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UHD player recommendations for Dolby Vision?

flyinion

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Re: UHD player recommendations for Dolby Vision?
« Reply #30 on: August 06, 2020, 06:45:29 PM »
Congrats on the great deal, @flyinion. Really nice find.

On the Disney movies, it's really annoying to buy 4K UHD discs and redeem 4K codes, but not get the ability to stream 4K from certain sources like Apple. For these movies I won't be clearing out the 4K disc anyway but it's still a cheesy situation on Disney's part.

I just experienced this myself.  Never set up a Movies Anywhere or similar account before to redeem any of my codes.  Figured why bother I have the disc lol.  Finally did it and linked my iTunes account and some other stuff to it.  Added the code for Endgame and it shows in MA as Dolby Vision, but it also now shows in iTunes.  I think it was actually 4K in iTunes (I'll have to go look again later), but it was NOT in HDR (so probably actually wasn't 4K either).  Kind of a shame too since apparently at least on an AppleTV box, iTunes has the highest bitrate for streaming of any of the streaming apps.  
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Re: UHD player recommendations for Dolby Vision?
« Reply #31 on: August 06, 2020, 10:55:07 PM »
iTunes movies will have a 4K symbol if they have it (and you have the rights) in 4K.

The thing is with iTunes/Apple - they upgrade pretty much anything you have rights to, to 4K if they have it. I have Blu-rays I've turned codes in for, that got a free upgrade to 4K in iTunes. When I started turning in digital codes somewhere around a year or so ago and realized that, it pushed me toward accepting that streaming is going to be the future and physical disks are going away. That was inevitable anyway but the quality upgrade completely changed my mindset. Before I was like Craig and others who wouldn't move away from physical media. That was kind of an epiphany. If a big company like Apple is going to not require me to double dip (or triple or whatever) to get that upgrade, it's a big win. I think streaming will at some point surpass physical in quality. 

Obviously there may be some question about the provenance of some of the 4K content in Apple's library for movies that don't have a UHD release. I haven't researched what that means - is there some kind of cheap up-res being done just to have a "4K" version? Maybe. But at some point if that movie gets a proper 4K rescan/remaster done I bet Apple has it. 


Re: UHD player recommendations for Dolby Vision?
« Reply #32 on: August 07, 2020, 12:10:08 AM »
iTunes movies will have a 4K symbol if they have it (and you have the rights) in 4K.

The thing is with iTunes/Apple - they upgrade pretty much anything you have rights to, to 4K if they have it. I have Blu-rays I've turned codes in for, that got a free upgrade to 4K in iTunes. When I started turning in digital codes somewhere around a year or so ago and realized that, it pushed me toward accepting that streaming is going to be the future and physical disks are going away. That was inevitable anyway but the quality upgrade completely changed my mindset. Before I was like Craig and others who wouldn't move away from physical media. That was kind of an epiphany. If a big company like Apple is going to not require me to double dip (or triple or whatever) to get that upgrade, it's a big win. I think streaming will at some point surpass physical in quality.

Obviously there may be some question about the provenance of some of the 4K content in Apple's library for movies that don't have a UHD release. I haven't researched what that means - is there some kind of cheap up-res being done just to have a "4K" version? Maybe. But at some point if that movie gets a proper 4K rescan/remaster done I bet Apple has it.
I've been redeeming the codes for years now and have well over 700 in my Vudu account (slightly less in Movies Anywhere because they don't support all studios). I mainly use them when I'm travelling and want to watch something on my tablet on the airplane, but now that Netflix and Amazon let you download shows, I rarely watch movies when flying anymore (before Covid I flew 35 weeks a year). I used that time to catch up on TV shows I didn't catch when they were on years ago. So many shows, so little time :)
Blu-ray Reviewer / Technical Writer
Former writer for Sound & Vision Magazine

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