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

[bruceames]

Originally Posted by Wendell R. Breland

4K MA downloads, forget bout it. Have you looked into what it takes to play a UHD BD via a PC? It can be done but ONLY after using very specific hardware, software and jumping through many hoops. And it is not cheap .

I wonder if Sony is still selling 4K downloads for the X10 from the Sony Unlimited site. Still have the player but haven't had it connected in over a year. I assume the downloads and the player will never have HDR/WCG/10 bit, just 4k resolution.

[veritas]

Originally Posted by Groot

Okay. But still, isn't downloading/making backups just a viable option for all of this? If I can buy a movie on VUDU and download the HDX, it's never going anywhere? Am I missing something with this? I'm not even being a smarta** I'm genuinely curious why you have an issue with/don't find this to be a viable option.

The backups only work on the computers associated with the account. At least some of them also require periodic server checks or they brick themselves (so a backup is pointless without the provider server anyway). Since hard drives fail every few years and computers get replaced a back up of a digital file is pretty worthless unless you also remove the drm and maintain at least 2 separate backups of all your movies. You would also need to change the file type since I'm assuming the vudu app will break eventually without support and you will need to get the movie into a more universal media player/media type.

It would probably be easier to take your physical media and make a digital back up. Then you could use a hevc so the files would take less hard drive space while also looking less compressed. Breaking the drm is also probably considerably easier on dvd's or blu rays or even iTunes then the less used vudu.

Anyway long story short lots of hurdles to backing up digital less hurdles to backing up physical and less overall need. You could probably back up digital but its like learning to play an instrument, creating a band and recreating a song that already exists because you did not want to buy the cd. You could do it but their are easier cheaper ways.

[TheLibrarian]

Originally Posted by dublinbluray108

From my own experience; whenever a big kids movie gets released in my own country. There are usually tons of kids watching the movie in the cinema with either their own families or school classmates alongside them. It's very encouraging to see this happen quite frequently from Ireland; an seemingly advanced country to little to no access to high speed fibre broadband outside of urban areas.

To give you one example; the last kids movie that I watched in the cinema with my mum from last year was Paddington 2. The amount of kids along with their families watching it with us was absolutely incredible. The place was packed out with all of the seats being filled up just to see that movie. I have observed this phenomenon on numerous occasions when watching other kids movies in the cinema over the years whether it is screenings for The Muppet Movies, Cars, The Lego Movie, Ice Age, Epic you name it. This trend may or may not equal cinema screenings of kids movies elsewhere in the world. But when a cinema trend like kids movies get popular anywhere; the studios & cinema chains will experience huge audiences & box office takings from that part of the audience coming in their direction.

If kids like their favourite movie so much here in Ireland; their parents will either buy the physical copy of the movie or see it on one of the Sky Movies Channels for them to watch on the big screen at home. I don't think that watching a movie as a stream or a download would be a very big trend in Ireland. It is more of a niche trend among people living in the country.

I live in Ireland too, and I agree, you can always find deals on children's movies in places like Penny's, Eason and Tesco and there is much more incentive for parents to buy them for their kids than put on Sky Movies and watch it with them at home, much less giving them a digital code (which I can't see any kid being pleased with if given as a present).

[Wendell R. Breland]

Originally Posted by bruceames

I wonder if Sony is still selling 4K downloads for the X10 from the Sony Unlimited site. Still have the player but haven't had it connected in over a year. I assume the downloads and the player will never have HDR/WCG/10 bit, just 4k resolution.

Sony shut down the servers in early December 2017. I sold my X10 awhile back for about 1/4 of what I paid for it and was glad to get that much back. Have the Oppo 203 for disc and Sony X800 for streaming (and sometimes disc).

[Groot]

Originally Posted by Wendell R. Breland

The last time I looked into this it could be done using ONLY a PC and you had to use their app for playback (DRM). UV made a lot of claims and promises about hardware support that was never fulfilled. Now most studios seem to be abandoning UV and singed up with Disney's Movies Anywhere. Let me know when you can download one of these and play it on dedicated hardware, i.e., a Blu-ray player with app.

4K MA downloads, forget bout it. Have you looked into what it takes to play a UHD BD via a PC? It can be done but ONLY after using very specific hardware, software and jumping through many hoops. And it is not cheap .

You can download DMA on iTunes and play them on anything that supports iTunes or burn them to a disc. It's not that hard to strip files of their DRM using things like TuneKit if you're concerned about contacting a server to verify the file years from now.

It is not this complicated. It used to be "super" hard to play a blu-ray too. It's pretty obvious why there isn't as many PC's supporting these drives right now....hardly anyone wants them. Most new Macs don't even have drives, because of digital. You have to buy external's anyway of any type, which aren't that expensive. So I'm not getting your point with this either.

[bruceames]

Originally Posted by Wendell R. Breland

Sony shut down the servers in early December 2017. I sold my X10 awhile back for about 1/4 of what I paid for it and was glad to get that much back. Have the Oppo 203 for disc and Sony X800 for streaming (and sometimes disc).

Interesting. I wonder if I can still play my downloaded movies on it?

[alchav21]

Originally Posted by bruceames

I wonder if Sony is still selling 4K downloads for the X10 from the Sony Unlimited site. Still have the player but haven't had it connected in over a year. I assume the downloads and the player will never have HDR/WCG/10 bit, just 4k resolution.

Originally Posted by Wendell R. Breland

Sony shut down the servers in early December 2017. I sold my X10 awhile back for about 1/4 of what I paid for it and was glad to get that much back. Have the Oppo 203 for disc and Sony X800 for streaming (and sometimes disc).

Have you guys tried the Sony Ultra Streaming, it's Fantastic all their Movies are 4K+HDR. You guys should try it.

[Vilya]

Sony Ultra sucks:

""Requirements: Select Sony Bravia 4K Ultra HD TVs."

"Cost: $30 per movie purchase, rentals are $8 for 48 hours when available."

"...selections are effectively limited to Sony Pictures movies and TV shows."

"But frankly, you’ll be hard-pressed to find virtually anyone using Ultra, as its many restrictions make it one of the least enticing services on the list."

https://www.digitaltrends.com/home-t...k-uhd-content/

We have already covered this subject before; are you back to repeating yourself again?

You are probably the only person on this thread that likes this lame, selection starved, overpriced service. Any other service you care to name is likely far better than Sony Ultra.

[alchav21]

Originally Posted by Vilya

Sony Ultra sucks:

""Requirements: Select Sony Bravia 4K Ultra HD TVs."

"Cost: $30 per movie purchase, rentals are $8 for 48 hours when available."

"...selections are effectively limited to Sony Pictures movies and TV shows."

"But frankly, you’ll be hard-pressed to find virtually anyone using Ultra, as its many restrictions make it one of the least enticing services on the list."

We have already covered this subject before; are you back to repeating yourself again?

You are probably the only person on this thread that likes this lame, selection starved, overpriced service. Any other service you care to name is likely far better than Sony Ultra.

Well Sony has some competitive prices, not all their Movies are full price, your information is old. Your Movie Collection comes over, and everything is very accessible. You do need a Sony UHD TV, but then they are rated up there with some of the best on the Market. I can access all the MA/UV Sites, and all have my Movie Collection. One of the only ones I don't access is iTunes, but then I don't have any of their problems.

[alchav21]

Well the high end Providers have changed things with the latest H.265 Codec and Adaptive Streaming. Yes, the max capacity on a BD is 50Gbs, but the max Bandwidth is 40Mbps on a BD Player. The average Bitrate is 20Mbps on a BD, so achieving BD Quality is not a big stretch for any High End Provider. I'm not talking about Downloads they are still very highly compressed compared to Streaming. You have to do some comparison viewing, with Bandwidths in the 50+Mbps range. Try the Providers that offer 4K, but for the trial test HD 1080P same as BD. In order to get better performance than Streaming you have to get a 4K UHD Player, their max Bandwidth is 128Mbps.

[bruceames]

I have a Sony display and have access to Ultra, but I don't use it. I only checked it out a few times to compare the UHD disc to the digital HDR version that came with the disc. Since the Sony movies are the only ones I can compare fairly because I can't get HDR on VUDU, it was worth the time to compare. The disc version looked quite a bit better on the few movies I tried. But that was quite a while ago. I have more Sony codes I can link to revisit the comparisons later, but I don't expect a different result. I'm sure the prevailing streaming bitrates for UHD are still in the low 20's at best. It's not really a fair comparison to disc bit rates that average in the 60's and peak well over 100 mbps.

My question regarding access to the Sony 4k downloads was mainly out of curiosity. I only have 3-4 movies downloaded, but since I paid for them, I would expect to still be able to access them. They're not exactly crap movies (It Happened One Night, Lawrence of Arabia, Bridge on the River Kwai and Amazing Spider-Man 2) and they were $30 a pop.

[Groot]

Someone warn Steeldeel, Jurassic World put out a short "choose your own adventure" LEGO tie-in:

https://jurassicoutpost.com/lego-rel...ld-short-film/

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by alchav21

your information is old.

The article I linked to was dated Dec. 12, 2017. It is not "old", but your continued praise for Sony Ultra is most definitely so.

The article is still accurate.

[Dynamo of Eternia]

Originally Posted by Vilya

The article I linked to was dated Dec. 12, 2017. It is not "old", but your continued praise for Sony Ultra is most definitely so.

The article is still accurate.

Yeah, but it's not any where near as recent as when he talked to some guy at Walmart this past weekend to get their input on the matter.

[alchav21]

Originally Posted by Vilya

The article I linked to was dated Dec. 12, 2017. It is not "old", but your continued praise for Sony Ultra is most definitely so.

The article is still accurate.

Originally Posted by Dynamo of Eternia

Yeah, but it's not any where near as recent as when he talked to some guy at Walmart this past weekend to get their input on the matter.

My point is, you don't have to buy from MA/UV Providers, you can still shop for the best prices. Sony is Linked to my Collection, so I can watch all my Movies on the Provider of choice. So if I buy a 4K Combo Pack or a 4K Code from here or a MA/UV Store, I can Redeem and watch it on Sony or any other MA/UV Provider. I'm up to around 600, and haven't lost any of my Movies. I watch all my 4K Movies on Sony Ultra, but I also use MA and Vudu to watch my HD Movies.

[Wendell R. Breland]

Originally Posted by Groot

You can download DMA on iTunes and play them on anything that supports iTunes or burn them to a disc.

This may come as supprise to you but many of us do not do the little i .

[Wendell R. Breland]

Originally Posted by bruceames

Interesting. I wonder if I can still play my downloaded movies on it?

Good question, one would hope so. I still have my JVC D-Theater machine and five movies that have not made it to Blu-ray. Still view True Lies on it from time to time.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by Groot

Someone warn Steeldeel, Jurassic World put out a short "choose your own adventure" LEGO tie-in:

https://jurassicoutpost.com/lego-rel...ld-short-film/

Very funny!

Seriously though, I’m amazed some of you guys can’t see what I am talking about. Look at the DisneyLife streaming service we have in the U.K. it is custom built for tablets and phones with tv streaming being an afterthought in my opinion. Books and games as well as music is also available but ONLY for phones, computers and tablets.

Now let’s look at DC’s upcoming streaming service. It is being hyped as interactive and will also come with digital comics. In other words, custom built for phones and tablets.

It’s not a stretch that we will see more interactive features with these streaming services but even more alarming is the mobile first focus that could squeeze out the appeal of watching stuff on the big screen for younger generations (and us lot eventually)
Those two services are huge potentially (Disney's Huge new streaming service will probably also include those features currently available on Disney Life)

My point is, these services, seem to me to be promoting smartphones to get the best out of the service. Worrying stuff.

[veritas]

Honestly I do think interactive is the future, if technology ever gets to the point where we have an ai that can do it. Change that actors hair color, turn this book into a movie, make a better 3d conversion on the fly then the studios can do now etc. Interactive does have a lot to offer like 50 to 100 years from now but when it truly takes off it will probably be an ai remaking a movie off somebodies revised script not a film shot 50 different ways with tons of choose your path breaks.


Hell I would pay a few 100 dollars just for a computer program that could take a book, read it and reproduce a proper high production quality audio book (with good distinct voices and optional sound effects where appropriate). It would need some interactive features perhaps so i could change the voice for each character and the narrator but something like that would be amazingly useful for book lovers.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by veritas

Honestly I do think interactive is the future, if technology ever gets to the point where we have an ai that can do it. Change that actors hair color, turn this book into a movie, make a better 3d conversion on the fly then the studios can do now etc. Interactive does have a lot to offer like 50 to 100 years from now but when it truly takes off it will probably be an ai remaking a movie off somebodies revised script not a film shot 50 different ways with tons of choose your path breaks.

What’s your take on my other point? Mobile first streaming services that seem to prioritize mobile use? Those two are huge services that (in my opinion) do just that. Doesn’t it concern ANYONE here that future film and tv services seem to be built from the ground up for smartphones and tablets with comicss etc.. included? Some may argue they are kid centric but Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, Disney are all big deals and a huge chunk of the film industry pie.

Let’s see if Donster or Octagon can explain this one away?