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Comment by quickthrower2 | Hacker News Reader

Disc via mail can win these sorts of people:

* People/areas with poor internet connection. Or no internet connection (but a way to occasionally get on e.g. a library)

* People who want to make watching a movie a special event at home, not just a dooms-scrolling life filler.

* People who want to see decent movies :-) that are not available for streaming

* People who want to rip the DVDS :-)

* People who are set in their ways have a DVD connected to a big TV and don't want to mess around with tech.

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Plus the quality. I do not think any streaming service offers the same fidelity as a local Blueray.

Even DVD to be honest; the resolution of the stream is basically unimportant, what really matters is the bitrate, and DVD is high, Blu-ray is insane (10.08 Mbit/s vs 40-100Mbit/s).

DVD’s mpeg 2 is vastly inferior to h.265/av1 used by most streaming providers. And there’s only so much quality you can get out of a 480p frame.

4k blu-ray is much better than any streaming provider, though. And 1080p blu-ray about equal to 4k streaming.

Ironically, with 4K on a good OLED TV, I actually find HDR to be a bigger deal than the res. The res works both ways...stuff that was shot well is gorgeous...but stuff that wasn't filmed so well - you're going to see tons of grain, any dirt on the print, etc.

Black and white films in HDR are gorgeous.. and filmic in a way they've never looked before on home media.

Usually on 4K discs they've been rescanned and restored, but not always, and sometimes even a good restoration job leaves a lot behind.

This might be it - some of the content that was mastered for DVD feels better (admittedly upscaled DVD content via the player) than badly remastered "HD" content where you end up seeing things you're not really supposed to see.

You're right, I completely ignored HDR. That can make a large difference as well.

You're right that bit-rate is king, but for most content, AV1 and HEVC will have superior subjective perceptual quality. Most content lends itself to being heavily compressed with minimal loss of quality.

This would be true if you’re still using Huygens satellite internet lol.

Do you mean "Hughes"? What a throwback. I cannot believe they are still in business!

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_Network_Systems

Resolution stops mattering much at a certain point, but that point is higher than a slightly widened standard definition.

And other people mentioned that codec matters, but not the full extent. Not only is the encoding on a DVD about 10x worse than a modern codec, 10Mbps is a peak you're unlikely to ever see. I'm skeptical that a well-encoded 1Mbps 720p stream would ever lose to a DVD, and I'm confident that at 2Mbps you'd leave the DVD in the dust.

While you're right that bitrate is king, most common HD streams will look better than a DVD.

> * People who want to see decent movies :-) that are not available for streaming

Or people who don't want to juggle 10 different streaming services

> Or people who don't want to juggle 10 different streaming services

That's the huge one. Availability is so fragmented for streaming that it's just not worth it. A DVD service that has everything in one place is gold.

Good call!! Also people that want the original music on older TV shows.

> Good call!! Also people that want the original music on older TV shows.

A DVD rental service won't necessarily get you that either. For some stuff filmed before buying DVD sets was a thing, you may only be able to get the original music from a tape someone made off of TV. For instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WKRP_in_Cincinnati#Music_licen....

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