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Comment by jibanes | Hacker News Reader

I wonder who buys dvd/bluray anymore... after netflix.

Me. For example, I’m currently legally rewatching Game of Thrones before the new season comes out even though I don’t currently have an HBO subscription. It is a durable copy that doesn’t buffer, is high quality, isn’t modified after the fact (such as when they removed the George W. Bush prop head-on-spike). For a one time price, I own it for life. I can and have lent it out to others. When I watch it, my analytics aren’t tracked, and there are no promos for other shows at the beginning.

> When I watch it, my analytics aren’t tracked

Unless you watch it on a smart TV. It's a shame you can't get the features of a modern TV without content tracking.

I mean, just turn off the internet on your TV. Most TVs have terrible built-in software anyway. My TV isn't connected to the internet, so it can't track what I'm watching.

I forgot to mention that my Blu-Ray player also has an Ethernet port and a bunch of "apps" available, and probably has the ability to report back on Blu-Rays viewed, but I don't use it for that reason (and I have better devices for apps, such as Roku.)

People who care about audio. Netflix streaming audio is shit. A Blu-ray has incredibly good audio tracks—usually 24-bit/96kHz lossless.

This got me really curious about what quality Netflix actually streams its audio, but the only thing I came across were tech support threads regarding low quality streams. Does anyone know of a good comparison of Netflix vs physical disc quality, and/or any hard numbers?

FWIW, I have an extremely good system and I've always thought that streamed audio sounds great. I honestly wonder if I've been missing out on the next tier!

What I recommend is having a DVD, Blu-Ray, and Netflix streaming of a movie with good sound and a lot of dynamic range that you can A-B-C with. Apollo 13 is a reasonable example and fairly cheap. :)

It's super obvious side by side, at least on my setup. Streaming is more-or-less DVD quality at best in my experience.

From what I've found, Netflix's highest quality audio is a lossy 640 kbps Dolby Digital+ (E-AC3) stream. For comparison, the highest quality BluRay audio would be the lossless formats Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA. Both of these formats support variable bit rate encoding, and from my personal library I'm seeing average bit rates of 4727 kbps for Atmos TrueHD and 2525 kbps for DTS-HD MA.

Dolby TrueHD is lossless, so the bitrate is somewhat irrelevant. DTS-HD Master Audio is also lossless, but "degrades" back to a lossy version if the decoding device does not support it.

The actual bitrate after decoding for a 24-bit 2-channel song with a 96kHz sample rate is 4.39mbps. With 5 channels, that's 10.975mbps (higher than a DVD for both picture and sound combined).

FWIW, TrueHD also contains a lossy core (AC3 in this case), just like DTS-HD MA. I was also surprised to see that my TrueHD tracks are 24-bit, but my DTS-HD MA tracks are 16-bit.

I do. A DVD is low on the list now, unless i know the material is best in SD.

BluRay is still a great purchase at times. I like the 24p film editions for classic movies, and in general, get best quality over most streams.

And no connection hassles.

I've started buying discs when they're on sale, because the discs should work for a long time, and I have no idea if I'm going to be able to watch what I want to watch when I want to watch it with Netflix (actually, I have a pretty good idea that I won't be able to watch it, because they rarely have what I want to watch anymore)

I buy criterion still. I'll use amazon and netflix but more or less prefer dvd. Also I like a lot of old movies, not all of which are available for streaming.

I always buy DVDs and CDs only. Streaming is like renting a movie as you don't physically own it.

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