Don't have pictures to share but want to say I'm happy for these kind of threads as I'm an avid physical collector. I still collect movies/tv shows and video games when I can (I just never stopped lol). The most recent thing I purchased was Akira on 4k, Monster hunter wilds and Suikoden 5. I have Dirty harry and Summer wars on PO for movies and Fatal fury City of the Wolves and the Capcom fighting Collection on PO for games.

I got the complete series of Babylon 5 on blu-ray. Will keep me busy for a while, 78 hours it says on the box.

I've seen parts of it when it was aired but was more into Star Trek back then and never got into the overarching story lines. Nice to have the complete series together.



Before that I got the flim comic of Spirited Away


Made from the original movie cells, 862 pages. English translation but keeping the Japanese 'backwards' book form.

Gotta start somewhere. Ordering Miles Morales: Across the universe on Blu ray cause the Netflix version is so bad. Generally don't care about the quality loss but you can really tell the film is not at its best. I waited all this time to watch it for HDR and the streaming makes it a mess.

Yeah streaming is only good for older TV series, like Lost. Anything with HDR just doesn't compare to the 4K blu-ray version, heck blu-ray is already better. Streaming looks good in slow scenes, action scenes are mess from bitrate starvation. Compression artifacts everywhere.

It's a shame blu-ray is on a decline for the convenience of crappy streaming. I can't watch the rest of The Expanse as it's simply not available here and hell will freeze over before I import it from the USA.

I hope TloU S2 still gets a Canadian 4K blu-ray release.

The hope is AI will make things better but yes, it's definitely more noticeable these days for some reason but it's not bad in some films that rely on visuals and HDR, I was still impressed with Top Gun Maverivk...although, that is basically a drama as to your point. I don't really care for 4K tbh but it has one benefit of making streaming crisper and making the quality loss very easily ignorable, my brain doesn't even pick up on it until very fast moving scenes. But yeah, when the image is moving as fast at every moment and the scene changes are so numerous in Across the Spider verse it the quality loss is so bad it is noticeable even on my phones 6 inch screen which is actually a really impressive little screen, my S24 is 2600 nits with blacks so deep they are unnaturally black and stand out against natural black with the lights off, it's as good as the most ecpensive of TVs... if it wasn't for those damn rounded edges and the hole punch. 

I hope the Blu Ray doesn't spoil me but you mentioned people choose streaming over convenience but it's most cost as the biggest reason, Blu Rays are very ecpensive for one film it doesn't as much as a month of Netflix or one month of Apple TV, Prime Video and Disney+ Combined. 

Yeah that's why we had Blockbuster ;) (And Netflix started as a rental service via post)

But yeah, renting was inconvenient and still $10 for 3 newer releases for a weekend rental.

The reason it looks worse today is because Netflix etc can get away with lower bitrates / higher compression. Blu-Ray goes up to 48 mbps for picture and sound, 4K blu-ray up to 128 mbps. Netflix 1080p is 3-7 mbps, 4K was 18-20 mbps, but is now max 15 mbps.

They already started reducing bandwidth in 2020
https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1602743673
Still, it is clear that Netflix is focusing mainly on reducing bandwidth rather than using the optimizations to deliver improved, less compressed 4K video quality.

It's true that 4K Netflix (and Blu-ray) use more efficient compression than Blu-ray (H.265 HEVC vs H.264 on standard Blu-ray) but it's still max twice as efficient (for some more loss in fine detail), thus 1080p Blu-ray's 48 mbps is still higher detail than 4K Streaming, comparable to 24mbps H.265. It's fine for slower movies, yet with a lot of water / smoke / fire effects in action scenes, bitrate matters.


Blu-ray doesn't really spoil at least. You notice it looks more clear and stable, then you forget about it again when the choice is find that blu-ray (and sit through all the warnings and other nonsense) or just stream what's in front of you :/

The industry screwed itself by making blu-ray less convenient than DVD with all the crap you can't skip.

DVD was a huge success because it was better in any shape or form than VHS. Then Blu-ray managed to make the user experience worse again :/ Longer load times, multiple unskippable warnings, stupid questions while its loading so you can't even just put in and walk away until the menu is ready (usually language choice, why not global setting, and asking to go online to download commercials!...) Then for many titles resume won't work and you're stuck with the same crap again then have to ffwd to where you were.

Can't blame people for choosing streaming when the alternative's user experience is awful.

Yeah, I was thinking it would be the bit rate, like YouTube stream. Blu Rays would die anyway, everything would just go digital as it makes since and is more refined even if it was renting or buying individual films. Hell I still rent on YouTube and the quality on there is limited but something about 1080p just feels better, more cinematic like. 

Streaming is nice and very convenient for about 70% of the content I watch and for like 90% of the audience out there. But ownership and not connecting to the internet is much more important to me for the movies and tv shows I love. I have a great TV and surround sound system and a 2k Blu-ray is always superior then streaming (As it currently is) specially in audio. I've never stopped collecting so It's crazy to me that I have to explain to people my own age that grew up with VHS, DVD, Blu-ray why ownership is important when something they love is taken down or away from streaming. They come over to may place and are in awe when they watched Interstellar on 4K disc versus how it looked on streaming. 

I watched Interstellar in an IMAX theater and tbh it looked better on 4K blu-ray. (no strobe light, better contrast) The movie also sounded better at home but that's more because I can control the volume at home :)

Streaming is good for so so movies, big blockbusters are for physical media. Dune for example, no way I would watch that on streaming.

For me, ownership is the biggest aspect of it. Even if that means being stuck with a relatively poor DVD. 

But there are a fair number of good benefits with physical copies. 

- blu-rays and 4k blu-rays will generally have better video quality than streaming. 

- uncensored or removed TV shows 

- with streaming you often lose access to content, as it gets moved around. 

I also just have a lot of fun collecting.