Is Online Delivery Acceptable for Home Theater Use? - Page 2

It seems to me that this exact or similar vote/talking point comes up quite a bit either on web forums like these, or from online "magazines". Over and over, someone wants streaming to be accepted and wants to be the person to first claim that the physical media is dead. I am not saying that this thread is looking to do that, but I think that we are all smart enough to know that a physical disc has its advantages (minus the down-rezed video and down-rexed audio of some rental discs).

Absolute best quality for anyone who wants the best image and sound. I think that most of us are a bit nuts about out systems, so that should (and voting shows) be evident.
No download issues of lag, studdering, down-rezing, internet caps, internet overage fees, etc.
Can take the movie with you if you go to a buddy's house.

There are more, but until the quality is the same or better, and until I can easily stream 40+ GB of data (give or take) at whim for a 2 hour movie, streaming will never stop me from buying a blu-ray.

Now, as far as movies that I don't want to buy, I might stream one of them, but even that is rare.

So if you enjoy streaming, great. It is a great concept that will, someday, get there, but it isn't ready yet. Fancy compression algorithms may *seem* to be like watching a blu-ray, but then again, their very nature and name ("compression" algorithms) give way to letting you know that something has been striped away. Or if you are watching on a modest sized TV from certain distances away, you might not care. That's cool. I am not going to say you can't enjoy it. Please, by all means, love it. Love what your system has and how you use it.

Another factor in considering streaming options is one that has nothing to do with the quality of the material and everything to do with availability. I wanted to watch "Lifeforce" the other day and I remember having added it to my Netflix queue about 9 months back. I logged in and sure enough it was absent. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that the title is about to get a Blu-ray release and they don't want any competition in distribution channels...

See also: anything to do with "Spartacus" or Starz content; used to be available - not anymore.

In this era of cloud content storage, the rules around who determines how long a particular piece of content is to be made available are often played a bit loose in my opinion.

I got to admit streaming technology has made a lot of waves and lots of progress. But still it does not compare to a well made blu-ray movie. I voted blu-ray only, because my home HT deserves it. After investing on a big screen tv and a kick-ass 7.1 sound system, I'm sorry streaming is not there yet. Specially in bandwidth capacity(But thats more of ISP problem and location) . For watching a series, maybe an old movie from my computer screen yeah i'm ok with streaming. But at home? To watch transformers 3 in 3D? Tron 3d? LOTR extended? all with 7.1 sound tracks?

Sorry blu-ray disc are still the way my brothas!!! lol

"Just less so"? True, still the maximum datarate of BD is still 500% compared to the best streaming service currently available right now.

Also the Sony 4K download offering will be at least 100GB per movie (based on a 90-minute movies). Considering most 90min bluray movies are in the 20GB range, 100GB per movie in 4K will be as good as if they're putting it onto a physical media.

Does not exist? Where have you been? BDXL is 100 GB

I base price compared to actually going to the movies. And whether it's a Blu Ray I'll enjoy watching more than once. For instance, I can wait for Zero Dark Thirty to sell for just under $ 20.00, considering the tremendous review -

http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Zero-Dark-Thirty-Blu-ray/63170/#Review

After all, I have bottles of wine I'm waiting 20 years to drink. Whats a month or two?

I don't know. I kind of have to put the 100GB download more in the physical media court than online delivery. The advantage to online delivery is immediate on demand consumption. Depending on download speed I might be able to run to walmart and buy a bluray before the 100GB download finishes or even buffers enough for me to start watching without a rebuffer every 5 minutes.

I'm not holding my breath on this. Seems like 4K makes even more sense on a physical disk. Anyway, I have yet to see a list of what content is going to be available in 4K. I'm giving 4K about 5 years to be ready for prime time IMO. Downloading 4K seems unrealistic for most people.

Well duh! You're no longer comparing apple to apple. It's like sayingVuduHDX is better than regular DVD.

PS: when there is no chice, then there is no argument at all. Even this very second if (say) the life of pi will never be released on Blu-ray, then of course I'll watch it on VuduHDX... Because there is no choice.

You keep claiming that you're being neutral but it's clear for anybody with even the most minute grasp of the English language that you want the physical media to be dead so you can say "I told you so" when streaming become the only way to watch movies.

Another duh! but at the same time I don't watch any of my DVD anymore

On the other threads when someone confront you about your neutrality, you calim that you're being neutral and just showing the comparison for the sake of doing a comparison.

Hey Mark - to my eyes it was really both...for sure the aspect ratio during the iMAX scenes did not change. During the first scene with the airplane hijacking, the aspect remained in 2.35 the entire time.
As for detail, I did notice less sharpness in the picture, especially in facial detail, but that could just be due to my connection. Also the sound track sounded much less subdued...much more so the difference you would hear between a DVD soundtrack and bluray. When I put the bluray in and started the same scene, the soundtrack had a huge improvement from VUDU.

I checked Dolby's website for some specs on DDP and it does confirm what I am hearing from VUDU. The bitrate is much lower of even Dolby and DTS...only 256 kbps for broadcast and online.
I agree with Mark, I would much rather have an uncompressed 5.1 track than a 7.1 track with a bitrate that low.

http://www.dolby.com/us/en/consumer/technology/home-theater/dolby-digital-plus.html

You must get bad fuel mileage.

At this exact point in time, a Sony 4K download is still just a future possibility. Hopefully there will be 4K content ( that somebody actually wants to watch ).

Ya, it costs me $ 2.98. I buy them online from Amazon.

For people with 100" screens or bigger we definitely need 4k and I agree that a new physical format will be needed as downloading a 100GB file is unrealistic at best and impossible at worst.

Exactly. I've already waited 3 months for the Blu-ray, what's another couple weeks? So many movie releases sneak up on you. They come out in the theater, you know you want to watch it, then you forget about it, then all of a sudden they get released on Blu-ray. There is always something to watch. It's the reason why I never watch most movies more than once. I barely have enough time to catch up on all the new movies I want to see.

While I do believe bluray has the best pq and aq, I also would like to say I feel proud of my collection when I see it on the shelfs. I would not even remotely feel the same when that collection would just be a text list on some device. I like to own the fysical object.

Probably a sign I am getting old...

I sure am glad that people still purchase movies but I will never understand the logic behind it. After I watch a good movie, even a great movie, I have ZERO interest in ever watching it again.