this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2024
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It's sensible for businesses to shift from physical media sales. Per CNBC's calculations, DVD sales fell over 86 percent between 2008 and 2019. Research from the Motion Picture Association in 2021 found that physical media represented 8 percent of the home/mobile entertainment market in the US, falling behind digital (80 percent) and theatrical (12 percent).

But as physical media gets less lucrative and the shuttering of businesses makes optical discs harder to find, the streaming services that largely replaced them are getting aggravating and unreliable. And with the streaming industry becoming more competitive and profit-hungry than ever, you never know if the movie/show that most attracted you to a streaming service will still be available when you finally get a chance to sit down and watch. Even paid-for online libraries that were marketed as available "forever" have been ripped away from customers.

When someone buys or rents a DVD, they know exactly what content they're paying for and for how long they'll have it (assuming they take care of the physical media). They can also watch the content if the Internet goes out and be certain that they're getting uncompressed 4K resolution. DVD viewers are also less likely to be bombarded with ads whenever they pause and can get around an ad-riddled smart TV home screen (nothing's perfect; some DVDs have unskippable commercials).

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[–] victorz@lemmy.world 38 points 2 months ago (4 children)

When someone buys or rents a DVD, they [...] can also watch the content if the Internet goes out and be certain that they're getting uncompressed 4K resolution.

I'm sorry, is this a special version of DVD that can store 4K video? Uncompressed?

[–] todd_bonzalez@lemm.ee 28 points 2 months ago (1 children)

4K BluRay discs are compressed with HEVC. There's no way to get consumer 4K video uncompressed.

Uncompressed 4K@30fps requires A 6000mbps data rate. BluRay caps out at 144mbps.

A 90 minute movie would be 4TB. BluRay caps out at 128GB.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Exactly. And a regular DVD caps at 4.7 GB if I'm not mistaken. Not even close.

[–] Malfeasant@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That's just single layer - dual layer is something like 8.4 if memory serves (which it often doesn't...)

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

a regular DVD

Yep, single-layer.

[–] TheImpressiveX@lemmy.ml 20 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They're talking about 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, which was introduced in 2016. The video is still compressed, but it's still much higher quality than DVD and Blu-ray, and can hold 60-100 GB of data.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

But they wrote "DVD". I'm just nitpicking.

[–] TheImpressiveX@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Ah, gotcha. It's annoying when people use "DVD" as a catch-all term for all optical media.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It is 😅 Words have meaning!

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Exactly. I can't play Bluray disks in my DVD player. That's a pretty important distinction.

[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's easy as long as you're okay with only being able to fit probably 1-2 minutes of video, the resulting disk not playing in any consumer player ever, and probably not even being capable of real time playback on a powerful PC with a fast drive.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

😅 I'm not sure if I am, to be honest.

[–] Gestrid@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

At the very least, it's still (generally speaking) higher quality video than streaming. It's not uncompressed, though.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Surely not? DVD is 576p/i (PAL) and 480p/i 💀. Not even 720p. 720p looks like garbage on a 4K display IMO. I really hope you are getting higher resolution from your streaming services than that, otherwise I think you're getting ripped off. (Streaming services are a ripoff to me regardless, but that's another point.)

[–] Gestrid@lemmy.ca 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Others replying to the comment included Blu-ray, so I did, too. I assumed it was a given to include that since others had already brought it up.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

No harm done. I'm mostly just being facetious. 😅❤️

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

No, you're absolutely correct. Many people just don't realize how crappy the resolution is on DVD, and I would hate for people to buy some and be surprised at how bad it looks.

I ripped all of my DVDs because I have them, and combined they're something like the size of one or two 4k Blurays. So don't go out and buy a bunch of old DVDs if Blurays are an option for you.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

combined they're something like the size of one or two 4k Blurays

Ha! That's pretty funny to me.

I think that would be a fun hobby for me, if I had the time for it. To gather a sizable blu-ray collection, and rip into a smaller size media library. There's so much to get into though, with all the codec options and settings and quantizing and shit. Mind-boggling when you haven't even started researching yet. 😅

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Well, just start somewhere and optimize as you go. I've got an 8TB NAS (two 8TB drives in mirror), and it's not even halfway full, despite having a ton of DVDs and Bluray rips. I haven't bought many Blurays lately bags because Netflix was good enough, but I'm getting back into it.

DVD max quality is 480p, and it takes up ~2GB for longer movies at super quality m4v format with Handbrake (the first Hobbit movie was 2.5GB). 1080p Bluray rips are like 10x that.

I accidentally ripped a few with the wrong settings, but it's easy to redo it. So just get started, but make sure you have plenty of disk space. I use Jellyfin for watching on my TV and it works pretty well and was pretty easy to set up.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Yeah I have like 16 TB of raw storage (no backups, kek) but I'm nearing filling that up soon actually. 🏴‍☠️😅

But I do intend to set up a NAS and a Pi or something that talks to the NAS and serves Plex or (preferably) Jellyfin. Also it would act as a seed box.That would be sweet. I don't know where to start looking into what I need though. I want a Pi because it should run 24/7 and reboot very seldom, and it needs to be small because I live in an apartment and don't have a basement or anything like that. This is all so I can let my desktop computer rest when I'm not using it.