How can Netflix kill Blu-Ray/DVD ?

Nailed it!!

The actual fact is, not everyone has reliable internet, if any. And if that’s the case, chances are cell signal (if any) is poor. 2G and 3G bands have mostly been removed. 4G will follow within, probably, this decade. So cell signals may get worse, unless you are in a large city.

Utilities need to realize the EVERYONE needs to have the same access to internet. I don’t mean, “Hey everyone, you have an 1G dn/up internet! Let ‘er rip!” I just mean that people should be able to get internet in their house. But looking from a greedy corporate chair, I can see “Eh, if they don’t like it, they can move, it was THEIR decision to live there.” HAVE A HEART PEOPLE!!

Physical medias will be around for decades to come!


Also, I hope you have recovered well and are able to be out and about. Being confined to a location/object for that long can get old and depressing real quick. I’ve seen it.

slaphappygamer said:

Nailed it!!

The actual fact is, not everyone has reliable internet, if any. And if that’s the case, chances are cell signal (if any) is poor. 2G and 3G bands have mostly been removed. 4G will follow within, probably, this decade. So cell signals may get worse, unless you are in a large city.

Utilities need to realize the EVERYONE needs to have the same access to internet. I don’t mean, “Hey everyone, you have an 1G dn/up internet! Let ‘er rip!” I just mean that people should be able to get internet in their house. But looking from a greedy corporate chair, I can see “Eh, if they don’t like it, they can move, it was THEIR decision to live there.” HAVE A HEART PEOPLE!!

Physical medias will be around for decades to come!


Also, I hope you have recovered well and are able to be out and about. Being confined to a location/object for that long can get old and depressing real quick. I’ve seen it.

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You said it. Unstable Wi-Fi connections being one of the biggest things that drives me away from streaming, I sure hope physical media outlives me. And thanks, I recovered within a few days

And the fact that you DON'T NEED to pay every time you watch. you think you don't pay, but you pay the internet use, and the streaming platform per se., and some streaming "rent" you the content, so charge every time you use it.

Yesterday I was drinking with friends and the talk get to the streaming services, the way how the most of people eve not know how many services have and how many money pay for they, you just subscribe and the charge goes to the credit card, so you don't realize the bill, just only pay the credit card statement but don't dimension on your head really the cost of the payments.

Common arguments against physical media:

• "How often do you watch a movie? Most movies only once!" → Depends on what movie. Owning something is still superior to streaming
• "Your discs will rot before streaming (or digital game distribution) go offline" → Can happen, but unlikely with good storage conditions. Pressed optical discs are pretty long-term stable. I own four failing discs without obvious physical damage (out of >>1000). Could salvage the data in all cases by trying several drives. Makes a data loss of zero cases in decades.
• Reliability issues of optical drives → Moving parts, lasers that wear down. Serious problem! But the discs can be decrypted, backed up and made available equally convenient… Or even better than commercial streams because DRM free offline files don't need any special supported hardware and/or good internet connection. Not really watching original DVDs/BDs with a standalone player. They get dumped and serve mostly as license tokens and collectable items. Besides, I don't like

On the other side, there are multiple issues with the streaming approach as well:

• Renting access is not like buying a permanent license
• Things can disappear from digital storefronts, even after "buying" not renting. Lovely: Sony’s […] Pulling Access to Purchased Studiocanal Movies[…]
• Streaming needs a huge amount of energy. I doubt it is more environmentally friendly than discs
• I have no subscription, missing own experience here. I've read that the bitrate isn't always convincing (for movies where this matters). Maybe this is wrong or just outdated. Even if a stream is advertised with 4K, it can look awful. At least for free YouTube videos this is very, very true. High Definition? My a.. ! The better the stream really is, the higher requirements for a good connection.

==========

Technical aspects:

Admittedly MPEG-2 DVD SD video is 1990s technology and surely not able to compete with newer video formats. There are still cases where this doesn't matter (of course also true for low-bandwidth streams):

• Source material bad. Example: Some 1980s TV series recorded on professional video tape rather than real (16mm or even 35mm) film. There is hardly a possibility to really "remaster in HD"
• Cartoons/Anime (if the source material is crystal clear). Big single-colored areas, simple picture structure and lines. Upscalers have an easy job here (same for Legend of Zelda – The Windwaker).
• If it simply isn't important. Star Wars on DVD? Rather not! But dialogue based, non-action movies… well: I personally don't care for HD in such cases

The Blu-Ray (1080p h.264) video format reached a quality that is good enough for almost everything. The bitrate is so ridiculously high that I'm honestly unable to find any imperfections or compression artifacts… and would fail a test where I should distinguish the original BD from a Handbrake/ffmpeg transcoded file with only ⅓ of the original bitrate.

As for the comparison to 4k: My eyes aren't good enough to see a difference in normal TV viewing distance unless using an insanely big TV (yes I know, common nowadays) or a projector. For people with better eyes and higher expectations, Ultra-HD 100GB(!)¹ BDXL based discs with even more efficient h.265 codec should suffice in this case (though the copy protection is a real pain in the a..)
=======


Many people skipped over BD because of the problems and limitations with earlier optical discs. They missed out some improvements:

• Because BDs would fail fast with scratches, they are MUCH more scratch resistant
• Read/write speed is a vast improvement over DVD
• BD-R type HTL are expected to be more long-term stable than organic dye DVD±R or CD-R. Excellent backup media, resistant against malware and real PC disasters

Sad that BD drives in PCs never became extremely cheap mainstream like CD and DVD drives before.



_______________
¹ No idea if quad-layer 128GB discs are also used. They are specified. Enough room for long, complex movies in highest data rate

KleinesSinchen said:

Common arguments against physical media:

• "How often do you watch a movie? Most movies only once!" → Depends on what movie. Owning something is still superior to streaming
• "Your discs will rot before streaming (or digital game distribution) go offline" → Can happen, but unlikely with good storage conditions. Pressed optical discs are pretty long-term stable. I own four failing discs without obvious physical damage (out of >>1000). Could salvage the data in all cases by trying several drives. Makes a data loss of zero cases in decades.
• Reliability issues of optical drives → Moving parts, lasers that wear down. Serious problem! But the discs can be decrypted, backed up and made available equally convenient… Or even better than commercial streams because DRM free offline files don't need any special supported hardware and/or good internet connection. Not really watching original DVDs/BDs with a standalone player. They get dumped and serve mostly as license tokens and collectable items. Besides, I don't like

Spoiler: this nonsense on payed discs

On the other side, there are multiple issues with the streaming approach as well:

• Renting access is not like buying a permanent license
• Things can disappear from digital storefronts, even after "buying" not renting. Lovely: Sony’s […] Pulling Access to Purchased Studiocanal Movies[…]
• Streaming needs a huge amount of energy. I doubt it is more environmentally friendly than discs
• I have no subscription, missing own experience here. I've read that the bitrate isn't always convincing (for movies where this matters). Maybe this is wrong or just outdated. Even if a stream is advertised with 4K, it can look awful. At least for free YouTube videos this is very, very true. High Definition? My a.. ! The better the stream really is, the higher requirements for a good connection.

==========

Technical aspects:

Admittedly MPEG-2 DVD SD video is 1990s technology and surely not able to compete with newer video formats. There are still cases where this doesn't matter (of course also true for low-bandwidth streams):

• Source material bad. Example: Some 1980s TV series recorded on professional video tape rather than real (16mm or even 35mm) film. There is hardly a possibility to really "remaster in HD"
• Cartoons/Anime (if the source material is crystal clear). Big single-colored areas, simple picture structure and lines. Upscalers have an easy job here (same for Legend of Zelda – The Windwaker).
• If it simply isn't important. Star Wars on DVD? Rather not! But dialogue based, non-action movies… well: I personally don't care for HD in such cases

The Blu-Ray (1080p h.264) video format reached a quality that is good enough for almost everything. The bitrate is so ridiculously high that I'm honestly unable to find any imperfections or compression artifacts… and would fail a test where I should distinguish the original BD from a Handbrake/ffmpeg transcoded file with only ⅓ of the original bitrate.

As for the comparison to 4k: My eyes aren't good enough to see a difference in normal TV viewing distance unless using an insanely big TV (yes I know, common nowadays) or a projector. For people with better eyes and higher expectations, Ultra-HD 100GB(!)¹ BDXL based discs with even more efficient h.265 codec should suffice in this case (though the copy protection is a real pain in the a..)
=======


Many people skipped over BD because of the problems and limitations with earlier optical discs. They missed out some improvements:

• Because BDs would fail fast with scratches, they are MUCH more scratch resistant
• Read/write speed is a vast improvement over DVD
• BD-R type HTL are expected to be more long-term stable than organic dye DVD±R or CD-R. Excellent backup media, resistant against malware and real PC disasters

Sad that BD drives in PCs never became extremely cheap mainstream like CD and DVD drives before.



_______________
¹ No idea if quad-layer 128GB discs are also used. They are specified. Enough room for long, complex movies in highest data rate

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I might be a bit weird in saying this, but in reference to your photo, I actually like the studio logos and FBI warnings before the movie. Idk why. As for the trailers, yes they are annoying. But not always unskippable.

And yes, a Blu-Ray drive in PCs would be so amazing wouldn't it ? I imagine they would be so much more popular if that was common. I've actually never owned a Blu-Ray player myself, and don't mind the few downsides of DVD, especially since they're cheaper, and I already have multiple players.

Perhaps when I'm older and richer, I'll get more into Blu-Rays. But as for now, I'm more than content with DVDs. And streaming....... yeah.. there's really no plus side to it, aside from the fact that I can use my sister's account (hey, as long as I'm not paying for it, what the Hell ?)
As 1080p would be nice, but 480p is fine to me. And DVDs can be backed up, thus rendering them immortal, while the same cannot be said with streaming.

on here is missing: stone, duration: forever. He he he

@impeeza Where did you get this picture from? http://CRASHPLAN.COM/MEDIAFILESPAN gives me a 404.

Anyway, this is an undisguised advert and I very much doubt most of it (the sources at the bottom aren't really readable).

fast reliable accessible anywhere forever
The cloud

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The cloud is not a data storage medium working "forever". It is a service that promises to do the maintenance for the costumer, so they don't need to do it themselves. There is no magic place where our data goes to survive the upcoming centuries without interaction. To my knowledge the problem of long-term preservation of large amounts of data is unsolved.
Specialized analogue archival film might be an option for lower amounts of data (digital data as QR-Codes or similar encoding), readable with a microscope in the worst case.

Cloud services can fail. They can go bankrupt. They can be unavailable. They will likely not survive global disasters such as a hypothetical World War III (hope it won't happen). As many arguments that can be found for cloud, there are many, many counterarguments.
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I also have my doubts concerning the lifespan they printed on their advert. An Audio-CD only 3 years of regular use? That is obviously rubbish. I've yet to encounter a pressed CD that failed so quickly (can happen with manufacturing defects).
VHS tapes started failing for me after roughly 30 years of storage.
SSDs on the other side aren't guaranteed to have data retention for more than a few years when inactive (expensive enterprise storage actually LESS, but they are normally on 24/7 anyway). I would not count on an SSD to have kept the data after half a century of inactivity.
They omitted MASK ROM and specialized archival grade media I think I know why.