Comment on Home theater fans are being starved of the new 4K Blu-ray releases they want and it's not okay
sramder@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Saving them up for the soon to be announced super-platinum streaming tier?
The return of the Disney vault awaits even more insidious DRM… which reminds me, there is some kind of secure streaming platform for the ultra wealthy, I can’t remember the name but as long as we’re manufacturing outrage here, I’m curious if any of these film were offered there at 4K?
I probably can’t find an actual answer… but I’m going to see if I can find an article on RichFlix™ so I don’t sound like an angry crank myself ;-)
And it even had my answer (circa 2015):
While all of this sounds like a crazy amount of effort to go through, PRIMA is apparently popular as hell. The movies reportedly look good, though they’re not 4K yet, and they can’t make them fast enough—there’s a waiting list to score one of these bad boys. Then again, if I had unlimited financial resources, like more money than I knew what to do with, I would probably get in line.
This definitely feels like something that needs a higher profile.
I can’t believe it’s really going to be a future where you just can’t get one of these films in 4K… maybe not on physical media, but some flavor of that future was always coming.
It’s not going to surprise anyone right now that Sony and Disney are being dicks. That they can afford not to or lack any real commitment to the arts is also already internalized by most.
I’m glad you brought it to my attention, hopefully we’ll rope in a few more :-)
Emperor@feddit.uk 4 months ago
Great thanks for that.
I did a quick Google and it seems like that system never really got off the ground but I did find this thread where they discuss similar set-ups that are available: Bel Air Cinema and Red Carpet Cinema, but that last link isn’t working so…
sramder@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Ahhh good old “reference quality”hard to beat but impossible to define ;-) And I can’t see what I’m writing anymore because beta app, so…
Emperor@feddit.uk 4 months ago
Yes, I was nosing around the Kaleidescope website and stumbled across that. Those systems will set you back 10s of thousands of dollars, so they’d better be of the highest quality.
sramder@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Streaming is a pretty low bar, plus most studios weren’t even doing real 4K transfers for years ;-)
sramder@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I’ll have to dig into that dci standards site, but ultimately I figure as long as they are doing cinema releases someones making a 4K file. And since were talking about the 1% here… someone is making the gear the theaters use, so folks can just buy that and skip the “full time concierge” or whatever is putting these folks out of business one after the other.
Emperor@feddit.uk 4 months ago
If they are working in digital there will likely be a UHD quality master (depending on how it’s filmed) but the resolution of a scan isn’t everything that makes a 4k release - that includes special audio and premium HDR and, I believe, it’s the latter which can be especially time-consuming.
That was my thinking, if they’ve spent six figures on a home cinema system they could just get themselves signed up as a small, albeit private, cinema and get the film sent to them that way. It may be these fancy services also make this available on billionaires’ yachts and planes, I suppose, so perhaps they are paying the big bucks for convenience. If a member of staff has to tell a billionaire “sorry you can’t have that right now” they are either getting the sack or being asked if throwing a zero on the end will grease the wheels.
It may simply be that these companies that provide this service are being circumvented by the 1% knowing a guy who knows a guy at the studios and there are ways. Back in the day, they might just have paid for an extra print to be made of the film.
sramder@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I’ve really been wanting to check out one of those boutique Bluerays, I just haven’t had a chance. I was always an impulse buyer and and ended up grabbing the shittiest DVDs somehow… best thing I got was that monster prosthetic test from Boogie Nights which was delightfully subversive in execution, but not the cinephile content I was promised :-S