How to gracefully transition my collection to Blu-Ray?

[cardinal biggles]

I've had a Blu-ray player for a little over 3 years now, and while I generally buy new/missing titles on Blu-ray, I haven't gone for mass replacements the way I did when I transitioned from VHS to DVD. The ones I have upgraded are titles I really love -- some Disney films as they come out of the Vault, Firefly and Serenity, the LOTR trilogy, the James Bond and Harry Potter films, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Buckaroo Banzai, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. And I'll certainly think about upgrading if a film is getting a reissue from Criterion, Arrow, or Shout Factory. It's way too expensive to upgrade every time a new format comes out, so my advice is to pick and choose what you really, really want in HD.

Similarly, last time I was at Barnes & Noble, they had a shelf-friendly copy of the complete Peter Capaldi run on Doctor Who (Seasons 8-10). It cost about $50. On the same shelf, they also had Season 10 individually for $70. WTF?

A lot of the British TV has higher list prices. Each complete season of the revived Doctor Who usually has a list price of $80 on DVD, and they haven't come down. Ever. In 14 years. Perhaps in recognition of this, the BBC recently put out less expensive box sets (one for Eccleston/Tennant, one for Smith, one for Capaldi; not sure what special features they might or might not include from the original sets), but haven't withdrawn the old complete season sets.

 

[Qonundrum]

I haven't seen much in-person 4K demonstration or anything, but I think it's mostly a sham. As this random blogger says (because I've looked, and failed to find, much professional writing/arguing in favor of 4K), standard 1080p blu ray pretty much maxes out the detail 35mm film can capture. Take a look at this enlarged portion of a frame from Dunkirk:

Standard blu on the left, 4K blu on the right:

Okay, there may be a tiny difference in quality, but again, this is an enlargement of a frame, meaning the difference is pretty miniscule indeed, and, when one adds in the confusion of motion, are you really going to be able to tell which is which? And, more to the point, is the image on the right worth $10-15 more per movie than the one on the left?

Now, that's a scan of a 35mm frame, and digital photography can of course take higher-resolution footage natively, but if 35mm/1080p was good enough for decades of theatrical projection, I tend to think it's good enough for the vast majority of home consumers. My 1080p projector shoots a razor-sharp image onto a screen seven feet wide and four feet high, which certainly feels like a theatrical experience from the distance of my couch, some 14 feet away.

(I do admit, however, that while DVDs are certainly watchable when upscaled via blu-ray players, especially in cases where HD versions aren't available, I've come to regard DVD cases as fundamentally unsightly and best kept hidden away. Whoever decided blu ray cases, despite delivering genuinely superior picture, should be smaller than DVD ones, made one of the best marketing calls of the millennium, IMHO.)

It doesn't help that most 4K releases are nothing more than upscaled @k and given a slight sharpening effect:

https://referencehometheater.com/2013/commentary/4k-calculator/

2K DIs: The dirty secret
One thing people don’t realize about 4K as well is that most Hollywood content today is only 2K. When they edit a movie in Hollywood, they do so using a digital intermediate. On this DI, they do all the special effects, color correction, and final editing. In almost all cases they do it at 2K resolution because either they haven’t upgraded their systems to support 4K, or it would be too expensive or time-consuming. Special effects, in particular, take much longer to do at 4K resolution so they almost never are done this way.

This means that even films that use 4K, 6K, or even 8K cameras often produce a finished product at 2K resolution. The image will be sharp and free of artifacts thanks to the higher resolution in the capture, but when you get it at the end everything is done at 2K resolution. 4K discs of these movies, including huge titles like Guardians of the Galaxy 2

and Wonder Woman

, are only upscaling 2K images to 4K resolution on the disc.

The good news is that these movies also have HDR and WCG, which make more of an impact than the extra resolution does. The problem is that if you have a TV that is only 4K but can’t show HDR and WCG correctly if at all, you aren’t getting any benefit from your 4K TV. The image would be almost identical when looking at a 4K UHD disc, where a 2K DI is scaled, or a Blu-ray disc, where the TV does the scaling. There might be some small differences, but nothing to make the price difference or upgrade worth it.

Which is why I looked at features other than "the megapixel myth". 4K sets will likely never show dead or stuck pixels due to the density, so they won't be sent to the landfill nearly as soon (and company not perceived as making junk the moment one pixel is stuck in just the wrong color (or stuck in the on or off position, being even more glaring). HDR, WCG, and other image processing algorithms (including faster frame rates for those who like the fluid non-filmic feel, say that with a mouthful of crunched up saltine crackers) are the biggie.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

I really hate that motion smoothing. Thankfully, I found the setting to turn that off on my TV pretty quickly.

I can’t wait until I can just download them into my brain. Am going to clear out junk I don’t need like my birthday or anniversary and address etc.

While it takes longer, I think I basically manually did that with repeated rewatches of a few key films in my childhood, like the Back to the Future trilogy and the first couple Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies.

A lot of the British TV has higher list prices. Each complete season of the revived Doctor Who usually has a list price of $80 on DVD, and they haven't come down. Ever. In 14 years. Perhaps in recognition of this, the BBC recently put out less expensive box sets (one for Eccleston/Tennant, one for Smith, one for Capaldi; not sure what special features they might or might not include from the original sets), but haven't withdrawn the old complete season sets.

A few years ago, Costco had some slimmed down complete season releases of the first 4 or 5 seasons of the new series at about $20 apiece. I already owned all of them but it was a nice deal.

One thing that this has gotten me thinking of is just how many movies I own that I genuinely never watch, movies that I thought were pretty awesome when they first came out but quickly lost my interest. This gives me a perfect excuse to ruthlessly cull the herd.

Starting out, probably the first titles up for replacement include pretty much all of the Marvel stuff, Stargate, Star Trek, Sherlock Holmes, Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, Highlander, Terminator, and Underworld. (Seriously, if there was ever a franchise where black levels matter, it would be Underworld.) Phase 2 is probably where I would start to look at DC movies, Muppets, James Bond, Wes Anderson, Alien, Jurassic Park, Mission Impossible, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and maybe some scattered comedies. I'm also thinking that I'll start with a general rule of no cell animation and no black & white movies (with the possible exceptions of Alice in Wonderland, Casablanca, and Ed Wood).

How does the original Star Wars trilogy hold up on BluRay?

 

[Kerock]

I remember I spent a whole year setting the VCR up everyday so at 5:00 it would record TNG. The reruns were showing all in order and I didn't want miss one episode in my new collection. Three episodes to a VCR tape. It was going to be so cool. I wound up with boxes of tapes.

A year later it came out on DVD and the old VCR tapes were such low quality by comparison they were un-watchable. For years the kids would stumble across boxes of "Dad's old Star Trek Tapes" tucked away here or there. It became something of a joke in our family. Same thing happened to my fantastic 8-track and cassette collections...lol.

Just count on replacing your collection a couple of times in your lifetime and enjoy the upgrade....vcr dvd blu ray 480p 720p 1080p 4k 8k it will never end.

 

[KimMH]

While it takes longer, I think I basically manually did that with repeated rewatches of a few key films in my childhood, like the Back to the Future trilogy and the first couple Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies.

Oh. My. Oh. Mind blown

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Thing is, I didn't really have to deal with this much during the VHS-to-DVD transition since I owned very few VHS tapes and most of those were animated films that I had no interest in revisiting during my early adulthood. The only movies that I bothered upgrading were Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, Star Trek, Star Wars, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And even then, I had to pace myself since they weren't all available on DVD at the beginning. The original Star Wars trilogy wouldn't be released until 2004 and the Star Trek movies were dribbling out at a leisurely pace since I was waiting for the 2-disc Special Collector's Editions.

I think it's funny how BluRay has been around for 13 years now but has still failed to kill DVD while DVD had essentially buried VHS in half the time.

 

[Amaris]

Thing is, I didn't really have to deal with this much during the VHS-to-DVD transition since I owned very few VHS tapes and most of those were animated films that I had no interest in revisiting during my early adulthood. The only movies that I bothered upgrading were Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, Star Trek, Star Wars, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And even then, I had to pace myself since they weren't all available on DVD at the beginning. The original Star Wars trilogy wouldn't be released until 2004 and the Star Trek movies were dribbling out at a leisurely pace since I was waiting for the 2-disc Special Collector's Editions.

I think it's funny how BluRay has been around for 13 years now but has still failed to kill DVD while DVD had essentially buried VHS in half the time.

The leap from VHS to DVD was clear to everyone, including the layman, and even on the cheapest TV made at the time. The jump from DVD to Blu-ray is evident, but it isn't as huge a deal because DVD changed everything. Blu-ray is just a continuation of that, and 4K probably doesn't even seem like a huge change from 1080p, not for the average person who just wants to watch their favorite TV shows they remembered from the 70s, 80s, and 90s.

Plus, it was on DVD that we saw that explosion of TV franchises. Blu-ray isn't going to have the same impact, and 4K/8K is irrelevant for shows people watched 10, 20, 30 years ago.

 

[bigdaddy]

Plus when VHS died there was no streaming. So people I think rather just watch things via streaming than buy a bunch of movies again.

 

[Enterprise is Great]

If I ever go 4K I'm not going to upgrade anything. I'll just start buying 4K blu-rays. I don't see as much difference between blu-ray and 4K as I see with DVDs and blu-rays,

 

[Amaris]

If I ever go 4K I'm not going to upgrade anything. I'll just start buying 4K blu-rays. I don't see as much difference between blu-ray and 4K as I see with DVDs and blu-rays,

This. I'm sure it's in there, but if I have to really focus to see it, then the upgrade (mostly in price!) simply isn't worth it.

 

[Teelie]

Just to give you a heads up, but the PS4 Pro doesn't play 4K Blu-rays. The XBox One S and X both do, but I have an S and the 4K player is pretty shitty on it too. So, I went with an LG 4K Blu-ray player. They're pretty reasonable now and not super expensive. I think I may have paid $120 for it (also be sure to invest in some good 4K HDMI cables. I bought the Cinnamon cable from Best Buy and it does a good job )

Thanks for the heads up. I may still get the PS4 Pro and get the seperate 4k player.

 

[cardinal biggles]

Plus when VHS died there was no streaming. So people I think rather just watch things via streaming than buy a bunch of movies again.

Netflix has half as many titles available as they did when I first joined because of their shift into original programming, and all their Disney titles will go bye-bye at some point after Disney+ launches. The stream giveth and the stream taketh away.

 

[Amaris]

Netflix has half as many titles available as they did when I first joined because of their shift into original programming, and all their Disney titles will go bye-bye at some point after Disney+ launches. The stream giveth and the stream taketh away.

Hence why I have my DVD/Blu-ray collection. I want to watch a movie on my terms, rather than on the whims of a streaming service that might lose distro rights at any moment.

 

[Kerock]

I am going to keep my old collections so I have something to watch after the apcolypse (lol)....but when I want to watch..........I will probably stream.

 

[Gary Mitchell]

 

[Amaris]

You can see the difference!

 

[JoeZhang]

Oddly I don't own any DVDs and never have but did start buying 4K discs when I upgraded the TV last time.

I notice Columbo has been remastered in 4K so I'll be looking out for that.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I have a 4K-capable TV and Blu-ray player but mostly only buy Blu-ray discs as very little content makes the additional cost of 4K BDs worthwhile.

I'm still holding out for a cheaper release of 2001 on 4K BD but it's still inordinately expensive in the UK. However, even the ordinary BD release revealed flaws such as marks in the back projection during the Dawn of Man scenes so the 4K release probably reveals even more defects.

 

[McDuck]

It's quite remarkable how lazy streaming has made me. Why go all the way into my office a whole room a way, choose from one of hundreds of DVDs/BDs, open the tray on my dvd player, put the disk in, click a few buttons on the remote, then watch it.

My god, I need to take a moment just to process how much work that is - just by thinking about it!

And the uncanny part is I still buy BDs/some DVDs (rarely) - but I download the digital copies and watch those. I tend to get extra pissy if they don't come with a digital copy.

Can't say I've ever repurchased a DVD as a Blu-ray, though. Even on my 65" 4k, the quality is lost on these shitty old eyes.

 

[BillJ]

About the only thing I've religiously upgraded from format to format over the years is Star Trek. Though I still need to pick up Star Trek (2009) and Into Darkness on UHD.

The XBox One S and X both do, but I have an S and the 4K player is pretty shitty on it too.

I have the Xbox One S in my living room, hooked up to my 65" 4K HDR TV and haven't noticed any real shortcomings in its performance. Though the interface could use some work. I have a cheap LG player in the bedroom.