Random Thoughts about TV, Film and Media (Page 11 of 11)

DVD's were fine, for about a decade.  When Blu-Ray came out, many studios began intentionally degrading their DVD releases on the same product.  Disney was notorious for this, as a way of showing off how much "better" BRD was.  In fact, it wasn't THAT much better.  The bit rate, sure, but given that 4K televisions did not become the "standard" until somewhat recently, there was often not a huge reason to have blu-ray's for close to a decade themselves, on older content.

Well, the first thing to look at would be what "extras" are on the discs?  For several years, DVD's mostly were sold with simple audio commentary track(s), trailers, a limited menu, and maybe a few deleted scenes.  This required minimal disc space.  Some studios like Warner Brothers often printed double-sided discs, one for widescreen and one for pan & scan.  After that first "wave," studios decided that they could start releasing other editions like director's cut, blah blah blah.  Yet, these would need to be additional discs in the case, so really no change.  With the advent of the blu-ray, and its well over 5x capacity increase from DVD, you could fit a larger film file (1080p) encoded at a higher bit rate.  However, you could also offer additional cuts, extras, and newly produced bonus content like interviews and documentaries, all on a single disc.  Well, when the studios go to sell them early on, they can't simply sell a blu-ray release, especially of a new film, you had to release a DVD or you'd lose out on millions of customers.  Since the DVD now needed to fit some (not all) of the litany of BRD extras, the studio would often sacrifice DVD bit rate to squeeze it on there.   Granted, many releases simply put the extras onto a second disc, but that's a cost associated.  Frankly, producing new bonus content wound up being a waste of money, as studies found the vast majority of it went unwatched. 

Now, obviously how the particularly movie you bought on DVD 15 years ago was shipped, in terms of extras and # of discs, etc., varied on a case by case basis. 

There are videophiles complaining incessantly on Reddit about 4K releases, and the type of BluRay disc being used.  They go crazy about whether a studio compresses to fit on a cheaper disc, when in fact the human eye is never going to discern the difference.  Perhaps in a screen capture, but who cares?  In fact, when they came out, people were screaming about how the studios often just took the DVD stream, and upscaled it, and sold you a 1080p version of an old film that your TV probably could have upscaled similarly, ha ha ha. 

The other issue is that many of the old forums and websites have vanished, but here's one where a customer was annoyed that Disney cheaped out and stuck too much on a single disc, and fouled up the video quality.

https://www.avsforum.com/threads/disney … tby=newest

That's unfortunate!

To me, I think of how the Universal DVD release of SLIDERS looks shockingly poor on DVD for Episodes 102 - 109, but if played on a CRT television, I don't think anyone could tell that those episodes looked any blurrier than the pilot or the subsequent seasons. I also doubt poor DVD bit rate was a problem until HD televisions started reaching 75 percent of homes by 2013, at which point DVD was already too low a resolution for the screen, and overcompression would make it worse. However, by 2015, it was pretty clear that DVD was going to fade in favour of streaming and, if anyone really wanted physical media, blu-ray for collectors.

Last night, in the depths of despair over how I can't properly upscale "Summer of Love" to "Luck of the Draw", I started looking on Kijiji for used CRTs. I saw one for $15 USD. Then I realized that while I have $15 USD, I have absolutely nowhere sensible to put a CRT television set because anywhere it could go is already occupied by a modern TV.

I've a really interesting program called ShaderGlass. https://mausimus.itch.io/shaderglass

It casts an overlay over the screen of a Windows PC, which you can apply to different windows or make fullscreen. It makes your screen mimic a cathode ray tube television with the dot pattern and the screen curvature and the crushed blacks. ShaderGlass made "Luck of the Draw" look like it did in 1995 for the first time since I'd thrown out my old CRT. And unlike an actual CRT, ShaderGlass doesn't cost or weigh anything or take up any physical space.

Anyone watch Terminator Zero on Netflix?

I don't love anime, but I think it's a pretty interesting story.  Almost all of Terminator is set in Los Angeles, and it's interesting to see the perspective of another location.  I have three episodes left, but I like it so far.

I also rewatched the original Terminator.  I forgot how much damage the Terminator takes.  He's not invincible, and he's pretty roughed up even before he gets blown up.  It ended up being a bit more realistic than I remembered - he's strong and doesn't stop, but he takes damage from car wrecks and falls.  I feel like some of that got lost as the series continued.

Yeah I have trouble connecting with the artwork, but I can get through it if the story is good.  And this story is pretty solid - after 40 years of Terminator stuff, it's a fresh look at the franchise.  They also take advantage of the fact that the Terminator is in a place where it isn't as easy to get guns.  So he has to improvise a bit more.

Yeah I understand that.  I do think they can be slow.

This one is 8 25-minute episodes.  I guess some of it could probably be cut but they try to do character development, and that means situations like the movies where the terminator shows up and then they escape.

I don't know, give it a shot if you're interested.  I'm curious what people think about it.