@bolong well done, that was my first thought too!
The end of physical media is neigh
Very sad news for me personally. Honestly this struck me as hard or harder than hearing about the death of a beloved artist. With the advent of machine learning and AI controlling our music listening we are becoming a world without any control at all over our music or movie culture.
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100% audiophile, 0% videophile, never got into videophilia... though i supposedly have a decent tv, according to a video dude i know. Movies in ultra high definition 4k look like documentaries (ugh) to me. I saw that OG predator movie more recently in UHD and it felt like Schwarzenegger was doing a documentary on birds in the forest or something I guess i can understand now why the vinyl guys like all the awful vinyl crackles and low-fi warpy wowy fluttery sound (bwaaahahahaha) that they claim is the "organic" sound of life...Videophiles might hate me.. |
Sometime, convenience can come to the sacrifice of quality. At least, at first, before the new convenient technologies have had a chance to evolve and improve. I no longer watch movies via surround sound, DVD and Blu-ray, like I did 15 or 20 years ago, so their demise doesn’t concerns me too much. However, I can see how others may see cause for concern. I’ll tell you what relatively new technology I have become madly in love with....."Music Streaming." Music streaming at a very high level, that is. I love streaming my music so much that I now stream exclusively. Happy listening. |
It is sad for those who care about getting the best picture quality, just as we care greatly about good sound. Even today with "fast" Internet, streaming of movies is lousy in quality compared to that from a well-done Blu-ray disc. Just compare the data rates. Streaming is nowhere close to giving you a gorgeous picture. And even Blu-ray is compressed. Ironically, the TVs themselves are very good and cheap. It's like have a nice Thorens turntable but limiting its performance by using a $29 Audio-Technica conical cartridge on it. |
@onhwy61 No, you only need a AV prepro or receiver with a legacy video input or a cheap composite video to hdmi converter from Amazon for 9.99. |
I am sure that the GenZ person who cleans out my space. Is going to get a lot more excited pulling the INNUOS instead of 24 IKEA crates of vinyl albums. technology can be a cruel mistress, but we signed the dotted line. And until someone can convince me that what I listen to is a bad thing I’m enjoying the boat ride |
Part of the reason I haven't added music streaming is the result of my experience with movie streaming. No matter how many subscriptions you have you'll never have access to everything you want. And that's assuming you're willing to take the time to search. BTW, I still have my laserdiscs and three (3) laserdisc players. Which means I have to keep at least one television with legacy video inputs. Life is so hard! |
@glennewdick , The Sony Playstation 5 is a good blu-ray player. All the gamer dudes would need to go full digital before the gaming consoles stop having a blu-ray drive in them. |
Not surprising Blu-ray is going away. With CDs there will maybe be enough die hard audiophiles to keep the market afloat because they think it sounds better. My take is that streaming can sound as good or better than CDs (plus you get hi res in streaming), but it takes a lot more effort to optimize versus just buying a high quality transport and DAC and being done. I get it. But with movies, does anyone really care that much if streaming movies isn’t quite as good as Blu-ray? I’d say 95% of the population couldn’t give a crap and the convenience of streaming overwhelms any quality differences. It’s just not as important when it comes to movies, hence the demise of Blu-ray. I will say a major takeaway from this that I did not know was that I always assumed if you bought/downloaded music you owned it but apparently you do not and stuff you bought can still be yanked from you. That’s just flat-out wrong and scary. You don’t own the music but rather just the right to play the music. That was new for me and quite concerning. It’s a brave/scary new world. I’m not up on downloading but is it possible to ultimately download the music to a server? I’d think then you’d have it forever but not sure how that works. Like, if you buy something from Qobuz, can you ultimately download it to your own personal server? I’m admittedly ignorant in these things. Still scary. |
I dont miss physical format for music at all... I use digital lossless files... I could not keep a house for 10,000 albums. Nor for 10,000 books... Now a simple hard disk (double for security) contain all ... The only thing i miss is paper books... You cannot study very specialized books or deep one on screen... I do it because i do not have the choice... Reading on screen is like typing on a keyboard, catastrophic for memory and understanding when you are young...I am old then it is less a problem even if i can notice it... Writing cursive is fundamental neurological learning when young... Reading a difficult book writing in it or underlining sentences or going back and ahead at will is fundamental for memory dynamics. For music digital is paradise for my budget and my living space...
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Related, but a tangent, is the way AI is taking over our listening. Driving in my car it is impossible to ask for U2. Google keeps hearing it as Youtube and damned if I can specify "Play the irish band U2" Alexa for instance can’t hear "Halie Loren" but plays some random artist with a name that sounds like Lauren. And the number of times I wanted to hear a specific song from a specific artist and couldn't is often. |
I can’t deny the convenience of streaming. The problem I have is that we are at the mercy of whatever the streaming companies want to have in their library at the time, which is not a cultural or artistic decision, it’s based on negotiations which have nothing to do with anything but money. And that’s fine, streaming companies have a right to optimize their offerings. My concern is rather, being able to share beloved movies with friends and younger generations when the powers that be have decided they are not lucrative or no longer available in your market region. |
I have boxes of dvds and blu ray discs. I have a Sony blu ray player that I mostly use to play music videos in surround sound. I have a Pioneer Elite dvd player sitting in a box as a backup, but it doesn't do blu ray. I might watch for a deal on a blu ray player just to have one in the event that my Sony craps out. I really don't think a lot of what I have on media is available from streaming. At least not for free. |
I am happy to move on. I used to have a laser disc collection, then a room dedicated to (three walls of racks) VHS tapes, then DVD , then Bluray... I only bought a couple... what was the next thing... 4K disks. I am so done with physical media. A waste of resources and fills up huge amount of space in millions of homes. I moved on to Kindle books, then Audible. We had rooms full of books. Now only a few hundred leather bound. |
. i like me a good dose of film grain and the low-fi look of those spaghetti westerns on tape.
