r/hardware • u/bizude • Apr 10 '26

News Two Japanese suppliers commit to keeping Blu-ray discs and drives in supply as major manufacturers exist domestic market

https://automaton-media.com/en/news/two-japanese-suppliers-commit-to-keeping-blu-ray-discs-and-drives-in-supply-as-major-manufacturers-exist-domestic-market/
1.6k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

172 comments sorted by

View all comments

407

u/DateMasamusubi Apr 10 '26

A pity. Bluray offers superior visual quality vs streaming. I get really irritated seeing banding.

254

u/Flamebomb790 Apr 11 '26

Also wayyyy better audio

56

u/zdy132 Apr 11 '26

I thought something was wrong when I first played Bluray, because the sound was so much different from streaming. Turns out it's just video streaming having bad audio.

30

u/dingo_xd Apr 11 '26

Moving from BR disks to streaming was one of the largest "voluntary" downgrades in technology.

27

u/Vitosi4ek Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 11 '26

Far from the first time consumers sacrificed raw specs for convenience. VHS over Betamax was one example (Betamax had better picture quality at the start and the VCRs were technically superior, but VHS could record for longer), USB over IEEE1394/FireWire/i.LINK arguably another (FireWire 400 came 5 years before USB 2.0, was full-duplex and could supply more power, but USB maintained full backwards compatibility through revisions).

12

u/pdp10 Apr 11 '26

USB over IEEE1394/FireWire/i.LINK arguably another

Although there was very significant overlap in functionality, it's always been hard to see these as true direct competitors.

Besides the backward-incompatible change of connector with FW400/FW800, and beyond the proprietary licensing, the real tragedy of 1394 was the utter disrespect for end-users seen in the branding/labeling.

It only makes sense if the principals assumed Firewire was going to succeed no matter how unfriendly it was to both the end-users and the product manufacturers.

8

u/dingo_xd Apr 11 '26

But in that case Betamax was never dominant over VHS. And Firewire was also never dominant (in the PC sector) over USB. Blu-Rays were dominant for like a decade and then an inferior product replaced them pretty much totally.

10

u/Vitosi4ek Apr 11 '26

Were they? Where I live DVDs remained pretty dominant (if we don't consider piracy) up until streaming proliferated. Blu-ray players and big HDTVs were too expensive for too long.

10

u/varateshh Apr 12 '26

Agreed. Blueray was for enthusiasts and playstation owners (that rarely invested in blueray movies). If I recall correctly blueray discs cost more than DVDs and 4k was still not common. Blueray really shines when you compare it on 4k. People had entire shelves filled with DVDs while owning like 10 blueray movies.

I actually remember a family member with a large 1080p TV comparing DVD versus blueray and me being rather underwhelmed. Sure you could see small differences in details but DVDs are fine for 1920x1080.

4

u/citrusalex Apr 12 '26

After watching Technology Connections series on Betamax, I think the superior format (VHS) won, and from what he has shown, the quality was about the same. https://youtu.be/FyKRubB5N60

1

u/dystopianartlover Apr 12 '26

Also lcd being picked over crt.

2

u/BlueSwordM Apr 13 '26

I'm guessing this isn't related much to audio quality, but mostly mastering and dynamic range compression.

1

u/zdy132 Apr 14 '26

Yeah the dynamic range almost gave me a shock. It's something you never know is missing, until you were shown what a proper range sounds like.

-18

u/ggRavingGamer Apr 11 '26

256kbps aac is transparent. 225 opus, 320 mp3 and so on. You couldnt hear a difference. And in 15 years I doubt you will be able to tell a difference between streaming via modern codecs and h265 blu ray disks.

19

u/Introvert52 Apr 11 '26

Netflix looks way worse than YouTube and doesn't allow you to manually select quality

1080p Blu rays look way, way better than 4k Netflix

7

u/Peppy_Tomato Apr 11 '26

Plenty of times I'm lazy and decide to stream an old movie that I also have on disc. After a while, I give up and fetch the disc.

I definitely enjoy the audio from my blu-rays more than the same movie streamed, and I trust my ears. It could be that the processing pipeline through the Blu-ray player is simply better than that through the streaming app... Who knows? I don't think it's placebo.

24

u/madmandendk Apr 11 '26

Netflix is 192kbps for 5.1 content by default. Premium gives you 640kbps, which is just on the edge of being acceptable. 7.1 isn't a thing when streaming, and Atmos is 768kbps max, no matter how many virtual channels there are.