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[EviLore]

The Holdovers 4K just went down to $17.99 on Shouts website. Excellent movie for a great price, only 92 left in stock.

The Holdovers [Collector's Edition]

"Raucously Funny!" – The Hollywood Reporter From acclaimed director Alexander Payne, The Holdovers follows a curmudgeonly instructor (Paul Giamatti) at a New England prep school who is forced to remain on campus during Christmas break to babysit the handful of students with nowhere to go...

shoutfactory.com

Listings aren't lasting very long!

 

[MidGenRefresh]

Physical media is great, but there's very little I actually care to own.

• Movies: I can count on one hand the movies I've watched more than once. I don't see the point of having DVD cases just collecting dust on a shelf.
• Music: Too unpractical. I just want my music stored digitally on my hard drives and iPod so I can listen offline, never stream.
• Games: I own a few physical games that matter to me, like the first Mass Effect or Fallout: New Vegas, but only the ones that really mean something to me or aren't available on PC, either natively or through a good emulator.

I used to collect vinyl and ended up hoarding over 50 records, but luckily I stopped myself before it got out of hand.

 

[EviLore]

 

[Chittagong]

I wouldn't know

 

[EviLore]

I wouldn't know

Same

 

[Highway Star]

I cancelled my streaming subscriptions a while ago. Every time I make a Amazon purchase, I toss in a 4K movies on sale.
Far more worth it than a streaming subscription.

 

[Unknown?]

Let's not exaggerate. The drive for physical is largely a fad IMO, hippy kids finding something to do. As others have mentioned - you re-watch or re-read a vast minority of what you own, all those movies are just filling out space till either you decide to donate/sell almost all one day or you die and your kids will do likewise or just throw it away. Not to mention companies learned it and will scam you with super-never-seen-before-deluxe edition with a few plastic gimmicks (made in China) for $99 or more.

I have very, very few book series that I bought in entirety in one shot just because they together look nice on the bookshelf. A few coffee books, that's it. Instead I have quite a lot of paintings in my house.

Same with media - yes, I don't own things, but instead of 10 cables behind the TV stand I have three hidden behind the piano - Apple TV, TV, wi-fi router.

I greatly prefer my space not cluttered by objects. If you see many rich people's homes this is also what you see - no clutter.

If you find it not worth to own, you can sell it. Can't do that with digital.

 

[BadBurger]

I am afraid to check how much I've spent at Barnes and Noble on 4K UHD discs from the Criterion Collection and A24 collector's editions.

 

[Killer8]

4K Blu-ray makes absolute sense for people to start collecting. It's an end-game format as far as i'm concerned ie. you're not going to get better than that.

Much like CD reached the limits of human hearing, so too does UHD for human vision in a home cinema setting. To tell the difference between 4K and 8K, you would need unnaturally good vision or a gigantic TV that's in excess of a normal living room size (or your bank balance).

You buy a 4K Blu-ray, you can now expect it to last a lifetime. This removes the sore point for people needing to upgrade formats every few years when something better comes along (VHS -> DVD -> BR -> UHD -> ???). Those people who skipped Blu-ray and were still collecting DVDs were the real winners here.

 

[Chittagong]

4K Blu-ray makes absolute sense for people to start collecting. It's an end-game format as far as i'm concerned ie. you're not going to get better than that.

Much like CD reached the limits of human hearing, so too does UHD for human vision in a home cinema setting. To tell the difference between 4K and 8K, you would need unnaturally good vision or a gigantic TV that's in excess of a normal living room size (or your bank balance).

You buy a 4K Blu-ray, you can now expect it to last a lifetime. This removes the sore point for people needing to upgrade formats every few years when something better comes along (VHS -> DVD -> BR -> UHD -> ???). Those people who skipped Blu-ray and were still collecting DVDs were the real winners here.

I think this is true, essentially all digital cinemas operate on 4K, and it's the common DCP master resolution. *

That said, I have been rather blown away how good a well mastered Blu-Ray holds up on a Barco cinema projector. Kieslowski's Dekalog (Criterion) looks absolutely stunning despite being a humble Blu-Ray.

—
(*) DCP cinema masters are typically
4096 x 2160 px vs 3840 x 2160 so the resolution difference is negligible.

Bitrate / chroma / colour depth on DCP is higher though, 250mbps / 4:4:4 / 12bit vs 60-100mbps / 4:4:2 / 10bit on UHD Blu-Ray and 120mbps / 4:4:2 / 10bit on Kaleidescape.

Technically there is no reason why HEVC (UHD Blu-Ray & Kaleidescape) couldn't support DCP tier quality, however with current disc size limits it could be only done on Kaleidescape, which is download/HDD based.

 

[near]

I think this is true, essentially all digital cinemas operate on 4K, and it's the common DCP master resolution. *

That said, I have been rather blown away how good a well mastered Blu-Ray holds up on a Barco cinema projector. Kieslowski's Dekalog (Criterion) looks absolutely stunning despite being a humble Blu-Ray.

—
(*) DCP cinema masters are typically
4096 x 2160 px vs 3840 x 2160 so the resolution difference is negligible.

Bitrate / chroma / colour depth on DCP is higher though, 250mbps / 4:4:4 / 12bit vs 60-100mbps / 4:4:2 / 10bit on UHD Blu-Ray and 120mbps / 4:4:2 / 10bit on Kaleidescape.

Technically there is no reason why HEVC (UHD Blu-Ray & Kaleidescape) couldn't support DCP tier quality, however with current disc size limits it could be only done on Kaleidescape, which is download/HDD based.

Blu-rays are still very viable when the master comes from a high quality 2K or 4K film and the encoding is handled with care. Lables like Arrow and Criterion do this well, which is why their 1080p Blu-rays can still look great on a 4K TV or projector.

But if it's sourced from a weak or dated digital master, it'll look bad no matter whether it's released as a DCP, UHD or Blu-ray. The quality of the source master is what really makes or breaks it.

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

4K Blu-ray makes absolute sense for people to start collecting. It's an end-game format as far as i'm concerned ie. you're not going to get better than that.

Much like CD reached the limits of human hearing, so too does UHD for human vision in a home cinema setting. To tell the difference between 4K and 8K, you would need unnaturally good vision or a gigantic TV that's in excess of a normal living room size (or your bank balance).

You buy a 4K Blu-ray, you can now expect it to last a lifetime. This removes the sore point for people needing to upgrade formats every few years when something better comes along (VHS -> DVD -> BR -> UHD -> ???). Those people who skipped Blu-ray and were still collecting DVDs were the real winners here.

I still stream / download nearly 100% of the movies and shows I watch in 720p and watch them at that resolution on a 2008 plasma display

and nothing can inspire me to change that, it looks excellent and natural. The whole arms race for high res was pointless, data efficiency / reasonable file sizes on my media server storage matters much more to me than a few pixels.

 

[BadBurger]

I still stream / download nearly 100% of the movies and shows I watch in 720p and watch them at that resolution on a 2008 plasma display

and nothing can inspire me to change that, it looks excellent and natural. The whole arms race for high res was pointless, data efficiency / reasonable file sizes on my media server storage matters much more to me than a few pixels.

A nice 4K treatment, good HDR, Dolby Vision, all on an OLED with superior audio and nice surround sound - bomb cuz. I definitely wouldn't want to go back.

 

[OzRinlvs]

I try to balance my purchases because each comes with a price. On one hand, space is always an issue, so I find myself trimming/adjusting collections (books, DVDs, Music CDs) as much as possible to save space, and mostly keeping only what I want, have not watched/played/listened to yet in physical format since I've already made the investment. But for many newer purchases that are not games I tend to buy digital. Audible Audiobooks in particular had been an absolute space and vision saver for me (had eye fatigue issues since college).

...On the OTHER hand, this whole thing about owning everything 'online' seems to be effectively just a long-term rental of sorts. You own nothing and you'll like it. I recall that Amazon once stated somewhere that they can't guarantee perpetual future access to all the audiobooks that you purchase (probably due to copyright possibly changing-- I can't recall). After that, I tried to download as many of my audiobooks as possible to my hard drive to ensure I have a digital version separate from Audible, but some of them take a ton of room and are so big they seem to simply refuse to download. I also don't want to think about all those old games I purchased on GOG and Steam because they were dirt-cheap that I have not gotten around to starting. For all I know, once any of these companies/websites go down, I may lose access to these games and there goes all those $$$ I could have spent on a physical game (that, knowing me, will also sit in my closet, unplayed, in perpetuity. But at least it will STAY there!)

But, again... as some said above, even though owning an item physically makes you feel 'safe' about ownership, "owning" it online has the same outcome as owning physical items that may eventually deteriorate. Also, you soon realize that you watch most movies (play most games, read most books etc) once and never again anyway, so it's better to just pay the few dollars for a rental instead of buying everything you want (like I used to do). I actually haven't even finished going through my DVD collection yet, and some had been waiting years. As for games, I have given up on my backlog a long time ago, mainly because I just don't have time (or vision) for them.