Samsung Quits Blu-ray Player Market

Not always true. That is true on a stream for all service like netflix where in reality you are just renting. But on others where you buy a digital copy as long as that service is running, you can get to what you bought.
and one of the most prominent digital copy services just ceased.

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I think that part of the reason streaming is good enough for many people-----is because many people have cheap TVs, which can't display a correct black level or all of the color depth and subtle resolution of a good source. So yeah, a disc vs streaming comparison on a cheap TV is not going to be as large of a difference. Because the TV itself, is a limiting factor.

And the quality level of streaming varies wildly. Even among modern, higher profile releases. Arrival streamed at 1080p (verified) on Amazon, looks awful. Its comparable to a 2Gb pirate rip.
 
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I've got a Samsung 4k player and honestly not very happy with it. When playing dvd or 1080p blu-ray it's pretty quiet but when playing 4k discs it you can hear the motor ramp up pretty loudly. This thing has even given some read errors occasionally with new discs even with latest firmware. Pretty shoddy piece of equipment. Won't miss 'em.

Are you sure yours just isn't buggy, when it comes to the noise? I have the first Samsung UHD, and it's been quiet. As far as the read errors, yeah, that does seem to occur. I replaced Ash vs Evil Dead Season 2 several times, before I bothered to check other players, and find out it's only the Samsung player which has a problem.

Also, one thing people need to take into account, it's not just the video quality which suffers with streaming. Audio too. Streaming doesn't seem to support as many channels, and often doesn't have Atmos support, unlike the discs.
 
Yeah and that's a big one for me with a 9.1 setup for atmos/DTS "whateveritscalled".

It's a real rarity if I ever stream.. as I make sure to buy a 4k release of anything I wanna watch.

If it's a girl/comedy flick with the wife yeah I'll make her happy and rent/netflix something.
 
I disagree. I still prefer physical media for movies and shows. I really don't want to try to rely on streaming for some of the non-mainstream stuff I like, especially anime as its still hard to find older non-shonen stuff digitally.

It's a bunch of DRM infected crap. The easiest way to watch blu-ray is still to just rip the dang thing and watch it on your pc.
 
I have a 55" TCL P605, 4K, HDR, Dolby Vision set. Last year I bought a cheapy Magnavox 4K BRD player, a the Sony X700 player and Thor: Ragnarok on 4k BRD. Brought everything home, hooked it up to test versus streaming the movie from Vudu. I also compared Star Wars: Rogue One across all both players, streaming, and my PS4. After a few hours of switching back and forth, to my eye there was a difference between streaming and disc, but it was negligible. Had a friend over who has a calibrated 65" Panasonic plasma (that used to be mine) and his opinion matched mine. Not enough difference to justify the cost. I took both players back.

I acknowledge that there are probably other movies where the difference in quality might be more evident. But after decades of chasing home theater nirvana (CRT, digital projectors, ISF calibrated sets, and dialed in audio setups) I'm just as happy with my TCL and soundbar setup as with anything else I've ever owned. Maybe I'm jaded and tired of fussing with all the gear. Been there done that. Now, I just want everything to provide good quality with minimal effort to setup and maintain, and with a small footprint.

If you're considering a UHD BRD player, go for it, but don't let people hear tell you it's night and day difference with streaming. If you have data caps, then that's a concern.

IHMO. YMMV. ETC. ETC.

Your opinion stopped meaning anything to me at "TCL". :p
 
I would like to say the DVD numbers surprise me, but they don't. There are tons of people (cough *the Elders* cough, like my mom/mother in law/father in law/everyone I've met over 65, etc) that can't tell the difference, or people in other markets where BR just hasn't made a huge impact (ie - all of South America, etc).

Wasn't that many years ago that my mom & step dad were trading VHS tapes with other people they knew.
I went through the old pile of VHS movies that had been sitting in my cabinet collecting dust for years, and gave her a large box of movies.
She asked when I needed them back :rolleyes:
I told her she could watch them, trade them or just give them away as I had no use for them.

I still had a lot of DVD's, but haven't watched one in years. I just can't bring myself to dumping them yet :cry:
 
No, no one "bought" a win. BD was always the better format. The ONLY advantage HD-DVD had was price. It never had the backing, the storage, the video and audio quality, or the durability of blu-ray. Toshiba failed, hard, primarily due to their own mistakes and bad marketing. The BDA (the people that actually own blu-ray) had the backing of tech and Hollywood giants while Toshiba fumbled at every step.

But they did "buy the win". You need to review your history. Sony didn't want to have another Betamax debacle on their hands. So they sealed the deal, with money.
 
It's a bunch of DRM infected crap. The easiest way to watch blu-ray is still to just rip the dang thing and watch it on your pc.

And you think DRM is going to magically go away when blu-rays do? Streaming and digital are loaded with even more DRM and restrictions than any disc.

But they did "buy the win". You need to review your history. Sony didn't want to have another Betamax debacle on their hands. So they sealed the deal, with money.

You see there is a problem with your version of history: You say "review your history" and don't offer proof and then you claim its Sony's format. Sony does not, nor have they ever, owned blu-ray.
 
I was more talking about video bitrate, and I was also intentional with my words, as in, saying "noticeable" difference (video).

It's like 1/4 the quality. 4K streams are 15-20 Mbps while a UHD Blu-ray is 80-100 Mbps including audio.

See above. The audio tracks on a UHD Blu-ray are 10-20 Mbps by themselves. Regular Blu-ray at 1080p is 30-50 Mbps, for crying out loud.
 
Are you sure yours just isn't buggy, when it comes to the noise? I have the first Samsung UHD, and it's been quiet. As far as the read errors, yeah, that does seem to occur. I replaced Ash vs Evil Dead Season 2 several times, before I bothered to check other players, and find out it's only the Samsung player which has a problem.

Also, one thing people need to take into account, it's not just the video quality which suffers with streaming. Audio too. Streaming doesn't seem to support as many channels, and often doesn't have Atmos support, unlike the discs.
It's possible that it's just buggy. Seems like the bushings for the motor just are not doing their job. When it winds up, it gets loud. I also totally agree with you in regards to audio streams. Decades before I began building home theaters for my family I was learning from my dad and other audiophiles when it came to audio quality. I admit that I took it for granted back in the days of reel to reel the sounds I heard as a child.
 
Heck, 64gb microsd cards are like $10 retail, and that's dropping every month.

I wouldn't be surprised if physical media moves to flash memory cards sometime soon. It's more expensive per card, but there are definitely logistical benefits when you can fit a thousands of them in something the size of a shoebox.

I remember a few years back some studios experimented with this around Sony Psp time and then Sony HDD. I'd be all for it. Doesn't matter the media since all have a limited lifespan. Just give me the least uncompressed format you can at a price I can afford and I'll take of the equipment to play it.

All this talk of backing up media is making me look at my blu-ray collection and thinking "I need to get a NAS set up at some point and put all of these on it".

I took a cheap(sort of) way out a couple years back and got a KDlinks 4k player along with a 6TB WD red HDD for it. Put about 20-30 uncompressed 3d blu-rays on it along with everything else I've 'gathered' in the last 15 years.


I have to admit, whether I'm right or wrong on any detail, I like the direction this thread has taken. A number of people have chimed in with valid pro's and con's to it all. Bottom line is that we've reached a point of perception and acceptance vs. money. I've been a part of that circle that's always out for the max of what you can see or hear but I also know many who're happy with 'good enough' if the price is right. I know even more that just don't have the time or resources to sink into high end and will ultimately succumb to the button for streaming and what it offers. I'll mention that 8k isn't going to dominate anytime soon but if it did this would be a considerably different thread. I won't even be jumping to it even it the displays reach affordable prices. Meanwhile 4k is within reach of many and thanks to the smoke and mirrors that have existed since DVD era most will be happy with streaming. I don't agree, but I've seen it to be true. Not to mention so many don't want the hassle of either going to a store or online ordering. The 'point and click' with a remote generation is here and the corps are watching.
 
Convenience is king, though. Even my brother, whom has thousands into his TV and 7.2 surround setup, along with a couple hundred blu-rays: often watches the movies he owns, via streaming or *gasp* commercial riddled TV showings.
 
I also noticed that Netflix still isn't renting out 4K Blu-Rays... I get wanting to own personal favorites, but it sure is hard to justify when it costs an order of magnitude more.



I'd recommend Staxrip or Hybrid.

Handbrake is fine, but if you want top quality encoded rips, you want a GUI that supports vapoursynth filters. Plus, they let you put your GPU to work, whereas Handbrake is still CPU only last time I checked.
I can't remember the names, but I've seen threads (probably on AVSforums or AVforums that referenced various sites that rent 4k disks. I don't htink they'll be as good as Netflix would be, but if you're only renting a handful of movies in a month, it might be worthwhile.

At this point, our best hope for a big company jumping in is Redbox. They're only in a few markets (follow link) right now and the movie count is small, but hopefully they'll continue expanding. There are times I'd like to rent before buying (though now that I've got AMC A-List, I've seen almost every movie that I might want to buy (or rent). Tough to beat 20 bucks/month for 3 movie/week.

Anyway, I hope they or someone else picks up the slack.
 
DVD - Good enough! It's only a movie or a TV show FFS!

We rent the odd one from the library when Prime wants £4 or Netflix doesnt have it. I have two BD players in the home (I inherited them kinda) but never bought a BD disk. The only physical DVD media I buy now is the annual Supernatural season boxset on DVD for the GF at Xmas.
For people with small TVs or bad eyes, I'd agree. Otherwise, not so much. I quit buying DVDs within a year of Blu Ray being available. It just looked better and 4k Disks look better still. 4k is still a bit expensive for new titles (but I saw a bunch of catalog 4k titles at Best Buy for 15-20 bucks, which is, adjusted for inflation, less than DVDs cost 15 or 20 years ago.
 
This is no surprise at all. Some of us don't mind having hundreds of discs around the house (or whatever your number) but most of us would rather not. Myself included. Just more junk that I don't need. Instead of a relatively large blu ray player, I use a tiny raspberry pi. Others use an android box, whatever your flavour.

Have all your media on your computer? No problem, a dock and a large HDD make an excellent, small and ecnomical backup solution. Its actually much cheaper than optical media per unit of data :)
Sure, but digital movies are lower quality than a disk. I'm watching S3 of Daredevil, and it's acceptable, but it's not close to blu ray quality, much less UHD disks. The reality is that a 2 hour 4k movie is between 40-90GB on disk. Streaming 4k is probably 8-20 (kinda guessing, since I haven't found hard numbers for iTunes 4k movies).

If it's something I think I'll watch again, I'll take a disk. If I'm not sure, I'll probably rent a Blu Ray from Redbox. No mosquito noise is worth paying for.
 
Kinda like SACD and DVDA, in 2020 we've effectively reached the limits of what human beings are capable of hearing and seeing.......the improvements at this point will rarely, if ever, outweigh the costs......I can see the 21st century being the BioRevolution age.....Industrial/Mechanical is starting to feel like us "just not trying hard enough". Famous last words, rite? :D

Also, Samsung are like Sony...for awhile they made 30 different versions of the exact same thing, and then had 30 other items just like those 30, so I fully expect for the market to scale to demand. There will be plenty of $2000 4k+ BD players out there and there will be a few $80 Cody models as well, and a few in between that the rest of us will wind up owning......
Not really. CDs already have greater frequency response than most humans can hear (SACD/DVDA are way WAY beyond hour range).

OTOH, 1080 is easily better than 480p and UHD disks are better than 2k Disks. Obviously if you're osmeone who sits a million miles from your TV (like you're still watching an old tube), then there's nothing to see. Me, I sit maybe 6' from a 65" TV and occasionally I'll notice the pixels at that range (at 5' I can see them on bright static images).

HDR and the wider gamut alone make 4k Disks worthwhile. My guess is that 8K may be the point where higher won't matter, but I remember thinking DVD was the shit. Then it was 1080p. IMO, when you can walk up to your TV and there are no pixels to be seen (even on a white screen), then we've reached the limit of what we can see. UHD TVS clearly aren't close to that point and thus neither have UHD disks (note I"m watching a 65" TV so smaller sets may not reach that limit with 4k).
 
It's like 1/4 the quality. 4K streams are 15-20 Mbps while a UHD Blu-ray is 80-100 Mbps including audio.

See above. The audio tracks on a UHD Blu-ray are 10-20 Mbps by themselves. Regular Blu-ray at 1080p is 30-50 Mbps, for crying out loud.

That's not how compression quality. While UHD BD is better quality, the increase in quality is on the order of 25-30%. Compression quality vs bitrate is a sigmoid function and streaming quality is basically already on the second knee.
 
While i do not have a 4k TV (yet)...i have not used a disc in..... well i cannot remember. Streaming is just too easy... if you would have said back 10 years ago that i would not use a dvd or blu-ray player to watch movies... i would have been skeptical... now its just normal. Crazy how things have changed, just like steam, i wanted nothing to do with it, loved my discs and printed manuals with great artwork... i guess i hate change...till i don't lol.
 
Sure, but digital movies are lower quality than a disk. I'm watching S3 of Daredevil, and it's acceptable, but it's not close to blu ray quality, much less UHD disks. The reality is that a 2 hour 4k movie is between 40-90GB on disk. Streaming 4k is probably 8-20 (kinda guessing, since I haven't found hard numbers for iTunes 4k movies).

If it's something I think I'll watch again, I'll take a disk. If I'm not sure, I'll probably rent a Blu Ray from Redbox. No mosquito noise is worth paying for.

Depending on the compression, I honestly don't find it that bad. But then I have nothing 4k at home. Normally I do my movie and TV watching on my desktop, old 24" monitor.

You can see how little I personally care at this point. If it looks good I'm happy.

The point is many of us are in this boat. There's a tradeoff. For me, I'm very happy to get rid of some clutter at the expense if lower image quality.
 
Depending on the compression, I honestly don't find it that bad. But then I have nothing 4k at home. Normally I do my movie and TV watching on my desktop, old 24" monitor.

You can see how little I personally care at this point. If it looks good I'm happy.

The point is many of us are in this boat. There's a tradeoff. For me, I'm very happy to get rid of some clutter at the expense if lower image quality.
Even on a 1080 monitor, there's noise that's not on a disk (unless it's really poorly mastered, which, so far, I haven't see on 4k. Frankly, i'm not sure any of my Blu Rays had the noise I see on streaming services.

That said, if you're only watching on a computer monitor, then 4k probably doesn't matter and disks are probably optional. Hell, you might even get away with a good DVD on a 24" monitor. But right now, I'm in the middle of S3 of Daredevil, and in dark scenes, it's noisey, especially in the shadows. On a 4k Disk, blacks are black, mosquito noise is non-existent. I'm not worried about space, because I don't buy millions of disks. I do have a dozen or so, and I'm sure that will grow (can't wait for the 4K version of The Abyss), but at this point, we're talking about 1.5 rows on an old CD/DVD rack (which is only ~3' wide). I see most movies in theaters, so most of what I have is stuff I know I'll watch again (ex Black Panther or Solo) and I pass on things I probably wont' watch again (ex the last jedi, The Favorite or countless other flicks)
 
A nice wiki on the history war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-definition_optical_disc_format_war

I'd say its easy why people could disagree on the how and why of how it ended up. Things I do remember was that in the beginning the local BB had near equal space for each format. Almost overnight a few months in and HD DVD went to a couple of sections. A month after than then 1 and then delegated to the bargain bins.

I do however strongly disagree about the quality of HD DVD vs Blu-Ray. Coming from DVD and sure it looked nice, especially if compared to single layer DVD. I started picking up some before I even had a player because of a couple exclusives at the time(Excalibur and something else I can't remember). Once MS discounted the x-box drive I picked it and about a dozen movies for around $160 at a local gamestop. It was pretty easy to get running on my rig. By then I had numerous Blu-ray players in the house including my rigs and I made like for like movie comparisons from both formats. HD DVD was only using Mpeg 2 w/ lower bit rates while BD was a mix at the time of Mpeg 2 or AVCH H.264 Mp4 but many mpeg2's were reissued later in AVC H.264 Mp4. I don't specifically remember the color depth on HD DVD but it too seemed a bit bland compared to the Blu-ray counterparts. On large t.v.s it was pretty easy to make out the extra 'noise' on HD DVD due to its compression techniques. Honestly Mpeg 2 was a horrible and bloated choice for this.

Back to topic. Judging from other people posting similar experiences as mine with them it's obvious Samsung players suck and no one will really miss them. I guess they just couldn't lock in a good quality/price point.

As previously stated, you have it backwards. HD-DVD used the VC-1 and H264 codecs. Some HD-DVDs used MPEG2 codecs, as they were a simple copy of the Blu-Ray encode.

Blu-Ray took years to ditch it's MPEG-2 codec in favour of H264/VC-1. Blu-Ray also brought in the need to run Java on the player, and all the nastiness that it brought with it, like bad loading times, copy protection and vastly increased hardware costs - A Blu-Ray player was essentially a full blown computer, which is why the PS3 was so successful in the beginning, as it was the cheapest way to get a Blu-Ray player that had acceptable performance.
 
I know i would buy more media if it was cheaper.. as in 10$ for new release, then quickly 8 to 5.. and i would probably wait for 8 to 5. For all i care just a paper sleeve is fine by me.
At 20 to 30 $ it just ain't happening on my behalf.
I wonder what sales would look like with 10 and under prices? No on tries though.. if only one studio did it, it wouldn't work for them as people like me wouldn't even know... They would need to work hard to get people in the market, stuff like that.
 
I'm scared, and looking at the end of physical media ownership...

What is even more scary, is the ignorance of so many people that think "I don't need to own my favourite movie, Netflix has it". I guess you will only miss it when it's gone.

I wonder if people here will wake up when we will all be forced to stream games, and not run them on our own hardware anymore?

The Grim reality is that the license holders of much of what we watch would love to see physical media go away.
 
As previously stated, you have it backwards. HD-DVD used the VC-1 and H264 codecs. Some HD-DVDs used MPEG2 codecs, as they were a simple copy of the Blu-Ray encode.

Blu-Ray took years to ditch it's MPEG-2 codec in favour of H264/VC-1

My experience with HD-DVD was based on the order in which I bought them and the dozen or so I got were all Mpeg 2 so I never even got to witness a change whereas within the same year I started to see the change on blu-ray. I actually had concerns with AVCH since having had mixed experiences with Apple's mp4 and QT. Some were amazing and some had insane files sizes but poor quality that could give realplayer a run for its money. I'm sure we could easily digress into compression techniques as it can become unbelievably complex unto itself and highly debatable between scientific numbers vs perceived quality. I still stand on what I said when I did side by side comparisons of the same titles I and others could easily see an improvement with blu-ray. I'm not fan of java either. I cringed back in the day when I heard it was being used for the OS for these things, 'java boxes' ugh! I'd had viruses sneak thru java streams back in XP sp1 days. These days it seems more secure but the near weekly updates are ridiculous. Not the biggest fan of MS either so I'm really glad they didn't get a stronghold in this.

An issue that still plagues us still and has nothing to do with the actual discs or formats at all is the authoring/encoding software. I firmly remember during the latter years of DVD how many solutions were still transitioning from basic Dolby 2.0/5.1 to DTS 5.1/Dolby EX 5.1 let alone DTS ES and each plugin costs extra. Had a number of friends involved with film who often complained about the hassles of going back and forth from Final Cut Pro, to Sony Vegas, or Avid, and some others I don't remember because of such issues. Some even had artificial caps on the video bitrate and wouldn't let you use a full 10Mbps for the video stream on DVD. Some even charged you extra just for that privilege. I also remember in the beginning of Blu-ray reading reviews and some people in threads complained about similar issues with the audio/video codecs and how their employers hadn't paid to upgrade to AVCH and they were trapped with Mpeg 2 or still using the old DVD Dolby audio codecs. Sometimes the adoption rate has nothing to do with hardware/physical and everything to do with the authoring/encoding software a studio chooses. All that and not even getting into where or not a solution syncs with AMD/NVidia driver updates to allow hardware encodes and what limitations so those in turn have. A physical issue that does exist for all is use of multi-layer options. It's pretty rare in any format I can watch a single or low-layer disc and say 'hey that looks pretty good', that is unless it's something under 90 minutes in length. I'd heard rumors of dual layer 30GB HD-DVDs but never had any so comparing the 15GB discs I found on sale in bins to 25GB or even 50GB Blu-ray's could've easily affected my perception.

In the end this thread is about Samsung bowing out and I for one won't miss them. My player is less than a year old and having increasingly more issues. A really clunky and god awful looking phillips 4k player I'd got a year before it with many more hours of use is still chugging along though.
 
The problem with 4K streaming is the quality of the stream and the bandwidth needed to maintain a certain level of quality. I am a huge fan of maintaining physical media, but who even makes a decent Blu-Ray player anymore? I am still using my Denon which is a rather higher end unit. The job it does with audio is impressive, but it is getting old as it only does 1080p. I am not sure if I want to spend that much money this time around on a player.
Sony's PS3/4 are good blu ray players. lol
 
I know i would buy more media if it was cheaper.. as in 10$ for new release, then quickly 8 to 5.. and i would probably wait for 8 to 5. For all i care just a paper sleeve is fine by me.
At 20 to 30 $ it just ain't happening on my behalf.
I wonder what sales would look like with 10 and under prices? No on tries though.. if only one studio did it, it wouldn't work for them as people like me wouldn't even know... They would need to work hard to get people in the market, stuff like that.

If you are that value oriented then you need to understand new releases are not for you. Pick up film from a few years ago if you are that cheap. I personally buy more PS3 and WiiU games than ps4 for that exact reason.
 
Well the thing is you only need, at most, one player per TV and that gets further limited to the TVs on which you are likely to watch blurays on. There are three TVs in my house 1 4K with a 4K player, Samsung's best plasma with a regular blu ray, and the guest bedroom has no player. Considering how much less use the player gets than a regular TV and how the upgrade cycle for players is even less frequent, means that market saturation is very much an issue. That 4K discs are generally limited to the newest releases and carry an extreme price premium also hurts the upgrade cycle.

Not hard to network everything. One Blu-ray player can drive any tv. Even better and use a central htpc instead of a bluray
 
Not hard to network everything. One Blu-ray player can drive any tv. Even better and use a central htpc instead of a bluray

That would mean having everyone in the house access the network and watching only one Blu-ray at a time. An htpc would fill pretty quickly with ripped 4K discs unless the home theater system was also hooked up to a rather dense NAS.

But yes, that would result in faster market saturation if adopted en mass.

If you are that value oriented then you need to understand new releases are not for you. Pick up film from a few years ago if you are that cheap. I personally buy more PS3 and WiiU games than ps4 for that exact reason.

It's not JUST new releases. Unless the 3D / Blu-ray / 4K media is on a special sale, it's going to remain significantly more expensive than many people are willing to spend long after the fact. Amazon's pricing algorithms (and therefore copycats like Best Buy) can actually end up raising the price again of moderately out of date movies rather than how in the past a movie tended to eventually make its way to the bargain bin and permanently stay there until finally sold.

As an example, just now (in quickly editing the post) I went on to Amazon to check the pricing of Marvel's: The Avengers and it's $45.97 for the 3D version and the 4K $24.99 or $37.97 depending upon the pressing and with regular Blu-Ray being $18.99.
 
you forgot the /s, or are you just trolling?

Not in the slightest.

Sony has worked hard to keep the price of Blu-ray discs artificially too high to be used for common purposes. They have also made it virtually impossible to use blu-ray on a desktop. Then, to add insult to injury they have filled blu-ray capable dvd players with so much DRM that you cannot even play many normal dvd's. Not to mention the Cinavia crap.
 
So kind of off topic here, but this next generation of QLED (Samsung) or OLED (LG) is it really that much of a difference over the "UHD" 4K tvs out there? I mean don't get me wrong they look awesome ass fuck as Costco, but I know they're playing that color jizz demo to make them look hot as fuck. But like a series6 4k Samsung is under $400, where as the QLED one is 3 times as much. But all I want to know if I play a video on one, will it look all color jizzy on the other?
 
I know i would buy more media if it was cheaper.. as in 10$ for new release, then quickly 8 to 5.. and i would probably wait for 8 to 5. For all i care just a paper sleeve is fine by me.
At 20 to 30 $ it just ain't happening on my behalf.
I wonder what sales would look like with 10 and under prices? No on tries though.. if only one studio did it, it wouldn't work for them as people like me wouldn't even know... They would need to work hard to get people in the market, stuff like that.
What would happen is all the complainers on here and elsewhere would complain that it wasn't 3 dollrs and if it dropped to 3, they'd complain it wasn't 1 dollar. I've already seen that movie play out with music, where everyone complained about prices and when the prices droped to what they wanted the complained they weren't cheaper still.
Here, you're literally asking for movies, upon release to home video, to sell for less than most movie tickets cost and then for them to drop to less than 1/2 of a typical movie ticket. And given that a huge chunk of movies hit video channels within 3 months (and almost all within 6 months), it makes no sense.

If you want it for 5 bucks, wait 10 years...hell you might even find some for that in 5 years, but 5 bucks is only going to happen for old releases and certainly not for 4K anytime soon (well maybe if it's a fairly old movie (see First Blood, which I've seen for 15 bucks on 4k).
 
So kind of off topic here, but this next generation of QLED (Samsung) or OLED (LG) is it really that much of a difference over the "UHD" 4K tvs out there? I mean don't get me wrong they look awesome ass fuck as Costco, but I know they're playing that color jizz demo to make them look hot as fuck. But like a series6 4k Samsung is under $400, where as the QLED one is 3 times as much. But all I want to know if I play a video on one, will it look all color jizzy on the other?
the LG looks amazing, but if you're not in a dark room, it may not be as good. I never watch TV during the day, so I'm not sure. QLED is LCD for better or worse. I believe that Samsung is working on a new type of OLED that will supposedly be brighter, but I don't know when that's coming out, much less the price.
 
What would happen is all the complainers on here and elsewhere would complain that it wasn't 3 dollrs and if it dropped to 3, they'd complain it wasn't 1 dollar. I've already seen that movie play out with music, where everyone complained about prices and when the prices droped to what they wanted the complained they weren't cheaper still.
Here, you're literally asking for movies, upon release to home video, to sell for less than most movie tickets cost and then for them to drop to less than 1/2 of a typical movie ticket. And given that a huge chunk of movies hit video channels within 3 months (and almost all within 6 months), it makes no sense.

If you want it for 5 bucks, wait 10 years...hell you might even find some for that in 5 years, but 5 bucks is only going to happen for old releases and certainly not for 4K anytime soon (well maybe if it's a fairly old movie (see First Blood, which I've seen for 15 bucks on 4k).

Totally saw the 4K version of Office Space on dealnews the other day for $5. :)
 
DVD, cheap, fast, easy rips. Blu-ray, expensive, slow large and sometimes problematic rips, incompatible tech refreshes... Blu-ray, from the inventors of Betamax, who unlike Betamax, "bought the win" this time.

They deserve the worst.... I own just a few Blu-ray, there's simply no need. Sorry Sony.

I tend to agree. Blu-ray had a bad start where they didn't have the extra tech/online crap the hddvd did and they had to add it back in. For a while you didn't have blu-ray players that you knew would play the disks in the future other than the ps3 which was one of the first that was up gradable. They also never really reached the market like dvd did. I bought a lot of dvd's when I was younger to watch on a plane, in the airport, or when I was on vacation on my laptop. A lot of people didn't sprinkle blu-ray players around like they did dvd players either. So I'd go to my girlfriend's house and she would have a blu-ray player in the front room maybe but not in the bedroom(where with both dvd and vcr's before this people would).

My early experiences with blu-ray were just bad and it never recovered for me. You had a bunch of shitty blu-ray rips of older stuff that just didn't make sense and the dvd was fine and cheaper. Also blu-ray pissed me off as it seemed like everytime I went to watch something new I'd get the "f*ck you, I'm going to update first" message on my player before being greeted by unskippable ads on the disk. Its weird but in a lot of cases I'd rather have the dvd just because there are far more chances of me being able to play it in more places without ripping.

I'm scared, and looking at the end of physical media ownership...

What is even more scary, is the ignorance of so many people that think "I don't need to own my favourite movie, Netflix has it". I guess you will only miss it when it's gone.

I wonder if people here will wake up when we will all be forced to stream games, and not run them on our own hardware anymore?

Maybe but I'm old enough to have gone through buying some things multiple times on different formats and don't have the old ones. Movies/shows on tapes, laserdisks, sometimes video cds(mostly anime) that were then bought again on dvd, then some again on blu-ray or digital copies on amazon. I don't have the vhs tapes, laserdisks, etc anymore, same in a way that I don't have the cassette tapes or music cds anymore for audio stuff.

In a way I think having amazon host stuff I've bought through their service has more staying power than a lot of the physical media, I can play it on more things, can find it faster, and don't risk trashing the physical disk.
 
What would happen is all the complainers on here and elsewhere would complain that it wasn't 3 dollrs and if it dropped to 3, they'd complain it wasn't 1 dollar. I've already seen that movie play out with music, where everyone complained about prices and when the prices droped to what they wanted the complained they weren't cheaper still.
Here, you're literally asking for movies, upon release to home video, to sell for less than most movie tickets cost and then for them to drop to less than 1/2 of a typical movie ticket. And given that a huge chunk of movies hit video channels within 3 months (and almost all within 6 months), it makes no sense.

If you want it for 5 bucks, wait 10 years...hell you might even find some for that in 5 years, but 5 bucks is only going to happen for old releases and certainly not for 4K anytime soon (well maybe if it's a fairly old movie (see First Blood, which I've seen for 15 bucks on 4k).
Well, in the case of music by the time they lowered albums at about 10$ the market was shifting.
I guess the same is going on with movies. I think the market would expand if prices were lowered, but it would take time. Some will always complain about prices... With Spotify music prices are vastly lower... Has the market expanded? Are they making the same less or more money as a whole? Even making the same miney with an expanded market its still a win as a tiny increase in prices would yeild a lot more money each time and more people are hooked and its easier to sustain the market as people talk with each other things like that.
Btw, as far as movie tickets go... Yeah those are too high too, its rare i go anymore... I used to have the whole slate cleared before... Then prices climbed, and climbed ...
 
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