4K AppleTV
When Blu-Ray players came out, I wasted no time in buying one. Well actually I wasted no time in buying an HD-DVD player. Then when that technology died, I switched to Blu-Ray pretty quickly.
I had bought maybe 30 or so movies when it started to become clear that for most purposes, physical media was becoming obsolete. At least for movies. I’ve got a huge TV show collection on DVD which consists of a lot of things not available from iTunes. (iTunes being my chosen source for media.)
So my Blu-Ray purchasing tapered off and my policy became to buy on iTunes. Even when there was a good sale on a movie, if I already had it in Blu-Ray I resisted temptation. Ok, mostly resisted temptation.
Now that Apple has announced the 4K HDR AppleTV and that many movies will be automatically upgraded to 4K HDR I’m pretty pleased with my strategy. I’ve been scorning 4K because I just could not bring myself to buy the same movies in YET ANOTHER format, and for full price again. Yes I have in some cases purchased the same move in VHS, Laserdisc, DVD, and Blu-Ray. Not many did that full ride, but some. And a lot of movies took at least a couple of those segments of the trip.
So obviously the news that I can maybe move into the glorious new 4K world without feeling like an idiot for buying movies in 4K that I own in Blu-Ray makes me really happy.
As of this date, 16-Sep-2017, about a week before the 4K AppleTV ships, I’m already seeing a few movies I own showing up as 4K HDR in iTunes. Hoping more will follow!
Now my only “problem” is that my 1080p plasma TV is still going strong so I cannot readily justify getting a new 4K TV. I’m going to resist as long as possible, in part because my Panasonic plasma still has superior picture quality to any LCD TV out today. It’s looking like OLED will be a worthy replacement when the time comes, but the size I want is still a bit pricey. Another 6-12 months and just maybe I’ll be selling a nice plasma TV…
The Dish and My Non-Love of Ads
So Andrew Sullivan of The Dish is taking his blog independent, and using a no-ad pay model. This has been getting a lot of buzz on the internet.
After taking a look at his existing blog and finding it interesting, I paid my $19.99 for a year. Hopefully I’ll enjoy the blog!
Why did I take this rather impulsive leap and support a blog I haven’t ever really read?
Simple – I hate the ad model. Repeat after me “If you don’t pay for it, you’re not the customer, you are the product.”
I’m putting my money where my mouth is by supporting blogs like this, iTunes, Netflix etc.
(This is also why Hulu can go pound sand – I’ll only watch ads in TV shows – especially ones I pay for – only if there is no alternative. Long live Netflix & iTunes!)
Once you start to get your entertainment without ads, it’s hard to go back.
It really bugs me that even though the New York Times has a pay model, you still get ads on the web. Why not have an option to eliminate them for a higher cost? I don’t get it. I understand that printing and selectively delivering two versions of a printed newspaper isn’t practical. But online? It’s a Simple Matter of Software. Could be done easily.
My time has value. I’ll gladly pay what something is worth to watch, listen, or read it.
Apple TV, iTunes, Netflix and the end of DVDs
Our Apple TV gets a huge amount of use for both content-purchased-from-iTunes as well as Netflix.
We still buy DVDs, but less and less. The iTunes stuff is so much easier – no loading the disc, sitting through the FBI warning (or, in the worst case, needing to skip trailers for other shows). And then navigating the sometimes annoying menu structure while the theme sing plays in an endless loop.
And did I mention the occasionally spoiler-ish nature of some of the images they use in menus and such?
Just navigate to the show on iTunes and hit play. Ahhhh.
I have zero interest in anything that involves commercials at this point, so Hulu is right out. (Once you get used to a zero-commercial life, it’s jarring to go back!)
From iTunes, most stuff is $1.99 for SD and $2.99 for HD. If you buy season passes, this can be reduced a little, or for some shows in some cases by quite a bit.
I’ll admit I tend to trade off the concerns of DRM for the utter convenience of digital media. No swapping discs in the DVD player, no waiting through the FBI warnings etc.
If the price is even close I’ll go with iTunes over DVDs.
One other advantage of the digital versions is that I’m ready to go should I want to watch shows on an iPad while traveling.
The ability to lend DVDs was a big issue for me for a while, but I find that I lend them out less and less, so it’s become a smaller factor. And after moving to an apartment, having less physical stuff is attractive as well. Unbelievable how many boxes of DVDs we moved! And are having to find room for.
Blu-Ray
About a year ago I broke down, violated my pledge to stay out of the HD format wars, and bought an HD-DVD player (the competitor to Blu-Ray) at Costco.
A month or two later the HD-DVD consortium admitted defeat and bowed out.
So now I have a bunch of HD-DVD movies and a player. Yet another obsolete media format to add to the shelf next to my Laserdisc collection. 🙂
At that point I pledged to ignore Blu-Ray, and do what I should have done from the start – just wait for network distribution. I’m sticking to that so far.
Now – here comes the crazy – I pre-ordered Firefly on Blu-Ray from Amazon when it was announced months ago. I’m planning to buy it even if I never own a Blu-Ray player.
Why you ask? Because any chance I get to make the folks that cancelled Firefly look bad I will take.
Muddlin' Through 