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Comment by everdrive | Hacker News Reader

I think blu-ray will live for quite a while, but will be a bit like vinyl; there will be a consistent, niche market.

Hilariously, DVD production could potentially outlive Blu-Ray discs, since DVDs are still popular enough 30 years later, and surpass the sales of Blu-Ray movies.

That will last only as long as boomers are still around watching movies.

I'm Gen Z and I buy DVDs (though mostly second hand). You're probably right on the whole, though I've only observed the opposite.

Why DVD and not Blu-ray? The reason I said boomers buy DVD is because there are still a lot of senior citizens that are not internet savvy that like to rent out movies from their libraries, the dvds are simpler to operate, are more reliable from deep scratches, and a lot of boomers have simple equipment. Most of them don't care about perceived quality. This market is big enough that ironically DVDs may actually outlive Blu-Ray. Its the format that wont die. In fact I bet part of the reason Blu-Ray is being kept alive is due to studios already putting in the work to produce DVDs.

I spoke to my local librarian who cited this as the reason they haven't bothered with 4K blueray despite it being 10+ year old technology at this point.

They're often cheaper and not everything is on Blu-ray. If Blu-ray was going really strong and overtook DVDs, I'd be happy about it. I don't really think DVDs are "simpler to operate" except for the fact that you only need cheaper equipment (though one can imagine someone with ingrained habits believing them to be "complicated").

Also, I’m impressed at some of the up scaling techniques that some players use to help improve the quality of DVD movies. Sure, it’s not native, but it’s certainly not bad looking either.

>I don't really think DVDs are "simpler to operate" except for the fact that you only need cheaper equipment

Think of it from the point of view from senior citizens. They likely already have the equipment for DVD and are used to it. That alone is "simpler to operate". Yes Bluray could often have simpler menus but that existing inertia is something that is important as well because I dont think most senior citizens are actively seeking out newer tech if they dont need to.

unfortunately mpeg2 is still standard for them so i guess people have to stick to 480i on double layer i guess, unless stars align and someone decide to make av1/opus standard for them lol

A surprising amount of newer-ish DVD players will play H.264 off a DVD just fine and AVCHD is essentially Bluray formats and file structs on a DVD.

Why is that? Vinyl has some unique characteristics. But as far as I’m aware, blu-ray is just a storage format for bits, so other than the box art, what is compelling about a blu-ray pressing?

Ever compare a Blu-ray to the same content over streaming? It's not even close. Unlike vinyl records, Blu-ray is vastly superior in quality to alternatives.

In case you're asking "why", it's because your "4K" stream is compressed to hell and back. Your home internet connection doesn't even have the bandwidth to stream the quality of a BR.

> Your home internet connection doesn't even have the bandwidth to stream the quality of a BR.

This has not been true for most people for a while now. Even the high end of 4K blue rays tops out around 100 Mbps, which is achievable on pretty much any broadband connection.

Netflix isn't serving 100Mbps though.

Are any streaming services actually serving that bitrate?

Sony's is.

> which is achievable on pretty much any broadband connection

It's only achievable in a real sense if there are video providers out there offering the content at that bitrate. The absolute best you can hope for in optimal conditions is from Apple TV+ at between 30-40 Mbps which is equivalent to what you get with a non-4k blu-ray.

For sure, my only contention is that the bandwidth is there, which makes the paltry bitrates Netflix et al will provide you even more frustrating...

Yeah, you’re right. Despite Grandpa over here having a 1Gb fiber connection, my head was apparently stuck in 2005 thinking 50 Mbps downstream internet is some kind of high-faluten’ wizardry.

A UHD Bluray tops out at about 150Mbps, most home internet is capable of that. It would just cost too much for the streaming services to support it.

But also the reality is that most people have their devices connected through a shitty wi-fi connection and may be effectively limited to 50 or even less mbps, specially if you consider the unpredictability that comes with it.

True. Plus the big streaming services' business model now is low quality content produced in house or with cheap royalties, that people put on in the background. They might have a prestige show or two, but that's just a hook to get you to subscribe, they'd much prefer you watch the cheap stuff.

The movie itself is generally encoded at a higher bitrate than what you can find in streaming or torrents.

The media includes bonus features that generally aren't available in streaming or torrents.

The media will not suddenly stop existing if some server breaks down, some company goes under or some contract expires.

The movie will not suddenly get "patched" with an AI-upscale or censored scene one day while watching it.

You can lend the media to someone else to watch without having to ask for permission to anyone else.

Technically blueray has a 'update mechanism' that newer films will require players to update to.

AVGN complained about it here: https://youtu.be/tetXKdi9U3c?t=400

"To play this Blueray, you must renew your encryption key"

Is that really a thing?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controvers...

Also, you can import blu-rays from other countries when streaming releases have geo restrictions.

Like DVD before it, Blu-ray includes region locking as a feature (but apparently ~70% of disks don't bother with it, notably Paramount and Universal don't). Non-locked disks are marked as ABC (A is the Americas and Asia, B is Europe/Africa/Aus/NZ, C is Russia/India/China).

Libredrive says: "that's cute"

Many of vinyl's unique characteristics are severe drawbacks compared to digital disks. I see a lot of kids collecting CDs instead—cheaper, lighter, easier to maintain, you can find cars that play them pretty easily, you can rip them losslessly, more hardware to play them, etc. Plus you can a lot of the same benefits of album art, lyrics, etc.

Blu-Rays also have special features, which most streaming platforms don't offer (I think largely except for iTunes).

Having it, physically. It’s harder for companies to play silly games like put the media into a vault, take it off their streaming platforms for tax reasons, etc… I started collected physical blu rays when HBO randomly took a million things off its platform so that it could do accounting tricks.

I want to support artists who make content I like, but I also want control over my media library. Physical media is the best way to do this.

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