Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We all took the DVD boom era for granted

filmstories.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 381 posts

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#161

Post by bluGill »

prmoustache wrote: post #133
pro14 wrote: post #87

have you noticed that the quality of movies has been progressively declining? i think it's because the pirated movie boom ended. there was a theory that DVD movie piracy increases the box office revenue. bring back movie piracy?

I think with the success of streaming series have become more interesting to streaming platforms as their addictive nature can lock people more easily into a platform for a specific period of time. For this reason budget and revenues of series have increased dramatically and series are more and more produced like movies. This probably created an artistic and talent shift from movies to series. There were a lot of shi…

Movies have historically been stand alone - if you didn't see [random movie]-1 when it was out but now your friends want to go to [random movie]-2 the movie better make sense. However it can still clearly be a follow on. As such movies tend to focus on a plot within the movie.

TV shows have been more a case of you may have missed yesterdays show, but want to see today's show. The format doesn't lend to complex plots because of the limited time to resolve them, and anything long term means people are seeing spoilers. Thus they tend to focus on characters, so you can watch in more or less any order.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#162

Post by snakeyjake »

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…

VoLTE-HD has been a thing for many years and the reason people haven't noticed is that most personal voice calls have transitioned to messaging apps and most of what's left are to or from businesses who have the cheapest VoIP setup they can get away with.

Two handsets connected with EVS/VoLTE-HD sound superior to two analog phones on the same circuit, talking to each other.

If I call my parents' iPhone using my iPhone the call connects using a high-bitrate EVS codec, crystal clear.

I never do that, of course.

I FaceTime them.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#163

Post by goosedragons »

dylan604 wrote: post #141
nemomarx wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people could make copies of the physical object, right? you should always record a new album onto a cassette or etc.

The vast majority of people can't make copies of books. Just because you could make a copy of something doesn't mean you had the right to. In fact, the small print stated that you could not for the purpose of redistributing it. If you bought a CD but only had a cassette player in your car, nobody cared that you made a tape for your own use. If you gave that cassette away, then that's in the no-go zone.

All you need to make a copy of a physical book these days is a scanner or camera. Even a smartphone is usable. The only thing stopping people from making copies of physical books these days is that it's time consuming. That's it.

And that can easily be reduced to a few minutes with a decent feed scanner and a knife if you don't care about keeping the original in easily readable condition.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#164

Post by theandrewbailey »

galleywest200 wrote: post #129
p0w3n3d wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, DVD is still a standard in medical imaging, which baffles me, because many people do not own drives anymore, but I think this is as close to "owning your own test results" as possible. I cannot imagine someone saying "sorry, you have not extended your subscription to our health-cloud and your results are gone"

It is worth noting that a lot of people DO own DVD and Blu-Ray drives still - they are just stuck inside of gaming consoles.

Game consoles are starting to come without optical drives.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#165

Post by theandrewbailey »

Neonlicht wrote: post #75
incorrecthorse wrote: post #12

*Cinephiles took the DVD boom era for granted The reason it ended is because the general public doesn't care.

Yeah these articles are all written by people who owned hundreds of movies. I was thinking about this. Normal people bought maybe one or two Disney movies a year? Now Disney Plus cashes in 20 eurodollars per month and they don't have to share it with anyone.

> Now Disney Plus cashes in 20 eurodollars per month

We truly live in the Cyberpunk timeline.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#166

Post by nradov »

jasode wrote: post #131
jhbadger wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or rent a movie for a couple of bucks. Or check out a DVD for free from a public library.

>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…

Even back when Netflix had a DVD rental service the media quality was kind of crap. I frequently got halfway through a movie only to have it skip and refuse to play due to scratches.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#167

Post by BeetleB »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #151
Miraste wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

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

That's not a georestriction, but a difference in media protocols. You could easily buy a compatible VCR. Heck, in some countries, Japan marketed VCRs that supported both PAL and NTSC (I had one of those) because those countries would have a significant influx of VHSs from both Europe and America.

It's like saying the choice of 110 vs 220V (or 120 vs 240V) is a "georestriction".

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#168

Post by deadbunny »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #151
Miraste wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

That was due to fundamental differences in standards[1] though. This isn't the case with DVD onwards (mostly).

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard-definition_television

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#169

Post by dylan604 »

goosedragons wrote: post #163
dylan604 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of people can't make copies of books. Just because you could make a copy of something doesn't mean you had the right to. In fact, the small print stated that you could not for the purpose of redistributing it. If you bought a CD but only had a cassette player in your car, nobody cared that you made a tape for your own use. If you gave that cassette away, then that's in the no-go zone.

All you need to make a copy of a physical book these days is a scanner or camera. Even a smartphone is usable. The only thing stopping people from making copies of physical books these days is that it's time consuming. That's it. And that can easily be reduced to a few minutes with a decent feed scanner and a knife if you don't care about keeping the original in easily readable condition.

ohmuhgawd becky, look at the pedantry on this one.

this does not refute the vast majority claim that i made. the skill set involved in what you describe is, a) ridiculous, b) way more difficult than just buying another copy of the book, c) if no more copies available, who's going to destroy a book like that?, d) see a

edit: e) google and archive.com cases show this is not allowed. google just did it at such a massive scale that they were beyond the law, and archive.com didn't

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#170

Post by [deleted] »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #57

I wish there were a way to just pay for a movie on a site and download it as an mp4 in 1080P or 4K. I hate streaming because I only want to watch 1-2 movies per month and they are very specific (like a specific martial arts movie or action movie). Streaming interfaces often have DRM and horrible interfaces and I don't want to pay a monthly fee for something I'll rarely use. Don't understand the DRM because pirates ge…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN