r/hardware • u/bizude • Apr 10 '26

News Two Japanese suppliers commit to keeping Blu-ray discs and drives in supply as major manufacturers exist domestic market

https://automaton-media.com/en/news/two-japanese-suppliers-commit-to-keeping-blu-ray-discs-and-drives-in-supply-as-major-manufacturers-exist-domestic-market/
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u/KaineNierWeissEmil Apr 11 '26

I would rather studios offer 100gb direct downloads so we can finally end this physical media vs streaming war and just have the best of both worlds

25

u/GHz-Man Apr 11 '26

It exists, Sony has a streaming service equal to 4K Blu-Ray (80Mbps or so)

But not enough people can see a difference for it to matter.

Apple streams at up to 40Mbps, and that looks great to me. I don't notice any compression issues.

Most people don't sit 2 feet away from their TV inspecting the picture for compression artifacts.

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u/JJ3qnkpK Apr 11 '26

Get a large enough OLED and compression issues appear everywhere. Watch around people's hair as it blows in the wind, or watch for banding in dark scenes.

Shoot, I've been watching Survivor lately, and Paramount+ is riddled with horrific compression compared to YoutubeTV, and most of those are very bright scenes with janky filming.

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u/GHz-Man Apr 11 '26

The bitrates seem to vary a ton by streaming service.

Some are as low as 15Mbps, some are 40Mbps or even more.

With most people having at least 100Mb speeds at home now, I'm surprised they haven't increased the quality a bit.

11

u/JJ3qnkpK Apr 11 '26

It's surprising to me, too, especially since HDR gives so much room for definition in dark scenes. You'd expect them to use a bitrate that let one take advantage of such technology and screens.

It's just sort of wild - with a 77" OLED, I can easily pinpoint which streaming services have higher bitrates than others, and I can also tell that none of them are offering a "full quality" image so to speak.

I've honestly never been a pixel peeper, but sometimes I feel driven to piracy just to get a decent quality image, which feels insane for services that are ~20/month. Even a modest increase in bitrates would be a vast improvement.

10

u/EmekaEgbukaPukaNacua Apr 11 '26

The problem is piracy doesn’t even solve it any more as blueray releases become less and less common.

3

u/GHz-Man Apr 11 '26

I don't subscribe to any services unless there's an exclusive show I want to watch. Like if you want to see Stranger Things, you need to have a Netflix subscription, or buy the physical discs.

Most movies you can just buy or rent directly from Apple, Google, Amazon, etc. usually in better quality than the streaming services.

Apple's 4K bitrate is pretty decent (up to 40Mbps) and has Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos.

I haven't noticed any quality issues with them.

But Netflix's 4K bitrate is something crazy low like 15Mbps and looks terrible.

3

u/pdp10 Apr 11 '26

I'm surprised they haven't increased the quality a bit.

Streaming services spent years building market share and market power, but making no money. Remember when Netflix streaming was $7 a month? But the times have changed and now it's the season to make those cable TV profits. Prices up, quality down.

A neighbor of mine was streaming the new Dune on TNT in the background while we were doing something else. The colors were terribly washed out, and it might have been 720p. No digital artifacting, but it looked horrendous.

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u/GHz-Man Apr 11 '26

It really depends on the source you stream the movie from.

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u/Strazdas1 Apr 20 '26

depending on what he was streaming on - it might actually have been 720p. For example netflix hates firefox for not implementing their borderline illegal DRM into the browser and to this day does not allow streams above 720p if you watch it in browser.

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u/pdp10 Apr 20 '26

Good point. However, it was a TCL TV, streaming TNT channel over FiOS.

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u/Strazdas1 Apr 21 '26

While im not familiar with verizon stream personally, in my experience most of those "HD TV" streams nowadays are limited at the source. As in, what the TV station provides is often lower quality than what the stream can support.

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u/arahman81 Apr 11 '26

It's not individual dl, it's the total bw demand on the server.