I'm with you. I keep regressing more and more in time. I actually find a low res image much more pleasing to my eye. I haven't even "upgraded" to 5.1 audio, just want the best 2ch stereo I can get.

Seems like the new Oppo UDP-203 will be released later this year at a retail of $499, which I find to be very reasonable. I will definitely buy it as soon as it gets a region mod.

Then good vinyl on a high end turntable and stylus will will deliver a good job imho.

As for 4K, i like the extended gamut, though rather have liked more primaries besides RGB (no, not like that quattron where they shine Red/Green onto an extra yellow phosphor, but 6 true primaries See the problem with wide gamut on only the so called "RGB" (which is actually not RGB, but more close to scarlet, chartreuse and azur) ).
The 2nd thing i like about 4K has more to do with to be able to view .MPO 3D photos and 3D video on a passive 4K screen in an enjoyable way.
On a 1080P 3D screen, with passive, it is like looking through venetian blinds, if you sit up close. You loose half the resolution for each eye.
With active 3D, you need more equipment that can drive that and despite high refresh rates can be strainful to one's eyes.
With passive 3D on a 4K screen, it is a nice compromise of all of those.
I would like to see a 4K 3D screen smaller than 55" though.

I will stick with CD for a number of reasons.

Got this in the mail today. Now we're talking some serious and justified 4K here. Forget about The Revenant or Deadpool. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (originally shot on 16mm) from 1974, mastered in 4K on UHD-BD is the new reference!

Cool cover

That is a huge problem with Netflix. I just find the audio quality to be of poor quality.

I am having huge issues with their Dolby Digital Plus audio tracks. The voices sound distorted at times and that is really really irritating.
I know this has been reported by many other people but all Netflix keeps telling their users that it is a problem with their AVR however that is
not possible as I am not having these issues with the Dolby Digital Plus tracks I heard on HD DVD or Blu Ray. And not all movies / series appear
to be affected by this problem. This really sucks.

Laserdisc audio is excellent. Netflix's stereo audio tracks suck a**, too.

Yep, another reason LD is the perfect format and the modern mass market sucks and people have no discernment anymore. Just stick with LD.

The audio on LD stands the test of time and I'll admit is better than streaming services and DVD, but like with the picture Blu-Ray and UHD with the superior codecs and bit rates come out on top comfortably.

Oh boy! my 4K UHD library grew quickly. I buy new releases and the older movies I don't own in any other format in 4K now. There are a few titles like Lucy and Oblivion which I bought on BD on release day that are on 4K UHD now. These films are visually stunning, they surely ask for 4K and HDR. I can wait for the prices to come down a bit but then the later prints aren't gonna come with slipcovers which I will have to buy from ebay for $5-10. Why am I sick like this? Is there a cure for this?

I got my first 4K title this past Tuesday . . .



. . . usually like getting Best Buy's Steelbook releases, and this one happened to have the 4K version in it.

I guess I'll get a 4K player once I can find a reasonably priced "region-free" 4K player.

And a display that can output 4K resolution.

Samsung player dropped to $200 from $400. Panasonic is $600 and the new oppo is $550(sold out within hours). You can safely assume the oppo player will get a region hack soon but oppos don't get discounted ever really.

4K TVs have come down in price by a lot. There is still so much confusion with formats. Only some displays support Dolby Vision (DV) and only some streaming devices output HDR or DV. There are still some exclusivity deals in effect. I think next year we will see some universal format displays that can do all.

So far you want a display that can do
-HDMI 2.0a with HDCP 2.2 (18Gbps bandwidth for 2160p60 4:4:4)
-HDR10
-Dolby Vision

Also you want something larger than 60" to realize 4K resolution at around 10-12FT (2.5-3m)

In Sweden these players are very expensive. The UDP-203 is nearly 10 000 SEK here, not including region mod. In other words you'll either have to pay big money or import a player and risk it getting stuck in customs.

As we all know, the Xbox One S can luckily play UHD-BDs and for me who currently own a 1080p set I felt it was the right time to get one during the After-Christmas Sale. May not be the ultimate player out there but for 2190 SEK (240 USD) with Gears of War 4 and a controller (which I'll sell since I've already got the Elite), I think it was a great deal. Will most likely not play many games on it but I still think it's a very welcome addition to my setup.

EDIT: Now I've tried out some UHD-BDs on my 910V and even though it's just a 1080p set I can see some improvements. Banding is pretty much gone and there's no sampling errors to be seen. Sharpness is fantastic as well. Not a dramatic improvement if the ordinary Blu-Ray is already great but it's still nice to see that they're offering us with Full HD displays something. There was also a local sale of UHD-BDs, all priced at 10 USD each so I bought a couple, none of which I've seen before. This is very exciting.

OK currently at 42 UHD BDs, I think it is time I get a 4K display:)

I am looking at the LG 65E6 (2016 model) 65" OLED display. 2017 models dropped 3D support all together and they are $1500 more expensive. Finally I will be able to use my Lumagen Radiance Pro 4449 in full force with 4K and HDR.

I got to see a couple of UHD-BDs on a Sony VPL-VW500ES earlier this year including Ghostbusters II, Independence Day and The Maze Runner. Although it was the first-gen 4K projector by Sony and missing both HDR as well as 10 bit color depth, picture quality was overall much more solid than regular Blu-rays in every single regard. Hopefully Warner will release Blade Runner later this year to finally replace their nearly ten year old Blu-Ray.

As soon as I get home Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk from the U.S. we'll arrange another evening.

500es is a 9ghz design. I am curious how it's going to handle Billy Lynn which is a native 2160p60 title. 2160p60 12bit 4:2:2 needs a 18ghz chipset. I am curious how the player is going to behave for this title. It could do 2160p60 8bit 4:2:0 perhaps or downscale to 1080p60 .

It will be 2160p60 4:2:0 and 8bit.

People didn't during the time of LD either. VHS didn't die in the US until 2005.

And with that being said… PQ and AQ aside, VHS managed to have some features that all subsequent home video formats lack:

1. Can be kept in crappy conditions for extended periods of time. No special storage scheme or furniture is required. Stacking is fine even to great heights.
2. No special handling is required. Tapes can be loaded with "monkey feet" into a VCR without significant risk of damage.
3. Can be handled by children without significant risk of damage.
4. Tapes can be repaired (or, hell, even edited if a section is too damaged to leave in) by anyone with scissors, scotch tape, and the gumption to pop one open.

VHS has its own special kind of durability. It's extremely resistant to outright abuse, true, but as someone who doesn't abuse stuff he paid money for I don't find that very useful.

Magnetism is a pretty serious weakness, as is mechanical wear. I've worn out VHS myself before, and when I worked at a rental store in the 90s we had MANY breakage issues. I know because I taped back together a million pornos and copies of Homeward Bound or Forest Gump. You can blame bad VCRs, but bad VCRs are part of the reality of VHS so that would be stupid, IMO. Meanwhile I've never worn out a CD/LD/BR because it's impossible and I've never had a cheap or dirty player destroy one. I *have* loaned out a VHS tape and had it come back unplayable despite looking perfect to the human eye.

Btw, my kid just turned 2 the other day and he can now use DVDs without even getting finger prints on them. I gave him his own collection, starting with one $5 Loony Toons DVD. He eventually destroyed it so I had to replace it but now I let him load my $100 BRs for me with no worry.

Of course, his collection and the main one are separated because he is only 2 and would trash everything for sure if he had full access to the library. However, with his own stuff I let him practice, a lot, he can access the TV, player, and his DVDs whenever he wants and he's good at it. If a two year old can do this then I can't understand why a grown-ass man can't avoid ruining his optical media. It really isn't that hard.


Regardless, I understand that the point you were making is that sometimes a new format is so shiny and new that you don't realize how much crappier it is than the outgoing stuff in many key ways. For example, a lot of lame DVD players don't have any kind of resume feature. If you eject the disc in many players, maybe you just bumped the button, you now have to sit through all the ads and FBI things as the dumb POS loads it all again and you try to find where you were on the disc. VHS has resume built in. If you take it out of the player it stays wound to the same point forever as a fundamental aspect of its design.

Of course anyone who uses LD and DVD/BR on a regular basis is reminded of this all the time. The convinence and response and control of LD are unrivaled. DVD BR were a massive massive downgrade from LD in those departments. On LD you can never be forced to watch a segment. You could play anything that was NTSC in an NTSC deck regardless of where it was intended for sale. You could copy it at will. You could, at *any* time the disc was playing instantly go to any other part of it, skip any part of it. If you were trying to understand a specific special effect or a killer drum solo you could A-B repeat that segment forever. If you have a music video compilation with one bad song on it you could program it out.

The new stuff...you don't control it, the studio does. It takes forever to do what it does do, is region locked, sells you crap, threatens you with PRISON before you've even watched the movie. Yeah. PRISON. My kid wants to watch some Marry Poppins but first he has to sit through an unskipable single frame movie from the FBI about how if you copy this for your friends you may GO TO PRISON. It's such an uplifting thing, thanks FBI.

UHD BD is region free, so at least we won back a small measure.