'Lovefilm' alternatives - DVD rental?

System

Sometimes people get things based on quality or price or convenience so the market place will reflect that. Consuming content by renting discs is a small niche compared to all the other methods of consumption.

Personally I got over pixel peeping after laser disc era and now just enjoy content through whatever device I have available at the time.

Takmon

neilmcl wrote: »

Streaming is rarely going to be higher quality than physical media. Also if you're interested in watching the latest movie releases streaming can be more expensive.

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of advantages to streaming, convenience being one of them.

HD streaming will definitely be better quality than any DVD disc as they only support SD.

4K Blu-Ray discs will be better than a 4K stream but not many people actually have the equipment to notice the difference, even the PS4 Pro doesn't support 4K blu-rays (Alot of people don't know this and actually use a PS4 as their primary blu-ray player).

You also need to consider that not all Blu-Ray Discs are 4K and only a certain amount are. But i'm not sure how a standard Blu-Ray disc and a 4K stream compare on quality.

Tammykitty

Takmon wrote: »

I'm not sure why you would want a DVD rental service these days with all the streaming options available which are all at least HD and alot in 4K so far higher quality and more convenient.

A local charity shop to me sell's all DVD's for 3 for a £1 and they still can't get rid of them fast enough!. No company could send out 3 DVD's and pay for return postage for less than £1 so it's actually cheaper to buy them than the price any online rental company could offer.

Maybe they don't have a or want a HD TV (or even a TV with a hdmi port) - so there will be no difference in the quality
Maybe they don't have broadband?
Maybe the broadband is poor quality?
Maybe they don't want to stream stuff


When I was looking for a new TV for my parents, I didn't buy the latest model as the upscaling of SD wasn't the best, and most things they watch are still SD.


I have to say in my own opinion the difference between HD and SD never mind £4k isn't important to me, and unless you have a 50inch plus TV, its probably not that noticeable to most people

neilmcl

Takmon wrote: »

HD streaming will definitely be better quality than any DVD disc as they only support SD.

4K Blu-Ray discs will be better than a 4K stream but not many people actually have the equipment to notice the difference, even the PS4 Pro doesn't support 4K blu-rays (Alot of people don't know this and actually use a PS4 as their primary blu-ray player).

You also need to consider that not all Blu-Ray Discs are 4K and only a certain amount are. But i'm not sure how a standard Blu-Ray disc and a 4K stream compare on quality.

Firstly I was talking about comparative media, eg, HD stream vs bluray but having said that a DVD well upscaled, either by a decent player or TV may still be better quality than an HD stream. The problem with streaming is that it's not all created equally, I've watched some truly spectacular 4K content beings streamed, The Blue Planet for example on BBC Iplayer and yet I've also seen quite a lot of very poor streams of so-called HD content due to the very poor bitrates used, particularly during peak times.

RumRat

Well, the OP has had their answer in post #9.
Other than that, the usual excuses for not streaming are being thrown about.
Amazing how those that stream usually have a positive experience and those that don't, think they won't.

JustAnotherSaver

Regards the stream, the reason i put it in there is because i want DVD/Blu-Ray and i thought if i didn't specify this then i'd have streaming shoved at me.


So i mentioned it ... and have mostly had streaming shoved at me :rotfl:


Anyway, post #8 & #9 thanks

RumRat

JustAnotherSaver wrote: »

Regards the stream, the reason i put it in there is because i want DVD/Blu-Ray and i thought if i didn't specify this then i'd have streaming shoved at me.


So i mentioned it ... and have mostly had streaming shoved at me :rotfl:


Anyway, post #8 & #9 thanks

Yep....That'll do it....every time on here.....;)

JustAnotherSaver

RumRat wrote: »

Yep....That'll do it....every time on here.....;)

I expected it but hey ho it's all welcome. I got an answer in amongst it all so all is well

Takmon

JustAnotherSaver wrote: »

Regards the stream, the reason i put it in there is because i want DVD/Blu-Ray and i thought if i didn't specify this then i'd have streaming shoved at me.

So i mentioned it ... and have mostly had streaming shoved at me :rotfl:

Anyway, post #8 & #9 thanks

But you haven't really said the reasons why you want physical disks rather than using streaming services. From your OP it sounds like you dislike streaming for no particular reason so i'm not surprised people are going to convince you to try it.

mangog

Another vote for your local library. Ours has a huge selection of DVD and Blu-ray - TV, film, world cinema etc. They often have interesting stuff that you can't get on streaming services too.