You'd have to ask your kids.
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
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Time and technology march on. Streaming will soon take over from physical media and as some have observed, current replay means for video will become a niche like vinyl. Two reasons, first is cost to provider and the second is ease and range of access. One only has to look at computers to see a parallel. Thirty years ago we bought programs that we loaded, now we down load or use the cloud. More now moving to cloud access, particularly at the enterprise level. The same is happening to video, following the lead of music. I have over 1,000 CDs that gather dust for the most part. I suspect I am in the majority there. |
I was engaged in a similar discussion in 2009 with Macdadtexas where he claimed Blu-Ray was already toast because streaming was so convenient and good enough for most people including him. Fourteen years later we are lamenting the pending loss of the hard format. Streaming quality has improved in the interim, but there is a lot of texture in both sound and video quality between services and titles, and on average I much prefer the sound quality of Blu-Rays to streamed content. I think for audiophiles there is a lot be concerned about in losing Blu-Ray as an option as the streaming networks focus on the average consumer and costs. Perhaps once everyone has a very big data pipe from source to home this wont matter, and content providers will step up their game, but there seems little incentive now. I am going to start loading up on reference Blu-Ray disks ASAP. |
Streaming will soon take over from physical media Did you know the fastest growing category in audio is LP sales? https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/ Do you remember how 3D discs came and left without a whimper? I have a 3D capable setup and still like it. The good news is 3D discs are now found at around $3 a disc and up used. When 4K blue rays came out regular bluerays can be scooped up dirt chaep used. I go on ebay and buy cartons of CD's in storage cases for less than $1 a disc. In two years or so I will be doing the same with the 4K discs being sold today at $30 a pop or so. Of course I still enjoy streaming but when I can buy a disc for about the same cost of a rental online its easy to do both. BTW, if you want to make your media POP take a look at Zidoo players, yowsa!
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@kota1 LPs used to be the dominant force in music, then it diminished so far it was almost extinct. Growth from ground zero is not indicative of of shift in the masses consumption pattern. A good analogy is tube gear.
tues and vinyl will always be with us, Technology moves on and CDs, video media will remain, but drift into the edges of mainstream use. I personally prefer the sound of a vinyl rig, but have succumbed to the ease of streaming. Just like I store backups on the cloud instead of floppy disks, separate hard drives, or memory sticks. |
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