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Similarly related, I've been collecting UHD blu-rays for the past year and have been enjoying it greatly. Lawrence of Arabia is being released as a 4k scan lat

Similarly related, I've been collecting UHD blu-rays for the past year and have been enjoying it greatly. Lawrence of Arabia is being released as a 4k scan later this year and I'm pumped! I think there are a few parts to physical media collection * No fear of the media getting "Cancelled" and you losing access to it * Quality is always consistent. 4k and high quality audio bit rates generally do ok when streaming but start artifacting when there are any hiccups in your connection. I have GB service and I Still have low quality moments on my streaming. * Collecting items scratches an itch I didn't know I had * With vynyl and CDs, listening to a whole album shows you songs that you wouldn't normally consider or search for. Spotify makes it easy to skip a song you may not like but I tend to try out new songs on my record player and sometimes I like new things * The artwork for blu-rays, vynyls, and CDs can be beautiful and make a nice addition to a shelf or library in your living room.

humaniania 5y ago
I don't understand 4K blu ray. It's 4x the resolution of HD but only has ~2x the storage capacity of blu ray. Isn't that limiting bitrate/quality?
- xeromal 5y ago
  UHD Blu-Rays can go up to 100GB in capacity and can be read at 144Mbits/second. I don't think it limits many movies, but my 4k Lord of the Rings copy has the movie split into multiple discs.
- deergomoo 5y ago
  Different codecs. Regular Blu-Rays are largely H.264 (though some of the original releases are MPEG-2 like DVDs); UHD is H.265 which is way more space efficient.
bgorman 5y ago
If you use YouTube and search for “LG Oled 4k” you will find fantastic looking streaming videos that look better than anything streaming from Netflix, HBO max, Disney plus, Apple TV etc… It is very frustrating that Blu Ray is the only way to get high quality Hollywood content. The technology is there for streaming
WalterBright 5y ago
All true except for one thing. DVDs and Blurays are very susceptible to the slightest damage, even invisible damage. Every time I play one, I wonder if it is going to play or hang halfway through. Many also make it hard to actually get to the movie, inserting several minutes worth of various delays. At least CDs don't have that last problem, just insert and they play. CDs can also be pretty beat up and still play fine.
- chasil 5y ago
  Actually, Blu-rays are supposed to have an improved chemical formulation that resists scratches/damage compared to CD and DVD media. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray#Hard-coating_technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray#Hard-coating_technolog... Audio on scratched CDs can sometimes be cleanly ripped and repaired with the cdparanoia program. I don't know anything that does this with DVDs. https://www.xiph.org/paranoia/ https://www.xiph.org/paranoia/ CDs and DVDs can also be refinished by equipment that grinds down and polishes the plastic, assuming the data layer is intact beneath it. This cannot be done with Blu-ray media, because of the altered surface chemistry.
- adamredwoods 5y ago
  I wish the component players had better read failure programming to overcome those scratches. I have tried finding reviews for the better players with no luck. Using a laptop sometimes handles scratches better.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    In my experience, DVD players have gotten steadily more able to deal with damaged discs over the years. But still, if one doesn't play in one player, it might play in another, or maybe a blueray machine will play it. It's not predictable. Sometimes, washing the disc will get it to play. Sometimes, rubbing a tiny bit of oil (!) on it will get it to play.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  In many jurisdictions it's legal to have a digital backup if you own the cd/dvd. So you wouldn't necessarily have to actually use the CD/DVD to play the media.
r3trohack3r 5y ago
> With vynyl and CDs, listening to a whole album shows you songs that you wouldn't normally consider or search for. Spotify makes it easy to skip a song you may not like but I tend to try out new songs on my record player and sometimes I like new things This is the exact itch I tried to replicate with https://audile.app https://audile.app It loads a random album from Deezer’s collection on every page load.
IYasha 5y ago
+1! btw, I heard it's notoriously hard to play UHDs on a PC - how do you do it?
- tnbp 5y ago
  MakeMKV makes it trivial.
  - xeromal 5y ago
    This is the right way!
- 6yyyyyy 5y ago
  You let someone else do all the hard work and download their DRM-free torrent.
georgeecollins 5y ago
You can still buy albums on MP3 from a variety of places. I guess that is the same as getting the CD and ripping it, but I like to own MP3s I have paid for. I enjoy playing music from my collection rather than having it served to me by a service for a variety of reasons. But I am not knocking streaming. It's just nice to really have the asset.
- opan 5y ago
  Maybe I'm being pedantic, but CDs are higher quality than MP3 usually. You can rip losslessly to WAV or FLAC and preserve the original. MP3 is lossy and will be a lesser version.
  - HNDen21 5y ago
    when you buy a CD from amazon.. for lots of them, you can download the MP3s right away after you paid for it
    - jolmg 5y ago
      Didn't know that. It's a weird disparity that you can't download a PDF when you bought a book. You get an online book viewer instead. I would have expected them to likewise stream the audio if anything, or require you to use their app to listen to it.
- mzvkxlcvd 5y ago
  one problem i've found with music is someone discovers an uncleared sample, and the album either becomes unavailable, or stays available with samples removed so its not actually the same album anymore.
  - boomboomsubban 5y ago
    Not a problem if you buy DRM free files, which most places offer. You're just responsible for storing them from the moment of purchase.
cameronh90 5y ago
I've been buying DVDs/Blu-Rays again. In my case it's mainly because you can't trust the online streaming companies to preserve access to content, especially if it's older content that's no longer considered politically appropriate. The watershed moment for me was when Netflix removed The Mighty Boosh over a small number of admittedly questionable scenes. There are other places I could stream it from, but some other content can be hard to find, even illegally. Other comedies have had scenes modified or episodes pulled. As a side benefit, I concur with the observation that the quality of Blu-rays and even DVDs is typically better than the streamers. Lots of films are 4k Dolby vision on Blu-Ray but still only 1080p on Netflix/Prime. Apple TV tends to be better, but usually no cheaper than buying the disc.
- mattl 5y ago
  Buy DVDs and rip them and run your own Plex server.
- ndsipa_pomu 5y ago
  Sometimes it's almost as if they want you to pirate stuff. Monkey Dust Series 3 is another series that is now impossible to buy legally. They used various people's music but didn't have the rights, so it got broadcast and then they couldn't sell it on DVD. I like to keep a copy of obscure and hard to find recordings - it's almost as if recent history is being erased before our very eyes.
  - cameronh90 5y ago
    Limmy's Show Season 3 is the exact same: https://twitter.com/daftlimmy/status/542009546588581888 https://twitter.com/daftlimmy/status/542009546588581888 The fact that the BBC could make this mistake several times does strike me as incompetence. The Monkey Dust situation is a real shame, as it was such a ground-breaking and innovative comedy programmes of its time. Ridiculous that something so influential can now only be watched thanks to piracy. Also kind of ironic considering some of the themes of Monkey Dust... The Wikipedia article also says this: "Another reason for the lack of DVD releases of the later series is thought to be the 'teenage jihadi' sketches being considered unsuitable in the wake of the 7 July 2005 London bombings that occurred a few months later."
gwbas1c 5y ago
Same here. I started buying UHDs because they meet or exceed theatrical resolution. I stopped buying DVDs and BluRays knowing that someday I'd have a TV where I'd see the pixels.
jdesmond 5y ago
I do the much cheaper version of this and collect high quality 4k rips of movies and amass private tracker accounts. A normal length movie is about 80-100GB. I like the process of making groups in Plex too!
- nebula8804 5y ago
  I wish there was some guarantee of a movie's integrity matches the original disc. There are so many versions of a file floating around and while the file size of 80-100GB seems to indicate no transcoding, you can't be 100% sure.
oneoff786 5y ago
> With vynyl and CDs, listening to a whole album shows you songs that you wouldn't normally consider or search for. Spotify makes it easy to skip a song you may not like but I tend to try out new songs on my record player and sometimes I like new things This seems funny to me. Discoverability of new songs (and artists) seems like the strongest benefit of Spotify and it’s kin. I usually check out a new album multiple times a week
- layer8 5y ago
  It’s not discoverability, it’s giving songs a chance that don’t sound appealing at first, because skipping them would be too much of a hassle. Songs can grow on you after listening to them a couple of times even if you didn’t like them initially. When using streaming services, that trajectory rarely happens unless you specifically decide to always listen to the whole album, multiple times.
  - xeromal 5y ago
    This is exactly what I meant. If a song doesn't immediately tickle my fancy on spotify, I hit next. With a vinyl, I just leave it on and oftentimes I end up liking it.
DougMellon 5y ago
>With vynyl and CDs, listening to a whole album shows you songs that you wouldn't normally consider or search for. Spotify makes it easy to skip a song you may not like but I tend to try out new songs on my record player and sometimes I like new things We currently have an old Macbook Pro running Qobuz that sits next to our receiver. I used to stand up and skip to the next song if I didn't like a track but it grew old quickly and I now just let it play through. I never realized how much good music I was skipping until now.
Scalestein 5y ago
Something about vinyl specifically is the fact that there is a real break in the album when one side ends. It requires some thought and gives an additional aspect to artists when creating the track listing. For example, "Stairway To Heaven" is the last track on the first side of Led Zeppelin IV. If you listen on Spotify the song hits the (overplayed) epic climax, smooth come down and ends with some haunting vocals. Then immediately the jaunty bop of Misty Mountain Hop comes on all bouncing around the room in a totally contrasting upbeat mood. Very jarring. It is very obvious these were planned to the end of one side and the beginning of another. When Stairway ends I need a minute to breathe and take it in before moving on. With a vinyl record this is planned for and intended by the artist, but on any other medium (save cassettes maybe) you lose this capability.
- mark-r 5y ago
  Even just the fact that the artist gets to specify the play order. Today it's rare that a playlist will even have two songs from the same artist in sequence, but in olden days you could have a sequence that was greater than the sum of the parts. My favorite example is the last 3 songs on side A of The Cars Candy-O - Double Life is kind of relaxing, Shoo Be Doo cranks up the tension, and Candy-O starts with a crescendo that releases the tension. I don't actually know if that was intentional, but it feels like it was.
nebula8804 5y ago
I'm glad that more people than me are doing this. I'm concerned about the shrinking selection of PC Blueray drives will prevent us from further keeping control of our media. The problem with Blueray is the requirement of needing updates for newer titles. There are methods of stripping the DRM and getting unencumbered files but after they stop selling the last blueray drive then the clock starts.
- xeromal 5y ago
  Yeah, I've thought about this too. I have an LG super drive that does blu ray, lightscribe, and a bunch of other cool tech but it's about 8-10 years old. I'm waiting for it to self destruct. lol
  - nebula8804 5y ago
    LG sells Bluerays drive that can be hacked but unfortunately they have mixed quality/reliability. Pioneer sells really reliable drives that can only currently do regular blueray, not 4k but they are being worked on. I suggest to nab one before they disappear and then hopefully they get cracked eventually. MakeMKV forums can provide more info.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

humaniania 5y ago

I don't understand 4K blu ray. It's 4x the resolution of HD but only has ~2x the storage capacity of blu ray. Isn't that limiting bitrate/quality?

xeromal 5y ago
UHD Blu-Rays can go up to 100GB in capacity and can be read at 144Mbits/second. I don't think it limits many movies, but my 4k Lord of the Rings copy has the movie split into multiple discs.
deergomoo 5y ago
Different codecs. Regular Blu-Rays are largely H.264 (though some of the original releases are MPEG-2 like DVDs); UHD is H.265 which is way more space efficient.

bgorman 5y ago

If you use YouTube and search for “LG Oled 4k” you will find fantastic looking streaming videos that look better than anything streaming from Netflix, HBO max, Disney plus, Apple TV etc… It is very frustrating that Blu Ray is the only way to get high quality Hollywood content. The technology is there for streaming

WalterBright 5y ago

All true except for one thing. DVDs and Blurays are very susceptible to the slightest damage, even invisible damage. Every time I play one, I wonder if it is going to play or hang halfway through. Many also make it hard to actually get to the movie, inserting several minutes worth of various delays. At least CDs don't have that last problem, just insert and they play. CDs can also be pretty beat up and still play fine.

chasil 5y ago
Actually, Blu-rays are supposed to have an improved chemical formulation that resists scratches/damage compared to CD and DVD media. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray#Hard-coating_technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray#Hard-coating_technolog... Audio on scratched CDs can sometimes be cleanly ripped and repaired with the cdparanoia program. I don't know anything that does this with DVDs. https://www.xiph.org/paranoia/ https://www.xiph.org/paranoia/ CDs and DVDs can also be refinished by equipment that grinds down and polishes the plastic, assuming the data layer is intact beneath it. This cannot be done with Blu-ray media, because of the altered surface chemistry.
adamredwoods 5y ago
I wish the component players had better read failure programming to overcome those scratches. I have tried finding reviews for the better players with no luck. Using a laptop sometimes handles scratches better.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  In my experience, DVD players have gotten steadily more able to deal with damaged discs over the years. But still, if one doesn't play in one player, it might play in another, or maybe a blueray machine will play it. It's not predictable. Sometimes, washing the disc will get it to play. Sometimes, rubbing a tiny bit of oil (!) on it will get it to play.
nicoburns 5y ago
In many jurisdictions it's legal to have a digital backup if you own the cd/dvd. So you wouldn't necessarily have to actually use the CD/DVD to play the media.

r3trohack3r 5y ago

> With vynyl and CDs, listening to a whole album shows you songs that you wouldn't normally consider or search for. Spotify makes it easy to skip a song you may not like but I tend to try out new songs on my record player and sometimes I like new things This is the exact itch I tried to replicate with https://audile.app https://audile.app It loads a random album from Deezer’s collection on every page load.

IYasha 5y ago

+1! btw, I heard it's notoriously hard to play UHDs on a PC - how do you do it?

tnbp 5y ago
MakeMKV makes it trivial.
- xeromal 5y ago
  This is the right way!
6yyyyyy 5y ago
You let someone else do all the hard work and download their DRM-free torrent.

georgeecollins 5y ago

You can still buy albums on MP3 from a variety of places. I guess that is the same as getting the CD and ripping it, but I like to own MP3s I have paid for. I enjoy playing music from my collection rather than having it served to me by a service for a variety of reasons. But I am not knocking streaming. It's just nice to really have the asset.

opan 5y ago
Maybe I'm being pedantic, but CDs are higher quality than MP3 usually. You can rip losslessly to WAV or FLAC and preserve the original. MP3 is lossy and will be a lesser version.
- HNDen21 5y ago
  when you buy a CD from amazon.. for lots of them, you can download the MP3s right away after you paid for it
  - jolmg 5y ago
    Didn't know that. It's a weird disparity that you can't download a PDF when you bought a book. You get an online book viewer instead. I would have expected them to likewise stream the audio if anything, or require you to use their app to listen to it.
mzvkxlcvd 5y ago
one problem i've found with music is someone discovers an uncleared sample, and the album either becomes unavailable, or stays available with samples removed so its not actually the same album anymore.
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  Not a problem if you buy DRM free files, which most places offer. You're just responsible for storing them from the moment of purchase.

cameronh90 5y ago

I've been buying DVDs/Blu-Rays again. In my case it's mainly because you can't trust the online streaming companies to preserve access to content, especially if it's older content that's no longer considered politically appropriate. The watershed moment for me was when Netflix removed The Mighty Boosh over a small number of admittedly questionable scenes. There are other places I could stream it from, but some other content can be hard to find, even illegally. Other comedies have had scenes modified or episodes pulled. As a side benefit, I concur with the observation that the quality of Blu-rays and even DVDs is typically better than the streamers. Lots of films are 4k Dolby vision on Blu-Ray but still only 1080p on Netflix/Prime. Apple TV tends to be better, but usually no cheaper than buying the disc.

mattl 5y ago
Buy DVDs and rip them and run your own Plex server.
ndsipa_pomu 5y ago
Sometimes it's almost as if they want you to pirate stuff. Monkey Dust Series 3 is another series that is now impossible to buy legally. They used various people's music but didn't have the rights, so it got broadcast and then they couldn't sell it on DVD. I like to keep a copy of obscure and hard to find recordings - it's almost as if recent history is being erased before our very eyes.
- cameronh90 5y ago
  Limmy's Show Season 3 is the exact same: https://twitter.com/daftlimmy/status/542009546588581888 https://twitter.com/daftlimmy/status/542009546588581888 The fact that the BBC could make this mistake several times does strike me as incompetence. The Monkey Dust situation is a real shame, as it was such a ground-breaking and innovative comedy programmes of its time. Ridiculous that something so influential can now only be watched thanks to piracy. Also kind of ironic considering some of the themes of Monkey Dust... The Wikipedia article also says this: "Another reason for the lack of DVD releases of the later series is thought to be the 'teenage jihadi' sketches being considered unsuitable in the wake of the 7 July 2005 London bombings that occurred a few months later."

gwbas1c 5y ago

Same here. I started buying UHDs because they meet or exceed theatrical resolution. I stopped buying DVDs and BluRays knowing that someday I'd have a TV where I'd see the pixels.

jdesmond 5y ago

I do the much cheaper version of this and collect high quality 4k rips of movies and amass private tracker accounts. A normal length movie is about 80-100GB. I like the process of making groups in Plex too!

nebula8804 5y ago
I wish there was some guarantee of a movie's integrity matches the original disc. There are so many versions of a file floating around and while the file size of 80-100GB seems to indicate no transcoding, you can't be 100% sure.

oneoff786 5y ago

> With vynyl and CDs, listening to a whole album shows you songs that you wouldn't normally consider or search for. Spotify makes it easy to skip a song you may not like but I tend to try out new songs on my record player and sometimes I like new things This seems funny to me. Discoverability of new songs (and artists) seems like the strongest benefit of Spotify and it’s kin. I usually check out a new album multiple times a week

layer8 5y ago
It’s not discoverability, it’s giving songs a chance that don’t sound appealing at first, because skipping them would be too much of a hassle. Songs can grow on you after listening to them a couple of times even if you didn’t like them initially. When using streaming services, that trajectory rarely happens unless you specifically decide to always listen to the whole album, multiple times.
- xeromal 5y ago
  This is exactly what I meant. If a song doesn't immediately tickle my fancy on spotify, I hit next. With a vinyl, I just leave it on and oftentimes I end up liking it.

DougMellon 5y ago

>With vynyl and CDs, listening to a whole album shows you songs that you wouldn't normally consider or search for. Spotify makes it easy to skip a song you may not like but I tend to try out new songs on my record player and sometimes I like new things We currently have an old Macbook Pro running Qobuz that sits next to our receiver. I used to stand up and skip to the next song if I didn't like a track but it grew old quickly and I now just let it play through. I never realized how much good music I was skipping until now.

Scalestein 5y ago

Something about vinyl specifically is the fact that there is a real break in the album when one side ends. It requires some thought and gives an additional aspect to artists when creating the track listing. For example, "Stairway To Heaven" is the last track on the first side of Led Zeppelin IV. If you listen on Spotify the song hits the (overplayed) epic climax, smooth come down and ends with some haunting vocals. Then immediately the jaunty bop of Misty Mountain Hop comes on all bouncing around the room in a totally contrasting upbeat mood. Very jarring. It is very obvious these were planned to the end of one side and the beginning of another. When Stairway ends I need a minute to breathe and take it in before moving on. With a vinyl record this is planned for and intended by the artist, but on any other medium (save cassettes maybe) you lose this capability.

mark-r 5y ago
Even just the fact that the artist gets to specify the play order. Today it's rare that a playlist will even have two songs from the same artist in sequence, but in olden days you could have a sequence that was greater than the sum of the parts. My favorite example is the last 3 songs on side A of The Cars Candy-O - Double Life is kind of relaxing, Shoo Be Doo cranks up the tension, and Candy-O starts with a crescendo that releases the tension. I don't actually know if that was intentional, but it feels like it was.

nebula8804 5y ago

I'm glad that more people than me are doing this. I'm concerned about the shrinking selection of PC Blueray drives will prevent us from further keeping control of our media. The problem with Blueray is the requirement of needing updates for newer titles. There are methods of stripping the DRM and getting unencumbered files but after they stop selling the last blueray drive then the clock starts.

xeromal 5y ago
Yeah, I've thought about this too. I have an LG super drive that does blu ray, lightscribe, and a bunch of other cool tech but it's about 8-10 years old. I'm waiting for it to self destruct. lol
- nebula8804 5y ago
  LG sells Bluerays drive that can be hacked but unfortunately they have mixed quality/reliability. Pioneer sells really reliable drives that can only currently do regular blueray, not 4k but they are being worked on. I suggest to nab one before they disappear and then hopefully they get cracked eventually. MakeMKV forums can provide more info.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]