Are we best going back to physical media

I've got around 750 Blurays and around 200+ UHD's and I won't be swapping any of them for streaming. Streaming has it's place, I use it myself BUT there are serious quality issues and the lack of hi res sound drives me mental... but that's me and 99% of the population do NOT CARE for DTS-X sound etc hahaha... I do... I recently watched one of the recent David Attenbrough programs on netflix and looked lovely then I realised I had it on disc... basically did the pepsi challenge and was night and day... the disc won hands down. HWOEVER the Netflix version I can see people being blown away with...

It's that old thing that you don't know what you don't know. So people will stream and be blown away with the picture quality and that's fine on their £500 quid TV but for us other who's invested in high grade equipment I don't want to 15mb/s stream when I can be enjoying 100mbs discs in all their glory. However, ultimatly physical media will be a thing of the past as the mass population control what is successful it's as simple as that. People want to stream, they're ahppy with the quality and that's that... and until streaming gives me disc quality in BOTH visual and audio then it's also my secondary choice!!! Once you'd heard a DTS-X or a true high res Atmos sound track... everything else is 2nd rate.
 
theone8181 said:
Surely you're only gaining atmosphere here, or does you player go straight into your TV (in which case why not the amp first)?
Click to expand...

Sorry, should have better explained myself.
Our AV processor is "legacy", i.e. capable of BD level of audio, but not Atmos.
Our new TV is a 4k OLED and we stream directly to the TV.

If we used an external device via the processor, we wouldn't get 4k video.
Via the TV, the outputs to an AV processor, the options are either EARC (which is NOT compatible with our processor) or SPDIF. So to date, we've been limited by the audio bandwidth capabilities of SPDIF, which is DD/DTS only audio, i.e. compressed audio.

The new device connects to the EARC output of our TV, such that we stream directly to the TV, the EARC to the new device, and the device extracts uncompressed audio and squirts audio only to our processor. Hope that makes sense.

As mentioned, despite the benefits of moving from compressed (lossy) to uncompressed audio, the missus would rather stick with SPDIF such that she can use the same remote control for volume aswell as channel selection.
 
So people (my missus included) can barely tell the difference between the higher quality SD and HD TV broadcasts. She can when I point it out, but she'll quite happily sit there and watch an SD channel when there's HD available. She really doesn't care. I can find that quite annoying. Especially if I come into the living room and find out I can't turn it over to the HD channel because she's paused it and it's out of sync.

At least I've managed to remove the DVD player otherwise she'd still be watching them.
 
inogen said:
So people (my missus included) can barely tell the difference between the higher quality SD and HD TV broadcasts. She can when I point it out, but she'll quite happily sit there and watch an SD channel when there's HD available. She really doesn't care. I can find that quite annoying. Especially if I come into the living room and find out I can't turn it over to the HD channel because she's paused it and it's out of sync.

At least I've managed to remove the DVD player otherwise she'd still be watching them.
Click to expand...
Yep my missus is the same... even in the cinema room I'm like wow, look at Guardians Of Galaxy 2 which is reference PQ and she's like yeah it's nice in that "I don't care" tone lol
 
inogen said:
So people (my missus included) can barely tell the difference between the higher quality SD and HD TV broadcasts. She can when I point it out, but she'll quite happily sit there and watch an SD channel when there's HD available. She really doesn't care. I can find that quite annoying. Especially if I come into the living room and find out I can't turn it over to the HD channel because she's paused it and it's out of sync.

At least I've managed to remove the DVD player otherwise she'd still be watching them.
Click to expand...
Show her a plus 24 channel on sky compared to a HD one, if she can't see the difference get her eyes tested:cry:. My post above was mainly due to (unless I'm mistaken), no streaming service does lossless audio so you don't lose anything using spdif vs hdmi.

I'm thinking of streaming services though, are you streaming from a home server in which case it makes sense.
 
Broken Hope said:
You say that like CD isn’t a superior format.
Click to expand...

I'm saying that for owners of '80s and early '90s vintage stack systems the fidelity of CD was a moot point because the sound systems were often crap.

The most common benefit for users at that level was that CDs didn't crackle on playback. I heard this comment frequently. IOW they were no longer listening through the sound of frying bacon.

My own vinyl didn't crackle like that, and that's because I took care of it. A girlfriend of the time even commented that she had never heard one of my records skip. For her that was a novel experience.
 
hornetstinger said:
I just get blank faces when I tell them their flat panel TV has crap sound quality lol
Click to expand...

Yeah because for the majority of people it's not something they care a great deal about in life. Most of us on this forum are people who'll stress about the tiniest of differences in things and spend weeks reading up on products before buying them.

It must be quite nice to not have the same concerns over every materialistic purchase.
 
Physical media is never "coming back" and will only keep dying out. The next gen consoles will surely finally move away from optical media drives. There are not many people that can afford to consume films/games who can not afford an internet connection.
 
Ayahuasca said:
Yeah because for the majority of people it's not something they care a great deal about in life. Most of us on this forum are people who'll stress about the tiniest of differences in things and spend weeks reading up on products before buying them.

It must be quite nice to not have the same concerns over every materialistic purchase.
Click to expand...

Nearly everyone has something that's important to them: clothes, shoes, food, alcohol, their hair, the house, the car, their team, nails, makeup, tattoos, fishing gear.. whatever. We just happen to be interested in tech. There's nothing wrong with that.
 
jaybee said:
Physical media is never "coming back" and will only keep dying out. The next gen consoles will surely finally move away from optical media drives. There are not many people that can afford to consume films/games who can not afford an internet connection.
Click to expand...
I hope they don't as you lose the 2nd hand market and they could charge the earth on ps store and xbox marketplace, imagine steam none sale prices:cry:.
 
lucid said:
There's nothing wrong with that.
Click to expand...

For the most part, yeah. When it gets to the point where you're telling multiple people that their "flat screen TV has bad sound quality" and you're met with blank looks, I'd argue there's an element of self-awareness needed.

I'm sure there are plenty of items that @hornetstinger owns that would be considered bad quality in comparison to what others have.
 
Ayahuasca said:
For the most part, yeah. When it gets to the point where you're telling multiple people that their "flat screen TV has bad sound quality" and you're met with blank looks, I'd argue there's an element of self-awareness needed.

I'm sure there are plenty of items that @hornetstinger owns that would be considered bad quality in comparison to what others have.
Click to expand...

People aren't aware just how crap sound is, from mobile phones,.tablets, flat screen TV etc
 
Ayahuasca said:
For the most part, yeah. When it gets to the point where you're telling multiple people that their "flat screen TV has bad sound quality" and you're met with blank looks, I'd argue there's an element of self-awareness needed.

I'm sure there are plenty of items that @hornetstinger owns that would be considered bad quality in comparison to what others have.
Click to expand...


Well I don't have a trinnov altitude 32
 
theone8181 said:
But you're forgetting the vast majority just don't care (although the soundbar market has taken off quite well).
Click to expand...

This is true, but it’s also relative. I’m reasonably happy with my modest viewing/audio setup, but I bet there’s someone else with a bigger TV, a better amp and a top tier set of speakers, who would swear blind they can’t understand how I can live with my ‘lesser’ gear :D

At the time, I could have bought a small 2nd hand car for the price of my speakers alone. I feel I get ‘value’ from them - my wife would think I’d lost the plot - but I’m fully aware there are bigger and better available. Everyone has to draw the line somewhere. I don’t think any less of those happy with sound from their TV, phone etc. they have simply found their level of compromise.

Edit - I’m still a big fan of physical media (I still choose to buy audio cds for example), but I know the game has moved on and it won’t be turning back :(
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom