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We all took the DVD boom era for granted

filmstories.co.uk

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Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#151

Post by theandrewbailey »

Miraste wrote: post #109
codedokode wrote: post #94

The problems with streaming services: - they do not allow anonymous usage (you need to provide a visa application worth amount of personal information) - stupid geographical restrictions - they tend to limit quality, both for copyright and traffic saving purposes As an intermediate result, a generation of people is growing who got used to watching digitally compressed audio and video (social media, especially for mob…

DVDs and Blu-rays also have stupid geographical restrictions. They come marked with region codes, and DVD players will only play discs from their home region. You have to go all the way back to VHS to be free of that particular corporate "innovation."

> You have to go all the way back to VHS to be free of that particular corporate "innovation."

Try watching a European VHS cassette in North America (or vice versa).

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#153

Post by theandrewbailey »

nyarlathotep_ wrote: post #144
retrac wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a generation of people is growing who got used to watching digitally compressed audio and video It is unfortunate how today phone calls are often heavily compressed. Back in the 80s, 90s, 00s the digital phone network would stream uncompressed PCM audio at 64 kbps and the rest was analog; calls often sounded better back then than they do today. Once we accepted the heavy compression necessary to make early digital…

I know effectively nothing about these topics but I recall having that thought the other day. With Apple users FaceTime audio has far higher audio quality than a "typical" phone call Wondering what accounts for the difference. I assumed, if anything, audio compression would be more "aggressive" on web-service based calling than "traditional" calling.

Apple knows which devices Facetime will run on. Traditional calls need to run on old embedded infrastructure that barely has 2 bits to rub together.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#154

Post by doublerabbit »

anentropic wrote: post #119
doublerabbit wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I enjoy watching movies without having to wait four hours to download a Blu-ray rip on my 2mb ADSL. "I feel like watching a movie, NAS" vs "I feel like watching a movie, ETA: 4 hours" And besides my TV is dumb enough that I'm proud of it. It supports DNLA and works well.

Just plan ahead and download it before you want to watch it

But that just ruins the spontaneous movie watching experience you get with DVDs.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#155

Post by bluGill »

zorked wrote: post #77
gapan wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on where you live. In Greece, I don't think a single movie other than kids cartoons were ever dubbed on VHS. Everything was subbed. On the other hand, in Germany or Poland, almost everything was dubbed.

It makes no difference. The question is if a Greek customer would buy a subbed movie from Lithuania for example.

Only if trying to learn the language of Lithuania, or is an immigrant from Lithuania. I'm not sure how common those are, I expect the total market is around 10... This is a real problem for the language learning community - they are too small for the studios to worry about, but the studios are making a lot of content that would be very useful for learning if only someone could get it.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#156

Post by bombcar »

retrac wrote: post #136
codedokode wrote: post #94

The problems with streaming services: - they do not allow anonymous usage (you need to provide a visa application worth amount of personal information) - stupid geographical restrictions - they tend to limit quality, both for copyright and traffic saving purposes As an intermediate result, a generation of people is growing who got used to watching digitally compressed audio and video (social media, especially for mob…

> a generation of people is growing who got used to watching digitally compressed audio and video It is unfortunate how today phone calls are often heavily compressed. Back in the 80s, 90s, 00s the digital phone network would stream uncompressed PCM audio at 64 kbps and the rest was analog; calls often sounded better back then than they do today. Once we accepted the heavy compression necessary to make early digital…

A significant percentage of people alive today have never made an analog phone call, or know just how good (and low latency!) it was to literally have two copper wires connecting two phones thousands of miles apart.

Direct at the speed of light (almost)!

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#157

Post by theandrewbailey »

blitzar wrote: post #149
fidotron wrote: post #108

Not mentioning the non-skippable anti piracy noise that ironically made the legit product worse than the pirated one poisoned the well for interactive features later on Blu Ray. Who cares about getting extras if they are hidden behind obnoxious menus and abusive junk when the Internet will tell you anyway? That said I remember that era fondly because of things like the Tartan output. In the UK if you had a multi regi…

Now I pay for the content and get unskipable ads before, durring and after the movie. Oh how I long for the You wouldn't download a car days

When will we be able to download 3D-printable and drivable cars?

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#158

Post by tmm »

I wish Kaleidescape[1] was more affordable. It's a download rather than streaming service, with a comprehensive movie library (12,000+ titles) and you buy movies individually rather than a monthly subscription. But then you can watch the movies as many times as you want and they don't disappear from your library if Kaleidescape stops carrying them. I don't know if they include the extra content typically available on discs or not.

You have to buy their player ($4,000) and their media server ($5,000 for 8TB up to $27,000 for 96TB). Then buy movies (about $9 - $30 depending on how new they are).

If you have the money, you can buy a pre-loaded system for $98,000 which includes their entire 4k library (only about 2000 movies), two 96TB storage arrays and a 4k player.

If the player was around $2,000 and I could use my own storage, I'd have bought one already and ditched all the streaming platforms.

Edit: looking through their library, some titles do include extra content (special features, deleted scenes, music videos, etc).

[1] https://www.kaleidescape.com

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#159

Post by ghaff »

reginald78 wrote: post #146
jasode wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Or check out a DVD for free from a public library. Major downsides to that alternative. My 80-year old friend started borrowing DVDs from the local library 6 months ago as a personal protest against Amazon Prime adding ads to their streaming. So far, made 3 trips to borrow DVDs and all had various issues: 1) checked out White Collar tv seasons but library only had seasons 1 to 3. Library didn't have last 3 seasons a…

I used to use netflix DVD as a great supplement to a few streaming services. For awhile they had just about everything and were pretty reliable, which meant the occasional extra media didn't require a separate service just a bit of waiting. But then they let it rot and stopped replacing disks before finally shutting it down. I wish they'd just sold it and let some one else run it for maintenance costs but I guess it…

Yeah. I subscribed to Netflix DVD latterly but they increasingly didn't have a lot of stuff (after having driven Blockbuster out of business). So, now there's basically not much alternative--at least discounting a la carte streaming which a lot of people do--other than actually buying discs which people still do to some degree.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#160

Post by xhkkffbf »

jebarker wrote: post #125
codedokode wrote: post #94

The problems with streaming services: - they do not allow anonymous usage (you need to provide a visa application worth amount of personal information) - stupid geographical restrictions - they tend to limit quality, both for copyright and traffic saving purposes As an intermediate result, a generation of people is growing who got used to watching digitally compressed audio and video (social media, especially for mob…

> they tend to limit quality, both for copyright and traffic saving purposes This is the killer for me. I've worked on both video compression and graphics in my career and those projects involved a lot of pixel peeping. The compression artifacts in streaming video are sometimes really distracting now. I keep contemplating switching to bluray but apparently an increasing number of 4K HD releases there are being ruined…

I've started to look for old Blu-Ray disks because the quality of the image is generally much better.
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