I think I’m going to finally buy a Blu-Ray player - blame Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli’s unwillingness to stream, although I also hope the upscaling that Blu-Ray players do can make my older DVDs a bit more watchable.
So: are Blu-Ray players simply commodity items now, and it doesn’t really matter what I buy? Or are there particular brands I should seek out or avoid? Does the upscaling of DVDs actually make much of a difference?
For example, I see on Carrefour’s website that there’s a Sony BDP-S1500 for $2990, and … oh … that may be the only Blu-Ray player on their website.
How would that work? Would a higher resolution player change the playback of lower resolution media?
For example, say you are watching a 720p film on a 4k TV. The quality of the 720p film won’t become better just because you are using better equipment. The same concept should apply to using a player capable of higher resolution to play a lower resolution disc.
The details of the tech are beyond my ability. They can’t make a DVD look like Blu-Ray, but they seem to be able to make the DVD look better than it currently looks on my vintage DVD player - I’m not sure how much better. (Plus that DVD player is increasingly flaky, so I wouldn’t mind getting rid of it.)
Quoted from the first link below:
Upscaling does a good job of matching the upscaled pixel output of a DVD player to the native pixel display resolution of an HDTV, resulting in better detail and color consistency.
However, upscaling can’t convert standard DVD images into true high-definition (or 4K) images.
Same problem here. Elife mall has the Sony and the Panasonic, same price, 3000 NTD. When I wanted to buy it, the vendor insisted that bluray was a waste, better get the little contraption that helps DL «extra content». For a while it was OK…until the government blocked all use of this contraption as illegal…Which it is.
I own several bluray disks, which complicates matters.
And I am not fond of «alternative media acquisition».
Yeah it’s frustrating - a lot of what I want to watch is available for legitimate streaming or in the iTunes Store, but a fair bit isn’t. And what’s available by other means is often of poor quality. Plus if I can buy something for a decent price, that’s what I’d prefer to do.
Arrrr… Piracy is fun and easy. And you don’t need anything special to do it. Your current PC will do it just fine, but you need a good GPU and CPU to fully utilize MadVR. I assume your PC is connected to your main display?
Ehem forum rules say we are not supposed to encourage illegal activities.
That said, I really do not like the image quality of most dl. I use it to watch content not available here but I do prefer good quality images, with subtitles. And rewatching, stopping, analyzing.
There are 1:1 copies of almost everything available. Bit by bit identical to the originals, and high quality reencodes that hold up well on my 140" screen are easy to find. Just need to improve your piracy skills.
Piracy isn’t illegal in every country.
I personally don’t believe in patents or copyright. I do believe in trademarks though.