2. home-theater
  3. 185778-355

Bad news for home theater enthusiasts

Disney is ending all DVD and Blu Ray releases down under for Australia and New Zealand which may be a harbinger of what can eventually happen to the rest of the world. Their last release will be Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3. From now on it's streaming only for them.

It's a good read for those with a big investment in physical media as streaming still can't match the quality and the big players just don't care as there'll be one less product to make.

Are we going to see a run on blu ray players with prices going through the roof again like we did when OPPO decided to call it quits? My OPPO BDP-103 is old and the mid level Panasonic DP-UB820-K is starting to look a bit desirable right now. 

All the best,
Nonoise

128x128nonoise
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nonoise's avatar
nonoise OP
10,838 posts
 

Nope. Never did. Your statements are just proof of your psychosis. Soon, little man, you'll be getting a time out from Admin.

All the best,
Nonoise

stereopup
15 posts
 

I recently had a few people over to watch a movie on my OPPO-205 to which I’ve added a linear power supply and improved IEC.  We then went through my library of movies on Blu-ray and even plain old DVD and compared portions of them to their streaming equivalent on my Apple TV and Xbox Series X via my gigabit internet, courtesy of Ting.  The video and sound goes through an Anthem 70, feeding a 77 inch Sony 4K OLED and a 9.2.6 system.  My living room has very slowly become quite the man-cave….  

We all agreed that with my setup, at least, the physical media looked, and especially, sounded noticeably better.  Even older movies that weren’t at 4K originally had deeper colors with better contrast, and the sound coming out of the OPPO was less compressed, especially in the upper registers.  The opening sequence of Maverick, for example, was so much more visceral coming out of the OPPO than when streamed via the Apple or Xbox.

Maybe this is due to compression employed by the streaming services?  Maybe my streaming devices just can’t match the hardware of the OPPO?  All I know is that I’m going to miss both the quality and the depth of selection that the Netflix DVD service provided.  Sure I can still buy some physical media, but being able to have a high quality borrowing library was great all these years.   

audioquest4life
770 posts
 

We are all going to become Blu-Ray/DVD hoarders the same way we are hoarding records, LOL.  

nonoise's avatar
nonoise OP
10,838 posts
 

Wouldn't it be wonderful if OTA 4K broadcasts became a thing? I seem to remember one company who was doing 1080i or p cable broadcasts OTA until they got a court order to stop. The people in the community loved it. They said they'll be back but that was some 2-3 years ago.

Another valid reason to breaking up monopolies.

All the best,
Nonoise

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