Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
WANTED: Happy members who like to discuss audio and other topics related to our interest. Desire to learn and share knowledge of science required. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions.
Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!
Blu-Ray was a cash grab and extension of geo blocking. The improvement in picture quality didn't matter to most people but the prospect of re-buying titles you already had on DVD and the possibility (often realised) that the Blu-Ray would refuse to play because of the "protections" built into the format made it a lame duck from the outset. I have over 300 DVD's but only four or five Blu-Ray titles it's a technology that I can watch fade away without any sympathy.
Wondering if I should buy a new Blu-Ray player and stick it away in case my Sony bites the dust. I have quite a few Blu-Ray discs that I'd like to continue to watch for as long as I can.
I suspect that those attached to the format should have little problem finding used or NOS Blu-Ray players from the usual suspects. We've got two Sony Blu-Ray players here, same model bought used for very cheap, both working fine after five years. I'm guessing the downfall of the format is the same as the downfall of CDs - people were happy to stream instead, not deal with the space taken up by the physical format. We get DVDs from the library, only have a few DVDs and even fewer Blu-Ray discs. I volunteer at the local library; we get donations of DVDs and Blu-Ray discs. People are dumping them.
I'm willing to bet there are many low hours BluRay players out there. I bought one some years back, and if it's had more than 20 hours use that would be a lot.
I'm sure there are many other folk in the same position.
The downfall of the format was bound to happen. However I agree with comment of dasdoing in that it never lived. It never lived because it was too expensive for discs. The price of the discs aren't bad now, but for far too long they were much too high to achieve widespread adoption. Quite a few people purchased the bluray machines once they were affordable and not so many in my acquaintance had many discs at all. I would sort of think Netflix when it was the primary streaming movie source and all the big movies ended up there was the final nail that doomed it. I hated it too as streaming while much improved doesn't match a good bluray much less a 4k bluray for image quality.
Streaming quality is so uneven and generally poor. I recently got an OLED TV and it's really made this fact more obvious than ever. I would happily buy or rent 4k blurays. Time to revive Blockbuster.
Streaming quality is so uneven and generally poor. I recently got an OLED TV and it's really made this fact more obvious than ever. I would happily buy or rent 4k blurays. Time to revive Blockbuster.
"Video killed radio star" Glad I got my pre-Hays Code Max Fliescher cartoons with topless Betty Boop on DVD. Like having the media. Have not looked for it on a stream and I'll bet its hard to come by but I could be wrong.
Edit: some pre Hays code stuff on DVD including Bamboo Isle. Need Vol 1 2 & 3 to get it all. 1 & 3 have the best stuff
It is my impression over the years that a higher percentage of consumers in Japan prefer physical media compared to other markets. My hunch is Sony and/or Panasonic will be selling new samples of 4K Blu-ray disc players for the medium term - five to ten years.
Streaming is very much hit and miss at times. I find Netflix generally to be quite okay. The AV1 codec it uses is 30% more efficient than H265 of a UHD Blu-ray, and the high bitrate game is one of diminishing returns. I suspect the quality is much closer than the bitrate difference makes it out to be. Amazon video always had strange colors and curious noise… very distracting. Disney+ is also generally okay I think. For sure a 50GB movie download is beter, but not that much better.
Bummer. I am a longtime Home Theatre enthusiast. I still even have my HD DVD player and HD DVD collection! (along with a Blu-ray player and Blu-ray collection).
Fortunately, I still have an oppo 1080p player, as well as their last 4K UHD player (unopened!… wow are those things expensive secondhand now).
For various reasons, I haven’t managed to set up the UHD player yet, but I think I’m probably headed towards a kaleidescape system. I’m not into collecting physical movies these days but would also like 4K UHD in high-quality.
I think Sony in particular is to blame for the decline of this medium. Instead of really creating a replacement for the DVD with the BD, they offered a "premium option" (especially in terms of price). However, ATMOS sound is only available from Sony, for example, with the 4K BD, which is of course another 10 euros more expensive than the standard BD. So effectively there are now 3 price levels for movie dics (maybe even 4 if you consider collector editions / steelbooks). It should be clear that the average consumer doesn't go along with this madness.
On the one hand, distributors are frustrated due to low market penetration, but on the other hand they are not prepared to really create incentives. In addition, the benefits of new products are not clear to the user and brand names lose their meaning due to bullshit bingo marketing. For example, my father's new 200 euro tablet also has a Dolby ATMOS logo on it, which is of course completely absurd. This device delivers perhaps 5% of a "real" 3D surround experience. But if everything is ultimately ATMOS-worthy, you can ultimately forget about the logos because they don't represent any added value of a product.
I have a few Blu-Rays, but they were never fun to watch. It took several minutes before you could finally start the movie (unskippable copyright notices - as a punishment for having bought the original, trailers, menus...).
Nowadays, I would have to laboriously dig out a drive, connect it to the PC and probably update the player software, or buy it again because maybe the older version refuses to update the copy protection.
If I want to watch a movie, I'd rather wait until Netflix or Disnex have it, even if I have it on the shelf as a BluRay.
On the other hand, providers are also making more and more efforts to ensure that streaming is no longer fun.
Fortunately, most movies are so bad anyway that it doesn't matter what quality you don't watch them in.
I'm still using DVD - never got around to Blu-Ray as DVD seemed to be a good enough system for my purposes. (We have around 200 DVD's).
In recent years though I have mostly used streaming services and even the DVD player has gone unused for long periods of time.
scarecrowvideo.org
