The Death of DVD

[JoeAwesome]

Blu-Ray players were “backwards compatible”, so that helped DVDs last longer. Blu-Ray players were and can still be expensive compared to DVD players, but that’s obviously been narrowed over time.

HDTVs have become commonplace, but I’d guess there’s still a small percentage which hasn’t shifted over, honestly.

Other related thoughts: kids DVDs are still being produced, and parents may choose to save $5 to play a DVD on built in player for a CRT since they think kids won’t care about fidelity.

Lastly, don’t ask the DVD if Blu-Ray was successful; ask the HD-DVD.

[Ziggy]

HDTVs are commonplace, but the real question is 1080 or 4K? DVDs still look awesome on a 720p or 1080p HDTV, and most would agree it's better to watch DVDs on a widescreen than a 4:3 SD CRT anyway. So if DVDs will look good on an HDTV and they're cheaper than BD, then why spend more money? I didn't really start collecting BDs until years after I had a 720p, and not even a whole lot after I got a 1080p TV. I started to get more and more BDs as they became cheaper, but DVDs are cheaper still. It would depend on the movie. If it was just some comedy I could get for $5 on DVD or $15 on BD, I would grab the DVD every time. If it was something I felt like I might actually enjoy in HD over SD, then I might splurge for the BD. More recently though I decided to try and shift more toward BDs since when my 1080p TV dies I'll probably replace it with a 4k set. I'm not sure how DVDs look on a 4k TV, but I'm sure BDs look noticeably better. That being said, I have a larger than average DVD collection, so I really hope they look passable on a 4K set because I wasn't planning on getting rid of it anytime soon.

This topic is so old I got a reply notification for it . I don't know the last time I held a DVD. I have a few movies but they live in my parents basement a hundred miles away. Can't say I've really been jonesing for my LOTR set.

Ryan The Slaya, what is up!?! Haven't seen you around here in a long time. It's always nice to see an old regular pop back in.

[RCBH928]

Are DVDs cheaper? They seem around the same price range now, in earlier times I am sure BD version was more expensive. I don't get why they do this, 2 optical discs one much more expensive than the other. My only bet is they are using the "sell it at what the customer is willing to pay, not on a margin of what it costs to make". They are asking even more for 4K ones, meanwhile on iTunes they upgrade your HD bought movies to 4K for free which makes me believe it really doesn't cost a thing to go higher quality.

I personally can't tell if its DVD or bluray running on my 1080P TV unless you come close to the screen which by then you can see the DVD artifacts. I am sure some hardware upscaling magic is happening in the background. Upscaling might be another thing that that gave DVDs a longer lifetime.

@Anapan

nice updated avatar.

[Ziggy]

Are DVDs cheaper?

Yes, DVDs are pretty much always cheaper in all cases. Even now. It all depends on the movie. Here's two examples right now on Amazon.com. Uncle Buck DVD is $3.99 and the BD is $4.99, so that's a no-brainer. Return of the Living Dead Part II DVD is $9.99 and the BD is $22.99, so that's a little tougher of a choice. And those prices aren't because they're out of print or something, both of those examples have Amazon.com as the seller.

I don't get why they do this, 2 optical discs one much more expensive than the other. My only bet is they are using the "sell it at what the customer is willing to pay, not on a margin of what it costs to make".

I get your point, but there can be many legitimate reasons. The biggest is probably that people have to get paid to remaster it. DVDs are 480 standard definition. When they want to release the same movie on BD, they have to remaster the film for the higher resolution. The soundtrack might even have to be remastered to use newer encoding methods. And because most people will probably think "why would I buy the same movie for more money" they more often than not make new covers, include new or more bonus materials, et cetera. All the people that did all of the work for the BD release have to get paid.

There might also be legal stuff with the copyright holders. Maybe a music license ran out, maybe the IP changed hands or was acquired/absorbed, maybe a studio or publisher holds the rights to the movie but another company holds the rights to the home media releases. Maybe there's a ton of copies of a movie on DVD in warehouses so the price point is $2.99, but for the BD release a bunch of people want a bigger piece of pie.

I personally can't tell if its DVD or bluray running on my 1080P TV unless you come close to the screen which by then you can see the DVD artifacts.

It totally depends on the movie. DVDs definitely got better looking as time went on, some early DVDs can look pretty bad compared to later ones. Then there's just some releases that didn't try at all and just look like trash. I guess it also depends on your TV and player. If you have a bad TV, that might help close the gap between DVD and BD. And it depends on the upscaler as well (could be the player and/or the TV).

[isiolia]

Other related thoughts: kids DVDs are still being produced, and parents may choose to save $5 to play a DVD on built in player for a CRT since they think kids won’t care about fidelity.

DVDs still outsell Blu-rays in general, much less 4K Ultra discs (though disc media in general has declined significantly). For kid's movies, it's a lot less likely to be a matter of CRT display, and more likely something like an AV system in a van or SUV, where streaming may not be a great option.

[o.pwuaioc]

Am I really missing out on something by not investing in Bluray? It always seemed that DVD was good enough for me. I know the very early HD stuff was a major turn-off (I think people hadn't got a handle on their TV's settings), but even now I don't want my movies to look like soap operas. As an analogue, I love 24 FPS and loathe 48 FPS movies (like The Hobbit movie, thought it looked just awful).

[Ziggy]

Am I really missing out on something by not investing in Bluray? It always seemed that DVD was good enough for me. I know the very early HD stuff was a major turn-off (I think people hadn't got a handle on their TV's settings), but even now I don't want my movies to look like soap operas. As an analogue, I love 24 FPS and loathe 48 FPS movies (like The Hobbit movie, thought it looked just awful).

Well some BD releases have more bonus content (or at all) if you're into that sort of thing. The larger capacity disc also comes in handy for longer movies. It wasn't very common for a longer movie to be split across multiple DVDs, especially after dual layer discs came out, but it did happen. It also helps for TV series, a full series box set will usually come on less BDs than the DVD counterpart. But as far as just watching stuff, no, you're not missing much since most DVD looks great on HDTVs. My only fear is how DVDs look on 4K sets since I haven't tried that yet.

I know I've told this story at least once before on this forum... If the price is right I like to get the DVD/BD combo pack if possible. I once watched through a movie and when I went to put it back in the case I realized I watched the DVD and not the BD lol. I mean, if I was paying attention at all I would have noticed. But it made me realize how good DVDs can look on HDTVs.

[isiolia]

Am I really missing out on something by not investing in Bluray? It always seemed that DVD was good enough for me. I know the very early HD stuff was a major turn-off (I think people hadn't got a handle on their TV's settings), but even now I don't want my movies to look like soap operas. As an analogue, I love 24 FPS and really loathe 60 FPS movies (like The Hobbit movie, thought it looked just awful).

If you actually care about the technical aspects, then there's quite a bit you miss out on by going with DVD over Blu-ray, much less UltraHD discs.

Related to 24fps, for instance, the standard format for Blu-ray is 1080p/24. Higher framerates than that, on standard Blu-rays, mean dropping to 720p. While UltraHD does technically support 60fps even on 4k, content is still almost always the same 24fps that theatrical films almost always are (the 48fps Hobbit n' such being rare exceptions).

Meanwhile, the DVD format was designed around playback on NTSC or PAL compliant TVs. NTSC is 29.97 frames per second, twice that in interlaced fields per second. Converting 24fps content to that means inserting frames, something that film to TV/VHS/etc had been doing before, via Telecine.
How that's stored on the disc can vary. For plenty of things, it's 23.976 fps and converting things to 29.97 interlaced video is done by the player. So, a capable player can also just ignore all that and play the video as stored. Or it may need to reverse the process to display it....it might be non-anamorphic...etc. Lot more variables to take into account.

'course, that's also something that 60hz TVs have to do in some way, since 24 doesn't go into 60 evenly. Bump up to 120hz, and it's just showing each frame five times, etc.

Blu-ray also supports significantly better audio formats. Even before the current positional audio ones, it offered lossless codecs almost as a given. DVD can be good, but you can also end up with very compressed audio tracks as discs get packed with extras. That's why Superbit discs cut so much of that out, in order to maximize actual movie data on disc.

On top of that, as mentioned, Blu-ray releases may be newer masters of the film. At this point, we're even seeing new editions of movies already on Blu-ray, benefiting from remastering being done for 4k. As tends to get pointed out, this is actually a much bigger deal for older movies, particularly for 4k discs, as a lot of modern content is mastered at 2k anyway. A fresh scan of a 72mm print can look spectacular on UltraHD...where the latest Marvel movie is basically an upscale of the Blu-ray with HDR grading.

Plenty of folks don't have the setup to really see much of a difference though, or just legitimately don't... I'm sure the holidays will be once again filled by people suffering through watching motion-interpolated films on their parents TVs

[RCBH928]

I noticed that BD quality has a bitrate of 40Mbps, since we now have 1Gpbs doesn't it make sense that streamed content should be on par or higher than BD? but its not. I am only guessing the compression is to force lower server loads, to download a 5GB HD movie is lighter than 25GB.

Am I really missing out on something by not investing in Bluray? It always seemed that DVD was good enough for me. I know the very early HD stuff was a major turn-off (I think people hadn't got a handle on their TV's settings), but even now I don't want my movies to look like soap operas. As an analogue, I love 24 FPS and loathe 48 FPS movies (like The Hobbit movie, thought it looked just awful).

Not really. When you think about it people were happy and excited to watch movies on VHS(pre-dvd). As I said, I can't tell if the movie is DVD or BD. I am not sure if my upscaler is doing a great job, or a lot of BD releases are just bad transfers from DVD. I must say though I have another player on an another tv brand and the DVD looks absolutely horrid as in unwatchable like I can see blocks like avi file from 1996. Maybe it has to do with wrong settings I don't know.

I think movies with a lot of modern special effects shine in HD/4K but something like "Meet The Parents" not so much.

On top of that, as mentioned, Blu-ray releases may be newer masters of the film. At this point, we're even seeing new editions of movies already on Blu-ray, benefiting from remastering being done for 4k. As tends to get pointed out, this is actually a much bigger deal for older movies, particularly for 4k discs, as a lot of modern content is mastered at 2k anyway. A fresh scan of a 72mm print can look spectacular on UltraHD...where the latest Marvel movie is basically an upscale of the Blu-ray with HDR grading.

Its interesting they are putting the investment and effort to do remasters for 4K BD because I imagine the sales are really low as people with 4k tvs and 4k playes and in the market to purchase 4k movies seem to be really niche now days. I will guess its the same master they will use for all streaming service, digital downloads,...and 4K BD to make it worth the investment. Although as I mentioned earlier they are upgrading people's 1080P purchases to 4K for free, thats unlike the studios we have known that try to mark up everything with every new release.

[o.pwuaioc]

Am I really missing out on something by not investing in Bluray? It always seemed that DVD was good enough for me. I know the very early HD stuff was a major turn-off (I think people hadn't got a handle on their TV's settings), but even now I don't want my movies to look like soap operas. As an analogue, I love 24 FPS and really loathe 60 FPS movies (like The Hobbit movie, thought it looked just awful).

If you actually care about the technical aspects, then there's quite a bit you miss out on by going with DVD over Blu-ray, much less UltraHD discs.

Related to 24fps, for instance, the standard format for Blu-ray is 1080p/24. Higher framerates than that, on standard Blu-rays, mean dropping to 720p. While UltraHD does technically support 60fps even on 4k, content is still almost always the same 24fps that theatrical films almost always are (the 48fps Hobbit n' such being rare exceptions).

Meanwhile, the DVD format was designed around playback on NTSC or PAL compliant TVs. NTSC is 29.97 frames per second, twice that in interlaced fields per second. Converting 24fps content to that means inserting frames, something that film to TV/VHS/etc had been doing before, via Telecine.
How that's stored on the disc can vary. For plenty of things, it's 23.976 fps and converting things to 29.97 interlaced video is done by the player. So, a capable player can also just ignore all that and play the video as stored. Or it may need to reverse the process to display it....it might be non-anamorphic...etc. Lot more variables to take into account.

'course, that's also something that 60hz TVs have to do in some way, since 24 doesn't go into 60 evenly. Bump up to 120hz, and it's just showing each frame five times, etc.

Blu-ray also supports significantly better audio formats. Even before the current positional audio ones, it offered lossless codecs almost as a given. DVD can be good, but you can also end up with very compressed audio tracks as discs get packed with extras. That's why Superbit discs cut so much of that out, in order to maximize actual movie data on disc.

On top of that, as mentioned, Blu-ray releases may be newer masters of the film. At this point, we're even seeing new editions of movies already on Blu-ray, benefiting from remastering being done for 4k. As tends to get pointed out, this is actually a much bigger deal for older movies, particularly for 4k discs, as a lot of modern content is mastered at 2k anyway. A fresh scan of a 72mm print can look spectacular on UltraHD...where the latest Marvel movie is basically an upscale of the Blu-ray with HDR grading.

Plenty of folks don't have the setup to really see much of a difference though, or just legitimately don't... I'm sure the holidays will be once again filled by people suffering through watching motion-interpolated films on their parents TVs

(I meant 48 fps, like the Hobbit, not 60. My bad. You must have been working on this post for a while, though!)

I've never owned a 4K TV, and given that I watch movies so rarely and even more rarely enjoy a "cinematic experience," I can't see me adopting one any time soon. My current TV is a Sony Bravia rear projection set, which I bought chiefly because of the s-video but also because I somehow had it in my head that it would play old lightgun games. Nope. Now I'm considering going back again to a late-era CRT, but at least my games look good on it.

So yeah, visually I guess I wouldn't be able to see much or any of a difference in Blu-ray with this TV? But the sound is a good point. I just don't know if I want to buy yet another thing to go under my TV when all I really use it for is playing games from the 80s and 90s or the occasional movie.

@RCBH928: Despite my nostalgia for it, I can't go back to the VHS era. The waves and warp and rewinding was just too much. They have charm, for sure, but not enough to overcome DVD's superiority.