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I understand that streaming is a great option but what about high quality? I buy Blu-rays of media where quality is a high point of the experience. Things like

I understand that streaming is a great option but what about high quality? I buy Blu-rays of media where quality is a high point of the experience. Things like Pixar films, traditional animation, films with extraordinary visuals (e.g. LoTR). Are there full-quality digital/downloadable options that I'm not aware of?

lxe 3y ago
You will still be able to buy Blu-rays, just not from Best Buy
- beowulfey 3y ago
  It probably marks the beginning of the end for the medium though
  - eat 3y ago
    To me it looks more like a continuation of the decline of brick and mortar retail. Even if I want to watch films on blue-ray, why would I ever want to drive to a Best Buy to purchase them?
    - josteink 3y ago
      Because you can have it now and not in three days? Sometimes urgency is a factor.
      - ghaff 3y ago
        If I really must have something right now, I'm highly unlikely to spend 30 minutes plus to drive to the nearest Best Buy to purchase a physical disc. And I don't think that's atypical. I have to believe the most common pattern for someone to buy physical media at a local store is that they're in the store for some other reason and they see a disc for a movie they want to watch.
    - morelisp 3y ago
      Browsing an enormous shelf of hundreds (at peak thousands) of films is a much better way to find new things than clicking "Next" 5-20 at a time and trying to parse a tiny thumbnail with a probably half-corrupted title.
    - WorldMaker 3y ago
      Because of overall efficiencies in carbon emissions and packaging waste when things are delivered by a palette load to a local-to-you retailer rather than individually packaged to be sent directly to homes?
    - beowulfey 3y ago
      Interesting… why wouldn’t you? Do you live far from one? I love going to Best Buy (and most stores), but maybe that’s just because it was great growing up with them as a source for all things electronic. Personally I get more joy from browsing stores in person compared to browsing digitally. It becomes something to do—an event of sorts. We exist in the physical world; the digital world is less satisfying to my other senses.
  - organsnyder 3y ago
    I think the beginning of the end happened already when streaming became commonplace.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    There was quite the kerfuffle around the Internet Archive and their controlled lending efforts wrt books online. The disappearance of media formats that could be physically lent out and the total lack of media owners being willer to offer the same digitally was the risk they were attempting to mitigate. Culture dies when libraries can't lend it (which they can today due to first sale doctrine applicable to physical media, whether books, DVDs, etc), and it's locked behind digital rights and streaming portals (where first sale doctrine does not apply). When physical media dies, you'll either be a consumer willing to pay "whatever the market will bear" for your temporary license (books, music, video, whatever), or a pirate. Archives can still accumulate culture for safekeeping (physically and digitally), it'll just be inaccessible to the public for a century or two sliding window into the past based on current flavor of copyright statute insanity. https://time.com/6266147/internet-archive-copyright-infringement-books-lawsuit/ https://time.com/6266147/internet-archive-copyright-infringe...
  - gdulli 3y ago
    Steam was the beginning of the end for physical media, it got the ball rolling on normalizing for a whole generation the lack of media ownership.
graypegg 3y ago
I think a lot of streaming services offer some sort of 4K upgrade pricing. [0] Doesn't seem like the requirements for netflix are even that demanding, minimum 15mbps is at least a common internet speed where I'm from. [0] https://help.netflix.com/en/node/13444 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/13444
- tpmx 3y ago
  Netflix 4k is laughably bad in comparison to Blu-ray 4k. Blu-Ray 4k has about 10x higher bitrate.
  - graypegg 3y ago
    Haha yeah that's possible, I don't even own a 4K TV at the moment, so I'm out of the loop here. I guess in the exact terms of how many lit-up pixels you get per second, it's the same. 15mbps sounds like some serious compression though I bet.
- mustacheemperor 3y ago
  The requirements are so low because the bitrate is so low. 4k off an internet stream doesn’t compare to off the disc. If you want DolbyVision, HDR, highest resolution and bitrate, physical media is still the only option that I’m aware of. Bummed about this happening because when I’ve tried ordering Bluray from Amazon, the discs sometimes show up loose in the cases and scratched up.
- hundchenkatze 3y ago
  4k content from Netflix does not look as good as 4k content from Blu-ray. Especially for dark scenes, Netflix's stream is full of decompression artifacts making everything grey and blotchy.
  - tpmx 3y ago
    They also have a problem with older noisy 1080p sources. Badly upscaled to 4k and then bandwidth-limited it sometimes looks comically bad. When I tried out the 4k Netflix option in early 2023 I found myself wanting an option to downgrade to their 1080p encoding for a few of the shows I was watching. I was told Netflix hired really smart people for like 300-500k/year for the express purpose of avoiding stupid shit like this.
stevenAthompson 3y ago
Agreed. Streaming is wildly inappropriate for things like horror films where compression and macro blocking ruin the dark scenes. The bitrate of a 4k blu ray sometime peaks above 100MB/s, yet most streaming providers max out around 20MB/s. There will always be a place for the enthusiast who is willing to put up with a little hassle and higher cost for a better overall experience, and boutique blu ray sales have really taken off lately for this exact reason. This isn’t the death of physical media, but it might be the death of retail physical media. FWIW If you find yourself without a choice other than streaming, check Apple first. They offer the highest bitrate typically.
awad 3y ago
Apple will sell you 4K downloads through iTunes. IME they're pretty good about getting you on to the latest/highest quality version of something if there is ever an upscaled edition released.
criddell 3y ago
Sony has a streaming service called Bravia Core. To use it, you need to be able to download at a sustained 115 Mbps. It's kind of funny that on Bravia TVs, this means you have to connect wirelessly because their ethernet port only supports 100 Mbps.

lxe 3y ago

You will still be able to buy Blu-rays, just not from Best Buy

beowulfey 3y ago
It probably marks the beginning of the end for the medium though
- eat 3y ago
  To me it looks more like a continuation of the decline of brick and mortar retail. Even if I want to watch films on blue-ray, why would I ever want to drive to a Best Buy to purchase them?
  - josteink 3y ago
    Because you can have it now and not in three days? Sometimes urgency is a factor.
    - ghaff 3y ago
      If I really must have something right now, I'm highly unlikely to spend 30 minutes plus to drive to the nearest Best Buy to purchase a physical disc. And I don't think that's atypical. I have to believe the most common pattern for someone to buy physical media at a local store is that they're in the store for some other reason and they see a disc for a movie they want to watch.
  - morelisp 3y ago
    Browsing an enormous shelf of hundreds (at peak thousands) of films is a much better way to find new things than clicking "Next" 5-20 at a time and trying to parse a tiny thumbnail with a probably half-corrupted title.
  - WorldMaker 3y ago
    Because of overall efficiencies in carbon emissions and packaging waste when things are delivered by a palette load to a local-to-you retailer rather than individually packaged to be sent directly to homes?
  - beowulfey 3y ago
    Interesting… why wouldn’t you? Do you live far from one? I love going to Best Buy (and most stores), but maybe that’s just because it was great growing up with them as a source for all things electronic. Personally I get more joy from browsing stores in person compared to browsing digitally. It becomes something to do—an event of sorts. We exist in the physical world; the digital world is less satisfying to my other senses.
- organsnyder 3y ago
  I think the beginning of the end happened already when streaming became commonplace.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  There was quite the kerfuffle around the Internet Archive and their controlled lending efforts wrt books online. The disappearance of media formats that could be physically lent out and the total lack of media owners being willer to offer the same digitally was the risk they were attempting to mitigate. Culture dies when libraries can't lend it (which they can today due to first sale doctrine applicable to physical media, whether books, DVDs, etc), and it's locked behind digital rights and streaming portals (where first sale doctrine does not apply). When physical media dies, you'll either be a consumer willing to pay "whatever the market will bear" for your temporary license (books, music, video, whatever), or a pirate. Archives can still accumulate culture for safekeeping (physically and digitally), it'll just be inaccessible to the public for a century or two sliding window into the past based on current flavor of copyright statute insanity. https://time.com/6266147/internet-archive-copyright-infringement-books-lawsuit/ https://time.com/6266147/internet-archive-copyright-infringe...
- gdulli 3y ago
  Steam was the beginning of the end for physical media, it got the ball rolling on normalizing for a whole generation the lack of media ownership.

graypegg 3y ago

I think a lot of streaming services offer some sort of 4K upgrade pricing. [0] Doesn't seem like the requirements for netflix are even that demanding, minimum 15mbps is at least a common internet speed where I'm from. [0] https://help.netflix.com/en/node/13444 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/13444

tpmx 3y ago
Netflix 4k is laughably bad in comparison to Blu-ray 4k. Blu-Ray 4k has about 10x higher bitrate.
- graypegg 3y ago
  Haha yeah that's possible, I don't even own a 4K TV at the moment, so I'm out of the loop here. I guess in the exact terms of how many lit-up pixels you get per second, it's the same. 15mbps sounds like some serious compression though I bet.
mustacheemperor 3y ago
The requirements are so low because the bitrate is so low. 4k off an internet stream doesn’t compare to off the disc. If you want DolbyVision, HDR, highest resolution and bitrate, physical media is still the only option that I’m aware of. Bummed about this happening because when I’ve tried ordering Bluray from Amazon, the discs sometimes show up loose in the cases and scratched up.
hundchenkatze 3y ago
4k content from Netflix does not look as good as 4k content from Blu-ray. Especially for dark scenes, Netflix's stream is full of decompression artifacts making everything grey and blotchy.
- tpmx 3y ago
  They also have a problem with older noisy 1080p sources. Badly upscaled to 4k and then bandwidth-limited it sometimes looks comically bad. When I tried out the 4k Netflix option in early 2023 I found myself wanting an option to downgrade to their 1080p encoding for a few of the shows I was watching. I was told Netflix hired really smart people for like 300-500k/year for the express purpose of avoiding stupid shit like this.

stevenAthompson 3y ago

Agreed. Streaming is wildly inappropriate for things like horror films where compression and macro blocking ruin the dark scenes. The bitrate of a 4k blu ray sometime peaks above 100MB/s, yet most streaming providers max out around 20MB/s. There will always be a place for the enthusiast who is willing to put up with a little hassle and higher cost for a better overall experience, and boutique blu ray sales have really taken off lately for this exact reason. This isn’t the death of physical media, but it might be the death of retail physical media. FWIW If you find yourself without a choice other than streaming, check Apple first. They offer the highest bitrate typically.

awad 3y ago

Apple will sell you 4K downloads through iTunes. IME they're pretty good about getting you on to the latest/highest quality version of something if there is ever an upscaled edition released.

criddell 3y ago

Sony has a streaming service called Bravia Core. To use it, you need to be able to download at a sustained 115 Mbps. It's kind of funny that on Bravia TVs, this means you have to connect wirelessly because their ethernet port only supports 100 Mbps.