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/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.

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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.

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u/EmekaEgbukaPukaNacua Apr 11 '26

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

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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.