[HN Gopher] DVD sales surpass Blu-ray in 2021: Physical format m... ___________________________________________________________________ DVD sales surpass Blu-ray in 2021: Physical format market Author : ksec Score : 79 points Date : 2022-11-21 15:46 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (itigic.com) (TXT) w3m dump (itigic.com) | duffyjp wrote: | We only buy physical movies on DVD because that's what our | minivan can play and that's the only time we need a physical | disc. I thing the general reason is just cost though, I'm not | going to spend $25 on a disc I'm only going to watch once. I'll | just rent it from Prime etc. | bombcar wrote: | Goodwill can be a decent source of DVDs, even if some might not | work, they're certainly cheap enough. | mxuribe wrote: | THIS! Isn't this part of the circular economy? If not, then | it should be. This right here is what we shold all be doing! | toomuchtodo wrote: | Consider buying DVDs used from Amazon. I haven't had any | reliability issues, and I don't care if the kids destroy discs | I paid a few dollars for. | mrguyorama wrote: | """USED""" DVDs on ebay are $4 or so a pop, reliably | available, ship in a couple days, and nobody is going to rob | your collection of your favorite movie 3 years down the line. | Thlom wrote: | We also have a dvd player in our van. It's hell on earth when | you put on a dvd for the kids and then 20 minutes in it starts | skipping or just freeze. Been looking into replacing it with a | more modern player with hdmi input or something so I can just | hook up an iPad or something instead. | gwbas1c wrote: | One thing I've noticed is that many DVDs look like utter crap | when I watch them on a 70" TV. The MPEG compression artifacts are | very noticeable; unless the DVD is compressed very carefully. | | I just decided that, if I think I'm going to watch something a | few times, I'll seek out the 4k disk. | rado wrote: | VHS, you're next | 1970-01-01 wrote: | D-VHS would be great! | hajile wrote: | DVD could have a new lease on life if they'd create an updated | spec with something like AV1. IIRC, Youtube uses around 2.5GB/hr | for 4k which would mean almost 3 hours of 4k content on a dual- | layer DVD at streaming quality. That would be good enough for | most people. | chungy wrote: | AVCHD was basically that concept: it uses the Blu-ray file | structures, formats, and codecs, but stored on a DVD-R(OM). | | It has the problem that it only works in Blu-ray Players, not | standard DVD players, so the usefulness of it is drastically | diminished. | duskwuff wrote: | The value of DVD is that you can stick a disc into anything | that says "DVD player" and it'll work. Inventing a new format, | like AV1 on DVD media, means you need new player hardware -- at | which point you might as well just use Blu-ray. | [deleted] | hajile wrote: | DVD hardware is way cheaper. Manufacturing DVDs is also way | cheaper. DVDs patents should have also all expired. | | DVD HD or similar player branding could distinguish these | decently well too. | woobar wrote: | They could always ask USB guys about proper naming. "DVD2 | Gen 1.2 (240 Mbit/s)" is my vote. | thesuitonym wrote: | Calling it DVD would almost make it a non-starter. HD DVD | lost, DVD is old. Who wants something old? You'd probably | have to call it something like red disc (Stylized as reDisc | of course). | PostOnce wrote: | too late https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_DVD | | We'll have to go with DVDPro or QuantumDVD or DVD 2 or | something ridiculous :) | yamtaddle wrote: | 1) It's probably not good enough for 4K if you've got a viewing | set-up on which you can actually tell the difference between 4k | and 1080p. Which, sure, is only a smallish minority of viewers. | | 2) But you can fit a basically-perfect 1080P rip on a dual- | layer DVD with modern codecs. Easily. | hajile wrote: | With an 85" TV, you have to be within 11 feet to notice the | difference with 1080p. With a 55" TV, that drops down to | about 7 feet. | | A great setup will show a difference, but those people | probably think nothing of shelling out tons of money for 4k | and 8k media. They'd hardly be the target market here. | XorNot wrote: | This is because your plain can't get a bunch of stuff on Blu-Ray. | There are new releases coming out which don't come out on Blu- | Ray. | scrivna wrote: | For me at least the ever increasing DPI increases have just not | been worth the extra expense, I see 4K is better than my 1080 TV | but i don't care enough about it to spend the money to upgrade. I | imagine the dirt cheap DVDs are more preferable to people than | the more expensive Blu-rays, I get the same amount of | entertainment from both for most movies that aren't really | focussed on the visuals alone. | derbOac wrote: | The thing these discussions invariably miss for awhile until | someone points it out -- I see this on art cinema forums all | the time -- is that all of the resolutions are functionally | bottlenecked by things having nothing to do with the disc. | | The size of the screen, for instance, how far you're sitting | from it, your actual visual acuity, and so forth and so on. | Because these things tend to be suboptimal more than they are | optimal, the benefits of higher resolution have diminishing | returns, because you have to increasingly have everything "just | right" for it to matter. | | There's been studies showing that in actual typical viewing | conditions for most actual people, higher resolution formats | are overkill. | | My preference is for blu-ray for instance but we have a small | screen by today's standards, which we really don't have any | desire to replace in size. | amalcon wrote: | Honestly I agree with you, but I was one of those people who | mostly cared about high definition TV because the sound was | better. I think we're something of a rare breed. | iso1631 wrote: | For someone with 20:20 (6:6) vision SD means your screen should | fill 20 degrees of your viewing angle, HD 30, and UHD 40. | | Recommendations for most viewing is 30 degrees, but for the | fully immersive THX/Theatre style viewing you want 40 degeres. | | That means for watching your 70" TV you should be about 8' | away. If you are watching UHD then that's great, you won't see | any resolution artifacts, but with HD you will see a | difference. | | However if you're 9' away from your screen you won't get any | uhd resolution benefits. | | (That's setting aside other UHD features, especially HDR) | | Of course maybe you have better than 20:20 eyesight. | bob1029 wrote: | I find the display technology also has a huge impact on how DPI | is perceived. | | Watching 480p content on an old 65" Panasonic plasma is somehow | _much_ more tolerable than watching it on my M1 MacBook or | another LCD-style monitor. | mikepurvis wrote: | The jump to 1080p from 480p is very, very noticeable-- I own | Firefly on both DVD and Blu-Ray, and I accidentally watched a | few minutes of an episode on the DVD version before being | like.... wait, what? and then realizing what had happened and | switching discs. | | However, IMO the jump from 1080p to 4K is way more marginal. | It's definitely better, but it's just not that much better than | what your TV's built in upscaler can do, nevermind some future | AI-powered DLSS-type upscaler. | simcop2387 wrote: | that AI powered DLSS type upscaler exists now, though I'm | only aware of a few products that have it, particularly the | NVIDIA Shield devices. | AlexandrB wrote: | There's a problem though when studios mess with the original | to do the Blu-Ray release. For example, _The Wire_ went from | 4:3 (DVD) to 16:9 (Blu-Ray) and introduced some problems[1]. | There are worse cases like the infamously bad Buffy Blu Ray | release[2]. | | Blu Ray releases would be great if they didn't mess with the | source material. But this seems to happen all the time. I'll | take the flaws of 480p over that kind of stuff any day. | | [1] https://www.vox.com/2014/12/3/7327539/wire-bluray | | [2] https://www.themarysue.com/remastered-buffy-is-a-butt/ | [deleted] | hotpotamus wrote: | I'd say the jump from 480 to 720 is huge, and to 1080 is | quite nice. 4K is already fairly marginal to my eyes and I | can't imagine shopping for an 8K TV. Perhaps at a wall size | TV, but I'm still quite well served by a 42" 1080p Sony TV I | got in 2009 or 2010 (can't remember exactly). | yamtaddle wrote: | At about 8' distance from my 65" 4K TV I don't notice the | difference between 720p and 1080p. At 5' distance I do | notice. Even at 5', though, the visible difference between | 1080p vs. 4k is tiny. And it's practically impossible to | sit much closer than that and still have room to walk | between the TV and front row. Maybe if I ever get a | projector with an 80" diagonal screen or something, it will | matter. | | My screen does HDR but it's not oled so the benefit to hdr | sources is barely noticeable, and anyway you can get high- | quality 1080p downsample rips that retain the hdr data. | bombcar wrote: | I can notice a 480p when watching vs 1080, but only really | notice 1080 vs 4k if I pause and happen to wander near the | screen. | ugjka wrote: | 4K kind of loses its sharpness when they add film grain | and blur on purpose. | | On the other hand there are some very stunning 4k nature | videos on Youtube that blow me away | Consultant32452 wrote: | For my money, 720p is more than enough for any movie except | visually compelling movies. For things like LOTR, Star | Wars, and some of the super-hero series I really appreciate | that 1080p. My eyesight isn't good enough to discern 4k. | mikepurvis wrote: | Definitely fair-- I'm rocking a 60" 1080p panel that was | left by the previous occupants of the house, and it's | perfectly adequate to my needs; I expect it is of similar | vintage, in any case. | | I haven't felt any appetite for picking up a 4K unit, | particularly if it means having to navigate the whole world | of "smart" TV apps, figuring which stuff I want to use vs | disable, and how to go about doing that. | Thlom wrote: | You don't have to use the smart functions. Just hook up | the peripherals you are using now and call it a day. | jaywalk wrote: | 4K by itself is marginal. But 4K HDR is incredible. | LeoPanthera wrote: | I wish they'd published the graph on an absolute scale and not a | relative one, because I have no idea if DVD sales have increased | or decreased. Only that the ratio with blu-ray has changed. | | I strongly suspect that the subheadline "DVD sales skyrocket in | the last year" is simply false. | jeffbee wrote: | Yeah, and even the relative bump in Q1 2021 was due to | backlogged sales from 2020 supply interruptions. A more recent | release of the same periodic data indicates that: | | """The total video disc market is still clearly in decline in | the US (and globally) and does not appear to be recovering | after the Covid 19 delays of new disc releases due to | theatrical releases being postponed or moved to streaming. In | the US, video disc sales fell 25.5% from $3.29 billion in 2019 | to $2.45 billion in 2020 and an additional 20% to $1.97 billion | in 2021. In the first quarter of 2022, video disc sales | continued their decline with an additional 19% drop year-over- | year.""" | substation13 wrote: | Why not buy the movie you want to watch (so that the creators get | paid) and then torrent an .mkv you can play anywhere and keep | forever? | googlryas wrote: | Do creators get paid more when you buy DVDs vs digital | versions? | substation13 wrote: | Good question - it might even be less due to DVD resale | market | yamtaddle wrote: | That "forever" for the .mkv comes at a pretty high cost in time | and money, if you really want a decent chance of it actually | lasting a lifetime. You can reduce one by making the other go | up, but there's gonna be some cost in both. | | Then again you have to store physical disks. And pay for them, | of course. Pick your poison I guess. | wolrah wrote: | > Why not buy the movie you want to watch (so that the creators | get paid) and then torrent an .mkv you can play anywhere and | keep forever? | | This is exactly the approach I've taken for the HD era and it | works great. | | Back in the DVD era I had a well optimized ripping setup, I put | hours in to tuning everything so I could pop a new disc in and | have it ready to play on my Windows Media Center instance as | quickly as my drive would read it. | | At this point though, it's just not worth the trouble. | Especially for UHD content, ripping that is just a nightmare. | These days when I buy a new disc I just add it to a list on my | server and my server goes out, finds whatever quality copy I | told it to look for, downloads it, extracts it, names it | according to my standards, and tells Plex to update its | metadata. | | More often than not by the time I get home the content is | already there on my server waiting for me and I can toss the | disc on the rack for display purposes. In my last move I had an | entire box of discs that were still sealed in their original | plastic. | | It's the best of all worlds. The content owners get their | money, I get a DRM-free copy that I can play on what I want | when I want. It's not strictly legal but it's morally clean. | The end result is the same as if I had ripped it myself, just | with less effort on my part. | hateful wrote: | Maybe all the people that never went from DVD to Blu-ray are | still on DVD now that the others have moved to streaming? | jmugan wrote: | Yep, that's what I was thinking. Odd it wasn't mentioned or | looked at. | bob1029 wrote: | Not surprising based on my experience. BR hardware/software is a | nightmare to maintain. Lots of new multimedia tech really sucks | in terms of the overall experience. | | In the codec realm, I find myself going all the way back to MPEG1 | for a side project. Getting 100% of the patents/royalties out of | the equation does wonders for compatibility. ISO is still getting | me on the standards docs, but that's a one-time cost. | | Not every application/customer on earth demands the bleeding edge | in efficiency or quality. Especially in the information theory | arena - you are always trading something else important. It's | usually latency, memory & compute, which are very powerful | dragons when trying to scale real-world applications. | deergomoo wrote: | At the risk of sounding like a complete snob, it annoys me that | DVDs are still sold. Blu Ray has been on the market 6 years | longer than DVD had when Blu Ray players were first released. | | I appreciate that many don't care about visual quality, but the | baseline of TVs continues to improve with time, and DVD supports | literally nothing rolled out in the last 15 years. | | At 720x480 resolution (rectangular pixels!), they're guaranteed | to look like crap on any TV produced this decade. I can only | imagine it's a case of "people keep buying 'em so we keep selling | 'em", which is doubly annoying because it allows the price of BD | players and discs to be kept artificially high as an "enthusiast" | option. A standard player on Amazon today is only about half the | price of what I paid for a nice Sony player in 2012. And that's | adjusted for inflation. | yamtaddle wrote: | A _lot_ of people are still using old TVs or have a very small | one they watch far enough away that 480p is barely, if at all, | worse than 1080p. | Blackthorn wrote: | The industry groups only have themselves to blame. The fragile | and shitty Blu-ray DRM makes it random whether a disc will work | or not. Who the hell would buy that? | hulitu wrote: | > At the risk of sounding like a complete snob, it annoys me | that DVDs are still sold. | | Playing a DVD is easy. Playing a Bluray is difficult, you need | special SW. | deergomoo wrote: | I have no data to back this up, but gut feeling is people who | watch physical media on a computer are a tiny minority. | | For a start barely any of them come with optical drives | anymore. | jonas21 wrote: | The article seems to be confusing relative share of the physical | media market with absolute sales. Its claim that "DVD sales | skyrocket in the last year" is simply not true. Both DVD and Blu- | ray sales have been declining every year - but Blu-ray sales | declined more rapidly in 2020 than DVD. | nu11ptr wrote: | > "In addition, it is possible to read DVD movies on any laptop, | something that is not the case with Blu-ray" | | How many laptops still have any form of optical drive? None of | the laptops I'm aware of | fedeb95 wrote: | In my opinion, the main point is that "quality" is highly | subjective. High definition may not matter most to some users, at | least not compared to acting, direction and photography of the | movie. Also I believe the customers of physicals are more | interested in those parameters than resolution. | | Another point to consider is that old movies don't gain that much | from blue ray. | | In conclusion, the higher price of blue rays doesn't justify the | increase of quality for some users, who may value other | parameters more. | chungy wrote: | > Another point to consider is that old movies don't gain that | much from blue ray. | | Disagree :) The oldest movies I own on Blu-ray are Gone With | the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, and both of them are visually | improved by being in HD compared to the DVD releases. I | wouldn't really prefer SD for anything regardless of age. | duskwuff wrote: | > I wouldn't really prefer SD for anything regardless of age. | | For movies, sure. But a lot of content produced for TV wasn't | produced and/or archived in HD formats. Some older shows are | _occasionally_ remastered in HD if the original film can be | found and digitized, but that 's a fairly expensive and time- | consuming process when it's possible at all. Older content | that's in low demand, like children's shows or soap operas, | may stay SD forever. | chungy wrote: | If the original production isn't possible to master in HD, | then fine, you don't have a choice but to (hopefully) enjoy | the show in SD. Same if it is possible but it hasn't been | done (eg: Star Trek DS9 and Voyager). | | On thinking about things when I make this post, I remember | that DragonBall has never had a good HD remaster done, | there's always DNR applied to it, soundtracks switched out, | et al. Old VHSes might actually be preferable to the modern | Blu-rays in that circumstance. | deergomoo wrote: | > Another point to consider is that old movies don't gain that | much from blue ray | | Very much not the case. The detail in 35mm film can scale to 4K | and beyond very nicely. | yamtaddle wrote: | My favorite 4K movies are the ones on originally recorded on | 35mm, in fact, as far as looks go. | aidenn0 wrote: | As with all media, mastering makes a big difference. If you | just stick a film into a TC machine and directly encode to DVD | then film-grain (and other artifacts) will demolish the quality | of a DVD because so many of the bits end up being spent | encoding noise. HEVC handles this somewhat better _and_ the | higher bitrate of Blu-ray gives the codec some breathing-room. | kjkjadksj wrote: | Having a DVD library is tempting. Physical media that you own and | is easy to rip digitally, etc. However I popped in a disc | recently and was reminded of how bad the dvd experience was. It | just stopped playing two scenes in. Took it out, the disk looked | perfect. Tried again, stopped at the exact same moment. There | goes that disk I guess, it was probably 20 years old to be fair | but thats true for most dvds you'd find in the used bin. | jvm___ wrote: | I tried watching Terminator 2 with my son the other day, we'd | had the DVD for ages to eventually watch. The mint looking DVD | refused to load in the DVD player so we pirated it to watch | instead. | smaudet wrote: | Laptops partially fixed this issue - you can just skip the bad | parts. | | Higher end dvd players used to do the same, but players are a | vanishing breed and consoles are not much more than dumb | players usually. | | Ofc it would be nice if there were just no skipping - there | were a number of technologies being employed back when DVD was | the pretty much the only format in town, I suspect the data | redundancy may have been traded for cramming more features on a | disk. | | Back when ripping (my own) disks was a thing, you could | compress a movie to half its size on disk (no coded compression | just more intensive picture compression) and burn it twice to | the same disk... | | Ofc the problem with that was the consumer burnable disks use a | degrading chemistry unlike stamped copies, so they would last | 3-4 years before undergoing significant corruption. | kurthr wrote: | It's a good idea to try ripping the DVD anyway... often ripping | software is more tolerant (better at | correcting/retrying/skipping) errors than the players. And as I | think you're implying, once ripped you don't have to worry | about THAT physical media. | | You remind me. I have some DVDs I need to rip (before they go | bad)! | triceratops wrote: | That's never been my experience. I get my DVDs almost | exclusively from the library - not once has one ever failed to | play for me. | BeetleB wrote: | > I get my DVDs almost exclusively from the library - not | once has one ever failed to play for me. | | Over the last few years, the experience with DVDs/Blu-Rays | from the library has been trending downwards. I would say | about a quarter of the movies I check out from the library | have some problem somewhere in the movie where the player | either gets stuck or skips. | r00fus wrote: | DVDs are great entire because I rip them immediately to get rid | of the menu and governmental mandatory ads. The DVD box gets | stored in a bin. | runlevel1 wrote: | > governmental mandatory ads | | Do you mean the annoying FBI Anti-Piracy warning? If so, | that's actually a voluntary thing the publisher added.[^1] | | [1]: https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2012-16506/p-8 | WalterBright wrote: | I regularly discover that even new DVDs won't play. It's a crap | shoot. | | Then there's the menu system on it. Every DVD has to re-invent | menus, usually badly. For example, they often do not display | what options are actually set or not. Sometimes it's even hard | to find the cursor. | | The only good thing about DVDs is you can turn on the Eddie | Mueller commentary for film noir movies. That man is an | unending gold mine of snark, wit, and funny/interesting | comments. He's often more interesting than the movie. | zbrozek wrote: | It's been at least 15 years since I've touched a DVD, but I | recall the menu system to be the worst feature of it. I've | never once wanted anything but the main feature. Also may the | product people who decided on "unskippable scenes" go to a | purgatory where they're surrounded by nothing but copyright | notices for eternity. | ncpa-cpl wrote: | > Also may the product people who decided on "unskippable | scenes" go to a purgatory where they're surrounded by | nothing but copyright notices for eternity. | | The first time I used Netflix about a decade ago I was | surprised how fast play worked. | | Now that you mention that, I was coming from a world of DVD | menus and unskippable notices. So the Netflix UX was a | great improvement. | jollyllama wrote: | Purgatory usually has a temporary connotation, eternity | would imply hell. | Moru wrote: | I use VLC for the very few movies I watch so can't say if | it works on all movies. Most of the time you can just | select "No disc menus" and it goes directly to the movie. | Then you can select language and subs as you want in the | normal windows style menus in VLC. | ghaff wrote: | The commentary tracks on DVDs could be quite good at best-- | even if they were also hit or miss. Unfortunately they seem | to have pretty much vanished. I assume that the volume of | DVDs these days doesn't justify the cost/effort of recording | these any longer. | WorldMaker wrote: | My impression is that a bunch of it has to do with "4K UHD" | Blu-Ray uses just about all the space for the main feature | and required languages per region and has very little spare | room. (As did "3D" Blu-Ray, though those are mostly extinct | today.) The early solution to that was "4K UHD" releases | were all expensive "Collector's Editions" that bundled a | standard Blu-Ray and/or DVD with all the "special features" | including commentaries (increasing the marginal costs of | all the packaging by including multiple discs). The late | solution today seems to be to just ignore all the "special | features" entirely, planning only for the lowest common | denominator amount of extra space, and things like | commentaries are slowly disappearing as an expected bonus | feature (again; it's not like these features existed in VHS | or Laserdisc; DVD was its own weird golden age). | ghaff wrote: | Laserdiscs had extra audio tracks with commentary on some | discs as I recall. (But the stack of LDs I have is in the | garage and it's too cold to check :-)) An audio track | shouldn't take much room. But not sure about actual | numbers. | avian wrote: | > Every DVD has to re-invent menus, usually badly. | | My favorite one is the Fifth Element DVD. It has menus | implemented as options flying towards you in a loop and you | need to press the OK button on the remote just when the right | one is passing by. Works great if you have a DVD player with | a slightly laggy CPU and an IR remote. It always reminds of | that "the worst volume control UI" website that was doing | rounds on social media a while back. | jonny_eh wrote: | Here's a link to a compilation of those "worst volume | control UIs": https://uxdesign.cc/the-worst-volume-control- | ui-in-the-world... | ncpa-cpl wrote: | I'd give the first price for worse DVD UX to the original | Harry Potter 1 DVD menu. | | In order to see the deleted scenes you had to race a broom | through a maze in the forbidden forest selecting the | correct way each time. | nebula8804 wrote: | 13 Years later and Jame Rolfe's rant on DVDs still rings true | | [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsdzaEVeFEE | | He makes a great point at then end when comparing VHS to DVD: | Its like we are moving forward in technology but moving | backwards in the amount of BS we have to put up with just to | enjoy what we paid for. The VCR gave you more control | compared to DVD players. | | Things haven't improved with Blue-Ray | | [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tetXKdi9U3c | | Streaming has eliminated many of these pain points in | exchange for freedom to truly own your media. | | The best way to fight back is to buy the Blu-Ray, rip it | using MakeMKV thereby creating an MKV file that contains the | ability to jump chapter by chapter, have any audio track you | want, etc but with none of the junk that you are forced to | use when you pop the Blue-Ray into the player. The best of | all worlds. | bombcar wrote: | I remember reading reviews of DVD players to find the ones | that "slipped through" testing with things like ad skip and | "direct to menu" and "direct to feature" options that you | could enable. | | Those players were always the best. | BeetleB wrote: | Consider that the player may be at fault. | | Almost 2 decades ago, when I was considering getting a DVD+RW | drive for my PC, I thoroughly researched them and found they | all had differing error correction algorithms, and it made a | world of a difference. I got one known for this, and it often | played DVDs that neither my standalone DVD player nor my | roommate's DVD player on his PC could play. | | I would have thought that by now they'd all be good at this, | but it seems not. | [deleted] | IshKebab wrote: | To be fair that seems to happen quite regularly for me on | Netflix and Prime. The encoder hits a bug and the whole app | crashes. Fortunately it's usually random and you can just | restart the app. | | Never seems to happen with pirated videos & VLC though. | [deleted] | notmyfriend wrote: | mkozlows wrote: | This article is old, and the headline misleading. It's talking | about Q1 2021 sales, which in practice means it's talking about | 2020 movies, which means that these are weird, pandemic-fucked | numbers that don't really mean anything at all. | | There are more recent numbers available. Here's the end of | October, the latest week available right now: | https://www.mediaplaynews.com/research/sales-report-for-week... | -- at the bottom of the page, you can see a link to the previous | week, and you can step back week-by-week. | | If you do that, you'll see that DVD sales are larger than Blu-ray | sales, but it's in that 50-something range, which puts it about | on track with pre-pandemic trends. Also, disc sales in general | keep falling annually at an incredibly fast rate, so both DVD and | Blu-ray are tanking. | | The obvious cause for this has nothing to do with particular | weakness in the Blu-ray format, but that the "mainstream" disc | market is now increasingly streaming, and the disc market is | bifurcating into: | | 1. Technophobes who don't understand new technology, and who | don't understand or care about HDTV, and so just buy the same | DVDs they always bought. | | 2. People who want the best possible image/sound quality, | collectors, and physical media fetishists. This is a niche | market, and always has been. | | The obvious end state is that DVD fades out in the same way that | CD sales are fading out in the music world, and that 4K UHD Blu- | ray ends up in the vinyl-style collector niche. | smackeyacky wrote: | DVD players themselves seem to have declined markedly in quality | since they became commodities. | | I have a new-ish blu-ray player that baulks at the layer change | on a DVD, or refuses to play some titles. I also have a high | quality Sony upscaling player I bought at a thrift shop that will | play anything. I will be unhappy when that dies. Unfortunately, | the introduction of HDMI seemed to coincide with the drop in | quality of DVD players so you may have to buy a chain of chinese | dongles to get the good quality players to work in your lounge. | | Ripping your DVDs is probably a good idea, not because of the | playability issues to do with the disks themselves, but to do | with finding a decent, working DVD player at any price. | | edit: the main problem I have with commercial streaming media is | that they are using all the nasty tricks of DVD to compress the | image below what you can notice on a modern TV. Crushed blacks, | blockiness when the stream gets compromised by traffic etc. Blu- | ray held such promise and it can look fantastic with a higher | average bit stream rate than streaming, but they are getting | harder to purchase as the retail outlets disappear. | bawolff wrote: | I wish dvds used the same scratch resistant coatings bluray does. | DVDs are insanely fragile. | spansoa wrote: | I much prefer to own a physical copy of media instead of relying | on streaming services. I have a large DVD collection and I'm | proud of it. Streaming doesn't sit well with me and you have to | re-download the media each time you watch it, which feels wrong | and a waste of bandwidth too. | paulryanrogers wrote: | Do you rip discs? I prefer rips to shuffling discs. | [deleted] | gear54rus wrote: | Why not simply store a file on a disk though. It's not that | storage is very expensive or anything | mxuribe wrote: | > ...instead of relying on streaming services... | | I'm getting to the point where i want ther video file so i can | save it locally. Sure DVDs are fine, because i can rip | them....I really only want physiucal media until i have ripped | to my local digital library. I know some movie companies used | to offer a "digital download" of the move if you bought a | disc....Not sure if that's still a thing. And who knows if that | format was even some crap proprietary, locked doen edition | anyway. But, yeah, i prefer my own offline-available, digital | copy of media myself. | mxuribe wrote: | In addition to some reason cited for the increase around DVD | format, i would posit some of the following too: | | * Parents buy cheaper DVDs for their very young | children...Children who care less about display quality. | | * While travel plummeted during middle of pandemic, there were | still people who took road trips (e.g. maybe for staying with | family, etc.)...and during those roadtrips, i'm sure some | families opted for DVDs and DVD players instead of trying to | stream stuff while on the road, etc. | | * Many folks buy cheap DVDs, because their favorite movies stop | being available on their current subscriptionsof streaming | servicews. I hate this myself. So, my partner bought 3 or 4 of | their favorite movies, so we can watch them whenever we want - | even if we lack internet (though we would need power for the dvd | player of course) | | * Vinyl records have their followers who revitaliuzed the | format...so maybe there are collectors of DVDS...? | | I'm sure there are other reasons for why this is happening. | yamtaddle wrote: | * The bins of shit-tier movies near checkout lanes at Menards | and Wal-Mart are mostly or all DVDs--if disc sales in general | decline, that particular segment might remain steady. | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | Blu-Ray players can be blacklisted at any time. If you can't | get it updated it's useless for playing new releases. | unfocused wrote: | I have Vinyl records, but my goal is to digitize them. They're | my Dads from 1940s, 50s, and many are 78s, so I had so search | Kijiji ads to get a player that plays that speed. Dual 1009 was | what I settled on. | | As for DVDs/Blu Ray, I only buy things like Planet Earth or | other docs. Sure enough, just yesterday I tried playing Planet | Earth II on UHD 4K Blu Ray on an Xbox Series X, albeit I still | have a 1080p TV (bought used) and 1080p Receiver (bought used, | Sony STR-DN1000 that I paid $50 for) and it was glitching. | _sigh_ Time to hit up Bit Torrent and download a ripped version | of the Documentary that I already paid for. Argh. | | Both Blu Ray and Vinyl are susceptible to one day not being | playable. By ripping them into digital, we can hopefully keep | the content playable well into the future. | mxuribe wrote: | > ...By ripping them into digital, we can hopefully keep the | content playable well into the future... | | Yep, this is my preferred direction, and of course an | offline-accessible though digital edition may be less prone | to issues of wonky players, or warped physical media. | ncpa-cpl wrote: | I've been wanting to play my grand mother's vynil collection | for some time. | | Are modern turntables reliable? Or is a vintage one | preferred? | ace2358 wrote: | Why would modern ones not be reliable? They're fantastic! | Having said that, for your old vinyl collection, you will | find the quality of the player mostly irrelevant. The age | of those vinyls will make them sound like a 32kbits/s mp3 | file! | | Have fun and good luck! | trynewideas wrote: | > many are 78s, so I had so search Kijiji ads to get a player | that plays that speed. Dual 1009 was what I settled on | | Many modern turntables, including cheap ones, support 78 rpm. | (Quick search finds 11 new 78 rpm-supporting models at Best | Buy in Canada, starting from $80. An $85 Sylvania that | supports 78s can also digitize directly to USB storage.[1]) | | Did you mean 16 2/3 rpm records, which the Dual 1009 supports | and most modern turntables don't? | | [1]: https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product/sylvania- | src831-3-speed... | mikepurvis wrote: | "Vinyl records have their followers who revitalized the | format...so maybe there are collectors of DVDS...?" | | I think it's _possible_ this is happening or will happen, | perhaps in a similar vein to how vintage gamers /collectors now | venerate the GameCube and PS2 as the last bastion of consoles | that weren't designed to be online all the time, and will | therefore be playable "forever" in a way that everything which | has come after them will not. | | At the same time, I feel like vinyl records are a little | different from a DVD-- from the analog tactility of them, the | size of the packaging leading to beautiful artwork, the fact | that they were the dominant format for decades, while DVDs got | barely fifteen years (the aughts and a bit beyond). It's easy | to love a record when you put it on and you can immediately | tell "yes, this is a high quality stereo audio experience that | I am having with this piece of media and the equipment I have | invested in for consuming it", and I'd argue there just isn't | really an equivalent experience for DVDs: they're always going | to be blurry, with janky menus and unskippable ad reels, blocky | subtitles, cheap plastic cases. Some of that changes with | collectors editions in special boxes or whatever, but I don't | know if it's widespread enough across the format as a whole to | really enable the kind of culture that exists around vinyl. | pdntspa wrote: | It is happening, my parents are proof. They have more DVDs | than the local library | mikepurvis wrote: | Are they doing collectory things like alphabetizing them | and putting them in special preservation cases, going | online to seek out mint copies of special editions, etc? | | Not to discount your observations, but I'm curious to | differentiate between an active, intentional, curated | collection effort, vs hoarding or just not having gotten | around to tossing them all out yet despite that none have | been touched in 10 years. Most people I know who still have | a shelf or two of physical discs in their media/living | rooms look a lot more like the second case than the first | one. | pdntspa wrote: | It doesn't matter, they are in possession of literally | thousands of DVDs; the money is spent and the sale is | recorded. | | There used to be a healthy market for DVD-specific | shelving; I have seen multiple bookcase-sized shelves | packed completely in one house. | mxuribe wrote: | > ...I feel like vinyl records are a little different from a | DVD-- from the analog tactility of them, the size of the | packaging leading to beautiful artwork... | | Yeah, I can see what you mean. | Kon-Peki wrote: | If a movie isn't enjoyable at 720p (upscaled for a 4k tv), it | isn't going to be enjoyable at 4k either. | | Blu-ray/4k isn't the crutch the studios were hoping for. Make | better movies. | mistersquid wrote: | I prefer DVD to Blu-ray because - Ripping DVDs I | own is simple and reliable. - Ripping my Blu-rays is | complicated, error-prone, and expensive (custom software, custom | hardware) - I'm macOS-based and there is no first- | party Blu-ray player for macOS. - Third-party Blu-ray | apps are awful and unreliable and they jank through ripped Blu- | rays. | | As a result, I stopped buying Blu-rays because ripped DVDs | provide the security/longevity of physical media with the | convenience of digital accessibility. | chungy wrote: | "Custom hardware" just amounts to having a Blu-ray Drive, and | they're not really expensive (or do you think $20 is | expensive?). You have a point on software, but MakeMKV can be | used for free for as long as it's called beta, which appears to | be forever at this point. | | For me, the quality improvement from 480i/p to 1080p is huge | and I wouldn't personally sacrifice that. Lately I've been | buying 2160p discs when they're available (and if I don't have | a 1080p already... unlike the other jump, 1080p-2160p is not | significant), and for a couple years now, ripping them in | MakeMKV has been equally as trivial as 1080p discs. | | Maybe your concession could be that most 1080p disc releases | bundle a DVD with them. ;) | fedeb95 wrote: | Still worse than using the dvd reader inside a laptop | dymk wrote: | I haven't had a laptop (or desktop) with a built in DVD | reader since 2015. | chungy wrote: | I just use a SATA Blu-ray Drive in my desktop. Works great. | [deleted] | ubercow13 wrote: | If I understand correctly for UHD discs it amounts to having | not just any drive, but having a supported drive flashed to a | supported, sometime old, firmware version such that MakeMKV | is able to dynamically overwrite the drive firmware (ie, root | the drive) before ripping the disc. The whole process also | depends on downloading encryption keys from a server that are | per-disc, so if that goes down or stops being updated that | could prevent you ripping your discs again in future. | | MakeMKV is incredible but the whole process seems fragile and | very complex. | smaudet wrote: | In addition macOS probably means macbook, where they either | don't have drive bays or only dvd drive bays. | post_break wrote: | Pioneer drives work out of the box with no firmware update. | aidenn0 wrote: | FHD Blu-rays rips really easily and the media are far more | durable/reliable. About 5% of my DVD collection fails to rip in | the simple manner, 1% doesn't rip at all[1], 100% of my Blu-ray | collection rips cleanly on the first try with makemkv. | | 1: ddrescue on two different DVD drives can rip most DVDs (make | sure you authorized the drive first by opening it with a player | first), but I have 2 (out of nearly 200) that do not. | deergomoo wrote: | I legitimately don't understand how you can care enough about | movies and TV to buy physical media, but little enough that | standard definition is not a deal breaker. This is not a | criticism, it just makes absolutely no sense to me. | daveidol wrote: | Seriously - 480i is pretty awful these days. I don't even | watch YouTube videos at that resolution on my phone. I can't | imagine watching full movies at that resolution in 2022. | pdntspa wrote: | Nothing a basic BD-ROM and a AnyDVD HD license (and a PC I | guess) can't fix | skunkworker wrote: | I haven't seen this be a problem on MacOS with MakeMKV and a | good external bluray drive (one a slim bluray and another a LG | drive in a usb3 enclosure). I've had maybe 1 bad bluray disk | that I backed up out of the hundreds of blu-ray disks that I | own, and in that case it was the physical material separating | on the disk itself. | | Edit: I have one of the good LG drives that works well with | Libredrive and as far as I've tested it can back up everything | I've thrown at it. | mistersquid wrote: | What software do you use to play ripped Blu-rays? | | I've tried both Macgo Blu-ray Player [1] and Anymp4 Blu-ray | Player [2] and both have their playback issues. (Just a note | that Anymp4 may look sketchy, but they are a legit company | who do provide refunds if necessary.) | | [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/macgo-blu-ray-player- | pro/id140... | | [2] https://www.anymp4.com/blu-ray-player/ | skunkworker wrote: | VLC can play them just fine and anything that supports | H.264/H.265 mkvs. | caycep wrote: | VLC basically. Or Plex if you have an apple TV. | | I usually transcode using Don Melton's other-video- | transcoding ruby gem, albeit I think doing it on my PC w/ | nvidia card seems to yield more consistent quality vs. the | Apple Silicon built-in HEVC encoder. | partiallypro wrote: | I buy physical media and rip them into a digital library. | Subscription based digital media is great, but they can yank the | rights at any moment. | hashmymustache wrote: | Including if you're in another country. I owned a movie on Vudu | that I wasn't able to stream in Canada due to licensing rights. | imiric wrote: | Judging by how the gaming industry is going, I'm afraid the | subscription model will only expand more in the movie industry | as well, until all physical media is considered a legacy | format. There will likely never be a successor to current | Bluray media. | | Studios will love this as they can cut costs on manufacturing | and distribution, while forcing consumers into their | subscription service. | | At that point piracy will be the only way to consume content | without any restrictions. | mxuribe wrote: | I think you've just defined the balance of freedom with fair | capitlaism...The artist(s) presumably gains revenue from your | purchase, but you gain vastly more flexibility to consume | however, whenver, and as many times as you wish the art | produced. Kudos! | steviedotboston wrote: | technology is cyclical | 1970-01-01 wrote: | Digital _Versatile_ Disc indeed. | liampulles wrote: | The increase in fidelity over the last two decades is not the | biggest visual improvement in home entertainment. Color is. | | I have an OLED 4k TV, maybe 10 Blu Rays, and well over 1000 DVDs. | I can definitely see the difference between a DVD and even 720p | content, but that's a difference you see when you are looking for | it. The pitch blacks are what grab you when you are not paying | attention, and you can get that regardless of the resolution. | | (Also, ripping DVDs is a fun hobby, and much quicker to | experiment with than BR :) ) | unnamed76ri wrote: | Buying physical media is so weird to me other than for young | children. | | Once you've watched a movie or show once, why watch it again? | arh68 wrote: | I used to buy more Blu-Rays but some TV series have stopped disc | releases, presumably to drive streaming, or just aren't worth | buying. | | Expanse: Season Five, specifically: why must I get Prime when | I've got Seasons 1 - 4 on disc? And who's gonna buy GoT S5-8? | Westworld S4? | | I've got no comment on any _increase_ in DVD sales, though. That | 's not my market. I only rip CDs (which skip like crazy, while | I've literally never had a disc issue with DVD/Blu). | gtm1260 wrote: | Blu-ray 4k is an amazing media format for true enthusiasts. | Nothing beats the 100% complete compression artifact free viewing | experience. Good streaming services like apple tv get close, but | nothing beats Blu-ray UHD disks. | | Would 99% of people on 99% of tvs not be able to tell any | difference? Probably. | chungy wrote: | > 100% complete compression artifact free viewing experience | | That doesn't exist on 4K Blu-ray. 2160p titles use the HEVC | codec in combination with discs up to 125GB in capacity to | minimize the artifacts as much as possible, but they are never | gone. | | That's video, anyway. Both 1080p and 2160p discs usually | include lossless audio tracks of at least one language. If your | box uses terms like "PCM", "DTS-HD MA"/"DTS-HD Master Audio", | "Dolby TrueHD", that audio track is lossless. | elihu wrote: | Something I've noticed: when DVD players came out, they quickly | dropped in price so after a few years you could buy one for $40 | or so. Blu-ray players were the same, initially expensive, but | after awhile they were fairly cheap. | | UHD Blu-ray players though have been out since 2016, and | average prices are still hovering around $200. Sometimes you | see one now around $150, so maybe prices are starting to drop. | | You could blame inflation for part of that, but is it also just | that far fewer of them are being sold because people aren't | buying physical disks anymore? I.e. they've turned into a niche | luxury item. | pavlov wrote: | It really is a revelation to watch an older movie on UHD Blu- | ray after being subjected to the mush that streaming services | put up. | | Services like Apple TV+ do pretty well on 4K when it's their | own flagship content, but none of them care about movies that | were shot before digital. They'll serve a terrible automatic | encoding that loses all the detail from the original film. | | I just bought Lynch's "Lost Highway" on UHD Blu-ray from the | Criterion Collection, and this 1997 movie has probably never | looked this good in any format. Even the original film prints | shown in theatres were second-generation compared to this 4K. | It's mastered from the negative and perfectly encoded to | preserve the massive film grain in the indoor scenes. | deergomoo wrote: | Honestly I'd take a 1080 Blu-ray over a 4K stream in most | instances. It's not universal, but streaming services are often | incredibly stingy with the bitrate. Mr Robot on Amazon Prime | was like watching a watercolour painting in dark scenes. | yamtaddle wrote: | Even 4-6GB h.265 1080p pirated rips are usually better- | looking than streaming "4K", let alone how much better an | actual 1080p blu ray looks. Especially netflix, god their | streams look like dogshit. | iso1631 wrote: | > nothing beats Blu-ray UHD disks | | Uncompressed 10 bit YUV444 UHD at 3840x2160 and 60fps runs at | 15gbit a second, so you aren't getting a complete compression | artifact free viewing experience. The largest UHD blueray will | only deliver at 1% of that speed, and if you could cache it | you'd get less than a minute's worth on the disk. | | Now you might think that the compression you choose is | suitable, and perhaps you'd be right, but it's not 100% | compression artifact free, and realistically you aren't going | to be seeing uncompressed UHD outside of a broadcast facility. | When I stream UHD from say a music festival, I'm compressing it | for the WAN section to around 120mbits of h265 at 2160p50 | (europe). Even with that level of compression (15:1) it's | likely better than your UHD disk. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-11-21 23:00 UTC)