The fact that 720P is being streamed is also lame, but I think it’s even worse that this should be shared this way…
I’m glad I chose to buy a Blu-ray player instead of opting for streaming services. Online content is actually the best option, but you shouldn’t have parties who want to exert influence. Online content only works when downloaded from certain sites. But this is illegal.
Apart from the problems surrounding streaming (location dependent content, content change, possibility of resolution/compression at any time by the provider, etc.), the entire range of movies is already corrupted…
If you want to watch the best possible quality, there is (right now) only one option: 4K (UHD) with some form of HDR (where Dolby Vision has the most potential, but not necessarily the best, more on that later). Not every UHD movie is actually (fully) recorded in 4K, but (partially) upgraded. And yes, you see. I have a UHD version of Harry Potter at home and the movies are more endearing compared to the other movies. see also Fake 4K Resolution†
Then the most beautiful story: HDR. First of all, there are several criteria. To make it easier: no standard gives any guarantee. Dolby Vision, for example, has a lot of potential, but there’s no guarantee: you always rely on what your TV can display and what the cameras have been able to record, rather than expecting a degree of quality. Does this mean nothing at all? new. The HDR standard ensures that it can handle this signal. No more, no less.
The same is already done with audio, such as Dolby Atmos. When I think of Atmos, I think of height channels, until it turns out that the smartphone supports Dolby Atmos. Well, you can hold a smartphone over your head… Dolby Atmos would be an added value there if you could send this to another audio processor (which can control the height channels).
So you’re all set for a true 4K movie, but switch to Dolby Vision (because most of the potential) and you’ve got a movie that supports Dolby Atmos, then there’s the next threshold: subtitles. Actually (with Bluray) you have to keep in mind that you have a Dutch subtitled version. Even better, if you have a version with several discs, some of them may not have Dutch subtitles. So be careful…
And after that, 8K is still around the corner, so there’s going to be one more thing to watch out for. So I’m not really looking forward to a game where I have to figure out all it takes (if that’s the case). I don’t think it will ever be okay. We consumers don’t understand that standards (anymore) don’t guarantee quality (or maybe do nothing with it) and don’t mind having to use different streaming services and being able to shorten the quality. I understand that downloading isn’t actually an option, but quite frankly it’s becoming increasingly difficult to refuse with common sense (sorry, but I really think so for now).
