Before I start, I will let you know that I don't read all postings here. So I'm sorry, if something would be double. There are a lot of text here
Night457 wrote:
If German broadcasters WANTED to broadcast in 1080p, surely they COULD, right? No one is forbidding them from doing so? Surely they are technologically capable of doing it?
The german Television (public TV and some private) send in Full HD, but you need to use the right Hardware or Service. You can watch it in 1080p if you using (for example) a DVB-T2 receiver or if you watching over Magenta TV from the German Telekom. In a Tech Forum from the Telekom I read around Magenta IP TV, that you need a "newer" Hardware to see it in Full HD and it also will check the quality of your internet bandwidth in the Background to deliver the "best experience". Also I read, that some users having trouble with the Amazon Fire TV Solutions to get the Magenta Stream in Full HD (1080). The best seems to be an Apple TV or (surprise) the Magenta TV Stick.
From the Magenta Team I found that interesting Info around the quality who you can get:
"There are 6 Quality Levels, 4x SD, 2x HD.
154 kBit/s
590 kBit/s 480x270 (25Hz)
1245 kBit/s 640x360 (25Hz)
2486 kBit/s 960x540 (50Hz)
4869 kBit/s 1280x720 (50Hz)
8741 kBit/s 1920x1080(50Hz)"
Night457 wrote:I do know that Amazon, Netflix and iTunes all seem to have content limited to certain markets, and people have to play around with VPNs and proxies to get what they want.
I never will understand that and I still hope and wait for an Pan-European Movie Store from Apple, but they still only have that for Music.
The problem is the complex structures of the film studios that do not negotiate / own international rights to release the films on media or cinema. That's one of the reason why I love the movie festival "International Berlinale" so much, because there you get the chance to see movies from around the globe. In the same time the having also the very important "European Film Marked", so with a bit of look a movie who running at the Berlinale, get some more attention.
Night457 wrote:
I wish I had the money to be one of those buyers!
I wish everyone in the U.S. had cheap 8k streaming internet![/quote]
I'm still living in the Full HD world with 1080p max and I'm happy with that. For me it takes a lot of time to see and accept the difference between DVD and BluRay (I think that happen because of a good upscaling). Now I'm often pissed, if I got a fresh movie release only on DVD and not on BD or better... Just a DVD but a Full HD as a digital version on iTunes. The problem for me is, that I love to buy DVD's or BDs to have it in my shelf... So I often buy the DVD first and wait for a price drop on iTunes to get it also in HD (or hanging around on this Board).
Night457 wrote:It aggravates me no end that some boutique labels continue to do releases without improved subtitles
I give you one more fact... I see a lot of movies at the festival with english or german Subs, but there is often no chance to get that subs for a final release from anyone.
I try to get Subs for Upp i det blå (
https://www.first-loves.com/forums/view ... +i+det+blå) for example over the DVD / BD publisher, but they haven't it (or will not give them). So I don't understand why they put the subs in the trash, when they are existing from professional translators?
Night457 wrote:I had no idea. I have never had a blu-ray computer drive so did not have to deal with this! What a load of horseshit. These articles made my head spin with their endless acronyms and tech jargon so forgive my slowness, but you are only "allowed" to use your computer blu-ray drive to play back commercial blu-rays with officially licensed software, but not freeware? Because the freeware does not necessarily have encryption protocols designed to prevent copying? And since the old official software has been cracked, you "have" to buy newer official software to play newer discs because the old software no longer works for them? Well no wonder people just use the hacker software!
Some years ago I'm starting to importing BDs outside of Europe and from that point I run in trouble, because of the Code (A, B, C). BD's with Region free (ABC) are rare or only from some studios. I look around for a drive for my mediacenter, but I give up after I saw how expensive the hardware is, who have not any restriction. So I decide me to get an external BD Drive for my Computer (Mac). The next thing was the Software, because Apple still not have any own Software who can play BDs (only a free DVD Player is delivered in Mac OS for years now) and since the iTunes Movie store I gave up my hope for a BD Player. But I found the Macgo Mac Blu-ray Player who solve that Problem for me, but you need to pay for that. But it works perfect for me for a long time with any BD, so I did not to pay again and again to let play my movies on the Computer.
The good thing with that Player was (or still is?), that when you play the disc without the menu directly, you can play all BD's from around the globe (i think they named it Quick Play in the past). If you want to start the BD with a Menu (there was no Pro version when I bought it), you need to set a region, but I was still able to using Quick Play. A bit later I start to found a solution how I can safe the BDs on my HD to let play them directly on my Apple TV over AirPlay with the free Software named MakeMKV (
https://www.makemkv.com - I used it for years now and it's still in Beta, so you can get every time a free license over the Board of the Page). The Software is running on Win and Mac and with that great tool you can safe near every BD on Disc. After importing the BD, you can convert the Movie (if you want) with the free tool "HandBrake". It can happen that MakeMKV can't rip the BD when it's totally new, but after some time they ad the code with an Update of the Software.
So at the end it's very easy to safe an BD on HD for free with only two Applications.