I think it’s hilarious that Sony was so scared of Bluray failing and becoming another Betamax that they basically bought out any future from under HD-DVD which probably would have been more successful (like VHS).
In the end, streaming won the day and Blurays are already a thing of the past.
To be clear, the first Blurays were coming out in June 2006, Netflix began internet streaming in January 2007, barely six months later.
Whoopsie doodles Sony you fucking idiots.
(I mean there’s a lot of reason streaming sucks but fuck Sony for real.)
Blurays are still way better than streaming though, especially the UHD ones. Bitrate is always way higher and the audio is noticeably crisper in my opinion.
I still regularly buy Blu rays, but it has to be for a specific kind of film or one of my favourites.
There’s caveats to that these days. Official streaming, in practice, sure. But with a debrid/similar service and sufficient bandwidth, you can pirate stream files with equivalent quality to uncompressed Blurays
It’s more useful than breaking into a cinema, stealing the hdd and emcryption keys and storing the screening file on your server.
And more useful than camrips.
What I want to say: It’s the best you can get to archival quality without aquiring the source files.
For sure but I used to think that BluRay in itself had any added value as in “it is better than the quality of a playable file”. But it does not. It simply is like a DVD which contains a high quality version if the film.
It can be hard to find full 4k atmos versions online in my opinion. But usual benefits are the same for any physical collection. Actually having something tangible you can look at and touch and know you’ll always have as long as you look after it and disc rot doesn’t come for it before your own demise.
For FHD Blu-Rays yes (though IIRC you need to download a file with the list of AACS keys for decryption). For UHD BluRays, you need to get a drive that people have made a custom firmware for and flash the firmware first. This is because UHD drives also have hardware level encryption protection that prevents you from being able to read the discs directly (assuming the firmware is working as intended, hence the need to flash a custom firmware). Realistically, just find a remux torrent. It’s much easier.
They’re a tad bigger than that (100 GB per disc), and I’ve lost enough hard disks over the years to not want to have to deal with backing up files that big. Not when I can have a small collection of shelf stable discs that won’t suffer mechanical failure short of deliberate damage.
Anyway, you can disagree all you like. If it’s not inconvenient for you, excellent, but for me it is. Hard disks sit in the back of my mind as ticking time bombs that I need to keep an eye on if I want to trust them. Ugh, I’ve done enough of that in my life. So many dodgy disks!
Oh and that also assumes a load of infrastructure in my home that I don’t have. I know how to set it up, but I don’t want to. Been there, done that. I’d rather check the second hand UHD shelf at CEX and pick up the occasional disc when the price isn’t silly.
Of course, eventually my UHDs will decay, but the timescale is decades rather than years.
I think it’s hilarious that Sony was so scared of Bluray failing and becoming another Betamax that they basically bought out any future from under HD-DVD which probably would have been more successful (like VHS).
In the end, streaming won the day and Blurays are already a thing of the past.
To be clear, the first Blurays were coming out in June 2006, Netflix began internet streaming in January 2007, barely six months later.
Whoopsie doodles Sony you fucking idiots.
(I mean there’s a lot of reason streaming sucks but fuck Sony for real.)
Blurays are still way better than streaming though, especially the UHD ones. Bitrate is always way higher and the audio is noticeably crisper in my opinion.
I still regularly buy Blu rays, but it has to be for a specific kind of film or one of my favourites.
There’s caveats to that these days. Official streaming, in practice, sure. But with a debrid/similar service and sufficient bandwidth, you can pirate stream files with equivalent quality to uncompressed Blurays
But what is the benefit of Bluray over dowloading?
That bluray is the source of your release.
The bluray is an export of the movie with lower compression flashed to a BluRay disk. Then we rip it back out of the disk.
The BluRay does not really add value besides as a physical storage medium. It is about as useful as DVD’s were in the past.
It’s more useful than breaking into a cinema, stealing the hdd and emcryption keys and storing the screening file on your server.
And more useful than camrips.
What I want to say: It’s the best you can get to archival quality without aquiring the source files.
For sure but I used to think that BluRay in itself had any added value as in “it is better than the quality of a playable file”. But it does not. It simply is like a DVD which contains a high quality version if the film.
It can be hard to find full 4k atmos versions online in my opinion. But usual benefits are the same for any physical collection. Actually having something tangible you can look at and touch and know you’ll always have as long as you look after it and disc rot doesn’t come for it before your own demise.
Back up your physical media!!
Can’t you just get the BR-ISO and remux yourself?
For FHD Blu-Rays yes (though IIRC you need to download a file with the list of AACS keys for decryption). For UHD BluRays, you need to get a drive that people have made a custom firmware for and flash the firmware first. This is because UHD drives also have hardware level encryption protection that prevents you from being able to read the discs directly (assuming the firmware is working as intended, hence the need to flash a custom firmware). Realistically, just find a remux torrent. It’s much easier.
Speaking only for UHD blurays - to get similar quality requires large files. Storing a collection of giant files is a hassle.
I disagree. Having 5TB worth of movies on a hard drive / NAS is way more convenient than having 5TB of movies spread across 100 blurays.
They’re a tad bigger than that (100 GB per disc), and I’ve lost enough hard disks over the years to not want to have to deal with backing up files that big. Not when I can have a small collection of shelf stable discs that won’t suffer mechanical failure short of deliberate damage.
Anyway, you can disagree all you like. If it’s not inconvenient for you, excellent, but for me it is. Hard disks sit in the back of my mind as ticking time bombs that I need to keep an eye on if I want to trust them. Ugh, I’ve done enough of that in my life. So many dodgy disks!
Oh and that also assumes a load of infrastructure in my home that I don’t have. I know how to set it up, but I don’t want to. Been there, done that. I’d rather check the second hand UHD shelf at CEX and pick up the occasional disc when the price isn’t silly.
Of course, eventually my UHDs will decay, but the timescale is decades rather than years.
Betas outlived VHSs by several years. It wasn’t Betas that caused Sony to act like that with BluRays, it was DATs.