Bass13 Posted March 16 Share Posted March 16 On 15/03/2024 at 11:06 PM, MLXXX said: Although I was an early adopter of 4K Blu-ray I find little motivation in 2024 to buy 4K Blu-ray discs, given that 4K streaming comes so close in video quality, and there is such a wide variety of streaming material from which to choose. Valid point, to be honest it seems that these current 4k players imo, are way too expensive....the way that things are going via streaming movies/etc, unless you have a exceptional theatre room & gear to match, then you might want the last bit of excellence, otherwise most shops/retailers will be stuck with them unless they slash the price by 50%.. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
betty boop Posted March 17 Author Share Posted March 17 for anyone wondering what the latest release james Cameron 4k uhd blu-ray compare to their digital versions worth having a look at below, while clearly not comparing the audio side would have to be a blind freddy i would say not to pick up the quite obvious differences in picture between physical disc vs streamed...but i understand totally where folk are not too bothered and happy enough with the digital vs physical disc... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MLXXX Posted March 17 Share Posted March 17 (edited) 5 hours ago, betty boop said: for anyone wondering what the latest release james Cameron 4k uhd blu-ray compare to their digital versions worth having a look at below, while clearly not comparing the audio side would have to be a blind freddy i would say not to pick up the quite obvious differences in picture between physical disc vs streamed...but i understand totally where folk are not too bothered and happy enough with the digital vs physical disc... You use the words "while clearly not comparing the audio side would have to be a blind freddy i would say not to pick up the quite obvious differences in picture between physical disc vs streamed". Why do you say "streamed"? Is that what the video discussion in the second video you linked to is primarily about? I just sampled a little bit of the video discussion and I heard reference to a Full HD Blu-ray. (There is also reference to a "digital version". I dimly recall low bitrate digital versions of movies being available for playing on mobile phones.) What different versions does the second video compare exactly, @betty boop? It seems that on the one hand is a premium 4K Blu-ray release. It is not apparent to me what the other version(s) is/are. As I say, I have not watched the whole of the second video. * * * My take on the video in the opening post is that it suggested it was very hard to see a difference between live viewing of a 4K blu-ray of a title and 4K streaming of that title. I don't know which streaming service was used for that first video. I am assuming it would have to have been a 4K service streaming a 4K source. Edited March 17 by MLXXX Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
betty boop Posted March 17 Author Share Posted March 17 more comparisons 4k uhd blu-ray physical disc vs 4k streamed via loki and disney plus, this time Prey 4k whcih is a stunning disc and Loki. Again you'd have to be blind freddy to not see the benefit of the 4k physical discs with the comparison shots shown.. not even comparing audio whcih we know is quite some steps ahead with what comes off disc...and he talks of the dolby atmos mix and what brings to the mix via disc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MLXXX Posted March 17 Share Posted March 17 5 minutes ago, betty boop said: more comparisons 4k uhd blu-ray physical disc vs 4k streamed via loki and disney plus, Al, where does this guy describe his methodolgy? Where does he provide objective information about the capture methods employed? For example, what fraction of the original frame widths is he showing at the top in this video? He talks a great deal about his subjective impressions. Looking at this third video even with YouTube set to HD I see screen captures displayed at the top that appear radically different. On the top left is a brighter looking image. On the top right is a darker and softer image. Relative brightness can be a question of HDR settings. But the softness shouldn't be as obvious. It very hard to reconcile with the video you linked to in your opening post. There the differences were quite subtle according to the 3 person panel of observers. (albeit that they did not have side by side comparisons available). I'd be much more impressed with full size still frame captures. Over the years, other people have done this comparing DVDs with Full HD Blu-rays. and with 4K Blu-rays I'd mention that the quality I get on Australian 4K Netflix is nowhere near as bad as this third video would seem to suggest, for a 4K streaming service. (I have to assume the presenter was using 4K services for his comparisons in this third video.) The presenter is obviously passionate, but this video of his woefully lacks technical rigour, in my humble opinion. Perhaps he has posted full size still images somewhere else: there may be copyright exceptions that would apply to allow selected frames to be published on the internet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cloth Ears Posted March 17 Share Posted March 17 On 15/03/2024 at 9:56 AM, georgehifi said: (maybe it's the well thought out linear power supplies in hiend CD players are higher quality than the off the shelf SMP's in streamers/modems/wifi setups etc) Cheers George (and then, a well designed SMPS is equal to if not better than a linear PS - but we have moved off topic) 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MLXXX Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 (edited) A quick Google search came up with the comparison video below. A lot of the time it shows full frames (sometimes with the left side the 4K streaming version, and the right hand side the 4K Blu-ray version). I'd recommend this video. Although some 4 years old, it's very well done, with plenty of comparisons. The streaming source was Apple TV 4K. A lot of the time there are quite noticeable differences in the side by side comparisons, though as the presenter says this can in some instances amount to no more than a "pixel peeping" exercise, rather than identifying something that would necessarily be noticeable in general viewing. Sometimes differences are not noticeable even when pixel peeping, e.g. for Mission: Impossible – Fallout . I have set the YouTube video below (which is available in 4K resolution) to start where this is presented (at 4 minutes into the video):- Edited March 18 by MLXXX Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MLXXX Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 (edited) It's a while since I last looked into this but my understanding is that streaming services like Netflix on occasion (or even normally) have access to higher bitrate 4K masters than the versions disseminated on 4K discs. And so when they (or their supplier) encodes for a lower average bitrate for 4K streaming (say 15Mbps) they are working from a higher bitrate source. They are not re-encoding a 4K physical disc. In a lot of movies there are relatively static scenes involving dialogue. In such scenes, bitrate is not as critical. And so streaming can look very similar to the picture from a 4K Blu-ray disc. In action movies, bitrate can be critical, of course. It's interesting watching older action movies where part of the action was created with cgi. You can often notice a blurring and a lot of use of subdued colour, e.g. teal. This was because the computer hardware of the era would have taken too long to render complex action scenes in full detail. Edited March 18 by MLXXX Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cloth Ears Posted March 19 Share Posted March 19 18 hours ago, MLXXX said: It's a while since I last looked into this but my understanding is that streaming services like Netflix on occasion (or even normally) have access to higher bitrate 4K masters than the versions disseminated on 4K discs. And so when they (or their supplier) encodes for a lower average bitrate for 4K streaming (say 15Mbps) they are working from a higher bitrate source. They are not re-encoding a 4K physical disc. In a lot of movies there are relatively static scenes involving dialogue. In such scenes, bitrate is not as critical. And so streaming can look very similar to the picture from a 4K Blu-ray disc. In action movies, bitrate can be critical, of course. It's interesting watching older action movies where part of the action was created with cgi. You can often notice a blurring and a lot of use of subdued colour, e.g. teal. This was because the computer hardware of the era would have taken too long to render complex action scenes in full detail. So you are saying Netflix have a different version of the movie? Doubtful in the extreme. Knowing Netflix and their business model, I highly doubt they would fork out for a different version of the 4K master - assuming one even exists. IIRC, no-one uses uncompressed 4K streams (at nearly 1500Mbps or 600Mbps for 24fps movies, it's too unwieldy), so it's all a matter of how compressed do we want it to be. Take the latest Titanic. It's been encoded onto a 100GB disc, which works out to be about half a GB per minute (9MBps or ~70Mbps). So, if you've got a very fast connection, you could stream this at the same rate. Assuming that you have no degradation of service, no-one else is trying to use 4K in your household, etc. Often, even a quarter of the bitrate is fairly close to achieving the same picture quality. 'fairly close', which is good enough for most streaming services. And, if it's smooth, it's still a cut above the 'Full HD' (why TF they have 'HD' and 'Full HD' I will never know). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MLXXX Posted March 19 Share Posted March 19 20 minutes ago, Cloth Ears said: So you are saying Netflix have a different version of the movie? Doubtful in the extreme. Knowing Netflix and their business model, I highly doubt they would fork out for a different version of the 4K master - assuming one even exists. I didn't make an assumption. I relied on my memory of what I had read. Netflix don't simply decode an existing Blu-ray and re-encode it at a lower bitrate (a process known as transcoding). They get source material direct. A quick search a moment ago of a Netfix blog yielded this: "To ensure that we have high quality output streams, we need pristine video sources. Netflix ingests source videos from our originals production houses or content partners. ... Our preferred source type is Interoperable Master Format (IMF). " ..." You may be aware that public cinemas don't simply play UHD Blu-ray discs. They have received digital movies in DCP format. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
betty boop Posted March 21 Author Share Posted March 21 (edited) From how to geek, a whole host of reasons why blu ray discs even are better than 4k streaming video … it’s quality over quantity folks .. it’s not just about number of pixels ! I saw this myself buying the Emma blu- which is a stunning movie by the way shot with arri Alexa with arri and zeiss lenses with 4.5k source and 4k digital intermediate … so when the iTunes(Apple movies) 4k popped up I grabbed it, but found it waste of time brought nothing more over the blu-ray … Why Even 1080p Blu-rays Are Better Than 4K Streaming Video https://www.howtogeek.com/872777/why-even-1080p-blu-rays-are-better-than-4k-streaming-video/ Grab Those Blu-rays While You Can “There's a good chance that Blu-ray will be the last mainstream optical format. Going ahead, your only option may be to buy or rent digital movies and series. Of course, just like you can buy lossless digital music today, you'll likely get to buy massive digital video files that equal Blu-rays in quality. Then again, it will be some time before routinely downloading 50GB of data for a single movie becomes commonplace.” Edited March 21 by betty boop 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MLXXX Posted March 21 Share Posted March 21 (edited) 2 hours ago, betty boop said: Why Even 1080p Blu-rays Are Better Than 4K Streaming Video https://www.howtogeek.com/872777/why-even-1080p-blu-rays-are-better-than-4k-streaming-video/ That article is almost disinformation, in my opinion. In some cases what is says may hold, but typically it would be wrong. I don't know why there is so much apparent bias against streaming by some writers, whether that bias be due to ignorance, or intentional. I find that in practice with Australian Netflix, 4K streaming looks better than a 1080p Blu-ray for drama feature films, where bitrate is not such an important issue. I watch a great deal of 4K Netflix and I find the added clarity and the vividness of the colour very appealing. This is with a 70'" flat screen TV at about a 3 metre viewing distance. (Our cable NBN has plenty of bitrate capacity, and is quite reliable, so the stream remains at 4K; it does not fall back to lower resolutions and bitrates.) I also note that 4K provides the possibility of HDR whereas 1080p Blu-rays lack that capability. The article does actually make a concession for HDR where it states: One area where 4K streaming has a distinct advantage over standard Blu-ray movies is when it comes to dynamic range. Only 4K UHD Blu-rays support HDR, but it's becoming common with 4K streaming. A good HDR 4K stream will knock the boots of a standard 1080p Blu-ray without HDR. At least when it comes to this particular feature. Edited March 21 by MLXXX Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
don Posted March 21 Share Posted March 21 (edited) We have Netflix 4k/atmos and Disney + streaming and the sound and visual quality is good, but IMO the 4k blu ray atmos discs still sound superior to my ears than the streaming content and is definitely my first preference for favourite content. Sometimes the visuals on the streaming content are also a litte patchy. We have 100 mbs data rate but I guess its not always there whereas the blu ray dics are always consistent. Edited March 21 by don 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
betty boop Posted March 21 Author Share Posted March 21 15 minutes ago, don said: We have Netflix 4k/atmos and Disney + streaming and the sound and visual quality is good, but IMO the 4k blu ray atmos discs still sound superior to my ears than the streaming content and is definitely my first preference for favourite content. Sometimes the visuals on the streaming content are also a litte patching. We have 100 mbs data rate but I guess its not always there whereas the blu ray dics are always consistent. i suspect we are in the same camp Don, we have apple movies, netflix, prime, brit box, recently let go disney + as we are not getting value... i see you mention sound.. this is without doubt audio wise streaming does not compare at all with its lossy audio nothing like what is even possible with blu-ray with its losses and 3D audio on top. we too have top level 100 mbs internet. but the streaming platforms hardly go anywhere near that and suspect there are issues of inconsistency as well though the discs is something can always rely on 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MLXXX Posted March 21 Share Posted March 21 7 minutes ago, don said: but IMO the 4k blu ray atmos discs Yes I don't think there is too much dispute in relation to a 4K physical Blu-ray disc that it can be expected to hold its own against (if not outperform) 4K streaming, in terms of the picture quality, with current typical 4K streaming rates. But @betty boop has now introduced into this thread the subject matter of how 4K streaming compares with a Full HD Blu-ray. The suggestion that 4K streaming is typically inferior in picture quality to watching a 1080p Blu-ray is quite a contentious suggestion. Arguably, that subject matter merits a separate thread, if there is interest in pursuing it in detail. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bass13 Posted March 21 Share Posted March 21 Al, you are right with many points you mentioned... 1 hour ago, betty boop said: i see you mention sound.. this is without doubt audio wise streaming does not compare at all with its lossy audio nothing like what is even possible with blu-ray with its losses and 3D audio on top. Agreed 2 hours ago, betty boop said: From how to geek, a whole host of reasons why blu ray discs even are better than 4k streaming video … it’s quality over quantity folks .. it’s not just about number of pixels ! Agreed, no doubt with a good UHD player & system you would enjoy the movie & experience more so, even if it wasn't a dedicated room or a full on setup.... as you mentioned "quality over quantity" is so true, we are just spoiled for choice these days, like an all you can eat restaurant to a fine dinning one. That's technology 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bass13 Posted April 5 Share Posted April 5 @betty boop Not sure if this is your cup of tea, its not 4k, but in Blu-ray, Yello Live In Berlin...this sounds magic on the streamer, dare say it would too on CD, the Blu-ray should be a ripper too, especially on good players with the added bonus of watching it. Yello Live In Berlin Yello Blu-ray $49.99 · In stock, at Sanity.com.au, not sure if its cheaper elsewhere... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zinzan Posted April 6 Share Posted April 6 There is an emerging view in some Home Theatre discussion circles that the long held belief that "streaming of audio is inferior to disc" may be because of something as simple as dialnorm level encoded in the track. That is to say, the streamed version of a track is a few to many db's down from the equivalent disc. When a stream and a disc are level matched, the ability to 'tell the difference' between the two, particularly in blind testing, melts away. This is a fascinating discovery, and bound to shock our faithful to the core. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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