SvennoJ said:
disolitude said:
My initial "good enough" comment was strictly comentary on why bluray isn't gaining traction in the mass market. We all have busy lives, and in most casual movie watching cases majority of the people would much rather stream a decent 720p res movie on Netflix instantly, rather than head out to best buy to buy a bluray and watch it in 1080p 30 minutes later. Even if the price was the same for both options (bluray is ususally more expensive to boot) I bet people would go with digital.
I realize that I am not the norm or the majority with my Tv setup but even as someone with a high end TV (and previous projectors like yourself), only movies I personally would even consider buying for 1080p/quality sake would be the few dozen classics that I really enjoy and would rewatch more than once. Do I really care if I'm watching the latest Adam Sandler crappy comedy in best possible 1080p quality?Not really...
For those must have movies, I have been buying blurays and ripping them myself or purchasing them through iTunes lately. You can easily compress an excellent 1080p quality 2 hour movie down to ~8GB (10 mb/s bitrate). iTunes I find has very good 1080p movie quality and 5.1 audio as well. After downloads there are ways to losslesly remove DRM form iTunes video purchases. When done you have your own 1080p copy DRM free and ready to use on any device at any time.
Here is a comparison ArsTechnica did of iTunes 1080p vs bluray in 2012.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/03/the-ars-itunes-1080p-vs-blu-ray-shootout/
This difference isn't as large as one might think and you have to think in 2 years since and beyond, things will only get better on the digital side...
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True, but I wouldn't watch the latest Adam Sandler crappy comedy at all. I had Netflix for a while and started watching a lot more movies, but with lower quality video and lower quality movies not doing it for me, I soon switched back to buying what I'm really interested in. I buy 90% of my blu-rays online, always fun when the next package arrives. No endless Netflix menus to browse trying to decide on the spot what to watch next. I also watch most movies twice plus the extras.
I watched a couple movies I didn't really want to buy on Zune HD, those were 10-12GB downloads, 10mbps video. Still a big difference. However that was 3 years ago, compression might be better now. Since then only tried 5mbps streaming XBox video and PSN download, both meh. Nebraska was allright, but that's slow moving black and white with little in the sound department, no challenge.
I haven't tried iTunes video yet, no rental to try out, no technical specs or any information what's included. However that comparison lists all the things that already annoy me on blu-ray. Blu-ray is still a bit too compressed for my taste. I encode my own videos in 24mbps h.264. At 15mbps it already looks more soft.
Even when streaming matches blu-ray I would still not switch over. It's just not the same as building a physical collection. The promise of 4K streaming is intriguing though. Too bad my isp would limit me to 1 movie per month, I might as well wait for a 4K projector and physical format.
Anyway now I'm a bit more worried for physical disk's future, when even someone like you chooses convenience over best quality and a tangible collection.
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I don't think you need to worry as I am sure bluray disks or another form of video physical media will be around for another 20 years minimum. The only problem is cost as unless there is mass market adoption, product becomes niche and prices reflect that.
4K video will be interesting... Streaming it is going to be a bitch for the next 5 years even in the first world and physical media may need to see another iterration to support true 4K. I see a lot of people paying 100+ dollars per movie if they offer true uncompressed 4K quality on a physical medium. The final frontier... :)
