Blu-ray vs. every other consumer technology (2010) - Page 9

It doesn't matter when you are streaming HD audio.

According to http://www.blu-raystats.com there are currently zero DD+ Blu-ray movies currently available.

If you look at the Blu-ray DD+ spec compared with TrueHD, and DTS-HDMA you can see why they wouldn't bother.

You provided a vendors description of their product, you don't see a problem in doing that?

You are welcome to it, personally I feel it is a major step backwards. Yes 720p and 1080i are still HD video formats, DD+ is more of a compromise to fit slightly higher bitrate audio onto a HD-DVD

And we wonder why the world has an obesity problem...

Why does everyone pull up a chart that a random person put together based on their thoughts. That image and that article are just what he thinks. There is no proper distance to sit from your TV, you sit where you want, you sit where is comfortable.

Also, can you please provide your calculations to say that 720p is 2/3 the size of 1080p, it is less than 2/3 the size, and also try and remember the bit rate as well.


I sit around 3m from my 40" TV, it isn't hard to tell the difference between low bitrate 720p and Blu-ray 1080p.

So they own a DVD player, so does a lot of people, that is one of the reasons why DVD is still the king.


That isn't what I mean. I want to be able to purchase a movie from Apple and play it on my Pioneer player, or purchase a movie from Sony and play it on my AppleTV.


I haven't got dial-up, I have 16Mb ADSL.


If it doesn't take that long, why did you mention it?


If you give people a choice between watching a movie on a 3" screen, 20" screen or a 40" screen, I think the 3" screen won't be the first choice.


VOD includes satellite and cable options, not really digital downloads.


Yes sales are going down overall, but nothing is picking up those sales, not blu-ray, not digital downloads, nothing.


You seem to understand bit-rate here, but you don't seem to understand the bit-rate different between digital downloads (like ATV) and Blu-ray...

Plenty available around the ten dollar mark.

What you both misunderstand is that I'm not talking about a zero sum game. Where physical media has to die for digital downloads to thrive.

What I'm saying is that because of the rise of various forms of content distribution that Blu-ray will not reach the popular of DVD. That in the long run digital streaming will be the most popular form of content distribution. But I do believe that physical media will be around for a long time. At point I'm sure it will transition from an optical disc to something else probably ROM SD cards.

Your mind is stuck on one metric of quality. We all understand that BR is the best quality for home entertainment.

We are talking about when people are willing to sacrifice quality for convenience. You cannot accept that many (probably the majority) are willing to sacrifice the visual and audio superiority of BR for the convenience of watching a movie instantly.

As reported by Netflix the growth of its streaming service is outpacing its DVD service.

I've tried to correct you in this misunderstanding a couple of times. But you seem to continue it.

The consumption of media is increasing. People are watching more movies, television, listening to more music than ever. What is going down are the profits from consumption of media. More media is being consumed but profits are not increasing at the same rate of consumption.

The reason profits are going down is because the media companies were able to gouge people with the what they charged for physical media. The profits from the decline in physical sales are not being made up by the increase in digital streaming/downloading.

There are calculations you can make about the convergence of pixels based on 20/20 visual acuity at a certain distance. That's how Apple can call the iPhone display a retina display.


1080p has more than double the amount of pixels but in terms of picture quality, you're not going to see anywhere near what you'd see in the iPhone 4 vs the 3GS where you get 4x the amount of pixels. When the see the two sizes overlayed, it's clear there's not all that much in it:



I totally agree on bitrate, a lot of services push it way too low, especially cable but there are some that push 720p at over 4Mbits and that should be fine. Apple's service from what I've seen is one of the better ones.


It would be more accurate to say TV is still king as that's their primary form of entertainment. Guess how that's delivered. Imagine if they had to order every one of the TV shows or movies they watch on Blu-Ray by snail mail.


I'm sure that's what they meant. If you purchase from one VOD supplier, you can get the download from any other supplier. I don't know if this means giving the chosen VOD supplier a download fee, after all the user will only get one rental regardless of who they pick.


So the VOD doesn't buffer every two minutes otherwise you aren't getting the service you're paying for.


I was saying it doesn't take 25 seconds for every movie on a streaming box, whereas it does take that long for every Blu-Ray movie plus the time it takes to change the disc.


I agree but it'll be interesting to see what happens when cost becomes negligible. Do you think everyone will opt for a 60" TV?


Digital sales were up significantly. In the PDF you posted, it says 20%, other sources measure 50% for certain types of VOD. Despite the rise in Blu-Ray, those people are just no longer buying the lower quality DVDs. If you are going to be buying a disc to keep, you may as well get the better one but overall disc sales are down and still, DVD outsells BDR by 10:1.

As I said above, VOD is growing, Blu-Ray is just pulling DVD buyer in but that group overall is dropping and moving to VOD like Netflix.


Codecs are designed to minimise visual artifacts and there are certain bitrates beyond which, there is no discernible difference from the source. You would for example notice no difference between 20Mbits 720p H.264 and 80Mbits 720p H.264 because the former would have no visual artifacts anyway even in high motion scenes.

I would say the limit for 720p is around 4Mbits assuming you use a decent high profile encoder. Not all streaming services meet that quality bar but some do. The distribution format itself can't be judged by the lowest common denominator.

The important factor in all this is bitrate. I got some 1080p samples, shrunk them down to 720p, saved and scaled back up to 1080p (essentially what 720p is on a 1080p display). Then both are cropped at 800x800 in the same part of the frame so you can see at a native size what both look like side by side. I mixed them up so I'd like you to guess in both which one, top or bottom is upscaled 720p and which is the original 1080p.





I stand by my statement that 1080p is 'slightly sharper' and it's also why it doesn't matter that Apple went for 720p and not 1080p with the ATV.

So the issue is bitrate and that is solved by hitting a quality bar that will show up absolutely no visual artifacts in any scene in any movie. 4Mbits is the minimum bar so if they stream 8Mbits 720p, then I reckon almost anyone would struggle to see the difference between it and 1080p Blu-Ray.

I think there are psychological effects when you know you are watching a lower quality source just as there are when you see a nice tasting food that has a disgusting appearance. I'm not discounting the valid criticisms of low bitrate sources, just that there are additional factors that make it seem worse than it is.

The top one is 1080p on both, no?

But your test is not so great, as it seems both images are slightly blurry. The focus is not very sharp at any part of either of the images. Choose a different image with sharper details in the original and the difference would be more obvious.

Welcome to the world of video compression. Video is intended to be viewed in motion so you are not likely to find a screen shot as sharp as a still picture.

Yes, I'm quite familiar with motion blur. However, there are plenty of scenes in films where there is very little motion, and filmed with a sharp camera at full resolution, it shouldn't be too hard to find a sharp image.

Consumption means nothing to the media companies if they can't make money from it, they are looking at the fact that sales are decreasing

Why are you always going on about the iPhone, what does that have to do with sitting distance from your tv?


Again, what does an iPhone have to do with sitting distance from your TV?


I don't think it is great to be to the best of the worst.


There are other ways of purchasing movies than just mail order.


If you purchase a movie from one supplier, why would you then download it from another supplier? Why can't you just have a common format?



Maybe it doesn't where you live, but it does for me. Hence one of the reasons I won't purchase or rent a movie on the Apple TV


It doesn't take 25 seconds to load a movie on my Blu-ray player, maybe you have a poor model, maybe you need a newer one. I can understand the problem, for example my Apple TV is very slow at most functions it does.


If you give people a choice of watching a movie on the devices they own, do you really think they will jump at the chance of watching it on the smallest one?


What part of "overall sales are down" don't you seem to understand? Downloads, and Blu-ray are not picking up the drop in DVD sales. Digital down sales are still minimal, they barely register on the sales. The digital downloads figure is mostly made up of VOD.


are they? DVD sales in the US are $6 billion down on their peek, VOD has picked up US$1.8 billion of that.



You seem to be all over the place, how does this explain why the Blu-ray movies look so much better than the Apple 720p version?

They are still images, you have selected them on purpose to prove a point. Video is meant to be watched moving, not inspecting a single image for the best clarity.

The fact is, a Blu-ray movie is far superior to the 720p stuff Apple currently delivers, if you are happy to pay more to Apple for a lesser product then that is your choice, but don't try and make it out that everyone wants to.

Not every Blu-ray is superior to 720p stuff. There are poor Blu-ray masters that exist, and there are poorly shot or poorly archived films that won't benefit from full HD resolution.

But for the most part, you are correct.

It's all pixels, the same principals apply when it comes to picture sharpness.


HD streaming is better quality than DVD so it's not the best of the worst, it's only 2nd to Blu-Ray. Sometimes the silver medal is ok if you can get it while sitting in your armchair.


You may only have hardware that allows you to download from certain suppliers at a given time.


This is what happens on the most popular Blu-Ray player - the PS3:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbV8vf7nuMA

Both actually took at least 20 seconds.


I think that if people don't have a living space that accommodates a 60" TV then they won't buy a 60" TV.


It's quite simple, overall physical media sales are down but 10% of people used to buying DVDs now buy Blu-Ray. Digital sales have grown since last year. Digital sales aren't dropping to feed Blu-Ray growth, it's DVD sales that are dropping to feed Blu-Ray growth.

You are probably interpreting it to mean that DVD buyers are migrating to both streaming and Blu-Ray and Blu-Ray is growing faster. I don't think that's an accurate interpretation. Those people are coming from abandoning TV subscriptions, it's a different market:

http://www.chieftain.com/business/lo...cc4c002e0.html


The point is that 1080p vs 720p doesn't matter because if it doesn't matter for stills then it certainly doesn't matter for moving pictures so the issue is bitrate. If streaming services are not good enough quality for you then either they are streaming at too low bitrates or your connection isn't fast enough. For people who have the right setup, they don't see a vast difference between Blu-Ray and HD streaming but note that streaming is faster to switch between the content.


Again your problem is with Apple. There are other services with better pricing models. Also you keep saying Blu-Ray is so much better. Review after review says that it's not vastly better than the best streaming services.

Blu-Ray has its place. They just announced Star Wars on Blu-Ray. Would I rather own Star Wars as a streaming pass or on Blu-Ray? My answer would be on Blu-Ray. If I want to watch a new movie though, I would rather stream the movie instantly than get a physical disc. If I like it and want to own it, I'd buy it on Blu-Ray.

Blu-Ray for ownership, streaming for everything else - TV, rentals etc. (the vast majority of media consumption).

Well, in the course of viewing 24 of those images shown in a second, If the still images look indistinguishable, then the 24 frames of them in a second will not be distinguishable, either.


In general, no. Only better on the benchmark scale, but in real life, your video gear will determine the degree of improvements you can achieve. Your head needs to be placed within 4 - 5 ft away from the screen on the ~45" screen to really notice. Most people do not follow the viewing specs at home. My computer screen is 37" 1080p viewing 2ft away right now, and 720p vs. 1080p is not noticeable. Have you not seen garbage 1080p video transfers on bluray? And off course, best 720p video content will always be better than the bad 1080p contents. Your claim dismissed.

Motion blur is different from what I'm talking about. Motion blur is an anomaly of recording motion pictures.

I'm talking about compression for digital delivery. Compression algorithms are tasked to find every way possible to eliminate excess picture information while maintaining a given bit rate. This process by nature decreases the sharpness of the entire movie.

The reason compression for video works so well is because motion picture has the advantage of temporal resolution and does not need as much spacial resolution.

Actually when the picture is still and the camera is not moving. That is a prime opportunity for the compression algorithms to get rid of a lot of picture information. Scenes that are not moving require less information than scenes with lots of action.

Are you sympathetic that a bunch of billionaires are making less billions this year than they made 5 years ago?

You aren't using the terminology entirely correctly. Sales are when people are buying stuff. Sales are down when people are not buying as much stuff as they did before. People are consuming more media, they are just buying it at a cheaper price than they would have paid before.

What the studios are complaining about is the fact that revenues are not increasing at the same rate that peoples consumption of media is increasing.


You really don't understand how any of this works. Which is OK you don't have to understand how it works, but don't enter a debate about it if you don't understand.


Because the marketing machine has simplified this stuff so that they can sell it. Resolution is only one factor in what makes a good video picture. Resolution is the easiest one to explain and market.

Its easy to read 1080P in big bold letters. But its not that simple.

And those poor masters used for the Blu-ray will also produce poor 720p videos as well.

it's all pixels... Yes, I would rather have the higher pixel count, together with the higher bitrate.


I'm not that lazy, so it doesn't worry me.


I guess this interoperability concept is lost on you.


Do you want me to make a video of my AppleTV and how long it takes to power on, and how long it takes to start streaming?


I think you are starting to take the piss now. If I have the choice of watching a moving on my iPod, my phone, my 24" iMac, or my 40" TV, I would choose the TV first.


Digital sales have barely grew at all, it would be hard for them to drop at all. No one is denying the fact that DVD sales have dropped, it is a well documented fact.



No, that's not how I am interpreting it.


Yes it does, a high resolution, high bit rate video looks nicer than a low resolution, low bit rate video, that is a simple fact.


The only problem I have with Apple is they are currently the only provider, and they are over priced. And that makes it Apples problem because I won't give them money for movies.


As I have said, streaming isn't any good when it is dramatically more expensive than renting from a video store.

You guys really need to stop reading from the same incorrect "spec" sheet.

If you have a 37" monitor, and you are sitting 60cm from it and can't notice a difference between 720p and 1080p then you need to get your eyes checked. I can tell the difference on my iMac without issue, and I can tell the difference on my 40" TV without issue.

And your last statement, what is that about? The majority of blu-ray releases will always look better than the majority of 720p releases. Your claim dismissed.

No I'm not, do you want to to post the same rubbish that people post here regarding how much profit Apple makes off their products and why it is important that they make that profit?

[
Again, you are missing the point, do you think these content producers are happy they are making less money by selling more product?



Fine, if you think you are so much better than everyone else, please tell me, why does the resolution of the iPhone matter in relation to how far I sit from my TV?


I know that, I haven't ever stated resolution alone as the quality marker, but as usual you like to ignore certain parts of peoples postings. If that is the way you do things, fine, if it makes it easier for you to understand, fine. Just stop making assumptions just because you don't read everything.

Nope. Good video gear will make bad transfer more apparent, but good 720p transfer will scale as well as good 1080p contents. Try it yourself, this will be true even on 100+" screen. If you can walk into a room and tell number of content pixels playing on the display, then you've got talent.

If they brought out 2000p at 100MBits/s in 5 years, would you buy a new 80" screen, player and discs?


So you still carry a bucket down the road to the well for fresh water? You can call it laziness or you can call it convenience.


The interoperability achievable with a cross-provider agreement is higher than trying to get Blu-Ray content to work on every device.


The Apple TV rentals aren't instant-on but others are. The buffer time depends on how fast your connection is. Still, it does it once and you can flip between other content while it loads. With Blu-Ray, you have to wait for every single disc.


It doesn't matter if the largest screen size doesn't show perceptible differences between the videos. It may do for you right now but with the right network connection and a decent bitrate service, it won't.


There is a point where the difference becomes negligible/imperceptible. You use the words high and low but you don't define bitrate limits for those words. What bitrate would you describe as an unacceptably low bitrate? The Blu-Ray video bitrate limit is 40Mbits/s. Here's a list of Blu-Ray bitrates used on films:

http://forum.blu-ray.com/blu-ray-mov...ates-here.html

A significant amount are under 30Mbits/s. 2001: A Space Odyssey was done at 13MBits. Your own broadband is higher than that. Blade Runner was done at 17MBits/s.

When you use advanced codecs like VC-1/AVC, you just don't need the bitrates to be all that high. Given that 1080p is only slightly sharper than 720p with sufficient bitrate, streaming services just need to hit a certain bitrate and then it doesn't matter for most people. I think the streaming services have hit that quality bar already where most people don't care about the difference.

That doesn't mean that everyone will be content with streaming vs Blu-Ray but like with everything, the quality enthusiasts are the minority. Your stance seems to be that people will move to streaming, just not now and we need Blu-Ray support now.

You already said that given the choice, you wouldn't watch a movie on anything less than the biggest screen in your house so why would computers need support for it? There is already 3rd party support for data archiving. I think it's silly to keep optical drives in laptops because they waste far too much space and cost too much.


They aren't the only provider by a long way. There are quite a few streaming services.


$4.99 per HD rental is high vs $1.50 Blu-Ray rental from redbox but Netflix subscriptions are cheaper overall and don't have the return conditions with redbox. Apple's streaming service needs to go subscription or pay-per-minute not pay-per-movie. This isn't Apple's fault though but the studios'.

When the pixels on a screen are at a certain density for an intended viewing distance and converge to the point where it's scientifically not possible for 20/20 visual acuity to determine the difference between it and a higher density of pixels then there is no reason to add more.

The iPhone was an example of a screen that has reached this density but it is also an example of a screen where a lot of people don't see an important difference despite the pixels going up by a factor of 4. The sharpness is there as seen in the following picture but the phones in the picture are huge so you don't see that difference nearly as much when you use the phone:

http://teenstalktech.files.wordpress...3gs-screen.jpg

The difference from 720p to 1080p is only a factor of 2 in the number of pixels. So the difference in sharpness is nowhere near the iPhone difference.

The statement I am making is the following: Given sufficient bitrate, 1080p is at best slightly sharper. You seem to disagree with that but I showed it clearly with the images on the previous page. At times you make your argument clear about high bitrate 1080p vs low bitrate 720p but then it slips back to just 1080p vs 720p.

The biggest issues with streaming are prices and bitrates. 720p vs 1080p is the least important factor.

If you want to try it out and have access to Windows, you can rip your 1080p Blu-Ray to 8MBits 720p with an AVC high profile encoder and compare it streaming from your computer to your ATV vs Blu-Ray. The difference in quality will be negligible.

The problem I think you have is that you can't right now get 720p 8MBits instant-on for $1.50 per rental. That would be a fair argument but technology transitions have to start somewhere and while what we have now is not quite up to that level, it's at a point where people who value convenience over picture quality are migrating.

The playstation network actually streams 8MBits 1080p and that's not far off some of the Blu-Ray bitrates but I'm not sure on the pricing.

I would agree that 720 is good enough such that other factors become paramount for many people today.

But at the same time, it seems you're being quite dismissive to those people who can see a diffeeence with 1080. A large percentage of people have better than 20/20 vision. I am legally blind without glasses or contacts. Yet I can still see iPhone pixels and the difference between 720 and 1080.

The immediacy of streaming makes me willing to accept 720 over the higher res and bitrate of blu-ray. But 1080 streaming is still preferable. Twice the pixels is not just "slightly sharper" for many viewers.

With that said, at times Netflix x-high hd is damn good. I'd have to eat some crow if I discovered the movie I steamed last night was 720 instead of 1080.

Not dismissive of the fact they can see a difference but that the difference matters so much to the point where people say that until the Apple TV gets 1080p, it's not worth buying.


Perhaps but then you have to compromise on bitrate. I'd say it's better to have 720p above a bitrate threshold than 1080p below it. I'd rather have 8MBits 720p than 8MBits 1080p for example.


It's only 50% more per pixel though because in order to display that larger areal size, the second pixel is split top, right and upper-right. The iPhone is double:



Here are some Tron Legacy comparisons from the Apple 720p and 1080p trailers (mixed up just for kicks again - the last ones were both 1080p in the top ones, 720p in the bottom):







The point is not really to see if you can tell which is 1080p, just to show that the difference is small and in a moving picture, it's unlikely you'd even bother about it unless you consciously made the effort to find fault with the picture or if you were freeze-framing Basic Instinct and looking closely at the screen.


Yeah Netflix seem to have started streaming 1080p for people with good enough connections. They said for certain it's not 1080i. As I say, I personally would rather watch 720p at the same bitrate but whatever is preferred can be offered for consumers with 10Mbps broadband.

lol. That reply reads like it was written by a team of lawyers. Are you really trying to prove me wrong about something?

Perhaps more charts and graphs are needed to prove that we don't understand pixels.

Yes, some of us can see the difference between 720 and 1080 and have the bandwidth to stream 1080. Can't someone say that without getting a manifesto rebuttal?

The discussions over 720p vs. 1080i vs. 1080p have been heavily beaten to death in AVSforum with outcome really depending on many things other than just pixels. In theory, 1080p is the best, but in real application in many homes, the PQ difference or being able to tell the PQ difference from the pixel counts alone is not that apparent within the variants of the HD contents.

Obviously, starting with the 1080p source material would provide the best potential for achieving the best PQ in theory. There is no question about that, but what % of consumers will have the system to utilize the 1080p source material to it's maximum potential?

In this regards, I do feel that it is more of a marketing gimmick on the 1080p. This is apparent on majority of blu-ray titles we buy everyday. Not all 1080p contents will produce PQ at it's maximum potential regardless of the available pixel counts. Since we are talking about number of pixels provided on the movie titles per frame other than purest still test screen/frames, the overall PQ is heavily dependent of source material/authoring/mastering/transfer, and in most cases the material will not challenge the potential of how 1080p material should be. Is 1080p source of such material really essential or the major factor of the video PQ? I doubt that and this is what we are talking about. There are probably 5-10% of released title worthy of 1080p and these materials can also stream in great PQ for most homes, it will look as good as if it was played from the 1080p blu-ray disc.

In many ways, The HD video market does share many similarities with the HiDef Audio scam. Not sure how many have bought into SACD, but many enthusiast found out the CD layer of the SACD was able to reproduce sound quality close or equal to SACD, however, the same CD audio title on the redbook version sounded much worse. Obviously, we are not talking about audio here on this thread, but this is an example of qualify of authoring/mastering alone capable of improving sound quality without utilizing HiDef audio format. I feel that the video market is very similar in the way it's driving HD video market.

Regardless, I am sucker for a new technology. Therefore, I have been walking the path of a typical early adapter for many years on my AV hobbies, including HD audio and video on discs, and now via streaming. I have bought into 3D already, and actually it's more exciting this time than the initial HD video roll-out. I can enjoy 3D with my whole family and my kids love them the most. I just hope they would release more titles. Once again, no thanks to the choppy 3d authoring, it will be as useless as badly mastered/authored/transferred 1080p contents on blu-ray.

Using your logic, why aren't we just using VCD for everything? It scales as well.

And if you can't tell a 720p video on a 100"+ screen there is something wrong with your eye sight.

That depends really doesn't it, if it was a single vendor product, then certainly not.



No I don't have too, we have a well out the back of the house, it is very convenient.

There are a lot of items available today that makes life very convenient, that doesn't mean they are better.


Really? I can get a Blu-ray from Sony, one from Warners etc and they all play on my Blu-ray player, they managed to organise something, why can't the digital download people do this?


I take it you mean if you are viewing it from your computer? Because if I try to watch something streaming from my AppleTV, I can't do anything else until it starts.



So you are telling me a product that doesn't exist right now is better than the products that do currently exist?



Lovely list, why don't you link to one that is getting updated now?

Here is one

http://www.blu-raystats.com/Stats/Te...y=VideoBitrate



How does that compare to the streaming services, say like Apples iTunes which peak at around 4Mbits/s?

Right, I get it that you don't want a quality product, you are happy with paying more to save yourself 15 seconds, you are happy for vendor lock-in, fine, I don't care, just stop with the crap trying to convince people that the current streaming model is better quality that Blu-ray, it isn't, and nothing you say will change the fact that Blu-rays are a higher quality product that steaming, or digital downloads.


Now for starters, I haven't said I wanted a blu-ray drive in a computer, personally it doesn't worry me, but, now this is the thing I think you are having the issue with, I am not the only consumer in the world, people have different ideas to me and want different things.


I don't live the US, I have said this a number of times, and I am saying it again, Apple is the only player in this market.


let me say it again, I don't live in the US, I can't access Netflixs, I can rent a 720p movie from Apple for $8, or I can walk 4 minutes to the video store (conveniently located for me) and rent a Blu-ray for $2 - $5. I don't want a subscription, I am happy with pay per movie, I just don't want the prices Apple is charging, especially when it eats up 5% of my internet limit per movie (which ups the rental price)

Again, you are showing static images of a phone, compared to moving images on a video.



I don't own a Blu-ray drive for my computer sorry.


I'll have to believe you, I don't live in a county with PSN movies, as I have said, Apple is the only player.

I move to dismiss.


The point I'm making with the comparisons is that people very often say they can see a vast difference between 1080p and 720p but generally what is meant by that is they have 720p from one source and 1080p from a different source and 1080p looks better under the assumption that it's the higher pixel number making the difference and not other factors or they are talking about seeing a 720p TV next to a 1080p TV.

All I'm saying is that, while you can tell the difference, the actual factual difference between the image resolutions is slight and the only artifact it can produce is a mild softening of the picture. Any other artifacts come from compression or color differences.


Say it was a product like Blu-Ray where you have to buy a special decoder for every device you own, would you upgrade to vastly superior 4k resolution if it became available? Also, will be you be in another discussion like this one saying that 4k is vastly better than 1080p and if you can't tell 1080p on a 100" screen, you need glasses? 4k resolution is 4x the pixels of Blu-Ray and generally what movies are shot at so your Blu-Ray is 1/4 the size of the source.

Or is Blu-Ray quality your quality threshold for all movies from now on? If it is then you have a threshold and for a lot of people, HD streaming at 4MBits meets their quality threshold.


Digital boxes offer more than just movies though so you get the TV networks fighting over the rights to it. That isn't a problem with the format though just the networks. While it's a valid criticism, you can't get new TV shows or trailers on Blu-Ray and never will so that format will always be the primary distribution medium for that content.

I agree entirely that the networks need to stop being greedy and holding back technology. This affected Blu-Ray too with the HD-DVD mess.


The new one allows you to do things while it buffers in the background and then notifies you when it's ready to watch.


Streaming is better than Blu-Ray for convenience right now; Blu-Ray has better picture quality right now.


It doesn't matter about how up-to-date it is. What's important is that some of the highest selling Blu-Ray movies e.g the Dark Knight are authored at much lower than the maximum bitrate Blu-Ray allows and people don't seem to be complaining. It's still a higher bitrate than streaming but in many cases, not by a lot which suggests that people can't tell the difference between say 8MBits streaming and 16MBits Blu-Ray.


Nobody said anything about streaming being better quality than Blu-Ray. The question would be is the difference in quality between Blu-Ray and streaming enough to prevent streaming being a viable alternative. The answer is no. You could forget about Blu-Ray entirely and be content with streaming.


Not everyone has that luxury though. You are also depending on a single supplier to have the movie you want. You may want to rent a movie from the 90s and the rental store might not stock it. Streaming can store any and every movie that's ever been made if the studios would let them.


That's a different issue altogether though. If I said which tastes better McDonalds or KFC, you can't say McDonalds because I don't have a KFC near me.

Because DVD writable disc price is low as CD writable disc. Did you not know that? I bet you also don't know that most people now use SD or USB storage these days to carry video files around. I would much prefer using the internet to transfer files via filezilla, though.

And yes, if you encode them properly, even a 2.5GB movie files at 720p encodes do upscale very well on 1080p screen.

If I had to purchase a product from a single vendor to enable me to watch videos that you could only purchase from that vendor, then no, I would not purchase it, regardless of the resolution, bitrate, etc.


It is the current bench mark for consumer video, and just like everything before it, something else will come along that is better.


Why can't you get new TV shows or trailers on Blu-ray? BR-Live allows for this.



That sounds better, but not enough make me want to replace the current one.


Convenience differs for individuals, I have a video store a couple of minutes walk away, that is convenient.


It doesn't matter how up to date it is? How can you claim the majority are under a certain bitrate if it hasn't been updated in over a year, that misses out a tonne of releases.



Like I said, the lack of streaming stops it being a viable alternative.


Wonderful word "IF".


So if a service is not available to me, how can that service be better, or more convenient? The service doesn't exist, which means it isn't viable. The service that does exist is better by default, you can't question that.