Comment by mikepurvis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikepurvis | Hacker News Reader

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"Vinyl records have their followers who revitalized the format...so maybe there are collectors of DVDS...?"

I think it's possible this is happening or will happen, perhaps in a similar vein to how vintage gamers/collectors now venerate the GameCube and PS2 as the last bastion of consoles that weren't designed to be online all the time, and will therefore be playable "forever" in a way that everything which has come after them will not.

At the same time, I feel like vinyl records are a little different from a DVD— from the analog tactility of them, the size of the packaging leading to beautiful artwork, the fact that they were the dominant format for decades, while DVDs got barely fifteen years (the aughts and a bit beyond). It's easy to love a record when you put it on and you can immediately tell "yes, this is a high quality stereo audio experience that I am having with this piece of media and the equipment I have invested in for consuming it", and I'd argue there just isn't really an equivalent experience for DVDs: they're always going to be blurry, with janky menus and unskippable ad reels, blocky subtitles, cheap plastic cases. Some of that changes with collectors editions in special boxes or whatever, but I don't know if it's widespread enough across the format as a whole to really enable the kind of culture that exists around vinyl.

It is happening, my parents are proof. They have more DVDs than the local library

Are they doing collectory things like alphabetizing them and putting them in special preservation cases, going online to seek out mint copies of special editions, etc?

Not to discount your observations, but I'm curious to differentiate between an active, intentional, curated collection effort, vs hoarding or just not having gotten around to tossing them all out yet despite that none have been touched in 10 years. Most people I know who still have a shelf or two of physical discs in their media/living rooms look a lot more like the second case than the first one.

It doesn't matter, they are in possession of literally thousands of DVDs; the money is spent and the sale is recorded.

There used to be a healthy market for DVD-specific shelving; I have seen multiple bookcase-sized shelves packed completely in one house.

I have a pair of IKEA dressers on either side of the TV, with the DVDs placed 2 deep in the drawers. And then a couple of bookcases in the basement for the overflow that doesn't fit the dressers. The current count stands at 1845.

Why not both? The missus and I have both been collecting DVD's for over 20 years. The resulting pile of movies fills a large part of the spare room in the house, and neither of us seem to show indications of stopping to grab cool old movies on DVD when at flea markets etc.

The physical DVD's are rather irrelevant, though. Most are ripped and streamed to the TV rather than watched in a player.

> ...I feel like vinyl records are a little different from a DVD— from the analog tactility of them, the size of the packaging leading to beautiful artwork...

Yeah, I can see what you mean.

In the case of vinyls, it is all about the rituals, the fact you see the actual disc spinning, etc.

Same doesn't apply between dvd and blueray.

Agreed, for many it is an experience - or, as you so rightly said "rituals". It's more than just merely consuming media. It's listening to the warmth of the sound, and yes even the crackles and pops of some tracks. And likely a feeling of nostalgia for some. I bet that's one reason for vinyl's resurgence.

Not entirely true - vinyl physical restrictions do not allow for some modern trickery that makes sounds less soundy: https://www.yoursoundmatters.com/vinyl-vs-cd-in-the-loudness...

What are you talking about blurry? Upscaled DVD is perfectly fine. For most movies from the 80s and 90s it's not like you're going to notice a difference going to Blu Ray or UHD streaming.

Amen. I still see plenty of HD video these days that’s so bit-starved, it looks worse to me than a good DVD.

Speak for yourself. Upscaling a DVD to a 4k large TV looks tremendously bad unless you're doing it with specialized software with some format-aware intelligence in it. So you need a computer hooked to your TV.

There's plenty of bitrate starved streaming content that's available on streaming that's poorly upscaled from a DVD, but that's not the case on studio upscale Blu-Rays with extremely plentiful bitrates and sometimes even film re-scans resulting in a quality that was better than what you could even get in the theater from the original film stock.

A bluray won't be bit-starved.

UHD streaming, even if it is bit-starved, should be far ahead of a DVD. HD content that is bit-starved is more of a tossup, but I rarely see egregious behavior even from youtube's bad bitrates. I only see that on overcompressed television stations.

What? Of course you will notice a difference. No digital cameras means that everything was on film. More than enough for 4k, maybe less for 16mm.

> For most movies from the 80s and 90s it's not like you're going to notice a difference going to Blu Ray or UHD streaming.

Complete crock of shit. Movies from the 80s and 90s were usually shot on 35mm - DVD quality does not begin to extract the detail nor the dynamic range in these films.

It’s not a subtle difference.

And if bitstarving is an issue it’s usually going to be DVD. No amount of encoder magic can overcome MPEG-2 inherent shortcomings.

For movies you are absolutely going to notice a difference. Anything that was recorded digitally like many TV series is less clear.

Just getting rid of interlacing makes any upgrade from DVDs worth it IMO.

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