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I was just flicking through eBay and saw Night Watch it was only £2 it's been over twenty years since I watched it (where has time gone) more a minor curiosity and pre Brosbond nostalgia on my part, the films are very much TV movie standard decent cast though.
Got a collection of about 500 DVD’s and I want to update them to Blu-ray. I intend to buy only my very favourite films, should be between 120 and 150 films.
However, does Blu-ray present the viewer with the very best resolution and is it still going to last for some time?
At this rate, I'd wait for 4K UHD - they'll only get more and more popular from here on out, and I'd wager by the time you finally make the transition and spend all that money, you would realize you would've been better off making a 4K upgrade instead.
In that case, I think I’ll just wait for a while. When do you think the Bond films will appear on that new format? Is it a matter of months or years?
I think I can claim to be "in the know" somehow, having over 2,000 disks about two-thirds of which are Blu-ray by now. I watch them via an eight-year old (by now) Epson Full-HD projector (recently changed the bulb for the first time) on a screen with a diagonal of 4.2 meters (roughly 14 ft., for those who don't understand the metric system).
Even at the cinema, I like to have seats that sort of immerse me in the movie. Which is contrary to most people wanting to sit far back, but then, I'm past the age of going to a theatre for having a couple of quiet hours with some crush of mine. So at our home theatre, we placed the seats (a fold-out sofa, by the way) so close to the screen as to just not see the individual dots of the image. Which means about 3.5 meters viewing distance.
All I can say is that I'm still totally thrilled by the sharpness of BDs, and I'm having serious problems to imagine it could be noticeably better in 4K (I also never developed any interest whatsoever in 3D). While I'm sort of a perfectionist in general, I especially see no reason to upgrade considering the costs. Older BDs are now cheaper than the DVDs I had bought in the first round (2002 - 2010), and I replaced the large majority of my favourite movies which I had on DVD (and a part of them, VHS before that) by the BD version...even quite a few I had never watched on DVD and which were still shrink-wrapped, since I lost the urge to see the "inferior" version.
My personal take is that I'll stick with BD, in 2D, for as long as the system is offered. While I'm buying far too many movies that I don't seem to manage to actually watch, I'm not ready to pay three or four times as much for a technically superior version I won't watch either. So Blu-ray is a compromise that satisfies me totally at this time.
They're currently available for 4K streaming via iTunes, but in terms of a native 4K UHD release, it has yet to be dated. Having said that, I'd bet all the money in the world that if we don't see them in 2018, they'll most certainly coincide with the theatrical release of B25, much like they did with the missing blu-ray versions of the Bond installments as we geared up for SF's release in 2012.
A 4K upgrade may not be noticeable or even necessary to a lot of people, and that's fine, different strokes for different folks, but I definitely notice quite the uptick in quality. Of course, that varies from film to film. Stuff like Kingsman: The Golden Circle was absolutely mind-melting to me in terms of quality - akin to just peering out my window, it seemed so lifelike. Then you have stuff like the original Blade Runner, which I honestly didn't think would get much better than the blu-ray version, until I made the upgrade and couldn't believe just how much detail and minor intricacies I was missing out on.
I have a chromecast too ideal for mirroring my tablet when out and about.
@Seven_Point_Six_Five you should start the thread and call it something like Media Entertainment, Past, Present and Future.
I’ll be starting TDKR later tonight. The IMAX scenes in TDK looked excellent, even just the random exterior aerial shots. It’s a shame more films don’t include their IMAX sequences in Blu-ray. I was so bummed when it was announced that the Batman v Superman Blu-ray wouldn’t include the IMAX aspect ratio. All that time and money put into shooting in IMAX that can only be appreciated for several short weeks in IMAX theaters. Such a waste.
A Bluray player would upscale your DVDs even more, you can get good Bluray players for around £50 now.
Yeah you can play dvd's on HD ready Bluray Players and Full HD Bluray players, I have been watching The Saint colour series dvd with Sir Roger, the dvd's look great on my Bluray player and that's a show from 50 years ago.
https://www.mi6community.com/discussion/18620/home-entertainment-and-media-past-present-and-future
Bargain of the week for me.
@j_w_pepper, I could not agree more. I'm also insanely envious of the home theater you have, you lucky sonuvagun.
My stance on Blu-ray vs. 4K is the same. I've seen comparisons of both formats and when it gets down to it you're paying even more for 4K just to get some slightly better textures to the image in a higher resolution, which isn't enough for me, frankly. The jump from DVD to Blu-ray was much more dramatic and advised, as you were getting an insanely restored image, better sound for the audio and an altogether more well rounded picture that was like nothing you could've gotten with the DVD copy. It was a whole new world, basically, from standard to the dazzling land of HD possibility. The jump from Blu-ray to 4K is less of a whole new world and more a slightly nicer looking part of that new world that you can travel to if you wish, but I don't feel you'll miss anything if you stay where you're at. 4K currently doesn't demand you make the leap like Blu-ray did from DVD in its day.
Like you I am already astounded by how movies look in restored Blu-ray, speaking of my favorite classic films like Casablanca or even the 60s Bonds, that I'm more than happy sticking with Blu-ray for the foreseeable future. I also think that I'll respond to the market, as was the case with the jump from DVD to Blu-ray. About the time that Blu-rays became so ubiquitous and DVDs became sort of old fashioned collectibles, it was time to make the leap and the prices fluctuated to make Blu-rays advisable to pursue. Every format has its beginning years before it really takes hold of the market and necessitates a jump from the old to the new, and I think we're still in the early, early stages of 4K. 4K also demands a higher chunk of your wallet, meaning it will take even longer for it to take hold of the market as Blu-rays did with DVDs in much simpler times. And even still, all you're getting is a jump from nice HD to nicer HD. Not interested.
We also share a problem of picking up movies we don't watch for a long while, but with how many Blu-rays I see on the cheap these days I can't resist taking up those bargains. I've built up my collection by an insane percentage in just this last year because of the sales I've seen, and it's a nice place to be in. With 4K making its way on the stage, it's a good time to go back and pick up cheap Blu-rays we've missed. And there's still restored movies coming out on Blu-ray as we speak that make staying with the format extremely sensible. A double feature restoration of Robert Mitchum's Philip Marlowe films from the 70s just released this week that I'll be ordering very soon, and that was a long time coming to Blu-ray. Much to be excited about still as 4K only just debuts itself.
The only area where I've had any digital purchases is in the video game market, and that's only when I see a super cheap deal I can't pass up. But it's a new thing for me, as I'm very much a tangible kind of buyer. This non-material digital world we're heading into can be scary.
Masterful film.
Great movie I will get all Nolan's films in 4K at some point.