9 ms·

An Apple Original on DVD: The Definitive Unboxing and UX Review

103 points by robbiet480 5y ago

LeoPanthera 5y ago
> "This is to be expected, but DVD subtitles are crummy, with low-resolution text and unappealing typography." DVD subtitles are encoded as images, not text, so in fact you can have any typography and style of typeface that you like, if you're willing to put some effort into it. The first release of Ghostbusters on DVD abused a subtitle track to store a Mystery Science Theater style silhouette of the people doing the commentary track. It was very funny, but sadly only worked on the 4:3 version of the DVD. It was removed from all later releases, but they never re-recorded the commentary track, which still contains references to things they are supposedly pointing at, even on the blu-ray releases.
- dylan604 5y ago
  DVD subtitles were worse than crummy. The highlights for the buttons used the same image formatting. The DVD could only use 4 colors in the sub/highlight. To make subtitle text legible, the black text on white background was posterized to 4 levels. Each of the posterized level was replaced in the authoring software so that each level was replaced with the corresponding transparency levels (100,66,33,0). It was janky as it sounds, but it looked so much better on low resoution TVs of the day. Once better HD screens came out, the crappiness was more noticeable.
- xattt 5y ago
  Tangential, but has there been any demoscene attempt to abuse the elements of the DVD-Video UI?
  - jchw 5y ago
    Closest I can think of, there is a demo (maybe a few) made to run as Bluray Java applets. https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=59098 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=59098
    - kingcharles 5y ago
      That was great. 1995 era effects (vectorbobs, plasmas, Gouraud shading etc), but still neat to think of it running in the Java VM on whatever CPU a Blu-ray player houses. Also the author says you can use your remote to control some of the effects.
      - jchw 5y ago
        Oh yeah, it’s definitely going for oldschool appeal. There’s something oddly compelling about running demos in weird and ill-fitting places. Mac Classic[1], mIRC script[2], TI-83 graphing calculators[3]… it’s got to be a similar appeal to porting DOOM to MP3 players, or Bad Apple!! to Atari Lynx. [1]: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=53636 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=53636 [2]: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=59129 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=59129 [3]: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=30240 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=30240
        kingcharles 5y ago
        A demo in mIRC scripting? I've seen it all now!
  - dylan604 5y ago
    What to you mean by DVD-Video UI? Edit: To the dead comment about JVM shipping with DVD. No, you are confusing DVD with Blu-ray. You may use the terms interchangably conversationaly, but they are 2 totally different things. DVDs were quite simple, but that's what made them so effective. While Blu-ray used Java, HD-DVD used ECMA script. They were both overcomplications to a situation nobody really cared about, a solution looking for a problem if you will.
    - moltke 5y ago
    - nitrogen 5y ago
      Menus, of course. Commercially people did use DVD menus to make interactive trivia games. There was some fairly sophisticated linking possible between different menus and videos.
      - dylan604 5y ago
        Okay, but a menu is just a still image or a piece of looping video. The UI portion is the same overlays as the subtitles. It just had a layer of buttons added to the video. In fact, we used to program easter eggs by adding hidden buttons to the main content portion of the video so that if you hit the right button on the remote during the right scene something would happen. I've programmed many interactive games, but the DVD spec is a very poor choice for any requirements for random. It all comes down to the DVD player manufactures and the cheap commodity players that became available. These low end players didn't really have a random function. Instead, they had a preset randomized list. We built a test disc for this to see which players offered true random. Some players would choose the exact same random order every time you restarted. If you think something was fairly sophisticated then that was a well done disc, because there was very little sophistication under the hood. The space was very confined, and became even more narrow if you used an abstraction layer system like DVD-Studio Pro. So the DVD UI phrase is a confusing term to me as there really isn't one.
        5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
paxys 5y ago
It's a stretch to assume that Apple had anything to do with the creation or mailing of this DVD. This stuff is handled by the production company.
- rndgermandude 5y ago
  They might not have authored it, but they certainly had to be asked for their approval prior to sending anything out with an Apple logo prominently displayed and a [redacted]@apple.com in the letter. And it's not unreasonable to think that a company that is a lot about brand message and identity as Apple would have had some feedback/required changes prior to finalizing and printing these things.
  - Maursault 5y ago
    > And it's not unreasonable to think that a company that is a lot about brand message and identity as Apple would have had some feedback/required changes prior to finalizing and printing these things. Apple has style-guides for every product and everything Apple, which whatever external contracted agency is provided and will meticulously follow. Unless novel design is involved, review is expedient. Any that have had previous contracts will become efficient and accurate. I've seen it with my own eyes happening so fast and quietly, and periodically, it's like they didn't want anyone to know they were making money between periods of inactivity, or that Apple had been their only client for many Moons (unclear).
    - scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
      Would you care to elaborate more on that last bit? Like you mean the subcontractor does his part quietly to not call corp attention to themselves, right?
      - Maursault 5y ago
        It would stand to reason that all of Apple's subcontractors are under NDAs. But even if they weren't, it would be not just good policy, but natural, not to advertise what was going on. My second job was working for a small marketing firm in the post-dawn hours of desktop publishing. There was the owner, who would scare up business, the artist, and myself, the graphic designer. We had one huge client, Siemens, which accounted for 90% of the firm's revenue, but this left us with plenty of time available to work for other clients. Most of the work we did was for other tiny clients until we exhausted ourselves and realized the only work we did that mattered to the business was for Siemans. Eventually we dropped all other clients but in theory remained open to working for a client as large as Siemans, which never presented itself. We had no NDA, but I can't imagine any of us told anyone we were working for Siemans. Maybe having Apple as a client is more bragworthy. My first-hand experience regarding Apple subcontracting was as a resident IT specialist at offices and facilities of two businesses recently purchased by a large international corporation (my employer) that was in a period of acquiring other companies (as a business strategy, which works, but it kind of also proves executive incompetence). The two businesses were related, one was an engraver, printer and proofer (insanely professional and expensive color proofs, and the equipment was drool-worthy). The other was a design firm and, as far as I could tell, for years at least, subcontracted for Apple to design all their packaging for everything they sold. This was not International Paper or some huge packaging company, but a small firm, less than 10 employees, surprisingly enough. The nature of Apple being secretive about releases and the nature of the product this firm provided meant that many individuals not employed directly by Apple would be privy to information about upcoming products for which certain media outlets would pay. I can only assume they were under NDAs, but I was not. This design firm was moderately successful at maintaining secrecy from the vantage point of a local IT department of one that was not all that curious or suspicious of what anyone was working on, in fact, I am biased against wasting any time doing anything that was not work. I always felt that the best attitude to have in IT was having absolutely no interest whatsoever in what anyone was doing, but I still noticed and became aware without anyone actually saying so nor by way of being nosey. I accidentally saw the work (artwork and patterned die files for cutting boxes for iMacs) and immediately recognized what it was and its significance, and that they had not been doing much of anything at all for the previous 5 months informed me Apple was their only client.
Timwi 5y ago
I was confused by the “form over function” comment. The author commended Apple’s “prioritizing form over function” but then criticized the function of competing items, indirectly lauding the function of Apple’s product.
naoqj 5y ago
Is the comment about packaging a joke? That packaging is very standard.
- dylan604 5y ago
  The whole thing is more or less a joke, so what about that particular part stood out to you?
Wowfunhappy 5y ago
I feel obligated to point out that every Mac still ships with a non-removable app called “DVD Player” preinstalled, so DVDs are still supported in the Apple ecosystem.
- philistine 5y ago
  To work with the still sold external DVD player that they stock in every Apple Store: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD564LL/A/apple-usb-superdrive https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD564LL/A/apple-usb-super... Keep in mind this thing is USB-A, meaning you need an adaptor for any laptop sold in the last couple of years.
- twmiller 5y ago
  I have a M1 Mac mini. It doesn't have a non-removable app called "DVD Player" on it. (Or, if it does, spotlight can't find it and I don't see it in the folder where I copied the 'apple droppings' apps to.)
  - kalleboo 5y ago
    It's hidden in /System/Library/CoreServices/Applications/DVD Player.app on my MacBook Pro 16" M1 Pro
  - gjsman-1000 5y ago
    I have an M1 MacBook Air. It exists - the easiest way to summon it is to put in a DVD, but it can also be found by perfectly typing “DVD Player” in Spotlight.
    - twmiller 5y ago
      I get 'No Results' when I type 'DVD Player' in spotlight.
- lwkl 5y ago
  There are some Mac users like my mother that still use this app today.
dylan604 5y ago
The Screener DVD production process is a curious bit of insanity. The "production" area[0] for this work is in a "secured" area of a "secure" facility. First, to enter the building, you must place any and all electronic devices in a locker. Once your credentials are approved, you then must be metal detector wanded before entering production floor. Once on the production floor, you must then enter a separate area from the rest of your co-workers that is secured even further by restricted access card readers and secure cage (I'm dead serious). Cameras, and I do mean multiple, are everywhere in this area, not that there aren't cameras in the rest of the place. If you've never been through an MPAA security audit, count your blessings. Once inside, the production is not dissimilar to normal short run DVD production. Standard DVD authoring software. Standard DVD burners. There are a few additional steps during video encoding that includes forensic watermarking and the pain in the arse that entails to ensure each disc is uniquely identifiable. Once the disc is burned, qc'd, and packaged, the physical media is then handled in also ridiculously security theater fashion. Lots of signatures and timestamps. To leave, you must once again pass through security to make sure you haven't succumbed to the temptation of walking out of the facility with more than you entered. You can return to your locker to retrieve your personal devices before finally being able to leave. [0] There are more than one company that does this work, but this is the description of where I worked many many moons ago.
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  Do you happen to know whether the individual watermarking thing works? By which I mean, do these typically end up on torrent sites?
  - dylan604 5y ago
    When I was first introduced to the forensic watermarking software, I was very skeptical. I, along with fellow curious coworkers, took it upon ourselves to see if we could circumvent it. We did all of the things their marketing people claimed it could do (inverting, flipping, scaling, skewing, combos of these, etc), and at the end of each of these tests, the ID could be read back. There were of course a few things we could do to make the ID unreadable, however it resulted in an unwatchable bit of video that would no longer be meaningful. The system does work. Every screener season I was involved, people were caught. They didn't always make the news because not everyone released to torrent sites. There are other screener "crimes" that don't involve the police but perhaps loose future screener privilages. There are other forensic techniques for feature films screened in theaters to catch camcorders. Modified versions of the content could be sent to different regions of the globe. When a pirated copy was found, they could look for these modified portions of content to narrow down what region was copied. These are innocuous things like changing the color of something in the background that oridinary people wouldn't even notice if it was changed from shot to shot. You'd also have to see the content from multiple regions to even possibly know that it was done. This is just one example.
yannikyeo 5y ago
Do they just watch on DVD resolution to select special effect winner? 1080p resolution and Blu ray has been with us for 15 years and they are still on DVD?
- dylan604 5y ago
  > they are still on DVD? The SD resolution of the DVD screener is part of the security. It's not dissimilar to changing the port of SSH. It's just one more thing to make the time less desirable to copy. After all, who wants to pirate/share/download/watch a crappy SD video?
- deergomoo 5y ago
  I find it insane that DVDs are still so widely produced. Who cares enough about movies that they want a physical copy, but not enough that watching standard def video blown up to 1080 or 4K is fine? That Venn diagram must overlap far more than I think it does.
  - maxerickson 5y ago
    It can be the other way around, where people using DVDs don't have fast Internet or don't realize how convenient video on demand has become.
    - dylan604 5y ago
      There's also a lot more content released and available on DVD than is available on streaming platforms. To expand, there is also tons more content only available on VHS than other formats. Straight-to-video was all the rage in the 80s/90s. Mind, that it's not necessarily good content.
  - classichasclass 5y ago
    I'll throw in a data point here: I dislike streaming services on general principles (I have HBO Max, but it came with my AT&T plan) and I'll pick DVD if there's a substantial cost difference on a movie I'm not sure about. Likewise, I'll gravitate to BD/DVD combo packs for movies I do want to see because pretty much anything plays DVDs nowadays and I might want to watch it on the road. Also, upscalers matter. To my nearly half-century eyes Sony upscalers aren't too bad. No one is claiming they're in any respect hi-def, but they're also hardly a miserable experience. Craptastic upscalers, on the other hand, are craptastic, sometimes from major brands who cheaped out.

103 points by robbiet480 5y ago

> "This is to be expected, but DVD subtitles are crummy, with low-resolution text and unappealing typography." DVD subtitles are encoded as images, not text, so in fact you can have any typography and style of typeface that you like, if you're willing to put some effort into it. The first release of Ghostbusters on DVD abused a subtitle track to store a Mystery Science Theater style silhouette of the people doing the commentary track. It was very funny, but sadly only worked on the 4:3 version of the DVD. It was removed from all later releases, but they never re-recorded the commentary track, which still contains references to things they are supposedly pointing at, even on the blu-ray releases.

dylan604 5y ago
DVD subtitles were worse than crummy. The highlights for the buttons used the same image formatting. The DVD could only use 4 colors in the sub/highlight. To make subtitle text legible, the black text on white background was posterized to 4 levels. Each of the posterized level was replaced in the authoring software so that each level was replaced with the corresponding transparency levels (100,66,33,0). It was janky as it sounds, but it looked so much better on low resoution TVs of the day. Once better HD screens came out, the crappiness was more noticeable.
xattt 5y ago
Tangential, but has there been any demoscene attempt to abuse the elements of the DVD-Video UI?
- jchw 5y ago
  Closest I can think of, there is a demo (maybe a few) made to run as Bluray Java applets. https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=59098 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=59098
  - kingcharles 5y ago
    That was great. 1995 era effects (vectorbobs, plasmas, Gouraud shading etc), but still neat to think of it running in the Java VM on whatever CPU a Blu-ray player houses. Also the author says you can use your remote to control some of the effects.
    - jchw 5y ago
      Oh yeah, it’s definitely going for oldschool appeal. There’s something oddly compelling about running demos in weird and ill-fitting places. Mac Classic[1], mIRC script[2], TI-83 graphing calculators[3]… it’s got to be a similar appeal to porting DOOM to MP3 players, or Bad Apple!! to Atari Lynx. [1]: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=53636 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=53636 [2]: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=59129 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=59129 [3]: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=30240 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=30240
      - kingcharles 5y ago
        A demo in mIRC scripting? I've seen it all now!
- dylan604 5y ago
  What to you mean by DVD-Video UI? Edit: To the dead comment about JVM shipping with DVD. No, you are confusing DVD with Blu-ray. You may use the terms interchangably conversationaly, but they are 2 totally different things. DVDs were quite simple, but that's what made them so effective. While Blu-ray used Java, HD-DVD used ECMA script. They were both overcomplications to a situation nobody really cared about, a solution looking for a problem if you will.
  - moltke 5y ago
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    Menus, of course. Commercially people did use DVD menus to make interactive trivia games. There was some fairly sophisticated linking possible between different menus and videos.
    - dylan604 5y ago
      Okay, but a menu is just a still image or a piece of looping video. The UI portion is the same overlays as the subtitles. It just had a layer of buttons added to the video. In fact, we used to program easter eggs by adding hidden buttons to the main content portion of the video so that if you hit the right button on the remote during the right scene something would happen. I've programmed many interactive games, but the DVD spec is a very poor choice for any requirements for random. It all comes down to the DVD player manufactures and the cheap commodity players that became available. These low end players didn't really have a random function. Instead, they had a preset randomized list. We built a test disc for this to see which players offered true random. Some players would choose the exact same random order every time you restarted. If you think something was fairly sophisticated then that was a well done disc, because there was very little sophistication under the hood. The space was very confined, and became even more narrow if you used an abstraction layer system like DVD-Studio Pro. So the DVD UI phrase is a confusing term to me as there really isn't one.
      - 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

paxys 5y ago

It's a stretch to assume that Apple had anything to do with the creation or mailing of this DVD. This stuff is handled by the production company.

rndgermandude 5y ago
They might not have authored it, but they certainly had to be asked for their approval prior to sending anything out with an Apple logo prominently displayed and a [redacted]@apple.com in the letter. And it's not unreasonable to think that a company that is a lot about brand message and identity as Apple would have had some feedback/required changes prior to finalizing and printing these things.
- Maursault 5y ago
  > And it's not unreasonable to think that a company that is a lot about brand message and identity as Apple would have had some feedback/required changes prior to finalizing and printing these things. Apple has style-guides for every product and everything Apple, which whatever external contracted agency is provided and will meticulously follow. Unless novel design is involved, review is expedient. Any that have had previous contracts will become efficient and accurate. I've seen it with my own eyes happening so fast and quietly, and periodically, it's like they didn't want anyone to know they were making money between periods of inactivity, or that Apple had been their only client for many Moons (unclear).
  - scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
    Would you care to elaborate more on that last bit? Like you mean the subcontractor does his part quietly to not call corp attention to themselves, right?
    - Maursault 5y ago
      It would stand to reason that all of Apple's subcontractors are under NDAs. But even if they weren't, it would be not just good policy, but natural, not to advertise what was going on. My second job was working for a small marketing firm in the post-dawn hours of desktop publishing. There was the owner, who would scare up business, the artist, and myself, the graphic designer. We had one huge client, Siemens, which accounted for 90% of the firm's revenue, but this left us with plenty of time available to work for other clients. Most of the work we did was for other tiny clients until we exhausted ourselves and realized the only work we did that mattered to the business was for Siemans. Eventually we dropped all other clients but in theory remained open to working for a client as large as Siemans, which never presented itself. We had no NDA, but I can't imagine any of us told anyone we were working for Siemans. Maybe having Apple as a client is more bragworthy. My first-hand experience regarding Apple subcontracting was as a resident IT specialist at offices and facilities of two businesses recently purchased by a large international corporation (my employer) that was in a period of acquiring other companies (as a business strategy, which works, but it kind of also proves executive incompetence). The two businesses were related, one was an engraver, printer and proofer (insanely professional and expensive color proofs, and the equipment was drool-worthy). The other was a design firm and, as far as I could tell, for years at least, subcontracted for Apple to design all their packaging for everything they sold. This was not International Paper or some huge packaging company, but a small firm, less than 10 employees, surprisingly enough. The nature of Apple being secretive about releases and the nature of the product this firm provided meant that many individuals not employed directly by Apple would be privy to information about upcoming products for which certain media outlets would pay. I can only assume they were under NDAs, but I was not. This design firm was moderately successful at maintaining secrecy from the vantage point of a local IT department of one that was not all that curious or suspicious of what anyone was working on, in fact, I am biased against wasting any time doing anything that was not work. I always felt that the best attitude to have in IT was having absolutely no interest whatsoever in what anyone was doing, but I still noticed and became aware without anyone actually saying so nor by way of being nosey. I accidentally saw the work (artwork and patterned die files for cutting boxes for iMacs) and immediately recognized what it was and its significance, and that they had not been doing much of anything at all for the previous 5 months informed me Apple was their only client.

Timwi 5y ago

I was confused by the “form over function” comment. The author commended Apple’s “prioritizing form over function” but then criticized the function of competing items, indirectly lauding the function of Apple’s product.

naoqj 5y ago

Is the comment about packaging a joke? That packaging is very standard.

dylan604 5y ago
The whole thing is more or less a joke, so what about that particular part stood out to you?

Wowfunhappy 5y ago

I feel obligated to point out that every Mac still ships with a non-removable app called “DVD Player” preinstalled, so DVDs are still supported in the Apple ecosystem.

philistine 5y ago
To work with the still sold external DVD player that they stock in every Apple Store: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD564LL/A/apple-usb-superdrive https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD564LL/A/apple-usb-super... Keep in mind this thing is USB-A, meaning you need an adaptor for any laptop sold in the last couple of years.
twmiller 5y ago
I have a M1 Mac mini. It doesn't have a non-removable app called "DVD Player" on it. (Or, if it does, spotlight can't find it and I don't see it in the folder where I copied the 'apple droppings' apps to.)
- kalleboo 5y ago
  It's hidden in /System/Library/CoreServices/Applications/DVD Player.app on my MacBook Pro 16" M1 Pro
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  I have an M1 MacBook Air. It exists - the easiest way to summon it is to put in a DVD, but it can also be found by perfectly typing “DVD Player” in Spotlight.
  - twmiller 5y ago
    I get 'No Results' when I type 'DVD Player' in spotlight.
lwkl 5y ago
There are some Mac users like my mother that still use this app today.

dylan604 5y ago

The Screener DVD production process is a curious bit of insanity. The "production" area[0] for this work is in a "secured" area of a "secure" facility. First, to enter the building, you must place any and all electronic devices in a locker. Once your credentials are approved, you then must be metal detector wanded before entering production floor. Once on the production floor, you must then enter a separate area from the rest of your co-workers that is secured even further by restricted access card readers and secure cage (I'm dead serious). Cameras, and I do mean multiple, are everywhere in this area, not that there aren't cameras in the rest of the place. If you've never been through an MPAA security audit, count your blessings. Once inside, the production is not dissimilar to normal short run DVD production. Standard DVD authoring software. Standard DVD burners. There are a few additional steps during video encoding that includes forensic watermarking and the pain in the arse that entails to ensure each disc is uniquely identifiable. Once the disc is burned, qc'd, and packaged, the physical media is then handled in also ridiculously security theater fashion. Lots of signatures and timestamps. To leave, you must once again pass through security to make sure you haven't succumbed to the temptation of walking out of the facility with more than you entered. You can return to your locker to retrieve your personal devices before finally being able to leave. [0] There are more than one company that does this work, but this is the description of where I worked many many moons ago.

Wowfunhappy 5y ago
Do you happen to know whether the individual watermarking thing works? By which I mean, do these typically end up on torrent sites?
- dylan604 5y ago
  When I was first introduced to the forensic watermarking software, I was very skeptical. I, along with fellow curious coworkers, took it upon ourselves to see if we could circumvent it. We did all of the things their marketing people claimed it could do (inverting, flipping, scaling, skewing, combos of these, etc), and at the end of each of these tests, the ID could be read back. There were of course a few things we could do to make the ID unreadable, however it resulted in an unwatchable bit of video that would no longer be meaningful. The system does work. Every screener season I was involved, people were caught. They didn't always make the news because not everyone released to torrent sites. There are other screener "crimes" that don't involve the police but perhaps loose future screener privilages. There are other forensic techniques for feature films screened in theaters to catch camcorders. Modified versions of the content could be sent to different regions of the globe. When a pirated copy was found, they could look for these modified portions of content to narrow down what region was copied. These are innocuous things like changing the color of something in the background that oridinary people wouldn't even notice if it was changed from shot to shot. You'd also have to see the content from multiple regions to even possibly know that it was done. This is just one example.

yannikyeo 5y ago

Do they just watch on DVD resolution to select special effect winner? 1080p resolution and Blu ray has been with us for 15 years and they are still on DVD?

dylan604 5y ago
> they are still on DVD? The SD resolution of the DVD screener is part of the security. It's not dissimilar to changing the port of SSH. It's just one more thing to make the time less desirable to copy. After all, who wants to pirate/share/download/watch a crappy SD video?
deergomoo 5y ago
I find it insane that DVDs are still so widely produced. Who cares enough about movies that they want a physical copy, but not enough that watching standard def video blown up to 1080 or 4K is fine? That Venn diagram must overlap far more than I think it does.
- maxerickson 5y ago
  It can be the other way around, where people using DVDs don't have fast Internet or don't realize how convenient video on demand has become.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    There's also a lot more content released and available on DVD than is available on streaming platforms. To expand, there is also tons more content only available on VHS than other formats. Straight-to-video was all the rage in the 80s/90s. Mind, that it's not necessarily good content.
- classichasclass 5y ago
  I'll throw in a data point here: I dislike streaming services on general principles (I have HBO Max, but it came with my AT&T plan) and I'll pick DVD if there's a substantial cost difference on a movie I'm not sure about. Likewise, I'll gravitate to BD/DVD combo packs for movies I do want to see because pretty much anything plays DVDs nowadays and I might want to watch it on the road. Also, upscalers matter. To my nearly half-century eyes Sony upscalers aren't too bad. No one is claiming they're in any respect hi-def, but they're also hardly a miserable experience. Craptastic upscalers, on the other hand, are craptastic, sometimes from major brands who cheaped out.