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

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by Wendell R. Breland

Before I am called an elitist look back several post where I described how I got to this point.

[Show spoiler]

Just like an elitist to deny being one!

[NightMovie901]

Originally Posted by Vilya

Define "crappy." It sounds like you are just making an excuse for not even trying to find any bargains.

I have found that pretty much all 4K titles go on sale. Again, check here often as listings change frequently:

https://www.blu-ray.com/deals/?sortb...egory=4kbluray

Check the weekly sales ads from your preferred retailer for even more sales opportunities; the above link primarily shows what Amazon is offering. Most retailers will price match Amazon, also, if the item is sold by Amazon, not third party sellers, and if it is in stock.

Seek and ye shall find. As someone who buys discs very often, I know I can find a good deal with minimal effort. I have three 4K titles arriving today; one cost me $14.96, one cost me $19.99, and one cost me $24.99. They include the 4K disc, the blu-ray disc, and the digital code.

They were all less than the $29.99 price that you mistakenly imply is the average that one has to pay for these 4K combo packs. I checked my order history for the last six months and I found that I only paid $29.99+ twice. Just two times in half a year of ordering. Most were $19.99 and some were just $14.96.

So I’m trying to get all the Marvel movies. All Captain America movies are $29.99 on the link you provided. Outside of Hulk I haven’t seen any Marvel 4K disc under $24.99.

I just don’t like that prices for the 4K movies start out higher.

[Forestt]

Originally Posted by dublinbluray108

For those of you talking about the removal of Michael Jackson from The Simpsons digital copies and possibly future physical releases.

WB have now apparently beginning to remove R Kelly's music video 'Gotham City' from their upcoming UHD Blu-ray release of Batman & Robin which is due for release in the summer. I had a look at the UHD back cover of the movie an hour ago on it's own thread. It say it has 3 music videos included on the UHD release. On the Special Edition DVD & original Blu-ray master of the movie; they all have 4 videos included. R Kelly's music video is one of the video's presumably not going to be included in the upcoming UHD release of Batman & Robin this time round. This is probably going to be more controversial from WB because R Kelly himself is still alive & he should be able to defend himself in court as a result of his apparent allegations going from the recently released documentary on him. All I'm saying here is that if R Kelly is found completely innocent of his crimes in court when it get's to it's eventual verdict. WB could find themselves in hot water with fans for removing his music video if it wasn't taken lightly from the UHD Blu-ray of Batman & Robin.

Does anyone else agree with what I'm saying here?

Maybe they have edited out the song in the film as well. Can't remember if it is in the film but I can imagine it is played during the credits.

I'm all for keeping the content in its original form as much as possible, even if actors turn out to be controversial (much) later.

[Wendell R. Breland]

Amazon has their 3 UHD Blu-ray title for $40 going again here.

[Matthew.H]

Originally Posted by Wendell R. Breland

Amazon has their 3 UHD Blu-ray title for $40 going again here.

If the 3rd How to Train Your Dragon film had been in the offer I would have bought all 3.

[Ender14]

Originally Posted by dublinbluray108

For those of you talking about the removal of Michael Jackson from The Simpsons digital copies and possibly future physical releases.

WB have now apparently beginning to remove R Kelly's music video 'Gotham City' from their upcoming UHD Blu-ray release of Batman & Robin which is due for release in the summer. I had a look at the UHD back cover of the movie an hour ago on it's own thread. It say it has 3 music videos included on the UHD release. On the Special Edition DVD & original Blu-ray master of the movie; they all have 4 videos included. R Kelly's music video is one of the video's presumably not going to be included in the upcoming UHD release of Batman & Robin this time round. This is probably going to be more controversial from WB because R Kelly himself is still alive & he should be able to defend himself in court as a result of his apparent allegations going from the recently released documentary on him. All I'm saying here is that if R Kelly is found completely innocent of his crimes in court when it get's to it's eventual verdict. WB could find themselves in hot water with fans for removing his music video if it wasn't taken lightly from the UHD Blu-ray of Batman & Robin.

Does anyone else agree with what I'm saying here?

They could further improve the quality of the UHD by removing the actual movie.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by dublinbluray108

For those of you talking about the removal of Michael Jackson from The Simpsons digital copies and possibly future physical releases.

WB have now apparently beginning to remove R Kelly's music video 'Gotham City' from their upcoming UHD Blu-ray release of Batman & Robin which is due for release in the summer. I had a look at the UHD back cover of the movie an hour ago on it's own thread. It say it has 3 music videos included on the UHD release. On the Special Edition DVD & original Blu-ray master of the movie; they all have 4 videos included. R Kelly's music video is one of the video's presumably not going to be included in the upcoming UHD release of Batman & Robin this time round. This is probably going to be more controversial from WB because R Kelly himself is still alive & he should be able to defend himself in court as a result of his apparent allegations going from the recently released documentary on him. All I'm saying here is that if R Kelly is found completely innocent of his crimes in court when it get's to it's eventual verdict. WB could find themselves in hot water with fans for removing his music video if it wasn't taken lightly from the UHD Blu-ray of Batman & Robin.

Does anyone else agree with what I'm saying here?

Yep. Expect far more of this going forward.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by NightMovie901

So I’m trying to get all the Marvel movies. All Captain America movies are $29.99 on the link you provided. Outside of Hulk I haven’t seen any Marvel 4K disc under $24.99.

I just don’t like that prices for the 4K movies start out higher.

You just have to keep checking the sales link; the titles on sale change often. Marvel movies are very popular and they often command a higher price, but even they and other Disney properties do go on sale.

You can get both Deadpool movies on 4K for just $34.96, for example:

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Deadp...lu-ray/205707/

The first three Spiderman movies in 4K are available in a box set for $57.35:

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Spide...lu-ray/188951/

Spiderman Homecoming on 4K is $20.95:

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Spide...lu-ray/181194/

Some pre-order and release day prices on 4K disc are quite attractive. Alien, with the director's cut, is being released on April 23 and it is priced at a mere $14.96.

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Alien-4K-Blu-ray/230308/

The upcoming releases of Field Of Dreams and Backdraft on 4K are just $21.99.

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Field...lu-ray/234417/

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Backd...lu-ray/233924/

Black Hawk Down with the extended and theatrical cuts is just $22.08.

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Black...lu-ray/216931/

If the release date is still a ways off, the pre-order price can be high like with the upcoming slate of Batman movies, but they will likely drop as the date draws closer.

You can get all three Despicable Me movies on 4K for just $29.99 right now; $10 per movie.

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Illum...lu-ray/191979/

You just have to watch the sales. If you do, you'll catch the good deals as they come.

[njdevil254]

Originally Posted by Wendell R. Breland

I take it you have the Apple TV 4K, if so, care to address some of the comments by other owners as posted on AVS:



BTW, my Oppo-203 will convert HDR10 to Dolby Vision. Not sure if it will convert HDR10 to HDR10+, will look into it sometime in the future.

As to the rest of your lame post, well Vilya took care of that .

I thought movies were filmed at 23.976 fps.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by Wendell R. Breland

Amazon has their 3 UHD Blu-ray title for $40 going again here.

Thanks for posting that link, but I could not find three that I wanted among the choices. Maybe next time.

[octagon]

Originally Posted by Dynamo of Eternia

The main difference between what many of us refer to as the "good enough" crowd and someone having to compromise by buying the best thing that they can afford (as opposed to the best thing period) is that the latter is at least trying to roughly and reasonably get the best that they can within their own circumstances and limitations.

To my ear 'roughly and reasonably get the best they can' sounds an awful lot like 'good enough'.

Originally Posted by Dynamo of Eternia

And that is certainly their prerogative. But the point is that what they do is VERY different from someone trying to get the best that they can, but compromising due to their circumstances.

Again, to me this all sounds like differences of degree, not of kind. In both cases people are spending their time and money in accordance with their priorities and their idea of what constitutes good enough.

And either group sneering at or looking down on the other because they don't have the right priorities when it comes to how they spend their leisure time and dollars just seems silly.

It's like listening to people sneer at Nascar fans for spending their Sundays watching cars go in circles.

Do I 'get' Nascar? I absolutely do not but so what. A lot of people don't 'get' silent movies or foreign films or football or hockey or any of the various things I burn my leisure time on.

Originally Posted by Dynamo of Eternia

To be fair, I don't think octagon was trying to be "elitist" in his post.

It's just that in response to what others have criticized about those who settle for "good enough," he was making a point that for what most people buy, there's always something better out there already available. He wasn't necessarily condoning the most extreme end of an elitist view point (though there are others out there who would, of course).

Thanks, that is pretty much what I was driving at.

Originally Posted by Dynamo of Eternia

(Also this all stemmed from a ridiculous statement that alchav made about having to have a certain level of equipment to not be settling for good enough).

He gets beaten up with that post a lot but it really wasn't that ridiculous.

He was citing a Sound and Vision..I don't know...writer...blogger...whatever...who draws a distinction between a multi-use media room and a home theater.

Is that distinction particularly important? No. Do I personally care whether somebody with a TV and a soundbar or a TV and a handful of speakers wants to call that a 'home theater'? I do not.

But the idea that there's more to a true home theater than a TV and some speakers isn't totally ridiculous. Neither is the idea that almost all of us are somewhere on the Compromise Continuum.

I personally have always been a little reluctant to refer to my various setups as home theaters. That always seemed like an odd way to talk about a TV and some speakers. And even when I started getting into projectors I was living in apartments and wasn't able to really lean into creating a true home theater.

Originally Posted by Dynamo of Eternia

To compare two relative extremes, in theory, you could have someone with a very limited income that has to save over time just to afford a TV that costs $500. But they could still be doing their best under that circumstance to do their research and get the best TV that they can within their budget. It's not that they wouldn't want something nicer, but it's just not something that is reasonably affordable for them now or in the foreseeable future.

What about less extreme examples though?

What about a guy who can easily afford a $2500 TV but opts to go with a $1500 TV because it's almost as good as the more expensive TV and he would rather spend that grand on something else? Is that guy in the Good Enough club? If he's spending that thousand bucks on insulin maybe he's not. If he's spending it on new golf clubs or putting it toward a new deck then yeah, he probably is.

Or the person who know that to get the most out of his projector he needs to control ambient light. But he also uses that room to watch ballgames and hand with friends and family so he's not in love with the idea of turning that room into a dungeon. Is that guy in the Good Enough club? I think he is. I think he's sacrificing an easily achievable and affordable increase in image quality in return for being able to use that room for other things.

Originally Posted by Dynamo of Eternia

While they both end up with the same TV, the mentality is very different.

It's really not. At the end of the day we're all making choices based on our priorities.

And not for nothing, we're talking about relatively unimportant choices. In your extreme examples we're talking about people buying a TV.

Even if we assume there's a right way and a wrong way to buy a TV who really cares?

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by octagon

He gets beaten up with that post a lot but it really wasn't that ridiculous.

Yeah, it was. It was entirely ridiculous.

This was coming from the same guy who continually says "digital is digital" as if that makes for some kind of an equivalency. People are people; that must mean we are all the same.

He was essentially telling people that they had to spend $10K to be able to benefit from 4K disc playback and that is patently false. He was advising people to stick with streaming because he claimed that 4K disc playback was just too expensive. It is even more ridiculous coming from him when he is not in any way equipped to experience 4K disc playback. He was telling people what they needed to spend to enjoy something that he himself doesn't own and clearly knows nothing about.

He even said that we needed at least a 75" OLED TV, too, (which he also lacks) and that is completely false; a bigger screen does not automatically make for a better picture and OLED has its own share of pros and cons. OLED TVs are offered in 77", by the way, not 75", again demonstrating how little he knows.

He also said that we need a Panasonic UB9000 4K disc player ($999) and that is also not true. There are plenty of great 4K disc players for far less than $999.

He even said that we need an unspecified A/V system and that it would all total $10K "easily". With his minimum budget "requirements" he only allowed $2K for the A/V system as a 77" LG OLED costs $7K and the Panasonic UB9000 costs $999. Allocating just 20% of a home theater budget for the audio side, an A/V receiver and a minimum of 9 speakers for an ATMOS configuration, further illustrates that he knows not of what he speaks. He said that if we did all of this we would have a "good" high end set-up. How would he know? He owns none of the gear that he says we "need." All of this proves and compounds his ignorance.

Anyone who knows what high end home theater gear costs would not call a $10K system high end. A good, even great, set-up, sure, but not high end. You can literally spend six figures, even millions, on the gear alone.

He also fails to distinguish the difference between the best content source, 4K disc, and the best home theater equipment. Most of us can easily afford the former and probably none of us can afford the latter, but the fact remains that he has no 4K disc playback capability and he does not own a home theater by any reasonable definition of the term. He is in no position to give advice about 4K disc playback nor about home theater gear.

He maintains that better equipment will transform streaming into something better than it actually is. If that were true, and it isn't, then it would also magically transform 4K disc into something better than it is, too. The source does not change because of the equipment used. Better equipment should yield better results, realizing more of what a given source has to offer, but it does not change the source itself. Most understand this fact; yet it escapes him.

He chastises people for not making actual comparisons between 4K streaming and 4K disc playback when, again, he himself can not do what he is demanding of others. There's a word for people like that and that word is hypocrite.

You like to play devil's advocate, and so do I, but his posts remain as absurd as ever.

[Wendell R. Breland]

Originally Posted by njdevil254

I thought movies were filmed at 23.976 fps.

In general, movies done on film were/are 24 fps. When these were transferred to NTSC (29.97 fps) they were done using 3:2 pulldown. When ATSC started being used they continued with 29.97 fps rather than 30 fps because there was/is so much NTSC content.This way they could switch between the two and not cause a "sync roll". I suspect this is the reason most digital camera movies continue to use 23.976 fps.

On Netflix I have seen 23.976, 24, 29.97 and 30(?) fps content. Because of their auto previews it causes my system to blackout as it re-syncs to the different frame rates as I try to scroll thru my list. The auto preview can not be disabled in the Netflix app. I finally gave in and set my Sony UBP-X1000ES to output 60 (59.94) for streamed content. For all other sources the frame is set to output the original.

[Vilya]

The most basic definition of a home theater is simply a home set-up that tries to replicate the audio and visual experience of attending a movie at a commercial theater.

This business of slapping the word "true" in front of "home theater" is not actually true at all as there is no objective definition of what that means or even a consensus as to what that means. The word "true" is really just a synonym for "better." In usage it usually means a more elaborate, more expensive, system.

[Vilya]

There are different mentalities driving purchases of home theater equipment.

While we are all limited by our budgets, some of us are following a passion spending the absolute most that we can in pursuit of it. Others are being more practical spending only what they feel is necessary to obtain a result that they deem to be satisfactory.

The passionate seek the exceptional and spend all that they can towards that goal; the practical seek a balance between cost and performance.

Almost everyone that I know is passionate about some hobby and they invest all the money and all of the time that they can into it.

[NightMovie901]

Originally Posted by Vilya

Some pre-order and release day prices on 4K disc are quite attractive. Alien, with the director's cut, is being released on April 23 and it is priced at a mere $14.96.

It is a 40 year old movie LOL

Thanks for all the links

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by NightMovie901

It is a 40 year old movie LOL

Thanks for all the links

Many things are worth more as they age, including even me! I am certainly worth more now than when I was "newer."

[avs commenter]

Streamers go to the cinema more

https://www.slashfilm.com/streaming-vs-theaters/

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by avs commenter

Streamers go to the cinema more

https://www.slashfilm.com/streaming-vs-theaters/

Okay.

I am glad that theater attendance is again confirmed to be doing well. The article shows that streaming is not hurting theater attendance. I never thought that it was.

There might be many reasons why people who stream less also attend the theater less. They might be doing lots of things less. Maybe they are just too busy? Maybe they are working multiple jobs? Maybe raising a family leaves them too broke and exhausted to watch much of anything? Maybe they like to read more? Maybe they are rabid sports fans? Maybe they have many hobbies competing for their free time?

I enjoy seeing a movie at the theater in principal, but I do not enjoy how members of the general public often behave at the theater. Thus, I seldom attend anymore.

Owning my own sizable library is anther reason why I don't attend often. I have a great selection right here that only gets better. I even sometimes stream! Watching at home is more comfortable and the concessions in my kitchen are better as well. No need to worry about bathroom breaks, either.

[alchav21]

Originally Posted by Vilya

This was coming from the same guy who continually says "digital is digital" as if that makes for some kind of an equivalency. People are people; that must mean we are all the same.

He was essentially telling people that they had to spend $10K to be able to benefit from 4K disc playback and that is patently false. He was advising people to stick with streaming because he claimed that 4K disc playback was just too expensive. It is even more ridiculous coming from him when he is not in any way equipped to experience 4K disc playback. He was telling people what they needed to spend to enjoy something that he himself doesn't own and clearly knows nothing about.

I guess my statements ruffled some feathers, and hit some nerves. When I say it's all Digital, I mean Digital Files put on a Disc or put on a Server. There's a reason why all the Studios are going Streaming, it's the Distribution of the Future. All the Studios want to do is make and sell Content for their projected Profit Margin. So if their Disc Sales keep going down, the Studios have to find a new Distribution method....Streaming Digital. Wendell talked about CDN's (Content Distribution Network,) and they have advanced putting them right into your ISP if needed plus Packet Data Priority Addressing Streaming has no boundaries.

As for the $10K figure, I knew that was low to make a point on "Good Enough." That it also applies to Discs depending on your Quality Level. When I purchased my Sony Display it was rated at the top of LED's, and I can't compare 4K Discs but I can compare BD to HD Streaming. I see no difference.