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

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by Vilya

And I feel you are welcome to do so, especially when no one was discussing anything on topic at that time. The thread police are a vigilant bunch.

Sometimes people monitor a thread on a subject they are not well versed on, but interested in, because they want to learn more about the topic.

It has been pointed out that it "Looks like it is the same script, different day for most." It's not exactly a surprise that the same regular posters post the same opinions; I doubt many minds ever get changed in these "vs." type threads and I, for one, never had changing anyone's opinion as a goal.

While I am staunchly a fan of physical media, I have learned quite a bit about digital and streaming that I did not know before. I, for the first time, have a digital library with 97 titles in it- but haven't watched anything in it as I have all but one of those titles on disc and I don't want to feel unclean.

I have also experimented with subscription streaming, namely Netflix, and while the overall quality was quite good, I found the selection of movies to be a big disappointment. Their strength lies in their low cost, original programming, and TV show offerings. Even so, I grew bored of it and I have suspended my service.

I have Amazon Prime, but I have seldom used the streaming aspect of it. I started to dabble with it more since coming to this thread. I found that Prime streaming is often a teaser service that offers you the first season of show in the hope of getting you hooked and then getting you to either subscribe to one of their many channels or to rent episodes- a ploy that I am sure works on many, but not stubborn ol' me.

I have been a Prime member since the program's inception in 2005 and a regular customer there since 2004. Clearly, the benefit of Prime for me is the two day shipping of discs.

In concluding my morning sermon, I must add that in the time that I have been here, methodically destroying this thread , I have met some very interesting people, not all of whom agree with me, but nonetheless are fun to converse with, both on topic and off. I'd treat you all to lunch if I could.

I will pop over. Do you have any Croissants? Nice cup of Joe as well please? Cheers.

[Groot]

Originally Posted by alchav21

Well I think I'll put my two cents in here, I want to comment on your Streaming. As you know I have Fiber feed to a Switch, no Modem my ISP set up is more like a Network. It's a Gigabit Switch so all the Ports have the full Symmetrical 75Mbps. Each Port gives a separate IP Address, so my Sony UHD TV has it's own Port and the full Bandwidth for the Streaming. I Stream from Amazon, and their 4K is Fantastic and their 1080P HD is Disc Quality to me. That's why I say Streaming is all dependant on your equipment and set up. Wireless is good for Mobile Devices, but not for your Home Theater.

Yeah, no.

I specifically said it was certain titles that they don't handle well. It has exactly nothing to do with my internet or home network.

[The_Donster]

Originally Posted by CV19

That's really the reason I started to read the posts on this thread. Although I am a physical media fan and always will be, I would still like to expand my knowledge on other alternatives, and this thread is a good source of information for that.

See, I can respect that and appreciate you explaining it to me. I honestly, just wasn't sure. I'm also not a 100% sure, but I think that's how Vilya got involved in the conversation too. Listen, I'm not trying to convert anyone one way or the other. I just trying to understand and don't get the one way or another perspective. At the moment I enjoy both, but who knows how that's going to go with the move to Texas. When people lock their heels in is usually when I get salty with my GIF responses

[The_Donster]

Back on point (Sort of). Out of curiosity for those who stream here in the states, who is hard lined outside of alchav21? Is that based on your feeling, like him, that it needs to be or is it the limits of your equipment? For example, outside of the computer I'm working from, everything is wireless in my house. My family uses either the BD player or cable box to stream, watch shows or On Demand. While I only use the apps on my KS8000. So unless we have a cable or internet outage we have had no problem using them and I'm curious on how everyone else streams.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by The_Donster

Back on point (Sort of). Out of curiosity for those who stream here in the states, who is hard lined outside of alchav21? Is that based on your feeling, like him, that it needs to be or is it the limits of your equipment? For example, outside of the computer I'm working from, everything is wireless in my house. My family uses either the BD player or cable box to stream, watch shows or On Demand. While I only use the apps on my KS8000. So unless we have a cable or internet outage we have had no problem using them and I'm curious on how everyone else streams.

When my ISP is working as it should, so is my wireless network. I have never had trouble streaming content because my home theater was connected wirelessly. I have only had problems when my ISP fails.

And not a single device in my home theater has ever been "bricked" because of firmware updates being performed wirelessly.

My router is reliable; my ISP is not.

[The_Donster]

Originally Posted by Vilya

I have Amazon Prime, but I have seldom used the streaming aspect of it. I started to dabble with it more since coming to this thread. I found that Prime streaming is often a teaser service that offers you the first season of show in the hope of getting you hooked and then getting you to either subscribe to one of their many channels or to rent episodes- a ploy that I am sure works on many, but not stubborn ol' me.

I have been a Prime member since the program's inception in 2005 and a regular customer there since 2004. Clearly, the benefit of Prime for me is the two day shipping of discs.

I've just started using the Amazon streaming too, but it sounds like we are having a different experience. Anything that isn't included with Prime I don't use. I've found a handful of movies I'd like to watch, but not necessarily buy without watching first (Same reason I use Netflix BD/Streaming, VUDU and other smaller services).

It is especially helpful now that they participate with Movies Anywhere and all of my digital codes transfer over outside of 3 studios. I love that my son can pull up one of our digital movies when he wants to watch something while I'm packing up the house. Speaking of which, I need to finish this coffee and get to my lawn.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by The_Donster

I've just started using the Amazon streaming too, but it sounds like we are having a different experience. Anything that isn't included with Prime I don't use. I've found a handful of movies I'd like to watch, but not necessarily buy without watching first (Same reason I use Netflix BD/Streaming, VUDU and other smaller services).

It is especially helpful now that they participate with Movies Anywhere and all of my digital codes transfer over outside of 3 studios. I love that my son can pull up one of our digital movies when he wants to watch something while I'm packing up the house. Speaking of which, I need to finish this coffee and get to my lawn.

I initially saw Amazon Prime streaming as just an added perk to the two day shipping service I have had since Prime's inception back in 2005. But now that Amazon's streaming has been around awhile, I somewhat resent it because it dramatically effects the cost of the Prime service overall when all I really care about is that shipping service, which is the only reason why I subscribed to Prime in the first place. Now, I get to subsidize all of the streaming services they have added, although I very rarely use them.

Amazon Prime streaming has a few movies and documentaries worth watching, but it is with their TV offerings that they try to get you to subscribe to their channels, except for their original content, or to rent any episodes beyond the first season. I feel like they are nickel and dimeing people with this approach.

I have no complaints with their streaming quality; it seems about the same as Netflix to me, but I am hardly a heavy user of either and therefore I am not the best to judge between them.

[CV19]

Originally Posted by The_Donster

See, I can respect that and appreciate you explaining it to me. I honestly, just wasn't sure. I'm also not a 100% sure, but I think that's how Vilya got involved in the conversation too. Listen, I'm not trying to convert anyone one way or the other. I just trying to understand and don't get the one way or another perspective. At the moment I enjoy both, but who knows how that's going to go with the move to Texas. When people lock their heels in is usually when I get salty with my GIF responses

I would never try to convert anyone into one method or another. For me personally, I love my disc collection and will continue to buy them for as long as they're available - which I hope is for many more years. As for people who stream their movies or even do both, then that's fine, I totally respect that, because at the end of the day everybody does what suits them best.

[CV19]

Originally Posted by PenguinInfinity

They're both fine as long as they're both available. The problem is that as streaming gains more popularity less titles will be available on disc.

Yes, there is always that danger I guess. That's what would worry me in the future.

[octagon]

Originally Posted by PenguinInfinity

They're both fine as long as they're both available. The problem is that as streaming gains more popularity less titles will be available on disc.

Maybe but I'm not sure the two are really all that related.

During DVD's heyday a physical media release could move enough units to at least partially justify a new master or even a full-blown restoration. That bubble has definitely burst.

Nobody studio is going to look at the average catalog title and think 'let's do a brand-new 4K scan and cash in on some of that sweet BD/UHD that's lining the streets'.

So in that sense, yeah, the move away from physical media has somewhat impacted the availability of (primarily catalog) titles.

But at the same time, studios still have to maintain their libraries and they still have an incentive to do restorations and new scans to meet new broadcast and streaming demands. So a lot of the work is still going to get done and as long as physical releases can generate even modest additional revenues there will be physical releases.

Some will be direct releases, some will be licensed to smaller distributors but they'll find their way to market.

The physical market has been contracting (and not just a little) over BDs entire lifespan but the catalog market has been remarkably robust. People have been preaching gloom and doom about catalog releases for as long as I've been a member here and we're still seeing some ridiculously deep titles getting very good BD releases.

(And as an added bonus, since we're basically an afterthought we don't really have to pay all that much for them either)

Color me optimistic.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by octagon

Color me optimistic.

I share your optimism.

Physical media will remain. I certainly do my part to keep it going.

[octagon]

It's not just physical media in general. I'm also very optimistic about the catalog market specifically.

There was a lot of hand-wringing several years ago when Twilight Time hit the scene. There was a lot of talk about the death of the catalog market or the catalog market being dominated by expensive limited edition releases as more companies adopted the 'Twilight Time model' but if anything the catalog market is more robust than ever.

Studios seem less interested in direct catalog releases instead favoring licensing to smaller boutique distributors but that's fine by me. There are more and more boutique distributors going after a wider and deeper variety of catalog titles and prices have remained somewhere between reasonable and ridiculously cheap.

And there don't seem to be any signs of that slowing down.

Not only is this a great time to love movies. It's a great time to love old movies.

[veritas]

This is a bit off topic but could somebody check something for me on the 4k Thor Ragnarok disc. At the 1 hour 54 min 50 sec mark to 1 hour 55 min 0 sec mark when it cuts from the the ship to the flame does something look weird about the flame for a couple of frames? I am wondering if this is the disc loading a different layer or if I need to get a different disc because this problem doesn't show up for the digital version.

Anyway Im basically wondering if i have a bad disc because this is the first time I have had something really stand out to me on a physical copy that wasn't also on the digital copy.

[alchav21]

Originally Posted by The_Donster

Back on point (Sort of). Out of curiosity for those who stream here in the states, who is hard lined outside of alchav21? Is that based on your feeling, like him, that it needs to be or is it the limits of your equipment? For example, outside of the computer I'm working from, everything is wireless in my house. My family uses either the BD player or cable box to stream, watch shows or On Demand. While I only use the apps on my KS8000. So unless we have a cable or internet outage we have had no problem using them and I'm curious on how everyone else streams.

A good Wireless connection will give you good enough Streaming, so I say it all depends on what Quality you want out of Streaming. I told Vilya the reason most people like Disc is because they are Hard Wired with the HDMI Cable, and get all the Bandwidth of the Player. So as Streaming moves forward, if you put the same File that is on a Disc and put it on a Streaming Server the only sure way to get the same Bitrate is to be Hard Wired and have the Bandwidth for Quality Streaming. So Convenience, good enough, and adequate Sound Quality is all you want then Wireless will do. I say the only way to get Disc Quality is to be Hard Wired like your Disc Player.

[Groot]

The only true advantage wired has over wireless is for LIVE streaming.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by alchav21

A good Wireless connection will give you good enough Streaming, so I say it all depends on what Quality you want out of Streaming. I told Vilya the reason most people like Disc is because they are Hard Wired with the HDMI Cable, and get all the Bandwidth of the Player. So as Streaming moves forward, if you put the same File that is on a Disc and put it on a Streaming Server the only sure way to get the same Bitrate is to be Hard Wired and have the Bandwidth for Quality Streaming. So Convenience, good enough, and adequate Sound Quality is all you want then Wireless will do. I say the only way to get Disc Quality is to be Hard Wired like your Disc Player.

The new wireless standard 802.11ac supports speeds up to 866.7 Mbps and even the older standard 802.11n supports speeds up to 150 Mbps. Both of these are more than adequate to match the bitrates of even 4K UHD at its maximum bitrate and are leaps and bounds above the 16 Mbps averages of streaming services.

You do not need to be hard wired to receive the bitrates of a blu-ray or a 4K disc player. A wireless network is easily capable of it.

You need streaming providers to use less compression and avail themselves of the greater bandwidth that many ISPs now offer. Until they do both, at a minimum, they will not equal the quality of disc playback.

People like disc because it offers the best in image and sound quality AND the tangible ownership of content that it conveys. All of it independent of unreliable internet service providers, their data cap limits, and over worked server farms.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by PenguinInfinity

My main concern is TV shows. Most of the shows from the 1950s-1990s were only viewable once (when they first aired) and are never likely to be seen again. When DVDs became common for TV shows in the 2000s I thought that would stop happening with most new shows. But then streaming came along and the industry took a step backwards.

I recognize that the most popular way to watch TV shows is via broadcast and it will likely stay that way. But in the early 2000s everyone who wanted to watch them over and over again only had one purchase option: DVD. Therefore every show that the studios thought people would pay to rewatch got a physical release.

But now streaming has cut into that market. People have cheap access to watch some shows on Netflix or Amazon Prime. And they can buy the rest of them as they air on iTunes, Vudu, and Amazon. Sales for TV shows on physical media have gone way down.

This leads to many shows stopping physical releases before completing the series and many short-lived series not getting physical releases at all. Sometimes even popular shows don't get physical releases because studios think there is more money in making them exclusive to specific streaming providers.

I fear this will cause many of these shows to be completely unavailable in the future as they lose popularity. Digital providers have already dropped many shows from their marketplaces; no one is able to buy those shows anymore. As the total amount of content increases the number of titles being de-listed will increase as well.

Just off the top of my head, I can not think of any TV series that I want that I can not buy on either DVD or, to a lesser extent, on blu-ray.

Looking at my collection, I own 399 TV seasons on blu-ray and 643 TV seasons on DVD; this seems like a fair amount to me. You yourself own 536 TV seasons on blu-ray and 459 TV seasons on DVD, according to your posted collection. Neither of us are exactly starving for TV shows on disc.

As for the part of your quote that I have underlined, there is syndication. TV shows from every era have prospered in reruns, many for decades. The cable channel TV Land is dedicated to them. Reruns are a staple on independent channels. I can not recall any prime time TV shows that aired only once and were never to be seen again. Some episodes have been lost because they were not taped or filmed in the first place and a few others got taped over, but by far and large cancelled TV shows have lived on in rerun syndication.

I Love Lucy has been reported to have never left the airwaves due to its being constantly rerun ever since it ended in 1957. A major downside to syndication has been that most TV shows have been edited to allow for ever more commercials, but they remain on the air and on cable.

While not every vintage TV show is available on disc, a whole lot are. The Outer Limits Season 1 now has a blu-ray release; I never thought I'd see that happen, but there it is.

Shout Factory! alone offers a whole slew of vintage TV on DVD, nearly 1,000 seasons worth! Mill Creek offers quite a few, too, just to name a couple of sources.

I would like to see more TV on blu-ray, but my Oppo 203 does such a great job upscaling even DVDs that I have found that these old shows look better than I ever thought possible. I just finished all 6 seasons of Leave It To Beaver on DVD and they were very impressive.

As I end this post, I still can not think of any TV show that I want that I can not own on disc. There may be some, but none come to mind at this late hour. I am not worried about my continued ability to own TV shows on disc.

[Vilya]

^From your 1990 list, I recognize about 8 of the 83 shows listed. Some memory, huh? I must not have been a big fan of TV that year. Or I thought the shows that year stunk.

Some shows stopped getting physical releases by their original studios only to get picked up by Shout! Factory or other independent labels later on. All In The Family was one such such show and Leave It To Beaver was another. Green Acres was still another title that was dropped for a long while. All three of these shows were completed on disc by Shout! Factory.

If those shows in bold type on your list have stopped getting releases on disc, they may yet get picked up by an indy label. It has happened many times before. And don't forget to check other regions; I wanted Malcolm In The Middle and I had to import the Region 2 DVDs from the U.K. There are easy ways to get around DVD region coding.

My biggest annoyance is with The Beverly Hillbillies; only 4 of 9 seasons have been released.

I have said this before, but the longevity of DVD-/+R media does not worry me. The only DVD-/+R media that ever failed me were discs I made myself when the recordable media was in its infancy, namely the early Philips brand DVD-R discs. If it makes you more comfortable with DVD-/+R media, they are easy to back-up. And at 56, I can only hope to have a few decades left myself.

Despite the the TV shows we can not yet buy, those that have not had complete series releases, and those now relegated to DVD-/+R media (lookin' at you American Dad), there are still a LOT of shows where we can own the complete series. You and I have a bunch of them between us.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by PenguinInfinity

So there is a show that you want on physical media but can't buy, you just didn't think of it before.

I care about these shows being available to everyone, not just myself. A backup can't legally be sold so redistribution will completely disappear when the DVD-R discs fail.

The UK releases of American Dad continue to use pressed discs, you should get those instead of the US DVD-Rs. They're cheaper too!

I will never have the attitude that it's okay for individual TV shows, movies, songs, books, video games, or any other art form to be lost just because there are a lot of others available.

Well, I own almost half of The Beverly Hillbillies series. I remain hopeful the other 5 seasons will materialize. I had to wait many years to get all of Green Acres, but it did finally happen.

I care about TV shows being available to everyone, too. I support many of their releases with a purchase after all.

Both movies and TV shows on disc go in and out of print. Anything ever released can be obtained. You may just have to pay a premium for it.

None of my purchased content on DVD-/+ R media has failed, so I am just not very worried about it "disappearing." Ironically, I can't say the same for my pressed discs; some of them have failed, although very, very few of them.

It is very easy and affordable for the studios to release content on DVD-/+ R and BD-R, so that may actually make some content more accessible than before. I prefer a pressed disc simply because so many people insist that I should, but I will buy made on demand "burned" media if that is what is available.

I was not suggesting that it is ok for any artistic work to be lost to the public with the consolation that much remains available. Rather, it is that large selection of available content that gives me hope that we will see still more released on disc.

Every time on old classic, but short-lived, show like The Outer Limits or a vintage show like Father Knows Best gets released on disc, I am encouraged that we will see more. Even Knight Rider is now available, not that I am a fan, but I am happy to see it get a blu-ray treatment. There is always hope for more TV shows getting a physical release.

Thanks for the tip about American Dad. Cheaper and pressed discs are pluses.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by Vilya

Well, I own almost half of The Beverly Hillbillies series. I remain hopeful the other 5 seasons will materialize. I had to wait many years to get all of Green Acres, but it did finally happen.

I care about TV shows being available to everyone, too. I support many of their releases with a purchase after all.

Both movies and TV shows on disc go in and out of print. Anything ever released can be obtained. You may just have to pay a premium for it.

None of my purchased content on DVD-/+ R media has failed, so I am just not very worried about it "disappearing." Ironically, I can't say the same for my pressed discs; some of them have failed, although very, very few of them.

It is very easy and affordable for the studios to release content on DVD-/+ R and BD-R, so that may actually make some content more accessible than before. I prefer a pressed disc simply because so many people insist that I should, but I will buy made on demand "burned" media if that is what is available.

I was not suggesting that it is ok for any artistic work to be lost to the public with the consolation that much remains available. Rather, it is that large selection of available content that gives me hope that we will see still more released on disc.

Every time on old classic, but short-lived, show like The Outer Limits or a vintage show like Father Knows Best gets released on disc, I am encouraged that we will see more. Even Knight Rider is now available, not that I am a fan, but I am happy to see it get a blu-ray treatment. There is always hope for more TV shows getting a physical release.

Thanks for the tip about American Dad. Cheaper and pressed discs are pluses.

My favourite boxed set is the old Twilight Zone series. They are delightful, such good transfers.