Subtraction.com: Blu-Ray Blues | Hacker News Reader

Subtraction.com: Blu-Ray Blues

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18 pointsatularora21 comments

The only advantage I see in blu-ray discs is the image quality - everything else is a severe letdown - the glacial load times, the unskippable trailers and warnings etc. I'm actually less inclined to purchase blu-ray discs than DVDs - I used to buy DVDs for all sorts of movies - comedy, drama, action. However, I find the user experience of blu-ray discs so annoying that I now only limit my purchases to action movies.

I feel that the image below perfectly sums up how the movie industry has done more to encourage movie piracy than anyone else:

http://www.thebuzzmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/why-p...

Mirrors my experiences with conventional DVDs. I have vowed I will never buy a Blu-Ray DVD or player because of that. I have constant problems with DVDs, they seem to require clean-room storage and handling to avoid skips and freezes, and forget about letting your kids try to use them. I might as well set $20 bills on fire and save myself the time, than to hand my kid a DVD to play.

I have not bought a DVD in several years. I sometimes rent them from RedBox but have moved almost completely to NetFlix.

As far as physical media, video cassette was the best medium for the consumer, picture quality aside (and for most purposes, the picture quality was good enough). I never had one problem with a VHS tape. I could fast-forward over the ads and trailers easily. If I couldn't finish a movie in one sitting, I could pop the tape out and resume it a day, or a week later exactly where I left off.

You never had your VCR eat a VHS tape? Definitely happened to me a few times. And the whole having to rewind thing was kind of annoying too. I'd take a DVD over a VHS any day, even if the picture quality was the same.

I'm glad I'm not alone in being frustrated by blu-ray. This post could have easily been about my own experiences. I wonder if the phrase "bag of hurt" was hinting at inherent problems in the spec that give rise to bad user experiences.

I thought it was well known by now that the PS3 is the only set top sized device to have the computational power to properly handle all that the blu-ray media can throw at it.

After all, media playback is a streaming decoding problem, and the PS3 is (in)famous for how the Cell Architecture is well adapted to that problem!

I would be curious to know which two Blu-Ray players the author purchased. Personally, having a PS3 has made my Blu-Ray experience rather flawless. I haven't had a single issue. Great picture quality from Blu-rated films on the AVS forums. Bonus-material is more or less the exact same as DVD with the interactive ones being mostly a waste of time.

Between iTunes and Netflix, why are people still using physical media?

* Cost? (Not all of Netflix is streaming and non-streaming iTunes content is between $0.99 and $4.99 on an AppleTV that's $99)

* Convenience? (I can't imagine anything being more convenient than the AppleTV setup, especially now that 1mil+ devices have been sold)

I agree, I think it's a waste of money. My brother however collects DVDs and Blu-rays. He's got a huge library of movies that can be watched any time (and probably cost a fortune). I think it's on the decline but I also think we'll be paying more for bandwidth due to excessive streaming.

1080p for BR, and the ability to rip DVDs and access them anywhere?

It's the best picture and with Netflix it's also really cheap. I'd only have to watch 2 movies a month on Apple or Amazon to hit my Netflix subscription price, and I'd be watching overly compressed 720p instead of 40Mbps 1080p.

Plus, I've yet to have a single issue with using my PS3 as a Blu-Ray player. Maybe the rest suck, but for me, it's just like watching a DVD.

$4.99 is too much for a movie that you can't keep.

Considering the price of movie tickets, does that mean you also don't go to movies at theaters?

Part of the promise of a theater is a movie before it's on DVD or streaming, and for most people the picture and sound is perceived to be better than what's in their home.

I think the assumption is that movies on iTunes are not available on day 1 of theatrical release and that you don't have a 70-foot TV. Standard movie ticket prices would indeed be too high to bear if the movies were all long gone in other theaters and you watched on a 32-inch screen.

No one can stream with Blu-Ray quality yet. Consider most blu-ray encoding bitrates are at between 25-45Mbps. Netflix's best HD Streams I think are about 3Mbps, maybe slightly higher. Even if you're streaming at 1080p (which Roku now supports) that stream is going to be smashed to bits to get that resolution out of it.

Also no one is streaming 5.1 surround sound yet either. You'd chew up your whole bandwidth allotment on audio.

Blu-Ray is still a considerably better format for video then streaming.

> Also no one is streaming 5.1 surround sound yet either.

While NF streaming is great, this is one thing that it's really missing.

Not all of Netflix is streaming is quite an understatement. Trying to find something worth watching that they stream is a task which conjures up memories of trips to the video store of yore.

(Although Amelie was very good.)

Netflix doesn't have "extras" like: multiple audio tracks or subtitle tracks (for commentary or foreign languages etc.), alternate endings, or behind-the-scenes footage.

Hardly anyone here in Australia is on a connection that could stream a full quality blu-ray, not that there are any services that I know of that provide it.

When we get to the point that you can stream first time and keep for a decent price compared to physical media, the connection is fast enough not to be any issue at all and probably even slight bigger hard drives become the norm I think the physical media will be done away with.

Right now that it's far easier for me to pickup blu ray disks that which can be around $10-$15 in sales here for anything not overly new.

It's a lot easier to give my parents a disc as a present.

Insufficient bandwidth at home for great quality, plus better selection at the video store. Also, it's kind of fun to stop at the video store with a friend and browse the shelves.

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