September 2026

I thought the era of me having physical copies of movies in the house was over. I really liked the idea of all my digital copies accessible through AppleTV, and being able to access it all remotely from my laptop. I mean how cool is it to be able to go on vacation and just bring an HDMI cable, plug my laptop into any TV and have the equivalent of my old movie stack at home?

If you’re nerdy enough to be here you’ve heard all the arguements already about how streaming music is not like owning CDs and records. It’s the same with movies, with all of overcomplicated legal rights there’s always the chance that something will just vanish from the library.

With audio there’s been a resurgence of people buying turntables and vinyl records. Now there are daily online fistfights about sound quality and I’ve done some blind tests and I appreciate that some people feel vinyl sounds better, or that the click and hiss are part of making it “warmer” or “less digital” and if you want to throw your money that way, I’m happy for you having some fun.

One point here that doesn’t get enough credit is that I think the tactile experience is not talked about enough. Searching for a song on Spotify is convenient and the library is massive, but it’s nothing like going to some store or crazy flea market and digging around in crates to see what you can find. Negotiating with a seller, talking with other fans, looking at the giant dust jacket with art and liner notes on it. All of this is part of a hobby that people love. It’s cool to chase things and fun to take some time to sit down at home and experience listening to music.

Ultimately for me though, I don’t consider the actual sound much different with vinyl vs. CD vs. streaming. This is heresy to many, but it’s where blind testing has led me. Most people don’t care that much, and an even smaller group is willing and able to hear the differences.

Ok, all this setup to land on a day about a year ago where I was watching a Peter Gabriel concert in “4k” from a streaming service and thought “I remember this looking better? Why is this so crappy?” I dug around in the closet and found a Blu-ray disc of the show and it was eye opening. Both the sound and the audio were way better than what I was streaming. Sharper, more color, more bass, more detail. More everything.

And with this I fell into the rabbit hole… When 4k streaming arrived on Apple TV I thought “I can finally ditch all these DVDs and Blu-ray discs! The future is good!” So why did streaming look like trash?

4k means the image size is 3840 × 2160 (highest resoultion currently streaming, or ok 4k Blu-ray disks)

Blu-Ray is 1920 x 1080 so that’s only 1/4 of the pixels of 4k so it must look worse right? DVD at 720 x 480 is rubbish.

But there are a bunch of other factors that affect picture quality besides just the number of pixels. Without getting into a huge discussion about file compression, color, and the audio spectrum, the short version is that movies are a lot of data. A blu-ray of a 2 hour movie can be 60GB of data. Streaming companies are paying to push that data, so any way they can compress the file so that there’s less data to send, the more money they get to keep.

The other thing is that the image quality is also a factor of how big your screen is and how far you are sitting away from it. If you are very close then more pixels is always good, more pixels packed into the same space, the less “jagged” it looks. But the smaller the screen, the less the resolution makes a difference. Carlton Bale is the guy who publishes a graphic on this that you can check out if you want details. The takeaway for me was that on a screen under 100 inches diagonal, that you are 12 feet away from, there’s not a lot of difference between 4k and 1080p.

Now when the streaming service compresses the file it reduces the color and detail. And since very few listeners are on systems with a subwoofer they can cut off all of the low end bass (listening to explosions and action films on streaming takes all of the action out of it.)

So I started collecting blu-ray again. And I kept reading. If you get hooked you’ll start checking out thrift stores, antique stores and yard sales. There’s an interesting thing with this – many blu-ray discs come with a digital code so you can add the digital copy to your library, but there’s a chance the previous owner has already redeemed it or it has expired. It becomes chasing lottery tickets. My local antique store sells discs for anywhere from $2-10. There have been many times I was able to redeem a digital copy of a movies that is still selling online for $15 or more.

If you are having trouble filling in your collection I’ve become a big fan of DeepDiscount and Gruv. They have great selection and run sales all the time. They also email weekly about new releases and reissues as they come out. Walmart still carries discs and new releases drop on Tuesdays.

Ok, now to get even geekier: Blu-ray vs. 4k discs. I stick to blu-ray for a couple of reasons. First is that in the Bale chart above, 4k is not a huge improvement for my situation. Second is that there’s a whole lot of things going on as far as video formats such as Dolby Vision and others that could affect your out of the box experience. 4k may look no better or even worse than blu-ray depending on the player and how your TV is set up. Third is that there are a ton of cheap and inexpensive blu-ray players out there but 4k players are pretty niche. This along with the announcement that Sony is not going to do a physical drive on the next Playstation makes me feel that it might be more difficult to find inexpensive 4k players 5 years from now, and I’m happy with blu-ray that’s cheaper and has a larger secondary market.

There’s also another entire level of geekery around how the original film or digital copy is transferred to blu-ray or 4k. Every movie is different and you can lose way too many hours reading about transfers. The sounce for this is Blu-Ray.com. If you want taste the insanity check out the 15 different versions of The Terminator. The TL/DR – the intial release of movies around 2000-2010(ish) are not as good as when the technology improved so versions around 2010-2015) look and sound better.

Another issue with 4k discs is that many of these transfers include digital noise reduction and other tools to “improve” the image quality. Many fans have completely lost their minds and are looking for people to shame for this heresy. For Terminator 2 fans it’s generally agreed that you should get the newer blu-rays and skip the 4k. There are a lot of comparison shots on YouTube you can check out, of course these start fights too with people saying “your monitor is not calibrated correctly, yadda yadda yadda”

Oh, and transfer is just part of it, many versions have “Extras” – alternate endings, director’s cuts, behind the scenes features. 20th anniversary editions may add new interviews and looks back. That gets factored in too, maybe that middle version of T2 has the best picture quality but it has the happy ending people complain about. More stuff for fans to argue about.

And all that to get to: with running around checking bins, having long drawn out discussions about transfers and obscure variants, (limited edition dust covers or metal “Steelbook” cases), Blu-ray really is the new vinyl.

Five years ago during covid I did my first home theater post on how to get set up for around the price of a good TV. After three years the sub $100 projector was starting to have some issues and there were other changes we wanted to make in the house so it was time for a nerd power upgrade! Everything execpt the sound system has been kicked up a level and while it’s a lot more expensive than version one, it’s reached the point that unless I am going to drive an hour to see something in IMAX, I’ve got all the local theaters beat.

So why to do this?

It has the same advantages of TV over the movies:

Pause when you want for bathroom or snacks
Watching movies over two nights lets me screen a lot more
Picture is better and as loud or quiet as I want, headphones are also an option
You can stop watching a bad movie whenever and don’t have to feel you wasted a trip for it

Ok, so what’s the latest gear?

The projector: The laser projector is an exponential jump up in brightness, sharpness and detail. It just looks amazing. The Anker Soundcore Cosmos Nebula 4k SE (not the best product name), Amazon currently sells a refurb for $800, you can get new from the Anker site for $1,000. I got it pre-inflation with an upgrade deal for $900 almost 2 years ago, I bit the bullet on the price after making the mistake of trying a projector that still used an old school bulb (last generation tech that wasn’t as good as the budget LED projector it replaced), and a 4k LED from a now discontinued line of Nebula projector. Laser clearly beats LED.

A bunch of the problems of the past like keystoning (the image not being perfectly square) or being out of focus are now all solved and the picture straightens it self out automatically on startup. Simple and looks great.

If you don’t want to pay that much for a projector Yaber still has a great 1080p model for $350.

The screen: This is the other huge leap forward. Our ancient farmhouse has plaster and lathe walls (read “nowhere near smooth”). I also made the mistake of painting it with a semi gloss so there were some hot spots. In moving to the new room (we swapped the Living and Dining rooms), we repaired the new wall with sheetrock so it’s perfectly smooth. I used a flat gray this time and it’s just perfect.

I did not order a special projector paint. You can pay anywhere from 70 to hundreds of dollars for paint, some with silver in them. I did a lot of research and results were mixed. Between the price and the odds of having a broken or open container of paint show up at your mailbox, I decided to try a paint that gets a lot of love in the AV Forums that can get made up at any Home Depot.

For $32 I got two quarts and did the whole room: Home Depot Color: 770E-2 | Silver Screen. Ultra Pure White Flat Low Odor Interior Paint & Primer. I ordered the Behr Premium Plus Flat Matte. Maybe some day when I have too much time and money on my hands I’ll try different paint (and the hardcore insist you need to be spraying it on), but I love what I’ve got right now.

The media: AppleTV is still the streaming king. Which might explain why the price hasn’t gone down in five years. I’ve found the picture quality to beat other streaming boxes, and I like that it has a wired internet connection to reduce drops.

Upgrading to a 130 inch screen also showed me new limitations in streaming. I noticed that the “4k” stream didn’t look as good as the same movie that I had as a blu-ray disc. This led me down a rabbit hole that I will write about separately, but the short version is: streaming services have a financial incentive to try and send as little data down the wire to you as they can. They need to compete with the other services, but overall, none of them will push you as much data as you can get off a disc. It’s noticeable in the color and detail, and in the soundtrack (the missing bass is obvious).

That gave me the excuse I needed to buy a Sony PS5. My local warehouse club had a good price and I scrambled to buy one in front of TarriffMania ^tm. It plays Blu-Ray and 4k Blu-Ray. It does have all the streaming services but I found they were not as good as on AppleTV. Note, for reasons beyond the nerd level of this post, it’s not worth the extra money to buy 4k Blu-Ray given my screen size and distance sitting from the screen.

This also opened up all the video game options which are amazing. Fortnite has become a staple for weekend fun, Resident Evil and Spider-man also look incredible. It adds the wrinkle of occasionally having to kick my son off so the rest of us can watch something as he has a TV over in the play room.

Sound: I am still using the Bose TV Speaker. For an 18×18 room it’s enough sound and I got it for less than $150 years ago. Originally I got it because it was cheap and has bluetooth, I am not running any wires for speakers if I can help it. The Bose TV Speaker 2 is now available for $300 if you are looking for a no headache answer. I did level up though by adding a Sony Subwoofer and it’s a complete game changer. Everything booms now. It’s a little wonky though, I had to solder together a cord to connect it to the Bose speaker. They have it set up so that normally you can only connect a Bose subwoofer because the cable is looking for an extra wire carrying power confirm it’s on. After digging around on Reddit I got the specs and made the cord and it’s worked fine for years. I’m happy to help anyone but I will not make them, I’m constantly checking mine to make sure I’m not going to burn down my house.

If I were building from scratch now I’d go to the warehouse club, you can check Wirecutter to verify the brands that are ok but for $200 you can get something that sounds great with a subwoofer and bluetooth if you have the same aversion to wires everywhere that I do.

Remote Control: This is one area that has surprisingly gotten worse. Logitech has end of lifed the Harmony remotes so once I had some buttons fail that was the end of the road. You’ll notice that the $70 Sofa Baton looks like a twin of the last Harmony Remote. Mine works ok but I tend to reach for the Apple Remote or a PS5 controller. This is all currently a sore point as people occasionally get stuck not being able to get something to work. The problem with the sofa baton is you have to choose what remote it is with a click wheel. So I want to move around in AppleTV, click to Apple, push some buttons. Adjust the volume? click to Projector, push some buttons. Forget to click? It’s not going to do what you want. I need to read more about programming the Sofa Baton but that’s maybe item #3,287 on my prioritized to-do list.

Oh, and one more thing: This winter I finally said I am so sick and tired of running on the treadmill that I had to change it up. I got an excercise bike and run Zwift on the AppleTV. Instead of smelling my local gym I am now doing virtual bike racing through Europe for the winter. With the huge screen it’s as good as any video game. I’ll write more on that later too.

Good luck!