originally Posted by Vilya

Please give us your full review when you can; I am still considering getting one if it will give me better audio results than using my TV's ARC function and its built-in apps.

While you wait for his here's mine

My review of the ATV4K (2021)

[Show spoiler]
It’s my favorite thing ever.

How useful it is can depend of how much you get into the Apple ecosystem because there are ways it connects to Apple Watch and iPhone and some app purchases will give you the app for iPhone, iPad, Atv and Apple watch. If you detest all things apple it’s not likely to be useful. iPhone can make setting up an ATV a lot faster as it will transfer your network credentials and logins automagically.

The ATV4K is the only thing in my Home Theater that has internet access and it's hardwired. It's my passport or translator if you will to Prime, Disney+, Hulu, ATV+, YouTube, Pluto and my next door neighbor's Netflix. It makes it easy for me to get to everything and the quality is great with an elegant interface.


AV Quality

The ATV4K has fantastic AV quality. It supports Dolby Vision and Dolby ATMOS and high frame rate.

One thing it doesn’t do is passthrough of audio and if that’s an issue in your use case then that could be a deal breaker because while pass through audio might happen it hasn’t yet and I would not count on it.

I don't use a TV so I can't comment on earc. I've read it works well. There's quite a lot of useful info in the official AVS thread here...

https://www.avsforum.com/threads/app...-post.1278071/


Interface

I like the interface. My preference order would be ATV, AndroidTV, Roku. Unlike Roku and androidTV you don’t get Ads on the home screen. I use a projector so there’s no built in apps for the ATV4K to compete with and where I live we get no over the air reception at all so I’m not very into TV Tuners or DVR. The Hulu app does seem to have some DVR functionality and some cable providers have integrated ATV services. I don’t think the ATV system is missing any major steaming services so if you like the interface like I do it can be your middle man keeping all your logins organized. It’s small and cheap enough to take on vacation where you instantly have access to every streaming service you use on any system. I am the only user but my kids could make accounts and tweak the interface and also have the ATV keep track of where they are in TV series and so on.


Remote

I liked the old ATV4K remote and I really like the new one. It now features a mute button and power button both of which I use. it’s small and a bit of boxy. It doesn’t have a backlight and isn’t very programmable. However, you can use third party remotes with the ATV4K.


Siri

If you are going to use a voice control for anything then you have some major options like Alexa, Google Home and Siri. Of these I really prefer the way Siri works and while Alexa can do considerably more I prefer Siri for a number of reasons. Apple claims better security and privacy and stronger encryption is built into the whole Apple ecosystem.



iTunes Movies

To some extent the iTunes store still exists. You can rent and buy movies easily. It’s very common for UHD movies to be available for $4.99 with DV and ATMOS. In my limited experience the iTunes store is much better than UltraViolet, Target Ticket, Best Buy’s Cinema Now, Walmart’s Vudu, Fandango, Kaliedescape and all the others. Family sharing can make iTunes content very compelling. I can share my entire library with my entire family and they take full advantage of this. As my kids leave to college most of our video library remains accessible to them via laptop, phone, or ATV.

One annoyance is if you “own” movies they tend to get replaced on the iTunes store with new versions and using the Siri to find your movie takes you to the options on the store even though the movie is in your library. This is the one thing I wish Apple could fix. For example, I own Shark Night and it’s in my library but if I use the very useful Siri to find Shark Night she will suggest I sign up for Starz to watch it even though it’s available in my library.

Music

One thing I love about ATV4K as music server is I don’t need to turn on my display to use it. I find it easy to tell Siri to play my favorite albums and it just works. Recently most of my favorite music was upgraded to high res (24bit, 48kHz) lossless and many favorite albums upgraded to ATMOS music which in my experience sounds great. Apple music is my source for all music. My CDs have been packed away into storage. (I do have a few Blu Ray audio sourced muti channel high res files but I use Infuse 7 for those) On the ATV there’s music videos and lyrics for music. A music visualizer like iTunes has on a mac would be nice and hopefully will be added someday. This can be done if you mirror your mac screen but I haven't tried that.

Homekit

I like Homekit and any smart home stuff I do is based on Homekit. I tell Siri to turn on and off my projector and I also use it for lights around the house and garage doors. I don’t currently have a video doorbell but if you do have and use networked cameras you can monitor them on the ATV4K. I have an original homepod and my daughter has the homepod mini and these are useful as smart speakers and home intercom. The new ATV4K supports Thread and serves as a Homekit hub.

Infuse

Infuse is my favorite app and it's what I use to play content from my own home networked servers. It can function like a kaliedescape type of system. Basically a media server. I have voice control access to my own home video server which currently is 40TB and has over 900 movies. There's no need for Plex or Emby as it can see the network shares and play directly from them. It can also connect to those types of servers if you do use them. It doesn't support ATMOS passthrough but it will play ATMOS tracks by converting to 7.1 PCM and I think the results are lovely.

Photos

Again this is more useful if you are also using other apple products but if you are you can have access to your photos, home movies, and slideshows and photos can be used for the screensaver.

Arcade

ATV4K has games on the App store and also Apple Arcade. It supports PS4, PS5, Xbox controllers so that makes it easy to test it out. It’s not comparable to PlayStation or Xbox in terms of hardware or software but if you play games on IOS or iPad then you know what to expect.

Fitness

I don’t use my ATV4K for fitness much but I have done a couple of workouts. There are workouts for treadmill, dance, yoga, high Intensity, strength training. If you use an Apple Watch it tracks your progress on the screen during a workout. It works well when and if you want that functionality. Most of my daily exercise comes from going for a walk and doing chores but in the winter I may use the fitness app occasionally if I haven't met my daily goals.

3D

Like most devices, 3D playback on the ATV4K is possible but not optimal. There are many ways to enjoy 3D video using the ATV4K. Vudu 3D movies work (75 movies available) and any old Anaglyph content you find will work as well as anything encoded as SBS or TAB. I have a single 3D Movie in Vudu and it plays perfectly. I've also converted some 3DBD and encoded them as SBS files and they also play perfectly. I can't try full res SBS even though the ATV would likely be able to play it because my projector doesn't do 3D and 4K at the same time. To get to 3D options on my Projector I have to set the output to 1080p.

Updates

TVOS gets many updates and it's possible to feedback feature requests to Apple. Movies purchased on iTunes sometimes get updated automatically with better audio and or video tracks. Apple Music recently got a massive upgrade all of which was no additional charge. This can be seen as good or bad because the updates are generally not optional.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by bhampton

While you wait for his here's mine

My review of the ATV4K (2021)

[Show spoiler]
It’s my favorite thing ever.

How useful it is can depend of how much you get into the Apple ecosystem because there are ways it connects to Apple Watch and iPhone and some app purchases will give you the app for iPhone, iPad, Atv and Apple watch. If you detest all things apple it’s not likely to be useful. iPhone can make setting up an ATV a lot faster as it will transfer your network credentials and logins automagically.

The ATV4K is the only thing in my Home Theater that has internet access and it's hardwired. It's my passport or translator if you will to Prime, Disney+, Hulu, ATV+, YouTube, Pluto and my next door neighbor's Netflix. It makes it easy for me to get to everything and the quality is great with an elegant interface.


AV Quality

The ATV4K has fantastic AV quality. It supports Dolby Vision and Dolby ATMOS and high frame rate.

One thing it doesn’t do is passthrough of audio and if that’s an issue in your use case then that could be a deal breaker because while pass through audio might happen it hasn’t yet and I would not count on it.

I don't use a TV so I can't comment on earc. I've read it works well. There's quite a lot of useful info in the official AVS thread here...

https://www.avsforum.com/threads/app...-post.1278071/


Interface

I like the interface. Unlike Roku you don’t get Ads on the home screen. I use a projector so there’s no built in apps for the ATV4K to compete with and where I live we get no over the air reception at all so I’m not very into TV Tuners or DVR. The Hulu app does seem to have some DVR functionality and some cable providers have integrated ATV services. I don’t think the ATV system is missing any major steaming services so if you like the interface like I do it can be your middle man keeping all your logins organized. It’s small and cheap enough to take on vacation where you instantly have access to every streaming service you use on any system. I am the only user but my kids could make accounts and tweak the interface and also have the ATV keep track of where they are in TV series and so on.


Remote

I liked the old ATV4K remote and I really like the new one. It now features a mute button and power button both of which I use. it’s small and a bit of boxy. It doesn’t have a backlight and isn’t very programmable. However, you can use third party remotes with the ATV4K.


Siri

If you are going to use a voice control for anything then you have some major options like Alexa, Google Home and Siri. Of these I really prefer the way Siri works and while Alexa can do considerably more I prefer Siri for a number of reasons. Apple claims better security and privacy and stronger encryption is built into the whole Apple ecosystem.



iTunes Movies

To some extent the iTunes store still exists. You can rent and buy movies easily. It’s very common for UHD movies to be available for $4.99 with DV and ATMOS. In my limited experience the iTunes store is much better than UltraViolet, Target Ticket, Best Buy’s Cinema Now, Walmart’s Vudu, Fandango, Kaliedescape and all the others. Family sharing can make iTunes content very compelling. I can share my entire library with my entire family and they take full advantage of this. As my kids leave to college most of our video library remains accessible to them via laptop, phone, or ATV.

One annoyance is if you “own” movies they tend to get replaced on the iTunes store with new versions and using the Siri to find your movie takes you to the options on the store even though the movie is in your library. This is the one thing I wish Apple could fix. For example, I own Shark Night and it’s in my library but if I use the very useful Siri to find Shark Night she will suggest I sign up for Starz to watch it even though it’s available in my library.

Music

One thing I love about ATV4K as music server is I don’t need to turn on my display to use it. I find it easy to tell Siri to play my favorite albums and it just works. Recently most of my favorite music was upgraded to high res (24bit, 48kHz) lossless and many favorite albums upgraded to ATMOS music which in my experience sounds great. Apple music is my source for all music. My CDs have been packed away into storage. (I do have a few Blu Ray audio sourced muti channel high res files but I use Infuse 7 for those) On the ATV there’s music videos and lyrics for music. A music visualizer like iTunes has on a mac would be nice and hopefully will be added someday. This can be done if you mirror your mac screen but I haven't tried that.

Homekit

I like Homekit and any smart home stuff I do is based on Homekit. I tell Siri to turn on and off my projector and I also use it for lights around the house and garage doors. I don’t currently have a video doorbell but if you do have and use networked cameras you can monitor them on the ATV4K. I have an original homepod and my daughter has the homepod mini and these are useful as smart speakers and home intercom. The new ATV4K supports Thread and serves as a Homekit hub.

Infuse

Infuse is my favorite app and it's what I use to play content from my own home networked servers. It can function like a kaliedescape type of system. Basically a media server. I have voice control access to my own home video server which currently is 40TB and has over 900 movies. There's no need for Plex or Emby as it can see the network shares and play directly from them. It can also connect to those types of servers if you do use them. It doesn't support ATMOS passthrough but it will play ATMOS tracks by converting to 7.1 PCM and I think the results are lovely.

Photos

Again this is more useful if you are also using other apple products but if you are you can have access to your photos, home movies, and slideshows and photos can be used for the screensaver.

Arcade

ATV4K has games on the App store and also Apple Arcade. It supports PS4, PS5, Xbox controllers so that makes it easy to test it out. It’s not comparable to PlayStation or Xbox in terms of hardware or software but if you play games on IOS or iPad then you know what to expect.

Fitness

I don’t use my ATV4K for fitness much but I have done a couple of workouts. There are workouts for treadmill, dance, yoga, high Intensity, strength training. If you use an Apple Watch it tracks your progress on the screen during a workout. It works well when and if you want that functionality. Most of my daily exercise comes from going for a walk and doing chores but in the winter I may use the fitness app occasionally if I haven't met my daily goals.

3D

Like most devices, 3D playback on the ATV4K is possible but not optimal. There are many ways to enjoy 3D video using the ATV4K. Vudu 3D movies work (75 movies available) and any old Anaglyph content you find will work as well as anything encoded as SBD, TAB. I have a single 3D Movie on Vudu because it redeemed also unlocking the 3D version and it plays perfectly. I've also converted some 3DBD and encoded them as SBS files and they also play perfectly. I can't try full res SBS even though the ATV would likely be able to play it because my projector doesn't do 3D and 4K at the same time. To get to 3D options on my Projector I have to set the output to 1080p.

Thank you for the very thorough review! If I get this it would be my first and only Apple anything. It was my plan to connect it directly to my AVR in order to be able to get Atmos audio with streamed content. My TV only supports ARC.

It looks like it does a helluva a lot more than I had imagined. All of my CDs are ripped to my computer's hard drive along with my pictures and a few videos. Another way to access them would be nice.

Thanks again for the big write-up; hopefully you were able to dictate all of that to Siri.

[gotmule]

Hey Steedeel. You made a comment a few months ago about “Only thing I need is the smell of popcorn” when looking at my gallery. That was an unintended nudge that planted a seed. I just put my machine together and will be firing it up this afternoon. I have the Flavocal and coconut oil all set to go. Machine looks great and has added another element to the basement. You may have also caused me to put on a few lbs in the process.

http://www.greatnorthernpopcorn.com/...chine-8-ounce/

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by gotmule

Hey Steedeel. You made a comment a few months ago about “Only thing I need is the smell of popcorn” when looking at my gallery. That was an unintended nudge that planted a seed. I just put my machine together and will be firing it up this afternoon. I have the Flavocal and coconut oil all set to go. Machine looks great and has added another element to the basement. You may have also caused me to put on a few lbs in the process.

http://www.greatnorthernpopcorn.com/...chine-8-ounce/

A tasty addition to your already impressive home theater, but it does look hard to clean. Does it come with a theater employee to do that for you?

I need to put on several pounds; I've only gained back 3. I'll be right over to be both entertained and fattened up.