Sometimes I find the less-sharp image easier to watch and get lost in the story. When the image is super sharp, the details catch my attention and take me out of the story. For most streaming movies, I prefer to rent the SD version over the HD for this reason.
I find that high def makes most sense for visually vivid movies or re-mastered copies of older movies. Not all re-mastered movies are worth investing in.
The Sound of Music for example, is STUNNING in blu ray. It was shot on 70 mm film stock. The restoration is gorgeous. At the beginning of the movie when you see the lakes surrounding Vienna, you can see the individual ripples on the lake, I had never seen those before.
Natural history documentaries (think BBC Frozen or Planet Earth) that were shot in high def look amazing on blu ray. I think concerts shot in high def are also worth it, if you really like the artist.
I’m just thinking about times when I’m watching a normally HD channel, but the content is definitely pre-2003 or so, but the content isn’t letterboxed on screen. For example, my wife watches Lifetime movies with some regularity, especially around the holidays. A lot of them are pre-2003 or so, but they’re somehow displayed in a non-letterboxed format.
Or, for example, sometimes older Spongebob episodes are shown non-letterboxed on Nickelodeon.
If I remember right, most films (moreso theatrical than made-for-tv, but still) have been shot in some sort of widescreen format. They were just edited for years to fit on 4:3 ratio screens for home viewing because we didn’t have widescreen TVs. Now that widescreen is the standard, they’ve removed the 4:3 editing and you can watch the original widescreen film.
Some broadcast TV is still filmed with 4:3 in mind. Announcers for sports events in particular. You might notice sometimes that they’re always occupying the center of the screen. Sometimes uncomfortably so - looking at it in widescreen you might think “geez guys you’re right on top of one another’s faces, you can take a step back, you’ve got room” Well no, because when it’s viewed on 4:3, the sides get chopped off, and in that case the heads are exactly as far apart as they can be without half of them being trimmed out of the picture. (Here is an example)
People are lazy and would rather push a button and get a inferior resolution version minus extras that can be taken away from them any time the service decides than spend 10 mins driving to the store and getting the superior version that no one can take away short of breaking in and stealing it or their own dumb fuckup losing it.
No, we just aren’t Luddite hoarders living in a perpetual 1997.
I only have a 720 tv so that’s fine for me, but both Netflix and Amazon offer 1080P.
Technically, as long as you have a modest amount of money, you can just rent the blu-ray from Netflix if you find a film you want to see in the best quality. This option is very inexpensive. If you think about it, renting it Netflix style, you have access to basically *every *blu-ray yet only the ones you are watching recently occupy room in your house. It is also less expensive - 9 bucks a month or so, you can realistically rent about 2-6 disks a month with the 1 at a time plan depending on how lazy you are about putting them in the return envelope the moment you are done watching em.
If you no longer can spare 9 bucks a month, you probably can’t pay your power bill anyway, so there’s no reason to horde the physical disks.
Yeah, the blu-ray player is kind of like a kick-ass 8 track cassette player.
If you’re only interested in newly released titles, Redbox (at about a buck for a DVD or $1.50 for BluRay) might work better, especially if you only rent movies infrequently. You do have to be prompt in returning them though.
Indeed. Either way, it’s cheaper to rent than it is to buy. Both in the short and the long term. The only time buying makes sense is if there’s a specific film you know you want to watch dozens of times.
Kind of like the “if it’s flies, floats, or fucks” rule of thumb. Only makes sense to buy your own airplane if you are flying it constantly, only makes sense to purchase your yacht if you sail for months on it every year, and only makes sense to marry the mistress if you are fucking her year round…actually, it’s probably cheaper for many people to just keep paying the mistress a monthly allowance than to marry her…
Yes, I can most assuredly see a difference. We all can. But everyone ain’t “videophiles”, and not everyone has the desire, or disposable income, to bother with seeing all them HD details.
The same thing applies to FLAC versus MP3. MP3 works well enough for most, even though FLAC is “better”.
It’s also on a rapidly diminishing returns spectrum. If you have a reasonably large TV bought within the last 5 years, it’s probably good enough to enjoy most any available content. If you have an actual subwoofer instead of the chintzy soundbar, you’re rocking. You can get both for about a grand. Or you can spend any amount of money, up into the 6 figure range, getting better sound and ever incrementally better a display.
I think it’s like the difference between someone eating ramen noodles and tuna vs grocery store steak vs Kobe beef in a white tablecloth restaurant with a Michellin rating. The mid range guy eating steak grilled at his home is getting almost all the same benefit as the high end guy.
Just don’t brag if you’re a ramen noodles guy, or you like to watch movies on your old tube tv and using ipad speakers. If you can’t tell the difference between that and steak, it’s not a good thing.
Netflix is not available in Thailand, although I’ve heard it will be in the near future.
I watched Blu-Ray at a friends. The difference wasn’t enough to justify the cost of a new set up.
But the main reason is their strongarm techniques. Removing the special features from DVDs. Not being able to watch any rented disc without 5 pitches to buy BR. Including after clicking ‘play movie’. Fuck 'em.
I’ll just stream, thank you.
Has blu-ray actually tanked that much? I’d like to see proof that it’s really doing all that badly. If anyone’s expecting it to outsell DVD’s it’s not going to and was never likely to, because some old films and most old TV shows can’t really be upgraded to blu-ray. That would be judging blu-ray by a standard that anyone realistic would not have expected.
I pretty much only buy blu-rays when i get a physical copy of a movie. If the film is a comedy or something where the picture quality is unimportant then I’m more likely to just see if it’s available for (legal) download.
More triple disc sets, or at least double sets, where it includes a DVD, would help sales. Then you have the option of watching the DVD in places like, say, your bedroom, where you probably don’t have a DVD player, or on a laptop or those DVD players on the back of carseats or whatever, without feeling ripped off for buying the same film twice.
This must be the main reason a few people here really are saying that they can’t see a difference. You need a big screen for blu-ray to make sense. I have a 100" screen in my living room, my daughter has a 24" screen in her bedroom. No point in her having a blu-ray player. You’d probably have to go beyond 40" for it to make a really appreciable difference, at least at the distance most people sit from their TVs. On my screen the difference is so notable that not noticing it would make you wonder if you should get an eye test soon.
They’re never really blu-ray quality - they just can’t be. Those that are, or close to it, take an age to download because they’re so much bigger, and that does cost in electricity and bandwidth (particularly if you have to leave the computer on overnight to download it), so it’s not really free either. If it’s not huge enough to take ages to download then the chances of it really being blu-ray quality are minimal.
I see a lot of people saying this, but the thing is, you don’t have to keep the cases and have them taking up tons of space. I have all my discs (of any kind) in folders - alphabetised! - and they take up hardly any room at all.
Here’s a chart showing optimal viewing distance for HDTVs.
Psst. Usenet. If you know the right places, you can find actual blu ray images - it’s the actual video file, decrypted, that was on the disk. In some cases you can even find a file that can be mounted as a virtual blu ray disk. These files are about 50 gigabytes. You have to pay for high speed access to usenet and you need an internet connection with enough download speed. Ironically, a good usenet service can cost…20 bucks a month…and you also need a higher internet speed package when in the US can run you an extra 30 a month…more expensive than Netflix.
That’s the point he was making. Such files may exist, but they’re so cumbersome to download and use it’s pointless to say “Blu-ray quality” downloads are available.
We watch one or two movies a week, usually on a Friday and/or Saturday evening. The only format I use is Blu-ray or standard DVD.
I have tried streaming movies via our DSL, but it sucks for a number of reasons:
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We living in the boondocks, and the crappy speed of our DSL makes the movies look blurry most of the time.
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The selection sucks. (We want to watch a specific movie, not just any movie.)
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We like to have the subtitles on.
The downside, of course, is the cost; I usually end of buying the Blu-ray or DVD via Amazon. It also means I have amassed a fairly large collection of once-viewed movies. I really need to look into renting Blu-rays / DVDs via Netflix.