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[falconxcrunner09]

I know that Blu ray/local media will always be the best option picture & sound wise but I'm getting a little sick of having all these cases around and considering going all digital through Google Play or iTunes. Streaming obviously compresses the picture and the quality changes depending on your internet speed. But what about renting/buying (mainly buying) a movie and downloading it? Will the quality of a digitally downloaded movie still be significantly inferior to a Blu ray? Or are the differences so unnoticeable it doesn't matter?

 

[Owari]

I usually do the blu ray for special features, if the commentary ain't worth it I just go digital.

 

[captive]

In my opinion yes. From the few digital movies I've rented/bought.

If your tired of having cases around why not rip all your movies to a NAS and put your disks in a storage binder? Best of both worlds imo.

 

[JB1981]

Blu-ray bitrate for video and audio is objectively better but digital keeps improving

Oh shit for renting? Just rent man. It's not that noticeable. Amazon and VUDU streams look amazing these days

 

[falconxcrunner09]

In my opinion yes. From the few digital movies I've rented/bought.

If your tired of having cases around why not rip all your movies to a NAS and put your disks in a storage binder? Best of both worlds imo.

So for comedies, it wouldn't make a difference probably. But for something like a Pixar movie or Marvel flick, would you say you noticed a difference?

That's not a bad idea actually. I would have to get a Blu ray drive tho.

 

[_Ryo_]

Blu-Ray has a much cleaner picture than any digital alternative as the bitrate is much higher.

 

[pauljeremiah]

I've also slowed down on my purchases of blu-rays. I find iTunes stream HD at a decent quality via the Apple TV, I think the bitrate is slightly above Netflix bitrate. I find the iTunes store great for Indie releases and usually, bigger films release early on digital. Plus I can watch them on my iPad when travelling.

So now I buy about 90% of my film digitally and the bigger releases on Blu-ray or 4K, something like Star Wars or LOTR for example.

 

[rjinaz]

As somebody that has a nearly exclusive digital library, blu-ray is better. It just is.

That said, UHD on VUDU is pretty damn good if you have a tv capable.

Digital is just cheaper and easier and frankly, good enough for me. I own 100s of digital movies. After a while you won't miss them and won't remember the picture was a bit better.

 

[this_guy]

Blu Ray is better but Vudu and Amazon streaming are both good enough. Both look noticeably better than Netflix streaming.

 

[alr1ght]

Huge quality difference. Why not buy the blurays and rip them and put them on a NAS?

 

[marrec]

The quality difference is too much for me so I usually end up buying Blu-Rays (UHD Blu-rays now) if I really like the movie.

But just for renting or when I travel? Digital is fine.

 

[oatmeal]

Blu Ray is better for sure, but I can't go back after going to digital. I have a huge library on iTunes now.

 

[ckohler]

I watched a 1080p streamed movie (from Vudu) and there was a LOT of color banding in the skyline shots. Not deal braking but clearly inferior to what the Blu-Ray would look like.

 

[rokkerkory]

I like to watch blu ray for my favorite movies, everything else can be digital.

 

[captive]

So for comedies, it wouldn't make a difference probably. But for something like a Pixar movie or Marvel flick, would you say you noticed a difference?

That's not a bad idea actually. I would have to get a Blu ray drive tho.

yea.


I forgot another thing, despite having 150mbps down, frequently Hulu and Netflix "buffer" and the picture is frankly asstastic.

 

[SmackCrackleNPop]

I have almost 600 movies on iTunes and almost the same on Vudu.

Blu-Ray blows them away. Even at 4K streaming it looks comparable to a blu-ray. UHD is another story. The bitrate is higher, the sound is lossless. I only buy discs for things I want to collect and watch again and again. Plus a lot of movies include a digital copy for Ultraviolet and most of the time also iTunes/Google Play.

For most cases, especially renting, digital is good enough. Just watched Hell or High Water on iTunes. Looked great enough to me. (but I know blu-ray will be better).

If you're into extras, iTunes have offered extras for most new releases (on purchases) and Vudu has started to offer them too.

 

[cloud_sleep]

Blu Ray is better. You are able to see individual pores and hairs.

 

[Corpsepyre]

Bluray's the superior one here, quite easily. Higher bitrate, better audio, etc.

 

[TarpitCarnivore]

I think it depends greatly on the movie, but in a lot of cases HDX/UHD from Vudu is pretty damn good.

 

[Mr. Wonderful]

4K streaming is just about 1080p Blu-ray quality, bitrate-wise. In the next few years, it'll be indistinguishable from or even exceed 1080p Blu-ray quality with the AV1 video codec.

I haven't seen a UHD Blu-ray yet, but AVS swears there's another huge jump to UHD Blu-rays. I would believe it based off the demo (file-based) content I've seen. Even still, we're probably going to hit the "close enough" range for UHD streaming in the next few years as well and it won't be worth the hassle.

The only downside of digital is the reduced level of ownership due to the extreme DRM.

 

[Vyer]

BR is better quality, but with a good connection IMO streaming quality is fine.

 

[marrec]

I think it depends greatly on the movie, but in a lot of cases HDX/UHD from Vudu is pretty damn good.

I think it mostly depends on the size and quality of the screen. If you're watching the content on a smaller, low quality screen then it won't really matter.

Like, when I'm traveling I don't bring a Blu-ray player to watch shit on my iPad, I just stream it cause who cares at that point.

But there is a pretty noticeable drop in quality comparing HDX and even UHD from Vudu and physical media.

 

[TarpitCarnivore]

I think it mostly depends on the size and quality of the screen. If you're watching the content on a smaller, low quality screen then it won't really matter.

Like, when I'm traveling I don't bring a Blu-ray player to watch shit on my iPad, I just stream it cause who cares at that point.

But there is a pretty noticeable drop in quality comparing HDX and even UHD from Vudu and physical media.

My point was that if you're watching Sisters or Step Brothers you don't need Blu-Ray, but Fury Road or Moon or Aliens? Yeah, it's going to matter

 

[Yaboosh]

Huge difference especially in dark scenes in my experience.

 

[farisr]

Streaming/digital quality is fine for most people. But yeah it doesn't touch Blu-ray quality for most things. The apparent difference varies depending on source, size of display and how far you sit from it.

In my experience, streaming wise, 4k gets close to 1080p Blu-ray quality. Can't comment on full digital downloads for 4k yet, as I haven't done one.

 

[Wollan]

Streaming quality is really good these days and normal Blu-ray feels like diminishing returns. Streaming bypasses any bootup slowness and it has a large convenience advantage.

Games & movies & music I have transitioned to digital now. Also I'm renting more than buying movies with Amazon being my prefered service (with Netflix and HBO Nordic as base foundation).

 

[Slackbladder]

Yes. Generally blu-ray is just better, particularly audio as there are often multiple audio options. Bit-rate tends to be higher too (around 20Mbps to 8Mbps for streaming) so PQ tends to be better with blu-ray.
Streaming is simply very convenient particularly if you're real lazy and don't even want the hassle of posting a disc back that you rented. Not that it is of course. It's just the way some people are.

 

[hateradio]

BD bitrates are always higher than streams, because they don't care about the limitations of broadband.

 

[old manatee]

I grew up with an antenna on the house and VHS tapes, so a stream from Amazon looks pretty amazing to me for a rental. But I still buy blu-rays of my favorites because I watch all of the deleted scenes and commentaries because they look even better.

 

[Tagg9]

Here's a quick guide for you. If you really want to stream something, go with Amazon. They use the best encoding algorithms.

Blu-ray >>> Amazon >>> Google Play > iTunes

 

[mmazurkiewicz]

Amazon 4K is actually really good. It's difficult for me to compare to UHD Blurays because content is different, but shows like Red Oaks look really, really good streamed in 4K.

 

[CassidyIzABeast]

Huge difference especially in dark scenes in my experience.

Yep. Just compared Zero Dark Thirty on blu ray to Vudu HDX. It wasn't pretty.

Digital is perfectly watchable but if you're a stickler for image quality you'll find yourself being irked by dark scenes.

 

[JB1981]

Streaming quality is really good these days and normal Blu-ray feels like diminishing returns. Streaming bypasses any bootup slowness and it has a large convenience advantage.

This. So much.

 

[Big Blue]

If you're a casual movie watcher then go ahead, if you're serious about the PQ and especially the SQ if your movies, well you wouldn't be asking this question?

 

[Dio]

The higher the bitrate, the easier it is to properly see stuff on older 35mm transfers like that good old film grain. There's a reason why the BD rips of old 35mm anime transferred to bluray have gigantic file sizes to maintain the original bitrate.

Outlaw Star examples, lossless PNGs hosted at full size:

A lot of the finer details and film grain are lost first once you downgrade to a lower bitrate.

 

[Jesus Carbomb]

Huge difference especially in dark scenes in my experience.

This. Macroblocking during dark scenes can be pretty bad. It's like a bad reminder that you're still watching a stream.

 

[FreshCakes]

Depends what you're watching.

I try to stay away from action or dark movies if I'm streaming.

 

[DAVIDHUXLEY]

I watched a 1080p streamed movie (from Vudu) and there was a LOT of color banding in the skyline shots. Not deal braking but clearly inferior to what the Blu-Ray would look like.

I tried to watch Zodiac on Vudu. It had blotchy blacks I dragged by sad carcass to my blu rays and popped the disc in.

 

[Pachinko]

I've seen a handful of movies at a friends place thanks to itunes and ... well my opinion of it is thus - for rentals it's fine. If you don't have a good sound system and your TV was built before 2009 , it's also probably good enough.

I'd put the overall experience roughly on par with watching a movie on netflix. The biggest example of it being a bit weaker came when I sat through exorcist a couple months back , the blacks were just awful , banding everywhere. BUT if you don't know what that word even means and don't care ? well, hey it's easy to do and takes up no physical space.

I'd actually argue that it makes more sense to do TV this way than movies. Sure, TV shows will still also look and probably sound better on blu-ray but the whole affair is usually lower budget so the convenience of clicking a few buttons outweighs having to fill up a shelf with multiple seasons and switch discs.

 

[brianjones]

This. Macroblocking during dark scenes can be pretty bad. It's like a bad reminder that you're still watching a stream.

yup

streaming is super convenient and i welcome it as the future but you can't beat an actual BR disc for quality right now

 

[Fei]

If you care about quality, you should stick with blu ray at this point. Blu ray with digital copy is clearly the way to go these days.

 

[SURGEdude]

Since you already understand stuff like bitrates I think it really comes down to what you think is acceptable.

Certainly there is a difference and on paper in bandwidth terms it's pretty huge, and even more so with 4K Blu-Ray. But a lot of it is going to have to do with the screen and audio system you use.

For me digital is fine for most uses but I won't buy content on it for archival purposes.

 

[ghostwritingduck]

There's the quality difference, but owning the movie is even more important to me. What happens to your movie collection when VUDU goes away?

 

[system11]

BR is miles ahead of any streaming services that exist. It's better than streamed 4k too in some respects.

 

[Auron]

Definitely a quality difference. Renting digitally is fine, but always purchase the Blu-Ray if the picture matters to you.

Purchasing the physical version also ensures you don't lose your content in the situation your provider discontinues the service.

 

[SolidusDave]

I try to buy only Blu-rays of stuff I really like and/or that makes that quality bump shine (sci-fi/action blockbusters, movies with great cinematography/70mm and nature docs).
Or when there are sub $10 offers to fill up my movie collection.


Over the holidays I ripped everything in original quality and now I can watch them conveniently on my Plex server just like on streaming platforms... but better.

 

[GameAddict411]

Blu ray is still much better than any streaming service. The bitrate will probably even rival 4k streams. The good news that compression technology is improving with time and they will catch at some point . But if you want quality always get Blu ray.

 

[mjfor40]

(For a newbie)

What is a NAS and how does it work in this example?

 

[ClivePwned]

Bluray does 24fps, most of the download stores are 30fps.

I've done some A/B tests on things where I have discs and itunes versions. For the most part, unless it's a really grainy, but a pinsharp thing shot on really good film, there will be minimal differences. On modern TV shows and movies shot digitally, there's very little difference.

I have discs, itunes downloads and my disc library ripped and converted to MP4s to play through an Apple TV. On some films with a lot of grain, using the Apple TV 3 preset in Handbrake (as it was when I did this a year ago using an older version of HB since the current build has different presets) meant some films ended up being 20GB (almost the same size as the MKV ripped from the disc).

So basically, unless your eyesight is super pin sharp sitting uo close to a massive screen, there's very little to worry about watching a DD version over a disc. Unless you're really, really perceptible to judder from 24fps converted to 30fps.

 

[TronLight]

(For a newbie)

What is a NAS and how does it work in this example?

Network Attached Storage, think of it like a huge hard disk connected to your local network. Usually it's more than a single HDD, but you see them as one on your PC.