LG discontinues the manufacture of Blu-ray players | Hacker News Reader

LG discontinues the manufacture of Blu-ray players

flatpanelshd.com

I've often wondered if the balkanization of streaming services would lead to a resurgence of physical media ownership, along with piracy of course

I had an argument some time ago with a friend who was a devout "streaming enthusiast" for lack of a better term. Netflix had Back to the Future on and I watched it

Understandably I wanted to watch the second movie in the trilogy. But...they didn't have it! Somehow they'd only acquired the rights to Back to the Future 1 and 3. But not 2

His genuine response was "just rent it on Google Play then"

This absolute stretching out of content to ensure every single penny on the table that could possibly be obtained is hoovered out of wallets is absolutely pathetic. At least when Netflix was a "dumping ground of old TV and movies" we could reliably go watch "re-runs" of Seinfeld forever. But not so much anymore

Your local library might have it. San Francisco public library has 11 copies of it, with 5 available right now.

https://sfpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S93C3909179

The "extras" also speak in favor of the physical media. The streamers apparently still haven't figured out what to do with that.

If I want extras I go watch behind the scenes content online

I wasn't sad to lose bonus content

My track record of finding the extras online is extremely poor. And contrasted with discs that contain sometimes rather large amounts. Some extra videos of course but also full length commentaries. Do you commonly find much of this stuff?

From watching sometimes at the streamers, it more like it's hard to even be aware of all the extras that exist. And can't be accessed.

Movies bought on iTunes have plenty of extras.

Whilst I understand your point, if you wanted to watch 2 & 3, you would have had to go walk to your video shop and either rent or buy those next two movies anyway.

I don't know how interested I'd be in watching movies of old if I needed to go and fork out more money to rent or buy the movies.

Heck if I wanted to go rewatch Harry Potter all of the movies are there on Netflix. I don't need to go and buy the boxset of hire each movie individually.

> I've often wondered if the balkanization of streaming services would lead to a resurgence of physical media ownership

Probably not. What's already happening is that movie studios are scaling back physical media production so if you want to see those movies you'll have to use their streaming service or figure out how to import it while you still can:

https://collider.com/disney-physical-media-release-discontin...

https://variety.com/2024/film/news/disney-sony-pysical-media...

Why sell you something when they can rent it to you forever?

Is this the final death of media that people can truly own and share? If so that’s really sad. I wish there was a better outcome but it doesn’t seem that way.

It’s also unfortunate since a UHD BluRay (>100Mbps) has a much higher bitrate than any streaming video service - Apple TV+ might be 30Mbps.

> Apple TV+ might be 30Mbps.

Yes, but they can scale it to any resolution. /s

Large records made a comeback, but I think that's because they are more easily produced via hobbyists. I don't see DVDs or BluRays doing the same thing, because the media companies wants to ultimately charge you per viewing.

I own a BluRay player with UHD, DV, Atmos, etc and have a collection of about 100 UHD discs.

A huge issue is that discs are way too expensive outside of the US. For years I bought discs on sale at Amazon US for like $10-15 but now these don't ship to my country and local prices are $30-50.

Studios, distributors, etc need to realize it's better to get someone to pay $10-15 for a BluRay disc than $0 because they ended up streaming or even torrenting that movie.

We need something that is Read Only, reliable, cheap to produce and small.

Unfortunately I dont see we have any options.

Is the Panasonic ub820 still the way to go to get Dolby vision?

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