Bad news for home theater enthusiasts
Disney is ending all DVD and Blu Ray releases down under for Australia and New Zealand which may be a harbinger of what can eventually happen to the rest of the world. Their last release will be Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3. From now on it's streaming only for them.
It's a good read for those with a big investment in physical media as streaming still can't match the quality and the big players just don't care as there'll be one less product to make.
Are we going to see a run on blu ray players with prices going through the roof again like we did when OPPO decided to call it quits? My OPPO BDP-103 is old and the mid level Panasonic DP-UB820-K is starting to look a bit desirable right now.
All the best,
Nonoise
Wouldn't it be wonderful if OTA 4K broadcasts became a thing? I seem to remember one company who was doing 1080i or p cable broadcasts OTA until they got a court order to stop. The people in the community loved it. They said they'll be back but that was some 2-3 years ago. Another valid reason to breaking up monopolies. All the best, |
Kaleidoscope is awfully appealing, but, most of the stuff I wanna watch is coming from non-kaleidoscope sources. And the fees for kaleidoscope movies are really annoying. I question the feasibility of this company staying in business. Netflix premium can be very nice if the offerings are all recorded at this higher premium level, but many don’t do a very good job. HBO is horrifying, Amazon movies can be good, peacock is horrifying and is bottom of the pack. I run everything through an Apple TV and I’m not sure how much better one can do after you install a quality HDMI, Ethernet and power cord. As well as having a very nice processor, and tube amplifier and preamp, which is an absolute must. Video quality is not the challenge, it’s the audio.
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You hit the nail on the head. Cable Internet infrastructure is the main problem in the United States. Most cable companies operate on physical cables that are 40+ years old and just cannot deliver higher speed Internet. It should have been upgraded to fiber optic cable years ago, but it means a costly investment for them. When they advertise "fiber optic cable," it might mean they have it at some point in the line to your house, but not all the way. So basically it’s like taking a bullet train to the middle of Los Angeles, then being stuck in traffic for 2 hours for the last 10 miles to your house... |
@nonoise what would really be nice if you even attempted to google a topic you have an opinion about. You again fill this forum with just pure noise. 4K OTA broadcast are a thing already, has been for years and is slowly rolling out across the country. To me it is astounding how little you know about what you post. |
Content providers basically care about only one thing - their bottom line and how to increase it. The quality of the video and audio of that content is a distant second, or maybe even third. Usually, a disc's maximum retail value is its price when first released, so the providers have no real motivation for supporting the format. The streaming format allows them to charge more for the same content, no matter how old it is. It's a mixed bag on streaming content quality - I watched the excellent Coen brothers movie, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, on Netflix and was generally very satisfied with the audio and video over my mid-level AV system. I scarfed up a few Oppo and Panasonic plasma TVs when each of those brands announced those products would no longer be manufactured, and I'm glad I did. To Nonoise, who is considering the Panasonic 820 player, that is a good choice (I got one when I dipped my toes into the 4k pool), but it made me sad to see the big difference in construction quality compared to the Oppo units. |
