[HN Gopher] We all took the DVD boom era for granted
___________________________________________________________________
We all took the DVD boom era for granted
Author : thunderbong
Score : 153 points
Date : 2024-12-07 05:45 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (filmstories.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (filmstories.co.uk)
| WalterBright wrote:
| What I don't like about DVDs (I have a lot of them) is it's
| always a crapshoot if they play, or if they play for a while and
| halfway through the movie it sputters and hangs. The disk is
| pristine. Sometimes taking it out and putting it back in will get
| it to work, trying it in a different player will work, arggh.
|
| With streaming, you click on it, and it plays.
| kalaksi wrote:
| Maybe your player is going bad. And blu-ray may be more
| resilient than DVD if memory serves.
|
| My experiences with streaming vary.
|
| - You need multiple services with the accompanying headaches.
|
| - some content will still get yanked
|
| - if you don't subscribe to netflix for 6 months they delete
| your account and you lose lists you had
|
| - quality can be poor depending on circumstance. Even with
| something like chromecast 4k, netflix doesn't offer way to
| enforce 4k quality but seems to decidw by itself. The picture
| looks bad with no way to tell why.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I have several players, they all behave differently wrt which
| DVDs make them crash. You're right that the bluray players
| tend to be more robust, but they still randomly crash.
|
| I just bought the complete Dynasty series, about 200 episodes
| (so sue me over my bad taste), and so far about 5 of the
| episodes won't play all the way through.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Buy a $12 DVD drive for a computer, download handbrake, and
| never care about any media problem ever again.
|
| I have never experienced a problem with DVD playback that
| wasn't obviously caused by extreme scratches. I don't even
| understand how a DVD player could "crash" in most cases.
| They are just a pipe from a DVD drive to an ASIC that
| hasn't had to change in 20 years. There's nothing to crash.
| "Bad" data either fails a checksum and skips or will give
| you weird microblock artifacts.
|
| Are these actual DVD players or some sort of weird computer
| system that software decodes DVDs?
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Are these actual DVD players
|
| Do you want a photo of them? :-) Sheesh!
| zeta0134 wrote:
| Unless anyone else in the house is doing anything at all on the
| internet. Then the stream has weird hitches and pauses, it
| buffers occasionally, and it'll "seamlessly" switch between
| glorious 4k and half-baked potato quality at random.
|
| Sorry did I suggest other people in the house were a
| requirement? Nah, it just does that anyway. Too many points of
| failure between the endpoint and the provider, and way too much
| distrust that the user may try to capture the footage once they
| have it, to solve all of the above problems, because the
| license holders don't like that.
| maccard wrote:
| Bearing in mind I only live with one person, and I'm lucky
| enough to live in a place with ample internet options, but
| this just isn't a problem for me.
|
| I've got gigabit fiber now, but in my last place I had 76mbps
| (but in practice it was more like 60 or so). We were able to
| watch two streams, with my wife's instagram and my reddit
| scrolling comfortably. The only reason we upgraded was when
| we moved 1) fiber was cheaper, and 2) I changed jobs and all
| of a sudden needed to download far more build files (hundreds
| of gigabytes a week)
|
| If we had 4 people streaming different things we might have
| struggled.
| xnorswap wrote:
| 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.
| Contax wrote:
| 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.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > 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!
| layer8 wrote:
| 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 the stream), switching subtitles and audio
| language takes more steps, and other inconveniences.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The expensive DVD player I bought was actually the worst
| at it.
| eimrine wrote:
| My computer illiterate friends use to ask me to download this
| or that movie for them from torrents. I don't use streaming
| because I dont like proprietary software, but seems that there
| is not every movie on those services, also some kinds of
| censourship use to deplatform the content from time to time.
| From my experience, licensed CD and DVD plays well, music CD
| plays excellent even if it looks too scratched to be good, but
| any self-burned disc from 00s is a lottery and typically
| requires some error-recovery software to be read.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I don't have trouble with CDs playing, even badly damaged
| ones.
| cladopa wrote:
| You should have invested in a good quality player. One with
| lots of buffer memory, and hardware acceleration of formats.
| People bought the cheapest they could find and then they
| ranted. At first good players were very expensive but then they
| became just a little more expensive that bad ones.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I have several, different brands, different years. None will
| play all the dvds.
| guappa wrote:
| > With streaming, you click on it, and it plays.
|
| Unless your provider or server is running low on bandwidth,
| then it stutters or lowers the quality :D
|
| With both disks and internet my method is to copy the entire
| content locally before watching it. I do it even for youtube
| videos (also because the browser doesn't prevent screen dimming
| but the video player does).
| cladopa wrote:
| I didn't like DVD. Those screens and advertisements that only
| made you loose time.
|
| I used those to "learn" French and German and the subtitles never
| matched what was said. When you are advanced in the language you
| don't care, but when you are learning it is a big flaw.
|
| The DVD usually only had English (and another one) audio tracks,
| subtitles in several languages, but not audio. You had to buy
| another DVD from Amazon.de or something, when it was way harder
| than today.
|
| I find arcade games or classics like Sonic or Mario, brilliant,
| even today. Sometimes the emulator is not properly setup: Nobody
| saw individual pixels on CRT screens.
| guappa wrote:
| Eh at least on linux you could skip the ads. On windows or
| hardware players it was annoying.
|
| Not that VHS didn't have ads. I remember my little mermaid VHS
| that had a few minutes of promo for disneyland before starting.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| You still had the copyright warning: "this video could be a
| fake, mum the quality is all fuzzy, check for the shiny
| sticker thing" on Disney movies.
|
| But at least you could skip past it.
| grahamlee wrote:
| It seems to me that the extra features on DVD were originally
| part of the marketing benefits driving people to adopt the format
| because the studios preferred it to VHS because of CSS and
| region-locking. Then they found they had painted themselves into
| a corner making all these extra features that people came to
| expect, until finally streaming let them get back to "just the
| movie".
| guappa wrote:
| VHS were dubbed... no need to do region locking.
| eru wrote:
| Some VHS were dubbed.
| dspillett wrote:
| Many VHS were subbed instead. Sometimes two versions of a
| popular film were released, one dubbed and one with baked-in
| subs. This did limit the desire to copy between regions a
| bit, though not as much as you might think given how many
| people speak one of a few languages as a second language.
|
| I suspect the cost of physical distribution and good copying
| equipment was the key issue until fairly late on in the life
| cycle of VHS as a common tech. Region locking just wasn't
| thought of because by the time it might have made significant
| difference other limitations of tape based media format were
| readily apparent and new systems were being designed and
| implemented.
| gapan wrote:
| 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.
| zorked wrote:
| It makes no difference. The question is if a Greek customer
| would buy a subbed movie from Lithuania for example.
| bluGill wrote:
| 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.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| >or Poland, almost everything was dubbed
|
| Animated films were usually dubbed, everything else was
| narrated by one monotone voice.
| ta1243 wrote:
| Region locking was more that US videos were 60hz ntsc and
| most of the rest of world was 50hz pal, and multi-region
| hardware was fairly rare
|
| Throw in the difficulties in buying non-local things in the
| first place and it simply wasn't a problem, they could
| market-segment to their hearts content
| grahamlee wrote:
| Region locking stops (or is designed to stop) someone, for
| example, in the USA buying a DVD sold in the UK market. The
| localization of the product on sale isn't relevant to the
| decision not to sell the product.
| ta1243 wrote:
| Features I don't want on DVD and much prefer streaming
|
| * Adverts (especially the anti piracy "you wouldn't steel a
| car" ones)
|
| * Logos
|
| * Menus
|
| It can take nearly a minute to go from the disk going in to the
| film starting.
| layer8 wrote:
| It was a good investment to get a modded player that ignored
| UOP and let you easily skip stuff. As for menus, most DVD
| remote controls had a button to directly start the movie
| without having to figure out the menu.
| acuozzo wrote:
| Studios were making special features before DVD with LD. Not to
| the same extent, of course, but it wasn't a new thing by the
| time DVD came around.
| incorrecthorse wrote:
| *Cinephiles took the DVD boom era for granted
|
| The reason it ended is because the general public doesn't care.
| openrisk wrote:
| since when is the "general public" arbiter of wisdom? The
| masses will embrace anything that smacks of short term
| convenience and will tolerate enormous amount of abuse because
| caring for anything actually requires effort. This starts with
| thinking, collecting objective information among the torrents
| of marketing and misinformation, agitating for your rights and
| (horror, horror) even sacrificing immediate gratification.
|
| Because the general public "doesnt care" we are in a world you
| can own nothing, control nothing, repair nothing, keep nothing
| a secret, do nothing without going through gatekeepers. In
| short, idiocracy.
| infecto wrote:
| 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 of
| course not all rosy, there is some nostalgia from living in a
| world of constraints, having to go to the Blockbuster on a
| Friday to pick out a movie, looking back there was something
| nice about it, it built a ritual. DRM is not great and you
| run the risk that the vendor you purchased the media from
| might go out of business. I will take those and enjoy my near
| limitless potential library.
| openrisk wrote:
| > 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.
| infecto wrote:
| 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.
| openrisk wrote:
| Anything streamed could also be delived as physical media
| at marginal extra cost, indeed for those that want it and
| can afford these few extra bucks. Actually on a lifetime
| basis and taking into account multiple viewings within
| family etc. it may even be advantageous. One can think
| many other use cases where having the media locally makes
| a difference. You are saying "it doesn't apply to me",
| which is fine, but it is hard to understand how _not_
| having an extra option is somehow better for everybody.
| browningstreet wrote:
| They're not the arbiter of wisdom, they're the arbiter of
| commercial success & market viability, which is always a bell
| curve to the bottom (see Stanley Cups and cupcake, boba, and
| dumpling retail [in the US]).
|
| I worked in the film industry, in DVDs, at the height of that
| market. Sales of DVDs tumbled. End of story. There was
| nothing for the studios to do because the ROI was dead, and
| their previous efforts (which were terrible natch) to
| manipulate the DVD market (cheaper, limited play product)
| were dumb.
|
| DVDs were great, streaming ate their lunch.
|
| Calling capitalism's market economics an idiocracy is..
| tautological.
| openrisk wrote:
| > Calling capitalism's market economics an idiocracy is..
| tautological.
|
| Thats definitely not true. The most ardent and smart
| defender of markets argued that they operate and optimize
| within the boundaries that society decides. If you
| legislate that people should be able to repair, own,
| exchange etc. stuff then markets will deliver exactly that.
| If you let them race to the bottom thats also exactly what
| you will get.
| Neonlicht wrote:
| 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.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| > Now Disney Plus cashes in 20 eurodollars per month
|
| We truly live in the Cyberpunk timeline.
| walterbell wrote:
| _> the general public doesn 't care_
|
| DVD "extras" help bootstrap film students.
|
| Less film students, less future films for general publics.
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| I still prefer to own movies I like and I have many of them. (no,
| not SO many as YOU have, my adversary). I think that having them
| will allow me one day to stop paying constantly more and more
| expensive subscriptions.
|
| By the way, for me, the DVD standard was very strange. I think
| that the engineering industry works differently than IT/CS guys.
| They think of "a product" which consists of the medium AND the
| "protocol" i.e. file format in this case, and they are
| inseparable in their (engineers') heads.
|
| When new codecs were created, the DVD could have been enhanced in
| terms of better quality, as normal DivX would allow maximally
| better quality on 4.7G (instead of 7GB available to DVD
| publisher). But when I am watching DVDs I find the low quality
| disturbing, and playing the interlaced movies (Futurama for
| example) without a decent player makes me nauseous.
|
| I would even think of converting them and storing on my local
| cloud but without decent player (like Cyberlink which was
| removing the interlacing) this looks like crap... Also probably
| today some AI upscaling would be nice... but I think I am asking
| for too much...
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| 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"
| soulofmischief wrote:
| When I was 15 I discovered that my local doctor lost all of
| my medical records. Poof, all gone. Whoops, next patient
| please. My last doctor no longer had a copy of my files,
| either.
|
| I had to receive all of my vaccinations again over two
| sessions before attending public school.
| DoctorOetker wrote:
| did you by chance undergo any operation you never consented
| too?
| liontwist wrote:
| Now instead of losing a yellow folder, a system will lose 1
| million people's records all at once.
|
| Aren't school vaccines registered with the state? Given how
| many parents cannot keep records, I am surprised the
| solution would be "get them again".
| bluGill wrote:
| Offsite backup needs to always be the answer. Fires have
| always been a concern in any human situation. Plus lots
| of other accidents.
|
| Of course the real hard part is how do you mark a record
| as do not restore anymore. In a medical context this
| isn't much a problem, but in other cases it is an issue.
| lukan wrote:
| They could offer you a download link, that is valid for 10
| days. Or since storage is cheap, stays valid.
|
| But why change a running system (and I have an external USB
| DVD device).
| no92 wrote:
| Depending on the jurisdiction, the minimum required storage
| time for medical data varies - but it needs to be kept
| around usually. Patients can, within that time frame,
| request that data to be provided, but may be required to
| pay some fee to cover the material costs. In my
| jurisdiction, this time frame is 10 years, and radiology
| data is usually provided as a paper slip with a link and
| password, valid for 1-2 years, or DVDs on request.
|
| Keeping that data around and managing requests for it is a
| part of why older physicians are so keen to sell their
| practices to younger doctors here - they can pass on the
| duty of keeping up with storing the data that way.
| zxexz wrote:
| FWIW, I'm in a jurisdiction with a 10 year retention
| requirement, and also have had no issues getting imaging
| data from beyond that (on DVD, of course - one department
| even had a side hustle selling external DVD drives for
| $50 on the side; they even offered to drop the files onto
| a USB drive for free).
| smolder wrote:
| Offering USB flash versions would make sense, too, given
| the low cost presently. There's probably a market for
| write-once flash drives.
| ta1243 wrote:
| If it stays valid that's a security nightmare
|
| People are very good as securing physical items. They are
| awful at securing files.
|
| A dvd or maybe an SD card or USB stick is a much better
| approach.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| 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.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| Game consoles are starting to come without optical drives.
| gruturo wrote:
| It makes complete sense. It's literally pennies for them,
| esp. when bought in bulk, it's read-only (more or less), and
| most importantly it absolves them of any responsibility
| regarding handing you some very sensitive personal data. No
| credentials, cloud service, hacking, leak, etc etc. They hand
| you a physical object and that's it. It's your problem now.
|
| A pendrive would work almost as well but too many people
| likely would accidentally reformat them, add data and mix
| them up, claim they got a virus from them (which they maybe
| did, when their 8yo nephew clicked everything looking for big
| boobs online, not because of the doctor. But now the doctor
| has to prove the virus on the pendrive was added later? Just
| hand the patient a DVD really).
| Ekaros wrote:
| It is perfectly sensible to consider data and medium to be
| single product when you cannot update the software running on
| products that read it. It was not great sell to tell people to
| go get new player each time new codec was released. Or tell
| that these new movies do not work anymore. Have to remember
| that DVD was released in pre-always-connected world.
| eru wrote:
| You could stick the codec on the DVD itself? They are
| relatively small programs.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Well yes, on other hand there is also hardware acceleration
| case which make lot of sense when you are manufacturing
| devices at scale.
|
| And with codec. What code it is in? For what architecture
| or operating system? What is system constraints it has to
| operate in? Do you have some specification? Do you need to
| due something beyond it for new codec.
|
| And from security viewpoint running some arbitrary code
| from disk sounds like questionable idea. Specially for say
| pc or console...
| smolder wrote:
| The solution of the day would have been to put a .jar on
| each disc and it would have been a nightmare, I think.
| thrw42A8N wrote:
| There's a JAR on every SIM and payment card and it works
| fine.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Card
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| That Java runs on the SIM, not on the AP. The DVD
| equivalent would be the Java running on the DVD itself,
| but a DVD is an inert plastic and aluminium sandwich. And
| even if it looks portable, it's not. In practice there's
| just enough quirks that code written for one Java Card
| won't reliably install and run on all others. Actually
| portable Java Card that would work like DVD codecs would
| need to work didn't come until eSIMs, which is decades
| later.
| everfrustrated wrote:
| Pretty sure bluray did something like this - some sort of
| java app definition that gets executed to display menus
| and the like.
| smolder wrote:
| For menus it makes sense. For compression schemes I see a
| lot of downside, mainly inefficiency of hardware.
| liotier wrote:
| Easy: ship source code and the whole compiler toolchain,
| also in source form, with bootstrapping instructions for
| a generic machine that future archaeologists will
| trivially port to whatever architecture is in vogue in
| year 32768 !
|
| Joke aside, this question is close to the file format
| obsolescence problem in long term digital preservation:
| the longer the term, the closer to bootstrapping the
| answer is.
|
| In the shorter term, detailed metadata, widely used
| containers and choice of codecs that have well-known open
| source implementations is a good start.
| robinsonb5 wrote:
| > Well yes, on other hand there is also hardware
| acceleration case which make lot of sense when you are
| manufacturing devices at scale.
|
| This. In those days any general-purpose CPU with enough
| grunt to do realtime software decoding of MPEG2 and
| hypothetical newer codecs would have needed a fan - which
| would have been a dealbreaker for a living-room
| appliance.
| paxys wrote:
| That would mean letting the disk execute arbitrary code on
| your machine. No way that ends well.
| fidotron wrote:
| Bluray does this. And it has network support as an
| option.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BD-J
|
| Admittedly not for codecs at least.
| jasode wrote:
| _> You could stick the codec on the DVD itself? They are
| relatively small programs._
|
| Consumer DVD players have (cheaper) ASICs for hardware-
| decoding of MPEG. The algorithm to decode is literally
| burned into the chip. It wouldn't have made economic sense
| for manufacturers to pay extra for general-purpose CPUs
| such as x86/ARM/MIPS to enable future scenarios of loading
| & executing arbitrary code from discs.
| pavlov wrote:
| When the DVD format was new, a 300MHz Pentium II CPU could
| just barely decode the MPEG-2 stream. And that CPU cost
| almost two thousand dollars at launch:
|
| https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/pentium-ii-
| release-d...
|
| In other words, there was simply no way to ship affordable
| DVD players that would use a general purpose CPU for video
| decoding. It needed to be in hardware.
| layer8 wrote:
| At least in the earlier years, DVD players had dedicated
| decoder chips (and often still have now I believe), because
| general-purpose CPUs weren't powerful enough or else too
| expensive at the time. So there wasn't a software codec you
| could upgrade.
| DoctorOetker wrote:
| could have been accommodated by putting executable codec
| files ON the DVD.
|
| A good brand would buffer compute and memory capacity by a
| decent factor at time of sale in order to support future
| codecs needs...
| Cumpiler69 wrote:
| _> could have been accommodated by putting executable codec
| files ON the DVD_
|
| You probably don't want that kind of capability since it
| ends up being used for nefarious purposes by the rights
| holders and media companies.
|
| For example the keys on your BluRay player can be revoked
| just by playing a BluRay disc, as the drive first reads the
| code on the disc and executes the appropriate code to
| "update" your player according to the wishes of the DRM
| overlords. It's a very anti-consumer feature. Sony was also
| distributing their music CDs with rootkits to try to
| prevent piracy.
|
| I think VHS and Laserdisc were better since they had little
| DRM and you could freely rewind and view whatever parts you
| want at your own discretion. The advent of tech also meant
| the advent of anti-user DRM that dictate how the (paying!)
| user must enjoy the content.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| > For example the keys on your BluRay player can be
| revoked just by playing a BluRay disc, as the drive first
| reads the code on the disc and executes the appropriate
| code to "update" your player according to the wishes of
| the DRM overlords. It's a very anti-consumer feature.
|
| Thanks for mentioning this. The LibreDrive firmware is
| specifically designed to address this and other issues.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> A good brand would buffer compute and memory capacity by
| a decent factor at time of sale in order to support future
| codecs needs..._
|
| The problem is a physical media format _absolutely cannot
| afford_ to gain a reputation for not playing.
|
| You see, if stores _accept_ returns for opened DVDs? People
| can buy a DVD movie, watch it, then return it for a refund.
|
| But if stores _don 't_ accept returns for opened DVDs? If I
| paid two hours' wages for that DVD, it doesn't play, and
| they won't give me a refund? I'm going to be mad about
| being ripped off, and I'm going to complain a lot.
| goosedragons wrote:
| How would that work? DVDs are playable on hundreds of
| devices with different architectures and capabilities. You
| could play a DVD on your MIPS based PS2, x86 based Xbox,
| PowerPC based Mac etc. And early on a hardware card was
| necessary for many devices because they weren't fast enough
| to decode in software.
| arp242 wrote:
| How would that realistically work? Because "just use a new
| codec" would mean you'd end up with old DVD players not being
| able to play newer DVDs, and a very frustrating transition
| period.
|
| They would be different incompatible discs. That is: a
| different standard.
| bluGill wrote:
| Call it blu-ray because that is what it is. If you just want
| a new codec with the same media you need some DVD2 label and
| get DVD player manufacturers onboard with the new spec so
| that players are common before the first disc. Also because
| consumers are not happy about replacing their DVD players all
| the time you have to not create new specs too often. (or
| perhaps you can have a standard decoder cartridge which can
| be put into your existing DVD players and sells for $5 thus
| making upgrading to DVD3 not a big deal). there are lots of
| options, but the point is always don't make it too hard for
| consumers to know their DVDs and drives are compatible.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> When new codecs were created, the DVD could have been
| enhanced in terms of better quality,_
|
| That wouldn't work for such a mass market product made by many
| manufacturers, many of them cutting every corner that they can.
| Newer codecs often require a bit more power or memory to run so
| even if there was an upgrade path many players would be locked
| out of newer discs or disc makers would be forced to put two
| formas on the disc, one for better players and one for those
| capable of only the baseline, reducing the amount of space
| available for actual content.
|
| DVD players, and consumer devices like them, are intended to be
| "black boxes" to the user, not something that they need to
| service by applying updates, and there wasn't the connectivity
| available back then that there is now for that to be done
| automatically - people would have had to bring something to the
| machine incurring a distribution cost. This couldn't be "just
| download and stick it on a USB drive" because many people
| didn't have much by way of Internet access at all at home, or
| often didn't even have a computer (or had one that wasn't
| recent enough to have the fancy new fangled USB thingies, and
| USB drives weren't the cheap throw-away trinkets they've since
| become). Remember: the standard was invented in 1995, first
| available to the public in 1996, and rose to significant
| adoption in the early 2000s.
|
| You could include the update on the DVDs themselves, but that
| adds two problems. First there is security/stability: something
| could accidentally (or maliciously) brick the user device.
| Second is compatibility: they would have to constrain the
| hardware options considerably, rather than it being "anything
| that can run this codec" many more implementation details would
| need to be fixed in the standard. You also run into the earlier
| problem: there is a limit imposed by the lowest common
| denominator in hardware, either you have to dictate better
| hardware in the standard which makes things more expensive for
| the public (that would have massively slowed the early
| adoption) or you are only adding a little flexibility not
| enough for the process to be worthwhile.
| Lammy wrote:
| > When new codecs were created, the DVD could have been
| enhanced in terms of better quality
|
| Relevant dead ends:
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Definition_Versatile_Disc
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Versatile_Multilayer_Disc
| soulofmischief wrote:
| On the other hand, the rise of longform independent games and
| film journalism/criticism on YouTube has filled the gap pretty
| well.
|
| The other aspects of DVDs, the materialism/commercialism, DRM, I
| don't miss. My ideal consumption format is a fucking file.
| cubefox wrote:
| I'm pretty sure DVDs didn't have any DRM. Netflix & Co do.
| mkesper wrote:
| Pretty sure they have. It's just been broken long ago.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS
| cubefox wrote:
| I thought this form of copy protection doesn't count as
| DRM. Not sure on the definition of DRM though.
| Symbiote wrote:
| The Wikipedia article would tell you.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| Memories of dumping, patching, and reflashing my DVD drive
| firmware to make it region free thanks to resources such as
| Doom9.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom9
| gadders wrote:
| Or on some home DVD players, making them region free by typing
| a sequence of buttons on the remote control.
| weinzierl wrote:
| Later reflashing blue-ray drives to rip 4K.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| MakeMKV and the LibreDrive firmware ftw
| maccard wrote:
| My biggest gripe with DVDs is how loud they are. There's nothing
| worse than being in the middle of a quiet scene in a movie and
| hearing the drive spin up.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| You should try LaserDisc :)
| acuozzo wrote:
| My Pioneer LD-S2 is _silent_ during playback.
| 23B1 wrote:
| Not to mention streaming/digital media is going to kill off
| actually good movies and content. This isn't the technology's
| fault mind you, but the streamers' business model, but you could
| rely upon residuals via DVD sales for movies back in the day and
| that money is gone, which eliminates the safety margin required
| to take risks.
|
| It's why I can't stand the 'information wants to be free'
| argument. Where the hell do you think that intellectual labor
| required comes from, the aether?
| liontwist wrote:
| The market for low budget DVDs would still be smaller without
| streaming because the entertainment market is more competitive.
| mindslight wrote:
| > _It 's why I can't stand the 'information wants to be free'
| argument. Where the hell do you think that intellectual labor
| required comes from, the aether?_
|
| Assuming your goal is to understand - _yes_ , that thinking is
| a product of time when people were altruistically publishing
| very high quality content on the web. The time before adspam,
| blogspam, llmspam, etc. You could punch queries into search
| engines and find no-nonsense sites with detailed information,
| not trying to sell you anything but rather just wanting to be
| the most complete resource about a certain topic.
|
| I'm not saying that ethos works for million dollar movie
| production. But on the other hand the ethos of people needing
| to be paid evidently doesn't work for high quality
| informational content, given that it has all but disappeared in
| the torrent of commercialized/intermediated spam.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| > 'information wants to be free'
|
| This wasn't meant to be a moral argument. It's not the
| information yearns for liberation and we ought to provide it.
| It's a physics analogy. Like a ball 'wants' to roll downhill.
| Free is the lowest entropy state of information.
| karles wrote:
| I have reverted back to owning movie-media again.
|
| I like watching movies, and thus, I have watched a lot. When I
| try to find a movie to watch on HBO/Netflix (I'm from Scandinavia
| - not the same selection as in the US), I have a hard time
| finding something to watch. A lot of newer movies doesn't cater
| to my taste.
|
| On the other hand, I can find a lot of classics from the
| 80s/90s/00s and even 10s in thriftstores for as little as 1-3$. I
| then get to keep the movies, that I often end up rewatching, and
| I get the added features mentioned in the article.
|
| I'm not to nostalgic about the cases, which I often just dump (I
| have considered keeping the fact-sheets though, just not the
| plastic casing).
|
| I'll soon cancel my remaining subscriptions, and only purchase
| them a month at a time when something I truly want to watch
| arrives...
| jbaber wrote:
| Opinions from a DVD connoisseur (Angry Video Game Nerd):
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VsdzaEVeFEE
| alt227 wrote:
| Id love to hear his retrospective of DVDs from the streaming
| era.
| dzonga wrote:
| hope physical media makes a comeback.
|
| one thing with dvd era - it allowed small scale / budget movies
| to made. movies that were not blockbusters but allowed art
| exploration.
| liontwist wrote:
| That opportunity was a result of unmet demand for cheap
| entertainment, and only slightly by the medium. I'm sure that's
| filled by YouTube, etc.
| alt227 wrote:
| The problem there is discovery. When someone local to you
| made a low budget film or documentary and released it on DVD,
| you would see that for sale in your local stores and gas
| stations. Now if people put that stuff on youtube it just
| gets lost in the noise and rarely will get the local exposure
| it once would have.
| sourcecodeplz wrote:
| Why bother with DVDs when you have torrents and russian streaming
| sites...
| doublerabbit wrote:
| 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.
| anentropic wrote:
| Just plan ahead and download it before you want to watch it
| doublerabbit wrote:
| But that just ruins the spontaneous movie watching
| experience you get with DVDs.
| mikedelfino wrote:
| Surely you mean the spontaneity after you have actually
| bought the DVD.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| That, or rewatching a pre-watched film for comfort. Not
| every movie needs to be new.
|
| I rewatched Firefly on the whim the other week and now
| Malcom In The Middle because I own them on DVD.
|
| Not available anywhere else digitally, at least with my
| subscription's.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Because paying for the art I enjoy is the right thing to do, so
| I do it.
| cubefox wrote:
| That fact that all the bonus material on DVDs (documentaries,
| audio commentaries, story board drawings etc) was hardly
| appreciated at the time until it went away in the Netflix era is
| something that also reminds me of movie awards.
|
| Many film classics were only really appreciated years later, and
| we are left to wonder why they didn't won an Academy Award at the
| time while some other totally unremarkable movie took it instead.
| I think it's this: Often we assume that certain things (e.g.
| certain types of movies, DVD extras) just will be as good or
| better in the future, and often they do, but if they unexpectedly
| get _worse_ , we realize that we did hit a high water mark in the
| past without noticing at the time.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| 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 get a better copy
| anyway.
|
| Right now, there is no better and more convenient interface than
| piracy and I wish that weren't the case.
|
| Edit: there is such an interface for classical music, e.g.
| Hyperion. DRM free and one-time payment, and I've used it a lot.
| goosedragons wrote:
| There are places that still let you download movies like
| iTunes. They are of course riddled in DRM so it's not much
| help...
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| yeah...I just want to pay for a DRM-free copy so I can play
| it and own it forever. That's it. No streaming accoounts, no
| tracking, no plastic packaging, just the file in exchange for
| money. I paid for Sublime text that way and it's a great
| model.
| episteme wrote:
| Sounds great, how do you propose stopping people from
| sharing that mp4 with the world?
| zild3d wrote:
| I used to borrow my friends' VHS tapes. Trying to stop
| people from sharing is barking up the wrong tree, just
| make it easy enough for people to do the right thing that
| sending a large file around and getting it to play on
| their TV seems like a pain in comparison.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Sharing a physical product is not even close to the same
| as sharing a digital file. If you share a book/VHS/DVD,
| that physical item is no longer usable by the original
| person until it is returned. A digital file shared means
| the both people now have a file for as long as they want
| it and now each can share as much as they want.
| nemomarx wrote:
| people could make copies of the physical object, right?
| you should always record a new album onto a cassette or
| etc.
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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.
| goosedragons wrote:
| 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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
| goosedragons wrote:
| It's not difficult and involves basically no skill set.
| There's a billion apps to help you scan documents and
| output a PDF. It's even built into mobile OSs at this
| point. It's just time consuming,that's it!
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| >In fact, the small print stated that you could not for
| the purpose of redistributing it.
|
| Prior to the DMCA this was only a civil matter. A
| question of whether you were vulnerable to a lawsuit.
|
| Now it is a federal crime to circumvent _any_ digital
| copy protection measures, no matter how feeble they are.
| Metaphorically, if the MPAA leaves a locked door standing
| in nothing but a bare doorframe in the middle of an open
| field on their digital distribution methods, the US
| federal government considers it a crime to walk around
| that locked door.
| iggldiggl wrote:
| Analog copies had to deal with generation loss and were
| orders of magnitude slower than a digital copy, plus you
| subsequently had to physically transport/mail/... those
| copies around.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| So what you're saying is that the internet sped up
| people's communications and improved our ability to
| transmit information with minimal entropy... and we as a
| society decided that this was a problem because people
| need to be allowed to own ideas as property under
| capitalist hegemony or else there's no reward for
| creativity (besides fame and influence, which also
| doesn't count for much under capitalism unless you can
| monetize it).
|
| It really does feel like the capitalist system that we as
| a society locked in during the industrial revolution is
| just running on hotfixes and fumes at this point, I gotta
| say.
| massysett wrote:
| Same way that you stop them from sharing MP3 files: you
| don't. Some people share them, but most don't bother
| because there are convenient ways to pay for them, and
| those ways offer better value than scouring the internet
| for pirate downloads. So there is still a reason to hunt
| down pirate sites, as the copyright holder doesn't want
| piracy to be too convenient, but locking down files with
| DRM ultimately just isn't a great solution.
| bmicraft wrote:
| Many games get their DRM removed from official
| distribution after a cracked copy is found circulating
| online. Sounds like that model would make sense for
| movies too.
| tavoe wrote:
| Align the incentive with the actual work done?
|
| Eg - fundraise to cover the cost of producing the movie
| and paying the salaries of everyone involved, because
| physically making a movie costs money. Then give the mp4
| away for free because copying a digital file costs
| nothing. Piracy is only a problem because companies are
| trying to charge money for copying a file, which is
| fundamentally free.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Fundraise does not mean what you think it means. Asking
| your mom for money to make a student film is not the same
| as making an actual film. People raise funds for movies
| from investors. Investors want their money back. Nobody
| goes to the theater any more, so how else are they going
| to pay back the investors if they can't sell the product
| they made. This isn't Uber just burning investors cash.
| Why does nobody expect to get free rides from Uber, yet
| expect free videos?
| whycome wrote:
| Fundraising doesn't mean what you think it means.
| Investors aren't looking for their money back. They're
| looking to make additional money. Fundraising is saying
| that the money goes towards the creation of that end
| product and that's it.
| wolrah wrote:
| > Sounds great, how do you propose stopping people from
| sharing that mp4 with the world?
|
| You don't.
|
| Regardless of what DRM is applied to official releases,
| every single mainstream movie gets released through
| pirate channels the same day as and often even before the
| official release. There may be a couple of obscure titles
| that slip through the cracks because no one in the pirate
| community noticed they existed but the stuff the industry
| actually cares about has never been successfully
| protected.
|
| The DRM only stops people who are trying to stay "legit"
| from doing things they should be able to do like store it
| on a NAS, play it on whatever device they want, etc. It
| has never and will never stop pirates.
|
| If I can go to a pirate site and locate a "REMUX" or
| "COMPLETE" rip of a movie, which is the case for the vast
| majority of movies ever released to digital formats, an
| official DRM-free release would change nothing for
| pirates and only make the experience better for people
| trying to stay legal.
| butlike wrote:
| Not to mention if I physically own the media, I'm legally
| allowed to make as many backups as I want as long as I
| don't share them. Streaming conveniently removed this
| feature.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| Well yes, but actually no (at least if you're in the
| USA). The DMCA prevents the circumvention of copy
| protection measures, which means that by ripping a blu-
| ray or DVD, you're committing a crime. This is doubly
| bullshit in that _before_ the DMCA was passed, copying
| your physical media was always legal _and_ if you were
| caught distributing unauthorized copies without being
| paid for them, you were _not_ a criminal but only
| potentially vulnerable to a civil suit from the copyright
| holder(s).
| msh wrote:
| People can easily do that if they purchase a bluray, so
| the difference is not very big.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Kinda true but I definitely do not want to purchase a Blu
| ray because I don't want to purchase and keep a drive
| around either...also I have to transcode it and save it.
| Just want a 1080P copy. Glad to pay $5 for one.
| ekianjo wrote:
| People have been sharing stuff forever, I don't see the
| media industry getting any poorer...
| jens-c wrote:
| I couldn't agree more. I use Bandcamp a lot to buy and
| download music in the form of DRM-free, lossless files, and
| GOG to buy and download DRM-free games. I wish this model
| was more widespread, and available for other types of
| media, movies and shows in particular.
|
| Often the problem is misrepresented as "streaming vs.
| physical media", wrongly implying that streaming is the
| only means of purely digital distribution. However, it is
| actually a question of whether you actually _own_ media vs.
| only renting them.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| I'm currently setting up a Plex in my home to play our
| families "most popular" movies and I genuinely want to buy
| these movies, pay for them, and just have them but I can't
| do that so I have to pirate them.
|
| I wonder how many others are in the same camp as me, I used
| to be a pirate back when I was a teenager but now I can
| genuinely afford this stuff and always prefer to pay versus
| pirate, but in the case of home movies I just can't do
| that.
|
| I think the studios will be very surprised if they just
| opened the floodgates and let folks pay for and download
| movies, because I think a large chunk of us are like me,
| only pirating because there's no other avenue to acquire
| the movie.
| rpdillon wrote:
| Totally agree. GOG for movies would get a lot of business
| from me!
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Maybe 0,00000001% of the general population. And 90% of
| posters here.
| delecti wrote:
| Are there truly that many movies which aren't released on
| physical media? I've also recently set up Plex, and just
| rip blu-ray copies to my NAS for it. Haven't failed to
| find any movies I've looked for.
| whycome wrote:
| Maybe they want to buy them digitally? Ripping from
| bluray involves a whole other process (hardware,
| software, os, time)
| belmead wrote:
| > I'm currently setting up a Plex in my home to play our
| families "most popular" movies and I genuinely want to
| buy these movies, pay for them, and just have them but I
| can't do that so I have to pirate them.
|
| > have to
|
| Can you elaborate, please?
| alexgaribay wrote:
| For me, I check my used bookstores for movies that aren't
| easy to find anymore. I've had good luck so far. Most
| used movies including Blu-Ray are around $6 USD.
| Y-bar wrote:
| I can't download any 4K movies from iTunes, only 1080p.
|
| (source: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/119599)
|
| For some of the movies I have bought I have ended up also
| torrenting a copy to have and be sure I can play it. Really
| tempted to get a bluray player and go back to disks.
| billfruit wrote:
| YouTube does still allow to "buy"/rent movies one apiece.
| blendergeek wrote:
| Nowhere can one pay a fee and receive a legal digital copy of
| a movie. YouTube allows people to pay for the privilege of
| being allowed to stream a movie for and indefinite period of
| time. YouTube retains the right to revoke all movie
| "purchases" at any time.
|
| GP is asking why we can't actually buy digital copies of the
| movies like we could with music in the iTunes era.
| saint_yossarian wrote:
| Vimeo does offer downloadable DRM-free paid videos, I used
| it a couple of times for crowd-funded movies and comedians
| releasing their shows. But yeah, it's pretty rarely used
| unfortunately.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Want a copy forever, not a YouTube buy.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I wish there were ready-made hosted Plex servers that could
| accept a file transfer. Buy a movie online and give them your
| server "address" and they send the movie to your Plex server.
|
| We have been robbed of so many possibilities by copyright
| bullshit.
| alt227 wrote:
| If you want your server to stay secure, then that is not
| really an option. Copyright is not the thing that is stopping
| your suggestion from happening.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Implementation details. At checkout put in a public key or
| something similar, at the receiving end accept a dialog to
| accept film <x> from <y> movie buying site.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| Just have an oauth flow to grant permission to the store to
| upload movies. It would absolutely be possible to implement
| securely.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| Signed URLs are a thing.
|
| Copyright itself isn't what's stopping that, but the legal
| apparatuses and laws surrounding the distribution of
| digital copyrighted information and the industry
| protectionism that spawned said laws and legal apparatuses
| _is_ what 's stopping it.
| bluGill wrote:
| Write your local congressman (depending on where you live
| this position may have a different name). Go to the local
| political party of your choice and make it known that this is
| an important issue. Remember votes are more important than
| money in politics - money can buy votes but only when voters
| don't care about issues. So if many many people make this an
| issue things will change.
| xtiansimon wrote:
| DVD extras are the best! (And nearly required if you're an art
| film fan).
| pro14 wrote:
| 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?
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I think it's because there's more movies made today than in the
| past. The streaming boom has lowered the barrier to entry.
|
| Also: There's always been bad movies, we just tend to forget
| them.
| prmoustache wrote:
| 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 shitty movies too back in the days but some
| never even reached the theaters and were only sold on VHS and
| DVDs.
| bluGill wrote:
| 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.
| codedokode wrote:
| 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 mobile platforms, use even worse
| compression). And new Apple headphones seem to use lossy
| compression as well, so we have a codec compressing another
| codec's artifacts.
| bamboozled wrote:
| - You need to subscribe to ten different services rather than
| just having one subscription to see the thing you want to
| watch.
|
| Before you just needed a DVD player
| alt227 wrote:
| > Before you just needed a DVD player
|
| However you also needed to physically buy a copy of every
| movie you want to watch, instead of signing up for one
| service and having access to thousandsd immediately.
| robohoe wrote:
| Yes, and a lot of movies on DVDs cost $10-15
| vel0city wrote:
| When DVDs were new, a new release around me would often
| be more like $25-30. Boxed sets would often be $50+. Of
| late 90s/early 2000's money, so $30 back then is like
| $55+ today.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| I own lots of DVD's. DVD day was my jam. Most new
| releases were 20. Sometimes if they were some sort of
| special collectors edition they would be 25. Then usually
| after a few months on the shelf they would come down to
| 15-18. After that the bargain bin. Bluray/HD started
| around 25-30 when they came out. Box sets were usually
| like you say 50+ some as much as 200.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Nearly every single individual DVD movie is less than $5
| on ebay right now.
|
| Streaming will never have a secondhand market.
| jhbadger wrote:
| Or rent a movie for a couple of bucks. Or check out a DVD
| for free from a public library.
| jasode wrote:
| _> 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 at
| all.
|
| 2) then checked out a British tv series with 10 seasons.
| The 10th season had 3 discs and the middle disc was so
| scratched up by a previous borrower that it was
| unplayable. (The library doesn't have a bunch of
| duplicate DVDs like Blockbuster Video rentals.)
|
| 3) then checked out another series that has 8 discs but
| only got 6 because 2 of them are already checked out by
| another patron. Now this means repeatedly checking the
| library if the other 2 finally got returned so she can
| borrow them.
|
| On top of those problems, the library has a very small
| selection in comparison to streaming. She estimates
| she'll exhaust the DVDs sitting on the library's shelves
| in a few months and have nothing to watch.
|
| Another huge negative to DVDs is that she can't play them
| (directly) on her iPad. Her exercise bike had a mount for
| an iPad and she used it to watch video streams from
| Amazon Prime.
|
| She was spoiled by the conveniences of streaming and does
| not look back on DVDs with any romantic nostalgia at all.
| The only reason she doesn't just subscribe to Netflix or
| HBO streaming to get back that convenience was she didn't
| think she could afford it on her Social Security income.
| On the other hand, the Amazon Prime Video streaming
| (without ads) was already part of her Amazon
| subscription.
| reginald78 wrote:
| 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 was probably also a
| competitor to their more profitable streaming service.
| ghaff wrote:
| 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.
| nradov wrote:
| 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.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Most libraries want to know if the media is damaged so
| they can replace it. Your friend can also put holds on
| things. Some library services also have streaming
| services, and there are free streaming services as well.
| PBS has a free streaming service, although I think parts
| of it are ad supported
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| ... and don't you all have interlibrary borrowing too?
| This system is 50+ years old [1], surely it can't be the
| only one around. Request a title from your local library
| website and it shows up at your local library a few days
| later regardless of which library actually holds it.
| Return at any library, it will always find its way back
| to the right place.
|
| We also have reciprocal borrowing privileges at many
| libraries that aren't in the network. You can always find
| a DVD you want!
|
| [1] https://swanlibraries.net/member-libraries/
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Which had "stupid geographical restrictions"
| KETHERCORTEX wrote:
| Once you have a player and a disk, you are able to move
| with them wherever you want.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| You still had to deal with PAL <-> NTSC issues.
| layer8 wrote:
| Multi-region players were always available. Many players
| could also be made region-free by a "secret" remote control
| button sequence.
| layer8 wrote:
| Streaming services are generally still more cost-effective,
| but the multiple subscriptions and different interfaces are
| an annoyance, as are differences between services in how
| easily you can circumvent regional restrictions. Physical
| media are more straightforward and consistent.
|
| Furthermore, once you own a disc you can use it "forever",
| whereas with streaming services you don't know what will or
| won't be available in a few years. Many movies and series
| that are available on physical media are not available on
| streaming, though for newer productions that also goes in the
| other direction.
| Miraste wrote:
| 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."
| prmoustache wrote:
| I don't know about bluerays but as for DVDs you just had to
| buy a player from Switzerland or any other country where
| players were not region locked.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| > 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).
| BeetleB wrote:
| > 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".
| mattl wrote:
| You could easily buy a region-free DVD player too.
| gosub100 wrote:
| This would actually be a plausible excuse for region
| locking. If the MPEG stream were somehow optimized for
| NTSC/PAL.
|
| If course the most likely reason is corporate greed, but
| it's also fun to consider other possibilities. Another
| hypothetical reason would be for sales in Islamic nations
| where certain content is prohibited. They could show the
| government censors that there is some level enforcement
| to prevent "illegal media" from being easily watched.
| Whereas without it, the government could have potentially
| made DVDs illegal in their entire nation. I'm trying to
| see this through the lens of the design committee back in
| the early 90s.
| deadbunny wrote:
| 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
| stevenAthompson wrote:
| This is no longer the case with 4k UHD Blu-ray. They CAN be
| region locked in a technical sense, but I believe that there
| have only been two ever released that utilized that
| functionality. For the most part you can just buy one without
| worry.
| KETHERCORTEX wrote:
| I saw Blu-Ray region restriction bypassed just by skipping
| to the next "chapter" to initialize run the movie.
| jandrese wrote:
| The flipside is they just price the discs so high that
| nobody wants to buy them in the first place. DVD boomed
| because they were reasonably priced, notably being cheaper
| than the VHS tapes they were replacing. Blu-Ray discs still
| tend to be priced as a "premium" product, even though the
| competition isn't an even more expensive physical medium
| but much cheaper streaming. There is really no mystery why
| the entire industry segment is dying. It is the same reason
| S-VHS and Laserdisc were flops while cheap DVDs sold in the
| billions.
| jprete wrote:
| You're not wrong, but DVDs were also region-locked.
|
| I think at the time this was both less annoying and more easily
| circumvented. I think it only came up if you bought DVDs
| internationally, were moving between regions, or wanted to
| bring DVDs but no player on such a trip.
|
| DVDs also have less-than-stellar image quality by comparison to
| today, although a lot of older works need the lower resolution
| because special effects and the like weren't intended to be
| scrutinized at 4k.
| KETHERCORTEX wrote:
| > DVDs were also region-locked
|
| A lot of later players didn't care though and were region-
| free.
|
| > DVDs also have less-than-stellar image quality by
| comparison to today
|
| Some DVDs have less-than-stellar image quality even compared
| to other DVDs. The format doesn't mandate some fixed bitrate
| numbers, so it can be truly atrocious.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| > Some DVDs have less-than-stellar image quality even
| compared to other DVDs. The format doesn't mandate some
| fixed bitrate numbers, so it can be truly atrocious.
|
| No kidding. Recently replaced my copy of war games. The DVD
| was 'ok'. But the later bluray transfers are much nicer.
|
| Some of the early stuff was literally throw it on a
| telecine machine, encoded it, and ship it. With lots of
| film wobble and poor color especially in the red channel
| (due to a bug in early software). Plus poor encoding noise
| that didnt have a clue what to do with film grain.
|
| Later on they actually physically clean the film first and
| scan a 4/8k rate first. Then the better ones a light touch
| on digital correction. Though some are very heavy handed
| and create poor a reproduction and you are better off with
| the previous DVD.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| But region coding granularity was very course, just a few big
| regions, unlike geofencing today.
|
| And if you travelled with your dvds, they still worked,
| unlike your netflix subscription today. (The need to bring
| your own player to match your disks doesn't change anything
| because your same laptop that you watch a stream with today
| had a dvd drive right in it before.)
|
| Region coding was a problem, but simpler and just not as bad
| as todays streaming geofences.
| Symbiote wrote:
| As well as DVD regions, there were/are TV encoding
| 'regions': NTSC, PAL, and SECAM.
|
| In practise, average-price DVD players sold in Europe were
| compatible with NTSC in addition to PAL, but DVD players in
| North America and Japan only did NTSC.
|
| We could buy DVDs on holiday in the USA and play them at
| home, but it was difficult to find a DVD player in the USA
| that would play a PAL DVD brought from Europe.
|
| Similarly, it was reasonably practical to import obscure
| American or Japanese movies to Europe, but less so the
| other way round.
| jebarker wrote:
| > 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 by questionable
| use of AI upscaling. It's really sad to me that there's no way
| to watch many movies in the same quality you would have
| experienced at a movie theatre.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| I've started to look for old Blu-Ray disks because the
| quality of the image is generally much better.
| KETHERCORTEX wrote:
| As far as I know, you should also look for older Blu-Ray
| drive if you want to get content off the disks.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| PS3s are cheap and work for every non-UHD blu-ray ever
| released. Top quality player
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| If you're worried about Aliens, I can confirm that it's
| gorgeous in 4k UHD and the color accuracy is much better than
| the prior (manually frame-by-frame denoised) 1080p blu-ray
| release
| jebarker wrote:
| Aliens and True Lies were the two i've heard most bad
| reviews for
| retrac wrote:
| > 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 mobile phone networks work at 10 kbps or so, we
| never got the quality back, even though devices have a thousand
| times more bandwidth available now.
| reginald78 wrote:
| Don't forget the added latency.
| nyarlathotep_ wrote:
| 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.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| 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.
| giantrobot wrote:
| FaceTime's audio quality is both higher data rate and
| better audio codecs. FaceTime uses AAC audio and samples at
| close to the full audible audio band. It also uses a
| relatively high data rate compared to typical voice calls.
|
| LTE and 5G has the option of higher quality voice codecs
| (EVS) than older cellular networks when using VoLTE or
| VoNR. They support wider band sampling and higher data
| rates for better quality audio. Why most voice calls sound
| bad is inter-carrier compatibility still sucks. Typically
| calls will downgrade to AMR-WB or AMR-NB (8KHz and 4kHz
| sampling respectively).
|
| FaceTime calls, or any other pure IP voice services, don't
| need to downgrade codecs to interoperate. They might have
| to change encoded bitrates based on network conditions but
| never go with some lowest common denominator codec because
| another user is on a different network.
| nyarlathotep_ wrote:
| Awesome, thanks for this.
|
| Where can I learn about these topics?
| bombcar wrote:
| 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)!
| KETHERCORTEX wrote:
| As a side effect, they didn't see the trick with dialing a
| number just by quickly hitting the "receiver rest" lever.
| atmavatar wrote:
| ...or use a captain crunch whistle to get free long
| distance calls.
| dboreham wrote:
| I'm skeptical there's anyone alive who made an analog phone
| call over thousands of miles. Local calls yes, but even so
| I'm pretty old and I never made one because I had no
| friends on the same CO as my parents' house.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Hi, I'm alive.
|
| East Coast of the US to London, UK, in the early 1980s.
| Over three thousand miles. Quite expensive. Quality was
| dreadful.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Long distance between US coasts is thousands of miles.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Long distance calls were all digital in 1980s, and probably
| sooner. (I don't know the exact timeframe when analog coax
| was replaced by T1s.)
| cogman10 wrote:
| > 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.
| snakeyjake wrote:
| 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.
| kbolino wrote:
| Digital phone audio, which was m-law [1] rather than linear
| PCM, was not exactly uncompressed. However, the compression
| involved was very simple, and was designed to offer the 8-bit
| samples a higher dynamic range than linear PCM would be
| capable of at the same bitrate (linear PCM would need 14 bits
| to represent the full dynamic range of 8-bit m-law). It
| resulted, by design, in quite clear audio for human voice, as
| compared to the more aggressive compression used today, but
| couldn't handle non-voice audio like music as well.
|
| [1] m-law was used in North America and Japan, but a similar
| encoding called A-law was used elsewhere
| garrickvanburen wrote:
| I use phone call quality as my prime example of why most
| people don't actually care about quality.
| supportengineer wrote:
| Fewer people care about anything any more. We are in a
| period of decline. Society is collapsing in slow motion, in
| particular any and all social contracts.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| I don't think this follows, because the function of a
| telephone call is more utilitarian than anything else.
|
| People call for leisure of course, but the phone's part of
| that leisure activity is still just to convey information
| not art. The kids all switched completely to txt for the
| same non-utilitarian conversations once it became
| available.
|
| For all it's low fidelity, it was actually quite high
| fidelity, in that it was actually very good at conveying
| all the "voice body language" information besides merely
| the words. It was just highly optimized for one job and
| that job was not music.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Why didn't they ever upgrade ISDN to ADSL speeds and beyond,
| or designed an ISDN-over-PON? Was it cost reasons?
| dsr_ wrote:
| Oh, they did. It's just that ISDN died in the USA.
|
| If someone from Germany can chime in, I believe they had
| higher-bandwidth ISDN services in the late 1990s onwards.
| sammorrowdrums wrote:
| Mobile voice call compression sucks so much that about a
| decade ago, in order to play a live drum audition remotely, I
| once had to find a space with a landline and printer that
| would also let me play loudly drums to do it.
|
| As a student I had none of those things.
|
| In the end I concocted a successful scheme where I would buy
| a series of phone extension cables, convince my university
| bar to allow me use their landline for a while, book a drum
| practice room and wire the cables in a long chain carefully
| to it, using duct tape to keep the cables safe and above door
| frames etc.
|
| Then I had to join the call, and when it was sight reading
| time run to the library to print out the sheet music, run
| back down and play it down the phone.
|
| It was intense, but I got the gig and flew off and sailed
| around the Baltic gigging for a few months in the
| orchestra/show band which was awesome.
|
| I really wish that a mobile phone would have worked, it would
| have saved me a huge amount of stress.
| latexr wrote:
| > stupid geographical restrictions
|
| DVDs had those too.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_region_code
|
| > they tend to limit quality, both for copyright and traffic
| saving purposes
|
| As long as the quality is above 480p, it's still better than
| DVD.
| 7734128 wrote:
| 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.)
| latexr wrote:
| > 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.
| pkroll wrote:
| 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.
| 7734128 wrote:
| That's similar to saying that a 20 megapixel front facing
| camera of a cheap chinese phone is superior to a 12
| megapixel DLSR.
| CharlesW wrote:
| You're right that vertical resolution is just one factor,
| but streaming uses radically more efficient codecs than
| DVD, so at typical broadband speeds, streaming 480P on
| YouTube will look far better than DVD did.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > 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).
| rob74 wrote:
| Stange that the article opens with a picture of the _The Matrix_
| DVD, but then doesn 't mention it in the text. This was actually
| the first DVD I bought (even though back then I didn't have a DVD
| player, just a DVD drive for my PC) and spent hours exploring the
| extras. Looks like I wasn't the only one who was impressed:
| https://theextras.buzzsprout.com/1781599/episodes/9714540
| alsetmusic wrote:
| Pink Floyd's "The Wall" had extra menus that I couldn't reach
| with a remote but could click with a mouse. I genuinely thought
| it was a bit unkind to fans who couldn't access them on a tv.
| alt227 wrote:
| Maybe other DVD player remotes allowed those things to be
| accessed?
| tantalor wrote:
| Same experience; I recall being disappointed with the
| _extremely greeniness_ of the Matrix on DVD, to the point I
| thought my monitor or computer were busted.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| One of the turning points for me was when the extras went from
| captivating to drivel: Extras used to be based on promo videos
| that you'd find on 1990s cable TV; for example, a promo that
| would be on the Disney Channel or Nickelodeon to get you into the
| theater. Later, the extras turned into something that an intern
| would slap together, with a bunch of people involved with the
| movie back-slapping each other.
|
| I stopped buying DVDs around 2005-ish: With BluRay coming around,
| and everyone saying that film was closer to 4k, why would I want
| to invest in a disk, only to need to rebuy it in BluRay and then
| 4k every few years? I also realized that most movies I only watch
| once, so streaming makes a lot more sense.
|
| Now that I have a 4k player I've gone back to buying 4k disks if
| I think I'll re-watch them.
| fidotron wrote:
| 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 region player (and
| many did) you could get stuff from all over the place, on top of
| the local but now forgotten play dot com.
| hx8 wrote:
| If I recall correctly these anti-piracy statements were like 10
| seconds out of 2 hours of runtime. Hardly makes the product
| poisoned.
| fidotron wrote:
| If only.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Wouldn't_Steal_a_Car
|
| That sound this made as well, not conducive to sitting down
| to be entertained. It was deliberately obnoxious.
| Retric wrote:
| Slightly annoying everyone watching a movie in exchange for
| putting out their little bit of propaganda, doesn't make it
| useless but it does make it worse.
|
| Enshitificstion isn't about companies making products worse
| because they don't like their customers it's just they have
| different interests. Thus shelf life is generally favored
| over taste etc.
| darknavi wrote:
| Experience matters, especially for consumer goods like media.
| Unskippable notices about piracy that are only shown to
| people who have pirated is silly and clunky. You can probably
| tell this by the fact that none of the streaming services
| show something similar.
|
| This will sound very silly, but one of my favorite features
| of my Tesla Model 3 is that it doesn't stall the screen for
| 5-10 seconds every. single. time. you get in the car
| reminding you to drive safely and to pay attention to the
| road.
| hx8 wrote:
| I had the 5-10 second safe driving message on an old car. I
| spent the time making sure myself and all of my passengers
| were buckled, that my mirrors were adjusted correctly, that
| my car was sounding normal and gauges looked healthy, etc.
| It was never annoying because you shouldn't just turn the
| key and immediately operate a motor vehicle.
| whycome wrote:
| The kind that prevented user interaction? With multiple ads?
| Forcing you to watch?
| blitzar wrote:
| 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
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| When will we be able to download 3D-printable and drivable
| cars?
| lazystar wrote:
| your question appears facetious in nature, but it's
| interesting to think about what the answer might be. I'd
| guesstimate 30 - 50 years before manufacturing technology
| reaches that point, but once it does, how long will it take
| to clear the regulatory hurdles? i bet it would take at
| least as long as the time from viable drone deliveries ->
| legal drone deliveries.
| rascul wrote:
| Local Motors already did this a decade ago.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strati_(automobile)
| gspencley wrote:
| It's funny ... I'm old enough to have a HUGE collection of DVDs
| and BluRays (many still in their original shrink-wrap lol).
|
| But these days, if I feel like watching a movie that I own
| physically... sometimes I still look to see if it's on a
| streaming service that I'm subscribed to, or will even pirate
| it ... just because it's more convenient than having to turn on
| the BluRay player and then navigate those awful menus with un-
| skippable ads (you forgot those) and copyright screens.
|
| The copyright notices were especially egregious and annoying to
| me BECAUSE I PAID FOR IT! Don't punish your paying customers
| because of the people you don't like... people that are not
| reading your annoying message.
| tom_vidal wrote:
| How in the world can you have a discussion about DVD packaging
| and special features without mentioning the Lord of the Rings
| trilogy extended edition box sets? Not only did the movies come
| in beautiful collector's cases with two DVDs per movie, they were
| also completely packed with special features, the run time of
| which exceeded that of the movies themselves. Hours and hours of
| in-depth making-of documentaries. I used to watch the special
| features for all the movies in a row when I was home from college
| during the holidays. Probably because before the advent of
| streaming, this was the longest, highest-quality content I had
| access to.
|
| But the special features themselves... man. Getting to see the
| craft of filmmaking and propmaking was one of the biggest
| inspirations for me in pursuing a career as a maker. That was the
| first time in my life anyone had pulled back the curtain to that
| extent on what it took to create something as complex and
| powerful as Peter Jackson's LOTR. You could tell the profound
| love and dedication that went into every inch of that film. To
| anyone who was involved in creating those special features and
| deciding to include them in the extended edition box sets, thank
| you.
| navbaker wrote:
| I absolutely consider the EE discs to be the canonical version
| justinator wrote:
| I consider the books to be canonical, honestly.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| + 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
| assembled. (This was only in the movie after a last-minute
| cancelled attempt to turn Arwen into a warrior; seriously.)
|
| No, Treebeard didn't spend 2/3s of the book stalling.
|
| No, Frodo did not offer a wringwraith the ring, even for a
| second. And if he did, there's no way he would've survived
| afterwards.
|
| And on, and on...
| stronglikedan wrote:
| A movie adaptation of a book is a retelling of a story
| for a completely different type of audience, so it's an
| apples to oranges comparison _always_.
| hx8 wrote:
| That is how Hollywood does movies. Other film traditions
| will more accurately adapt the source material. For
| example, many animes are a shot-for-shot recreation of
| manga.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| >For example, many animes are a shot-for-shot recreation
| of manga.
|
| This is something of a newer phenomenon in the grander
| history of anime as an artform. Osamu Tezuka, one of the
| founding fathers of the modern anime industry, notably
| created the filler-heavy formats of yesteryear that were
| the dominant form of popular televised anime well into
| the 21st century. There are notable early outliers like
| Yu Yu Hakusho and Death Note, but most of the popular
| anime had their runtimes padded all to hell in order to
| continually cash in on the unpredictable zeitgeist
| popularity of their source material. This trend of
| creating manga-accurate adaptations was largely spawned
| during the mid-80's OVA boom (wherein many one-shot OVAs
| were functionally made as high-production-value
| advertisements for their corresponding manga), but it
| largely didn't make the leap to TV anime until well after
| the turn of the century.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| There's a difference between adaptation; and retelling
| the story in a way that damages the integrity of the
| original. Many of the above changes don't make sense even
| within the movie's own material. Even if the books didn't
| exist, Faramir's filmic story arc (as just one example)
| would be a badly executed example of character
| development.
| bombcar wrote:
| That's the real problem - nobody _really_ cares about
| Arwen at the Ford vs Glorfindel; it doesn 't change the
| story much at all.
|
| And even changing characters somewhat but still having a
| _development_ or purpose is arguably fine - it 's the
| changes that aren't good _in the context of the movie_
| that are most baffling, especially considering the
| dedication shown in other areas of the films.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > completely different type of audience
|
| A general one. And if you think about that its sad that a
| story has to be rewritten in order to ensure maximal
| appeal to generate maximal profit. The story isn't
| rewritten for the screen, it's rewritten for the
| investors polluting the story with money.
|
| But on the flip side the story reaches a large audience,
| perhaps larger than the books might have, though not in
| true form. Double edged sword really.
| buttercraft wrote:
| Ugh, don't get me started on the troll scene in The
| Hobbit...
| Yeul wrote:
| 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.
| vunderba wrote:
| 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.
| robbs wrote:
| If you haven't already, get yourself to Wellington and take the
| tours at Weta. You might even recognize a few of the faces that
| still work there.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| I think this was the point where they started looking not at
| ticket sales, but overall lifetime earnings per family...sure,
| it's the ticket, then the DVD, then the BluRay, then the
| Extended BlueRay, then the Criterion Edition (with Sting)
| stevanl wrote:
| FWIW my uncle still runs cinemaparadiso.co.uk - the last DVD
| rental service in the UK and possibly wider afield, in case
| anyone would like to explore the catalog.
| tmm wrote:
| 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
| ndileas wrote:
| That's really cool that it exists / is possible. Maybe someone
| will create a similar service that undercuts them - but I would
| imagine the licensing agreements somewhat require them to do
| drm with the player / media server. 9k entry cost is going to
| keep essentially everyone out of the market - and much of that
| sounds like total bs costs, in no way related to the cost of
| the components.
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| Wow! Imagine the margin that makes for the seller...
| segmondy wrote:
| Funny to see this, I bought 2 used DVD complete series from ebay
| last night instead of subscribing for it on prime even tho prime
| was a bit cheaper.
| latexr wrote:
| > Designers came up with nifty animated menus
|
| Those user-hostile abominations were a great reason to have DVDs.
| They were slow, made starting to watch a movie more complicated
| than it need be, and frequently committed the cardinal sin of
| showing spoilers.
| giobox wrote:
| Funny to see movie people going through the same pain PC gamers
| did (lamenting the loss of "big box" retail games - the reasoning
| is much the same), especially the complaints around the loss of
| things like booklets etc.
| nemomarx wrote:
| weirdly I'm more in favor of it with steam - I guess there's
| not a really great equivalent for movies and music? I mean band
| camp is pretty close to gog but it's a little bit of a hassle
| to manage your library still, and easier to keep CDs in the
| car.
| giobox wrote:
| Steam works great while the benevolent dictator (Gabe) is
| still alive and in direct control.
|
| What happens to the company and its services once he dies is
| extremely concerning to me given depth of my own investment
| now in game licences on the platform. Things may not be so
| rosy if/when Steam is sold to a publicly traded parent and
| has to do boring things like deliver quarterly growth for
| shareholders etc.
|
| Would a Steam/Valve owned and run by Microsoft be as good? It
| might not be Microsoft in the end of course, but that
| question is going to come up a lot sooner than a lot of Steam
| fans probably realise, especially as Gabe ages out.
|
| Big box games generally had very little of these types of
| concerns.
| arielweisberg wrote:
| 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, and
| bad video quality.
|
| I have a few continuous subscriptions, but they are for weird
| stuff and they are pretty inexpensive (5-6$ a month). Dropout TV
| and some D&D podcasts for example.
|
| What most streaming services are asking in no way aligns with the
| content they offer that is worth watching.
| pwarner wrote:
| I've been ramping up on UHD Blueray lately, especially since I
| upgraded to an OLED TV. It's a massive picture quality upgrade.
| I think I have like 6 discs, all ~$10. A mix of newer movies I
| haven't seen, and 80s-90s movies I want to show the kids in a
| few years. It's been fun.
| selectodude wrote:
| I want to rip them to NAS so I don't need to bother with the
| discs but goodness is that a project.
| walterbell wrote:
| https://b3n.org/automatic-ripping-machine/
|
| https://github.com/automatic-ripping-machine/automatic-
| rippi...
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| 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.
| BryantD wrote:
| This article is focused on mainstream cinema and I tend to agree
| with it; I miss the days when major studios were releasing DVDs
| packed with extras. Simultaneously, we're in the middle of a
| major boutique Blu-ray boom. I am not intimately familiar with
| the economics of this, but it's demonstrably true that it's
| possible to license and produce high quality Blu-rays with a lot
| of interesting extras in batches of 2-3K and make a living at it.
|
| We're probably all familiar with the Criterion Collection, which
| has been around for decades. Fewer of us have heard of Vinegar
| Syndrome, which has a highly successful business producing Blu-
| rays of mostly B movies and exploitation flicks. Arrow, based in
| the UK, has been releasing cult movies for a couple of decades
| and we're at the point where people who worked for Arrow are
| going and starting their own boutique companies (Radiance Films,
| for example, who produce 3-4 discs a month, mostly non-English
| genre movies). There are easily a dozen more companies like this
| out there.
|
| I think the model requires appealing to a collector mindset. The
| boutique Blu-ray subreddit often hosts fervent arguments between
| people who don't break the shrink wrap and people who care about
| the movies. Several of the boutique companies have subscriptions:
| for a thousand bucks you can get one copy of everything they
| produce in the year. Often a new release will be available in
| special packaging for a limited run, with no difference in the
| content: those sell like hotcakes.
|
| I don't know if it's practical to run this model for major
| studios. For one thing, it's a tiny market as these things go --
| does Sony really want to make the effort to pump out cool
| material for a couple of thousand sales? They'd be doing it for
| prestige and marketing reasons, not financial rewards. There
| might be a niche for boutique companies to do an ongoing deal
| with a major studio for this kind of release, though.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| Many major music artists release limited-run vinyl records,
| with unique coloring and packaging and often booklets as well.
|
| It's often to monetize their back catalogue by giving people a
| way to buy a gift for a fan.
|
| I think there's totally an opportunity to do the same with
| films.
| BryantD wrote:
| Yeah, good call -- it's a very similar situation.
| stego-tech wrote:
| Honestly not where I expected the article to go, but grateful for
| it. While I do kinda miss the old, glamorous packaging and pack-
| ins of yore, the modern media server-focused me appreciates
| modern releases that are thin on extras as they're easier to rip.
|
| I kind of think that if media ownership remained a priority, and
| the focus was on an improved home experience instead of
| increasing consumption via streaming, things would've turned out
| broadly better. Then again, I look at series that never would've
| had a chance in the old media environment (Invincible, The Boys,
| Hasbin Hotel, The Amazing Digital Circus, etc), and I'm reminded
| that nostalgia for the past is a powerful reality warp.
|
| All that being said, ultimately the strongest voice inside of me
| is that of the librarian: "Thank f*k all this media uses the same
| dimensions for a change. All those fancy-pants novelty boxes were
| a real pain to keep organized and pristine."
| liampulles wrote:
| I really enjoy the process of ripping a disc to my hard drive,
| especially the process of finding the right combination of
| VapourSynth filters to clear up and fix any issues done in the
| mastering process. I also have discovered some interesting extra
| features.
|
| An interesting DVD set was the first season of The IT Crowd,
| which has base64 encoded subtitles. It was a fun little project
| to OCR those, combine them together, and then decode them.
|
| In terms of interesting DVD commentaries, Goodfellas and Catch Me
| if You Can have commentaries with the actual criminals who are
| the subject of the film, which gives an interesting perspective.
| There was also a hidden commentary track on one of The Simpsons
| episodes where the writers go into details about why there was a
| drop off in quality on the show. Actually the commentary tracks
| on The Simpsons episodes are generally excellent.
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| Killer product would be a physical UHD player with built-in very
| powerful and accurate AI upscalling (better than Nvidia Shield)
| for all your discs - old and new.
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| But I guess that, in a couple of years, mainstream LLMs will
| know every pixel of every disc ever released by heart...
| LinuxBender wrote:
| _We all took the DVD boom era for granted_
|
| I did not take it for granted at all. My DVDs can not be
| cancelled, do not require internet or streaming accounts. Most of
| them have bonus features that the streaming providers do not
| always offer. Solar power and a portable player means I am not
| restricted to books during a prolonged power outage. Please do
| bring back a greater DVD boom but do not bring in any physical
| media that requires checking for a license.
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