Podcast: LCD TVs for Movies, Laser Projectors, RIP Ennio Morricone, AV & Movie news, B+W Matt Damon

Phil Hinton

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This week we pay tribute to Ennio Morricone, ask if LCD TVs are any good for serious movie viewing, are 4K UHD discs dying out and we discuss the best Matt Damon movies and more...

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This week's podcast competition: Win a copy of The Iron Mask on Blu-ray. We ask the question in the podcast. Go here to enter the competition and pick the answer https://www.avforums.com/competitions...

If you want to help Kim beat cancer, the Just Giving page is at https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfundi...

This week's star focus: What are your favourite Matt Damon movies?

00:00:00 - Start
00:00:15 - Welcome
00:04:55 - Competitions
00:06:07 - Haircuts
00:07:15 - Just Giving appeal to save Kim from cancer
00:09:15 - Remembering Ennio Morricone
00:17:20 - The best and worst movies out this week
00:27:18 - Hi-Fi news. £12,000 QDC headphones
00:30:35 - LG Nano and Hisense U7 TVs in for review
00:42:00 - Digital Rights Management issue with LG TVs
00:45:00 - Ed's tedious car moment and adaptive cruise control
00:47:40 - National trust sites are open if you want something to do
00:49:40 - Pub and lockdown talk
00:57:30 - Is streaming so common that BD discs are on the way out?
01:12:00 - Denon podcast coming soon
01:15:30 - Q&A
01:34:47 - Best and worst of Matt Damon
01:41:28 - Thank you and goodbyes

Presented by Phil Hinton with Cas Harlow, Ed Selley and Steve Withers.

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Thanks to one & all - the podcasts are always fun, but this one I found even more exceptionally good!
:thumbsup:
The Martian & the first Bourne Movie as best Matt Damon Films
& for Ed's upcoming Perfect Albums, my picks would be:-
1) Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon
2) Crowded House, Woodface
3) Steely Dan, Katy Lied
4) The Black Sorrows, Beat Club
 
Enjoying the podcast. The Simpsons is playing in glorious 4:3 on our PS4 app. If you're having problems, I would suggest signing in on the Disney+ web app, going to The Simpsons, then details, then (confusingly) *unchecking* the remastered aspect ratio option. It should sync across accounts.
 
Interesting discussion regarding physical media, I tuned in specifically for this as it's something I've been thinking about recently.

With the likes of Netflix and Prime primarily offering HDR for TV shows, the likes of El Camino and other streaming original films being somewhat of a 4K HDR rarity.

I've just been mulling over the 4K Blu-ray discs recently. Since getting an Apple TV 4K box some months back to pair with my Panasonic OLED, mainly to reign in the additional apps of Apple TV+, iTunes access, Disney+ and Now TV.

After watching the superb Greyhound on ATV+ over the weekend, and checking out some of the Disney+ HDR Marvel films for the rare few that I don't already have on 4K disc. It's no easy feat. justifying a brand new 4K disc purchase at £25, especially now I have seen the prices and frequent deals for film purchases on iTunes.

I however still have some sort of mental barrier that stops me from purchasing iTunes films. I rented Watchmen Ultimate Cut last week for £1.99, and the choice to buy at £4.99 was an option. Rather telling though as without hesitation I'd certainly have paid upto a tenner for a 4K disc copy on offer. If I can get over that purchasing barrier and I was confident to not lose access to my streaming purchased titles, then I could see me ditching discs almost entirely.

Ultimately I feel they charge a tenner too much for 4K Blu-ray. Never once have I bought a 4K Blu-ray and thought 'Nah, we'll try the Blu-ray rather than the 4K disc tonight'. At £15-£18 for 4K at launch, I think they are in the realm of an impulse buy. I don't know why they don't just sell the 4K disc solo boxed copy? I guess they use the standard BD thrown in as an excuse to jack the price up, but without it they'd obviously sell more.

Apple TV and the iTunes store is really appealing more recently with the current pandemic situation. Disc prices aside, I was mostly content with renting 4K discs, but due to a very slow turnaround with titles being delivered, I decided to cancel the disc rentals for now. This is where iTunes has come in, luring me in with 99p-£1.99 rental offers. I've occasionally rented some new releases for more, as I figured we're not getting to the cinema and are saving £15/mth on disc rentals. But usually I wouldn't bother paying full price for a streaming rental.

I think it's the convenience factor that is winning me over more than anything. I like the Apple TV user interface, and while I am sure if I had them side-by-side - iTunes 4K HDR vs. a UHD disc, that I could possibly spot the difference. I think I'm at the point where I just can't be arsed with it. I get the impression from my own eyesballs that the iTunes 4K HDR streams are presented at a better quality than all the other streaming platforms, and just maybe it edges close enough to the disc to be good enough for almost all films. Given the iTunes rental prices that's certainly good enough for me. The purchase pricing is good too for the frequent offers, but I've not taken that step just yet.

As for discs, my last purchase was Joker, I can't think of any other titles that I care to buy on disc. I'd buy Greyhound on disc if/when it sees the light of day, and now the complete Game of Thrones boxset is coming to 4K disc, I'll plonk the rentals back on to re-binge through the other seasons in 4K HDR, as NowTV really didn't do the series justice. If there ever was a low-point for streaming that was certainly it.

I've seen recent offers on iTunes (not sure if available now) at £15 for The Dark Knight Trilogy and The Matrix Trilogy -- I thought I got a good deal on the disc boxset of those at £30 each, now I'm not so sure. Hell, I'm pretty sure I saw the Bad Boys Trilogy just recently for £15 too. Presumably the disc copy for the last film is still £20-25 even now. I did see the last film on 4K Blu-ray and it's one of more impressive 4K discs I've seen in a long while. Curious if I would still feel the same way about the iTunes version.
 
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Just a point about streaming service throttling.

Netflix is not back to the same bit rate in UK as it was prior to Lock Down. 4K SDR is capped at 11.44Mbps which Previously was 15.25Mbps. Atleast DOLBYVISION is back to 15.25Mbps and SDR 1080p is also now watchable.

Disney is back to normal. It was not 4k in Lock Down start and is now 4k. So this in addition to ATMOS is great. To my eyes even at the lower 1440resolution during lock down the bit rate was much higher then rubbish Netflix. This indicates Bit Rate might be more important then resolution. Just think about gigantic bit rate from Blu Rays , no wonder they look superb.

The best quality from a Streaming Service was AppleTV+ shows and even though they still look great, unfortunately not restored to a generous 35+Mbps which they were prior lock down.

I can easily tell the difference on quality for above services sitting 6.5feet from Calibrated 65inch OLED and that’s with wearing glasses. Many people with younger sharper eye sight can tell the difference easily. I know Calibrators have a fantastic eye for both colour and contrast, but this doesn’t mean they have better visual processing for picture sharpness compared to young eyes with 20/20 vision.
 
I think the physical disc buyers amongst us are going to be a dying breed.

I very rarely watch films on Sky or any of the streaming services (Netflix, Amazon or Apple TV+). DD+ as a container for Atmos is okay, but it does not compete with the Lossless audio of the discs. That is a deal breaker for me. I want to sit and watch a film in the best way possible for the home and an action movie with 'okay' sound and vision is just not where I personally want to be. However, for the vast majority of people I think it is, as it is good enough. It can look/sound fine and it is much more convenient with the right Internet connection.

@Steve Withers My Lawrence of Arabia replacement disc arrived today. Great service and puts many to shame.

Keep up the great work on the podcast.
 
That is a deal breaker for me. I want to sit and watch a film in the best way possible for the home and an action movie with 'okay' sound and vision is just not where I personally want to be. However, for the vast majority of people I think it is, as it is good enough. It can look/sound fine and it is much more convenient with the right Internet connection.
I think this is what keeps me coming back to disc to some degree, as you say, the best possible video and audio. If you've forked out several pretty pennies for an OLED and decent audio setup, it does seem a shame to settle for streaming over disc.

I think the problem is really one of value. If they could ditch the standard BD from the 4K pack and adjust the price accordingly, I think more people would be enticed to buy 4K disc copies more. I've really only been buying my favourite films on 4K disc, the John Wicks, Gladiator, Hacksaw, pretty much all the classic war stuff. And some garbage too when the multi-buy deals roll around. Most of this rubbish I'm switching to the iTunes rentals for now. Tonight's attempt at entertainment is Vin Diesel in Bloodshot, rental at £1.99. I'm confident the HDR should be good at least. ;)
 
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Perfection ? This gets pretty close. No studio needed..
 
Great podcast as ever guys.

With regard to your points about the boutique studios helping keep disc buying alive, I think again we're seeing some movement and shift there........

Owning in the region of 300 Arrow discs, 140 88 Films discs, 100 Criterion and god knows how many Shameless, 101 Films, etc, I'm a huge fan of the output of these boutique labels and this was always my rationale for keeping my Withers-esque disc buying habit going. But with the likes of Arrow porting over their titles to iTunes and with the brilliant sales they run through there, its becoming even harder to justify the disc prices.

I used to hoover up all those obscure 70s and 80s horror titles that were admittedly one watchers, but with no other place to see them (they're simply not on the majority of streaming services), shelling out between £10 and £15 for that one watch, albeit in decent AV and with boatloads of often interesting extras, was a no brainer for me (lucky to be able to do this, I know).

Now though, even with Arrow's best disc sales (2 for £15), I'm finding it harder to compete with the £2.99 price point of their iTunes counterparts. Sure, the extras are often missing, but with the often less than perfect transfers anyway nearly at the same levels as the disc, its an awful lot easier on the wallet (and the conscience!) to drop the price of a crappy shop bought coffee on some of these titles. And when iTunes are also putting new Arrow releases in these sales too - each of the Jodorowsky films in their new boxset are available to pre-order at iTunes for £2.99! - its getting tougher to resist the digital lure........

The minute that other boutique labels start to sell their titles via these digital market places (and it is digital 'ownership' - I know, I know, but bear with me! - we're talking here, not streaming), that will see my disc buying start to drop significantly. Or conversely, will this see an increase in my purchasing? Titles I wouldn't drop £7.50 on I'll be willing to take a punt on at said coffee prices........hmmmmmm. And it will be interesting to see if Arrow put their 4K transfers on sale digitally or will they keep those for disc purchases only?

Who knows......but either way, its a great time for any form of movie ownership, with titles available in the highest quality for the cheapest prices.
 
As it stands for me in terms of watching films and with regards to 4K I have gone as far as i'm prepared to go with physical media. Blu-ray is the one i'm sticking with and I wait for titles I want to drop in price, including 3D discs, or I purchase them from "cex" (used) when they also drop in price after having them in stock in for a while.

I have a problem with downloads because the quality on occasions isn't that great plus I prefer the feeling of physical ownership, and with discs you don't get any digital crashes happening and possible loss of content. Maybe it's because i'm "old school" I dunno, but apart from watching some stuff I don't particularly want to own I prefer the shiny round things.

I save space by putting the discs (apart from the double / triple or boxed sets) into my collection of "Discgear" units with the covers in corresponding "literature" booklets and they go into a secured shed (alarmed) in the garden so I have hardly any discs cluttering up the house and therefore placating wifey as she has enough to contend with in regards to my 7.1.4 setup and all the other Hi-Fi and AV hardware.
 
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Great show guys as always.

4K Discs - There aren’t going to be 8K discs, so it has to die eventually. The fragmentation of streaming has one advantage, that services will hopefully be pushing to offer great picture/sound quality as a point of difference.

Perfect Album - Rumours/Joshua Tree/Holy Bible

Adaptive Cruise Control - Do a lot of motorway miles for work (normally), and it is a godsend. Makes the difference between arriving fresh and relaxed as opposed to frazzled. I drive a Volvo so I’m pretty confident the car won’t try to kill me.

LED LCD TVs - Interesting to hear that they are only on par with OLED nit measurements, even with FALD. If you want a light cannon it’s QLED or nothing.
 
Great podcast as ever guys.

With regard to your points about the boutique studios helping keep disc buying alive, I think again we're seeing some movement and shift there........

Owning in the region of 300 Arrow discs, 140 88 Films discs, 100 Criterion and god knows how many Shameless, 101 Films, etc, I'm a huge fan of the output of these boutique labels and this was always my rationale for keeping my Withers-esque disc buying habit going. But with the likes of Arrow porting over their titles to iTunes and with the brilliant sales they run through there, its becoming even harder to justify the disc prices.

I used to hoover up all those obscure 70s and 80s horror titles that were admittedly one watchers, but with no other place to see them (they're simply not on the majority of streaming services), shelling out between £10 and £15 for that one watch, albeit in decent AV and with boatloads of often interesting extras, was a no brainer for me (lucky to be able to do this, I know).

Now though, even with Arrow's best disc sales (2 for £15), I'm finding it harder to compete with the £2.99 price point of their iTunes counterparts. Sure, the extras are often missing, but with the often less than perfect transfers anyway nearly at the same levels as the disc, its an awful lot easier on the wallet (and the conscience!) to drop the price of a crappy shop bought coffee on some of these titles. And when iTunes are also putting new Arrow releases in these sales too - each of the Jodorowsky films in their new boxset are available to pre-order at iTunes for £2.99! - its getting tougher to resist the digital lure........

The minute that other boutique labels start to sell their titles via these digital market places (and it is digital 'ownership' - I know, I know, but bear with me! - we're talking here, not streaming), that will see my disc buying start to drop significantly. Or conversely, will this see an increase in my purchasing? Titles I wouldn't drop £7.50 on I'll be willing to take a punt on at said coffee prices........hmmmmmm. And it will be interesting to see if Arrow put their 4K transfers on sale digitally or will they keep those for disc purchases only?

Who knows......but either way, its a great time for any form of movie ownership, with titles available in the highest quality for the cheapest prices.

I get all your points regarding films mainly on BD and some on DVD's. :lesson:

On another tact: The only time I would consider changing to another carrier (as I said on another thread) is if the carrier was static. Something like a high quality version of an SD card type arrangement with all the surround capabilities of disc and obviously picture, certainly no less than BD quality and yes with 3D where applicable.... some hope. :censored: There would be no moving parts and a massive reduction in terms of being space saving.

Over the years I have slowed down my purchasing with CD's to virtually zero now. The only CD's I bought recently (and again from "cex"as well as "ebay" apart from their latest release) was from the artists Rodrigo and Gabriela who play guitars, mainly acoustic, and they are artistically speaking quite astounding. Their latest album is called "Mettavolution" which I bought new but on "special" at £9.99.
 
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I think that over time there will be a niche market for physical movie formats, driven mainly by the likes of us the movie and AV geeks. Much like the UK laserdisc market in the late 80's and 90's, a small market but willing to spend for the right product. (Unless FACT come in and shut down your favourite laserdisc import shop 💩 ancient history now, but I wont forgive them)

90% of people will stream quite happily, but some of us are collectors, movie fans or chase the ultimate AV quality (you may be all three of these).

Look at vinyl at the moment if you go in HMV it's like 1985 again wall to wall vinyl. People like collecting physical media we just have to hope there is enough money in that to keep the studios making physical media.
 
@Ed Selley Have you enabled the original aspect ratio in the app?

Working fine on my B7

Screenshot 2020-07-14 at 5.06.29 pm.png
 
Long live physical media ! Vive la rèsistance :)

Only streaming service I would consider for proper movie watching is the Kaleidescape. I see streaming as a convenient tool for mass consumption and binge watching series.

All the pennies invested in this hobby only to sell out on Apple store rentals! Come on guys!!
 
Love this podcast. Do ANY streaming services provide more than DD+ audio? I wish the audio had a higher bitrate.
 
Long live physical media ! Vive la rèsistance :)

Only streaming service I would consider for proper movie watching is the Kaleidescape. I see streaming as a convenient tool for mass consumption and binge watching series.

All the pennies invested in this hobby only to sell out on Apple store rentals! Come on guys!!
I for one can’t justify the expense of a Kaleidescape system, and they don’t sell in Ireland anyway.

I do have a good sized iTunes movie collection and there’s great deals to be had, I recently got Apocalypse Now: the Final Cut for €3.99 (as opposed to £20 on Amazon) and Jojo Rabbit in 4K DV for €7.99 (Only Blu-ray on Amazon for 9.99).

I'm more than happy to pay for convenience and eventually will download copies to my computer (1080p admittedly) to keep a local copy for if/when the internet breaks (which it does here in occasion).

I loved the convenience of having my own collection of travel movies (back when I used to leave the house), that I would watch on a commute to work, staying in hotels, or more importantly when flying ... as I hate the onboard screens and the sudden spike in volume when the pilot came on to give an update.

I know I’m not getting the best quality, but given the clear limitations of my setup and the probability that the kids would try to load multiple discs into a player ... which I’d likely end up needing to replace afterwards going streaming makes sense for me.


All that said... the thing that completely wrecks my head about iTunes is how awful they are managed, all movies are assigned just one genre which is rubbish as that means when you are looking at one genre most of the movies that should be there aren’t listed, and you can’t filter by actors, decades ... it’s the most basic indexing possible.

Given in the podcast they have previously said go UHD over BR purely on the value HDR gives I would love to see an article comparing the same movie on Blu-ray Vs iTunes (DV + DA) Vs UHD Blu-ray.

Thanks for another great podcast, I will be listening again to the Physical vs Streaming discussion a few times in the near future.
 
Thanks gents for another good listen.

@Ed Selley Try deleting the cache for the apps on your TV if it allows it to free up storage.

Enjoyed the streaming debate and I will now only buy UHD discs in which the audio and picture are key features of the movie and justify the additional expense, otherwise streaming is my approach these days due to cost, availability and the fact we rarely watch a film twice and if I do, it's a number of years later.
 
Like Toon Army, I also generally only watch a film once so it's not important to own the media so am thinking about renting physical 4k discs via cinema paradiso. We live in the sticks and don't have a good enough connection to rely on (it'll do HD). Any thoughts?
Worth mentioning that I am still considering whether or not to buy a 4k player having recently got an oled, hence my interest in this discussion, I'd like to see films in the best possible quality but baulk at the price of the discs.
Really good podcast guys. First time listener, subscribed!
 
Like Toon Army, I also generally only watch a film once so it's not important to own the media so am thinking about renting physical 4k discs via cinema paradiso. We live in the sticks and don't have a good enough connection to rely on (it'll do HD). Any thoughts?
Worth mentioning that I am still considering whether or not to buy a 4k player having recently got an oled, hence my interest in this discussion, I'd like to see films in the best possible quality but baulk at the price of the discs.
Really good podcast guys. First time listener, subscribed!

Worth a try so you can actually watch something in 4K HDR on your expensive 4K HDR TV.
 
I am not even sure this is technically possible but there are a lot of static images in the framing, even your names are white on primary colours. Can you swap it about a bit mid stream ?
Wouldn't be a good news story if someone watching on their OLED had image retention because they were watching The AVF YouTube stream 😉
 

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