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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

#271

Post by WalterBright »

layer8 wrote: post #236
WalterBright wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have a bad DVD player As I mentioned, I have accumulated several DVD players over the years (different brands, even a blue ray), and all of them exhibit this characteristic. The only commentary I've enjoyed are the Eddie Mueller ones commenting on film noir. I'll watch the movie, then re-watch it with Eddie. Good stuff!

That’s odd, unless maybe you always bought very cheap players. I owned half a dozen players over the years, played a 4-digit number of discs, and barely ever had any playback issues. With streaming, on the other hand, I have intermittent hangs and stuttering every few weeks, and navigating the video is worse than with physical discs (no chapter stops, skipping forward/backwards often takes longer to resync/rebuffer t…

The expensive DVD player I bought was actually the worst at it.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#272

Post by Yeul »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #199
justinator wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider the books to be canonical, honestly.

+ 1 Here. I can hardly sit through The Two Towers , extended or otherwise, without cringing constantly at nonsensical plot changes. No, Faramir was not a moody nihilistic relativist who changes his entire outlook without any character development. No, there was no alliance, and getting from Lothlorien to Helm's Deep in the span of a few weeks, with a full army, is physically impossible even if the army were already a…

Now that the last family member who gave a shit is dead LOTR is whored out. They want it to be the next Marvel universe.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#273

Post by WalterBright »

Contax wrote: post #37
xnorswap wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a bad DVD player and good internet. Lots of people have the opposite: crummy internet where there's no guarantee that they'll get through a streamed movie without buffering issues. On the article itself: indeed sometimes I enjoyed the directors commentaries as much as the films or shows themselves. In particular Requiem for a Dream, where the director's commentary adds a lot of context.

I've watched Requiem for a Dream a couple times and you got me curious about the commentary, so I'll try to get a copy. Thanks for the unexpected tip.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#274

Post by pkroll »

latexr wrote: post #261
7734128 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider streaming 720p to be DVD quality at best. (And no, i'm not basing that on bitrate. I know modern compression is much better.)

> I consider streaming 720p to be DVD quality at best. But it’s not, DVD quality is 480p. This isn’t a matter of opinion, we can look up the numbers.

That's too simple a comparison, against something that's a little more complicated. A 720p stream without adequate bandwidth can have terrible artifacts, mostly showing up during fast motion/panning/action. They can look objectively worse than DVDs.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#275

Post by Night_Thastus »

arielweisberg wrote: post #216

I started buying Bluray/UHDs as a replacement for going to the theatre and purchasing/renting digital copies and streaming. I was spending the money anyways, why not own a copy? Streaming is primarily just for specific TV shows, subscribe, immediately cancel, watch the series, then resubscribe when something worthwhile exists. I can't stand the bugs, slow interfaces, forced ads in ad free tiers, bad audio quality, an…

I started doing it as well. Not only is the quality great (4k, HDR 10+ or Dolby Vision, uncompressed audio) but equally important is that it cannot be taken away.

If I love a movie on X streaming service and they have some licensing problem or decide it's not worth what they're paying to host it, they can remove it at any time. I'm sick of that. I'm sick of what's available changing on a daily basis, and constantly getting split among more and more services that charge more and more monthly.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#276

Post by vunderba »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #199
justinator wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider the books to be canonical, honestly.

+ 1 Here. I can hardly sit through The Two Towers , extended or otherwise, without cringing constantly at nonsensical plot changes. No, Faramir was not a moody nihilistic relativist who changes his entire outlook without any character development. No, there was no alliance, and getting from Lothlorien to Helm's Deep in the span of a few weeks, with a full army, is physically impossible even if the army were already a…

I'm also swiftly bored by interminably long epic "battle sequences" - I usually find the choreography to be bland and uninspired, which I think partially stems from a childhood of golden harvest Hong Kong cinema.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#277

Post by cogman10 »

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

I have to point out that DVDs are in fact digitally compressed audio and video. The last mass market video media that wasn't compressed was VHS.

DVDs use MPEG-2 and AC3 for their compression algorithms (both lossy).

The algorithms that streaming services use for compression are leaps and bounds better than what DVDs can do. Further, there's been a lot of research dumped into optimizing perceptual quality at a given bitrate.

As a hobby, I've recompressed DVDs and blurays. With modern compression algorithms and codecs, for me a 1080p stream with AV1 compression and Opus codec is transparent at about 1500kbps. (Depending on the media, Cartoons can go much lower and live action might need more bits).

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#278

Post by cogman10 »

bombcar wrote: post #156
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…

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)!

> just how good

No.

Analog copper signals are TERRIBLE. A big reason telecom was one of the first to embrace digital transmissions was due to all the quality issues of copper.

Yes, latency was low, but that was about the only thing going for it.

To get a clear signal over copper you NEED a very large amount of insulation, and that insulation needs to be through the entire circuit. Just one section with frayed plastic, ran too close to a powerline, or is passing under a thunderstorm would introduce all sorts of noise onto the line. The longer the distance, the bigger a problem this was.

Sure, some calls might have been clear, but a lot were utterly terrible.

Re: We all took the DVD boom era for granted

#280

Post by infecto »

openrisk wrote: post #145
infecto wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the flip side, this is one of the best times for people who enjoy movies/media. I can purchase near almost any movie to my hearts content. Streaming is super convenient, I don't have to think about how to store the digital media. I don't need the physical media taking up space. Heck I even love to pay for a 24-48hour digital rental. I can spend $3-4 and get a movie to watch instantly. I don't care about DRM. Its o…

> living in a world of constraints kinda funny to think you are not subject to constraints when your access to the limitless potential library can be revoked at any moment. pressumably you also don't own any house, car, books, clothes, etc. as that gives you limitless potential to rent stuff.

I already acknowledged that your at risk of the vendor going out of business or any other way, losing access to the content. Except for the outlier movie fanatic, its never been better for the consumer imo. I enjoy movies and watch quite a few and I think its fantastic how easy it is for me to rent and stream what I watch. I have no desire to buy a film. Even physical media, the cost of purchase and storing it is too high for me. I recognize that some people enjoy it but I don't believe the majority of the market does and I don't believe its fair to effectively call them sheep for believing that.

Unlike practically every example you provide, I am typically watching a film once. I may revisit it years later but I am not consuming it on a frequent basis.

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