Are blu-ray players still worth buying?

[Chrispy]

Sometimes I'm envious.

Especially when I want to listen to loud music late at night.

Yeah, I can put on headphones, but rocking out on cans just isn't the same as loudspeakers...

Yeah that's not been a problem for the most part. Altho I have had roommates in the past, but mostly they'd be into it as well Hate using headphones....

 

[Sal1950]

Sometimes I'm envious.

Especially when I want to listen to loud music late at night.

Yeah, I can put on headphones, but rocking out on cans just isn't the same as loudspeakers...

I still have the same problem due to close neighbors and thin uninsulated walls on the cheap modular homes.
But heck, I had foot thick brick walls on my old bungalow in Chicago, but with my LaScala's and dual HSU subs, I still had the guy next door call the cops on me a few times. LOL
I've gotten hot on headphones a few times but after a short time I burn out on listening to them. They can sound incredible but ???????????????????

 

[watchnerd]

I still have the same problem due to close neighbors and thin uninsulated walls on the cheap modular homes.
But heck, I had foot thick brick walls on my old bungalow in Chicago, but with my LaScala's and dual HSU subs, I still had the guy next door call the cops on me a few times. LOL
I've gotten hot on headphones a few times but after a short time I burn out on listening to them. They can sound incredible but ???????????????????

I can't listen for more than about 2-3 hours on cans before I get tired of it, physically (ears got hot / sore) and mentally.

 

[Sal1950]

I can't listen for more than about 2-3 hours on cans before I get tired of it, physically (ears got hot / sore) and mentally.

There's just something about the lack of imaging that takes much of the listening pleasure out with headphones.
Specially when compared against good multich immersive recordings, there's just no comparison.
YMMV

 

[Human Bass]

Im pretty sure the vast majority of blu-ray players are xbox and ps4.

 

[Nathan Raymond]

Im pretty sure the vast majority of blu-ray players are xbox and ps4.

It probably accounts for a lot these days, and the lousy support for UHD is I'm sure a big factor why UHD isn't selling well (compared to the original Blu-Ray, which had strong support from Sony on the PS3 at launch, while Sony still doesn't support UHD on the PS4). That and playing back UHD on a PC is beyond annoying.

2k HD Blu-Ray (and older formats): Sony Playstation 3, Sony Playstation 4, original Xbox One, PCs and Macs with any DVD drive
4k UHD Blu-Ray (and older formats): Xbox One S, upcoming Microsoft and Sony consoles, PC via CyberLink PowerDVD (must be Win 10 on Intel 7th generation Core i processors or later with Intel SGX technology, must use Intel Graphics and HDCP 2.2 display, must use a certified UHD drive, and if the computer includes more than one graphics processor, Ultra HD Blu-ray will only on a display that is directly connected to the Intel graphics processor).

Those onerous CyberLink PowerDVD 4k UHD hardware requirements are just absurd. The DRM isn't as secure as they pretend it to be, you can buy software like DVDFab Player 6 (which has no US industry backing) and it will play back UHD discs on a wide range of CPU/graphics processors. There's other software that will lift the contents off Blu-Ray discs (2k and 4k), so the HDCP also isn't really protecting anything. But the intellectual property tax (i.e. licensing fees) that encumbers all of home theater theses days makes the IP rights holders rich without them having to do much other than endure boring annual ratifying committee meetings so they can rev their standards. Meanwhile consumers will continue to suffer with limited and inferior products from a shrinking pool of companies who can stomach bending over backwards to accommodate these 'protections', and the streaming companies can get rich selling the same content to consumers over and over again, which they won't own, can't rely on being on a given service, and can't necessarily rely on that service being around long-term.

 

[jhm]

Apologies for reviving this thread but I was just wondering whether it's slightly crazy of me to think about buying now in 2021 my first Blu-ray player and my first Blu-ray discs ?

I watch streaming services on a 27" iMac including the Criterion Channel and Mubi. I do have a small collection of DVDs which I've built up over the years but I can count on one hand the number of times I've watched them in the past five years (it makes me happy to get a disc which I think is worthwhile even if I don't get around to watching it yet). I bought last month a Sony 48" 4K OLED (HDR10, HLG, Dolby Vision) and I'm only using the TV's built-in speakers. The only DVD player I have is a USB drive for my Mac. For music (and thanks to ASR!), I have a D90/A90/Empyrean setup.

I've come across a couple of films which are only available as Blu-ray discs (part of the Eureka! Masters of Cinema series) and not on any streaming service I'm aware of. If I do get the discs, I'm thinking of getting a Panasonic DP-UB820 (£300 here in the UK - currently around $420). I read Amir's review about the player's mediocre audio performance but if I do get one, I'll only be connecting it to the TV over HDMI so the player's audio performance shouldn't matter. The DP-UB9000 costs a lot more and apart from much nicer build quality, the other extra features will be wasted for me. The DP-UB420 costs less but lacks Dolby Vision (in case I ever get a Blu-ray disc with that). The Sony Blu-ray players seem to have an annoying flaw of them needing to have Dolby Vision manually switched on and off.

I can understand why people might buy a Blu-ray player if they already have a substantial collection of Blu-ray discs but in my case, I'm wondering whether it would be strange (at least) for me to get a Blu-ray player and Blu-ray discs now ?

Thank you in advance for advice!

 

[Chrispy]

Well IMO bluray still beats all the streaming options for both video and audio....and audio is more important to me, cannot even imagine only using a tv's speakers (I never use tv speakers, they suck).

Now, how much you want to spend on discs....that's something else. Most of what I watch is Netflix disc rental (and bluray is becoming less of a choice with quite a few films lately....the studios are cutting back, eventually they'll just go away to a great extent I think, might even revert mostly to dvd as to what's available outside of the bigger $$ films). I do buy the ones I want still but my collection is still modest on bluray compared to how many I have on dvd from before the blurays (let alone cd), so having a player is always key for me (actually several of them for use in various rooms). At least an optical disc player can play most if not all of the optical discs out there.....

Doubt the audio performance is an issue in any of the major players, tho. It may not have pristine numbers....but doubt any particular issue audibly.

 

[Robin L]

Well IMO bluray still beats all the streaming options for both video and audio....and audio is more important to me, cannot even imagine only using a tv's speakers (I never use tv speakers, they suck).

Now, how much you want to spend on discs....that's something else. Most of what I watch is Netflix disc rental (and bluray is becoming less of a choice with quite a few films lately....the studios are cutting back, eventually they'll just go away to a great extent I think, might even revert mostly to dvd as to what's available outside of the bigger $$ films). I do buy the ones I want still but my collection is still modest on bluray compared to how many I have on dvd from before the blurays (let alone cd), so having a player is always key for me (actually several of them for use in various rooms). At least an optical disc player can play most if not all of the optical discs out there.....

Doubt the audio performance is an issue in any of the major players, tho. It may not have pristine numbers....but doubt any particular issue audibly.

I'll just note one more time that Blu-Ray players show up frequently at thrift stores for stupid money. As they also play CDs and DVDs, and many of them play SACDs as well, they are something worthwhile should you run across something in a 'legacy format'. Keep a couple on hand, you never know when one will blow out. I think I spent all of $35 for my two used Sony Blu-Ray/SACD/DVD players, including the remote I had to order online.

Right now, I have no intention of getting more physical media, I just don't have the room and streaming has matured very quickly into a viable option. On the other hand, I've got many movies on discs and want to see them again, but don't intend to pay for them again. And who knows when someone might give you a CD or a DVD? So I intend to keep something around to play the digital discs I've got.

 

[Sal1950]

I paid $45 for my last Sony BD5100 off ebay, and if your interested it can also be used to rip SACD's to your hard drive.
It really does surprise me that many audiophiles have no interest in BD players. They offer lossless 24/192 sound on multich files both from
movies and BDAudio releases.. They remain the SOTA in sound distrobution with only the 4k UHD discs surpassing them in video quality
Not to mention their cost is at the bottom of components for our hobby.

 

[David Harper]

I may have bought the last OPPO 203 and I love this thing. Even if bluray does go away. It's performance has (so far) been perfect. And it just looks so cool sitting there all black and OPPO looking. And I do have some SACD's and audio DVD's and DVD's so there's always something to play.
And the bluray picture quality is awesome on this thing on my 50" Panasonic HD plasma. ( I may have bought the last plasma TV as well) I've been buying bluray movies from the redbox machine.
By the way if anyone here hasn't seen "The Invisible Man" yet be sure to watch it. Much better than it sounds.

 

[Andysu]

Hardly now buy bluray discs due to studios being greedy and doing near field mixes which I don't appreciate at all. Often a 4k comes with a bluray. Last blu/4k brought was months ago now cos the last Milking greedy studio, disney company with a rubbish star wars revenge of sith, with a rubbish atmos upmix that only uses 2 channels on the overhead height 2 middle if it says 7.1.4 disney are liars cos it only uses 2 channels and if remixed at skywalker sound, it really takes the biscuit cos it had bad cross-talk in first 12 mins and only got worse cos all they did was take the music and some sound effects and stuffed in the encoder and didn't do anything that was remotely artistic or professional. My advice is stay away from disney 4k atmos it is trash and only suited for the cat litter box, if you catch my drift?

I rather buy the odd Laserdisc now and then latest one was Chain Reaction (1996) Dolby AC-3.

 

[JSmith]

Bluray and UHD bluray is the only way to get the best picture quality... everything else is compressed further to some extent.

Bluray rips need to be a complete image of the disc, re-encoding will likely reduce bitrate and PQ. Of course ripping a bluray is very much illegal, even for person use.

Streaming can say 1080p or 4K all they like, but resolution doesn't equal quality if the bitrate is average to low for that res.



JSmith

 

[David Harper]

Bluray and UHD bluray is the only way to get the best picture quality... everything else is compressed further to some extent.

Bluray rips need to be a complete image of the disc, re-encoding will likely reduce bitrate and PQ. Of course ripping a bluray is very much illegal, even for person use.

Streaming can say 1080p or 4K all they like, but resolution doesn't equal quality if the bitrate is average to low for that res.



JSmith

yea I watched "Wonder Woman 1984" streamed it on HBOmax. It was claimed to be 1080p but the picture quality wasn't nearly as good as my bluray discs.

 

[JSmith]

yea I watched "Wonder Woman 1984" streamed it on HBOmax. It was claimed to be 1080p but the picture quality wasn't nearly as good as my bluray discs.

Yeah exactly... 4K on some streaming services is about as good as standard bluray, but the 1080p streams are often average in comparison. 4K using a 4K player and TV is superb.



JSmith

 

[Mkaram]

Is this legal? Or don't I want to know?

In the USA, at least, the answer is ... annoying.
If you own something it is legal for you to make a personal backup copy. This means it's legal for you to rip your physical media.

*However* it is likely illegal for you to circumvent *any* copyright or anti-piracy mechanisms no matter how strong or weak. For example, most DVD's were protected with an encryption scheme called CSS. CSS was completely defeated which is why it's so simple to use software like DVDShrink or Makemkv or similar. And that software is likely legal because it's not inherently illegal to read an encrypted disc. The digital copyright laws are very strange in this regard and rely on the intent of the encrypting party. This means it's likely *illegal* for you to rip your own discs.

You can backup your physical media.
You can decrypt your own physical media, too.
But it is likely illegal to decrypt physical media which was encrypted by others if they encrypted it with the intention of preventing you from decrypting it or creating copies of it.

It's not illegal to defeat encryption. It's illegal to defeat encryption to enable activity against the desire of the encrypting party.

I could create a zip file and give it the password "12345" (hey that's the same combination on my luggage!). Anybody could readily open this file either by guessing or cracking weak encryption.
It would be legal for me to do it with the file *I* passworded. It would be legal for a third party to do it if I gave them explicit permission to do so. It would be legal if they did so explicitly for the purpose of researching or understanding the encryption scheme.
It would be *illegal* for a third party to do it with the intent of using the file in a way I did not intend.

That said, it's highly unlikely that an individual will ever get in trouble for this because media groups do not want an individual fair-use case to potentially dilute the current assumed power of the law should they want to use it against folks looks Kim Dot Com, for example.

 

[JSmith]

If you own something it is legal for you to make a personal backup copy.

Not for DVD/BD media, it can't be reproduced for any reason at all;

*However* it is likely illegal for you to circumvent *any* copyright or anti-piracy mechanisms no matter how strong or weak.

It's not possible to rip without circumventing;

https://lifehacker.com/is-it-legal-to-rip-a-dvd-that-i-own-5978326

That said if one doesn't distribute same, I can't see how anyone would know.



JSmith

 

[Mkaram]

Not for DVD/BD media, it can't be reproduced for any reason at all;

View attachment 117361

It's not possible to rip without circumventing;

https://lifehacker.com/is-it-legal-to-rip-a-dvd-that-i-own-5978326

That said if one doesn't distribute same, I can't see how anyone would know.



JSmith

I know. That's why I said it's annoying. For some reason you quoted one sentence of a long post explaining the complexity.

Imagine a theoretical blu-ray that had no copyright protection at all.You are allowed to make a personal backup copy of this media you own. This is what's known as "fair use."

But because any BDs you buy will certainly have encryption, you cannot legally make backups. Making the backup isn't the problem, bypassing the protection scheme is the problem.

So, practically speaking, it is not legal for anybody in the USA to make backups of their DVD/BD's, because doing so would require circumventing the protection systems.

 

[kevin1969]

Yeah exactly... 4K on some streaming services is about as good as standard bluray, but the 1080p streams are often average in comparison. 4K using a 4K player and TV is superb.



JSmith

That's exactly why I keep buying them because I haven't found a single video or audio example of anything streaming that can compete with the actual 4K disc. I feel bad for people that didn't know this in the beginning and own all their HiDef content through iTunes.

 

[Sal1950]

I'm a bad boy.