I switched to 4K discs earlier this year, for the same reasons - no dropouts, no blockiness, no sudden resolution changes. Precaching would solve a lot of these problems (it's how movie theaters get their films now - via encrypted download). But I do prefer owning the physical media.

I figure that most of the streaming titles will be lost in time. Sure, the equivalent of "Casablanca" will still be available. But series that people are fond of but weren't good enough to win awards .. they'll vanish into the ether.

The theater versions are also compressed at a much higher bitrate (although I believe using a not-as-good codec as h265). I've heard 500GGB+ for a 2HR film.

Yeah it’s individual JPEG2000 images, which is definitely...a way to do it.

My prosumer cinema camera (sigma fp) records video with individual dng files and a wav for audio. I think it’s not that unusual.

I would imagine a big advantage for the production team is being able to screen it and pause on any single frame and have it be perfect - consumer codecs all seem to use keyframes, which certainly save a lot of space, but if you start on a non-keyframe you either get no output or pixel puke until the next one.

They mark which frames they're referring to, so you at most just get a little stutter to decode those other frames if you're optimizing for the scrubber use case.

Not sure how much benefit there is in h265 over h264 or something like j2k at high bitrates, at low rates h265 certainly is beneficial.

Either way 500GB for 2 hours is still significantly compressed - over 90%.

Standard UHD 10 bit 30 bits a pixel, even at just 24fps is 384021603024 = 6gbit/sec just for the video alone without audio, ancillary information, and container overhead. I suspect movies work in 12 bit too, and work at 4k, so that's 409621603624 = 7.7gbit/second, or about 7TB for a 2 hour movie.

Were movies ever displayed at this bitrate in regular theaters?

My understanding is that it isn't even used in the cameras. It's compressed, at the very least losslessly, immediately.

ah yes, having to store 6 gbit/s on a (somewhat) portable device is best avoided.

> they'll vanish into the ether.

Not as long as piracy is a thing they won't. It will just be illegal to own them.

Considering how many unseeded episodes are floating around out there, good luck.

I've had no issue getting any episode of anything. You might just be looking in the wrong places.

You should be downloading season packs instead.

Why would I want to pirate when the company making it will take me money?

Because they have a habit of removing stuff, and/or retro-actively censoring shows to fit in with whatever the latest witch hunt is. :(

I've not had this with anything I've "bought". If it were confiscated I certainly would have no qualms in downloading a copy.

If something is removed from netflix, that's fine, I'm not paying to buy things I watch on netflix - I'm paying to rent them. I wouldn't copy them any more than I'd copy a VHS I'd rented from blockbuster back in the day.

This. When all else fails, and this is the only way, then it is the way. I, too, am more than happy to pay $ for a high quality physical media, but if they aren't satisfied with my one time purchase, and instead choose to force me to pay for each subsequent rewatch if that is what I desire, then they will no longer get my business, and I'll find other ways to get what I want. Why should I not?

> I figure that most of the streaming titles will be lost in time.

At least there, legislation has us covered - most movie, TV and text products have to be submitted to national archives.

What does that have covered? There's already plenty of digital release only stuff.

I don't mind the streaming so much as I mind the bitrates and lack of lossless audio. There is still a very clear quality difference between UHD BluRay and 4k streaming services.

There are also large differences between the different streaming services. For example: prime Video is quite bad, while Apple TV+ is quite good.

Then there is also the absolute ridiculousness of Sky Showtime, a brand new streaming services that launched in 2022 without 4k or Atmos support.

Audio quality is another big factor with streaming media. Streaming media likes to heavily compress surround sound effects. While discs aren't perfect, they usually have a more immersive audio experience because of less compression