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.