Hacker News Reader

Comment by mvdtnz | Hacker News Reader

Yeah no it's not 2003 anymore, in not going to own a device to slot a plastic disc into so I can watch a film.

I will. There’s no streaming service that guarantees any level of bitrate or picture quality, and if they can save a few cents by compressing the hell out of my movie, they will. If I get a well-mastered 4K disc, it’ll always be a quality experience on a decent player.

Still, I think your attention to picture quality is a niche case (like how "audiophiles" treat music). Above a certain quality that all streaming services pretty much match, I don't really care about compression. Honestly, I can't remember a time I noticed netflix's compression.

I tried to watch Star Trek DS9 on netflix. Video quality was absymal. Same for Valerian.

Audio quality is even worse. To be able to underestand spoke english you need the volume at 60% (everything else working at 20-30%).

You slot the plastic in once and then save a video file to you hard drive. Keep the plastic disc as a reliable back-up in case you lose the file or need more disk space.

If only the manufacturers of the plastic weren't trying to make it as difficult for you as possible to save the video file

That does, indeed, totally suck. Luckily, DVD and Blu-ray (alas not 4K) DRM is pretty trivially defeated.

MakeMKV handles 4k content perfectly

But then there's the matter of purchasing specific drives etc... that just means it isn't trivial is all I meant by that

Wait until the film you want to watch no longer exists.

Instead you'll stream a version that meets the restrictions of the day. Perhaps the soundtrack has been changed due to licensing issues, or entire scenes have been deleted for being politically incorrect (according to whichever politics are in power when you watch the film)

This is happening a lot.

Silence of the lambs and Lexx come to mind.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com