deanbrew wrote: ↑Sun Jan 19, 2020 11:33 am
I subscribe to Netflix, AP and YouTube TV, but am disappointed that when I search for movies I've made note to watch (not recent releases), I can't find them for free on any of my services.
One site/app I have found that helps is justwatch.com .
You can look up movies and it will find which services offer it and at what price.
For example :
https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/joker-2019
You can see a rental of Joker is $5.99 on all the streaming services, whereas the superior 4K Blu-ray disc costs $2/$2.50 to rent, if you have a Redbox nearby. The price of convenience, I guess. But it still makes no sense the physical disc should cost less, when it costs more to manufacture.
In the past, I have been loathe to use streaming, because the quality left too much to be desired, especially in the area of audio. I have been revisiting that decision as the selection of 4K Bluray discs available is not big enough, and they still cost about $20 to purchase each on average, and most are not available for rental.
I started looking into streaming recently. I found the various services require different devices to use, and have different quality in terms of bit rate and supported audio/video formats. It can make quite a bit of difference depending on your setup.
See
https://www.nakamichi-usa.com/the-ultim ... tmos-guide
For example, I found that Netflix on my Chromecast ultra supports 4K HDR video, but not Dolby Atmos. Too bad given my home theater has 15 speakers.
On my Sony UBP-X800 4K Blu-ray player, it's the opposite. Netflix only shows HD video, but it has Dolby Atmos audio.
Same on my home theater PC. Netflix in HD but with Atmos. Apparently because its GPU only has 2GB of VRAM. I'm going to swap the GT1030 GPU with the GT1050 in of my other PCs today and see if I can get both 4K HDR + Atmos to work in the HTPC.
The Fandango Now service doesn't support 4K on any of my existing devices, so I ruled out using it. I would need a Roku for that to work, apparently.
Vudu does work with both 4K and Dolby Atmos on my Chromecast ultra.
Seems like Prime video does 4K on my Chromecast Ultra, but not Dolby Atmos.
It really is a pain that each streaming service has their own device lock-in, and specific DRM. At least I don't have to worry about Dolby Vision since my 4K projector doesn't support it. For now, I have subscribed to Netflix 4K plan and the Amazon Prime video, but I haven't yet succeeded getting both 4K and Atmos to work with either of these services. Just one or the other. No such issue with Blu-ray discs - they all work with 4K HDR and Atmos, when the discs include them.