A lot of people ask me what the way to watch movies at home is, and that is an easy question to answer. 4K Blu-ray is the best audio and video experience that you can get in your home right now. But I find that people ask the wrong questions. This isn’t about if 4K is better. We know it is. It’s about which one is better for you. And for a lot of people reading this, the honest answer might not be the 4K format. It may be Blu-ray or even regular DVD.
4K, Blu-ray, DVD: What’s The Difference?
The first thing you need to understand is the difference between these formats. There’s 4K UHD Blu-ray, standard HD Blu-ray, and DVD. Most people think about resolution when they talk about these formats. 4K being 2160p, HD being 1080p, and DVD standard def being 480p.
And when you think about DVD and Blu-ray, that’s fair. It was an upgrade in resolution, better compression, it was a better image purely on resolution. But when you get to the 4K format, you introduce something called HDR, high dynamic range, and this was a completely new color spectrum that was able to be used on home video.
Most of the perceived wow factor that people have when they watch a 4K disc is actually the HDR more than the resolution. If you put a 4K Blu-ray with HDR and a Blu-ray on, say, a 65-inch screen and sat 10 feet away, you’re not going to notice that one is necessarily sharper than the other. You’re going to immediately notice the difference in color. That is just a basic limitation of the human eye, and it’s a huge reason why you may not need 4K based on your setup.
What Do I Need To Upgrade to 4K?
Going to 4K is also lot more than just buying a 4K TV and a 4K player. You do need both of those things, and you’d want to make sure the TV has the right HDR compatibility, and that the player is compatible with the TV.
If you’re using audio equipment, you’ll also need a new audio receiver that can pass through 4K, and new HDMI cables that can pass through 4K. And of course, you need to upgrade all of the discs themselves. If you don’t have a 4K disc, you’re not going to get true 4K picture.
It’s not just one purchase, like upgrading a player if you went from DVD to Blu-ray on an HDTV. You need to upgrade every single piece of your equipment. None of it is very cheap, even years after this format was released. It will cost you over a thousand dollars, probably close to two thousand dollars, to do that full upgrade the right way, even at the lowest budget options for TVs and players.
Is Blu-ray and DVD Good Enough?
With all the costs associated with 4K, this is why I continue to preach that Blu-ray is a very viable format. 1080p Blu-ray is excellent. It is as good as most streaming services’ 4K streams. If you just look at compression and bit rates and how good the picture looks, a standard HD Blu-ray is equal to about a 4K stream. And even a DVD is equal to about an HD stream on streaming services.
This is why the 4K Blu-ray format is superior. It’s far better than a 4K streaming service can ever deliver. But with a standard 1080p Blu-ray or even a DVD, you can get great picture if you just upgrade your 4K TV and your 4K player. You may not even need the discs.
A lot of the better players, especially ones from Panasonic, and the better TVs, have great upscaling built into them. Upscaling means they’re going to take your standard def or HD image and upscale the resolution to show it on your 4K TV. I’ve watched many DVDs on a 4K TV, I’ve watched many Blu-rays on a 4K TV, and they look damn good. A DVD looks about as good as an older mid-tier Blu-ray. And a Blu-ray many times can look near close to a 4K disc, just talking about sharpness and resolution.
If you already own hundreds or thousands of DVDs and Blu-rays and you’re not feeling like you want to upgrade to that next format and spend all of that money again, one of the best investments you can make and stay away from the cost of 4K discs is to buy a good 4K TV and a good 4K player with a good HDMI cable. That upscaling will do wonders for your existing collection.
Prefer video? Here is my video on this topic:
What is Your Budget for Collecting?
That’s one of the things you really have to ask yourself: budget. Do you want to spend all the money for 4K? Especially if you already own the movie on Blu-ray? Because it is going to cost you roughly $20 to $25 for each 4K movie. A lot of these are only available as special editions or limited editions which can be upwards of $40. They get very expensive, and yes, they have lots of cool features and lots of cool artwork. But is it always the right choice for you, and is it always the right choice on every single movie?
You may want to buy some 4K movies for things like 2001: A Space Odyssey or Jaws, my favorite movie. These classic remastered films look incredible in the new format. I would recommend 4K for movies like The Odyssey or Project Hail Mary - the big visual feasts with lots of color and great cinematography. But if you’re getting a new release Blu-ray, say of a mid-budget horror movie, you may not need 4K. That isn’t a knock on mid-budget horror, but that’s probably going to look 98% the same on a standard Blu-ray. And if you can buy that for $10 cheaper, you can save that money.
The other great thing is, you can go to the library. You can rent DVDs and Blu-rays from the library for free. You would be surprised at how many libraries have them and what they can get from their networks. They may not all have 4K, but if you are looking for Blu-ray and DVD, your public library is probably the biggest video store in your town, and it’s a great resource that 4K might not be the best fit for. Even then, you should always ask! I know many people who do get 4K discs from their libraries just by asking the right person.
So Many Movies Will Never Come To 4K
Now if you care about selection, you need to know that are a massive amount of movies that have never made it to the 4K format and never will. Even if you are a dedicated 4K movie collector like myself, and you have over a thousand 4K discs and you’ve gone all in on this format, the reality is lots of your collection is still going to be Blu-ray and DVD. And I personally don’t mind that. I have lots of DVDs for TV shows especially. One of my favorite shows is Reno 911. I absolutely love this show, but its only available on DVD. It’s also pretty hard to find streaming, especially totally uncut. So I bought the DVD, and when I upscale it on my TV, it looks as good as it’s ever looked. It looks like I’m watching an HD stream of this show.
And I have lots of other shows like that. The old Ninja Turtle shows, old Nickelodeon shows like Angry Beavers, Rocko’s Modern Life, even a lot of just regular old TV shows. For example, if you want to watch The Office, do you really need The Office on Blu-ray? I mean, you can get it on DVD for like $20 and you’re getting mostly the same experience. Because that’s not why you watch The Office. You’re not watching The Office to see how great it looks and to see the cinematography. You’re watching The Office for the comedy and for the acting. And those are things that don’t change based on resolution.
Physical media of any format still beats streaming because of the ownership, but also because of the physical nature of the format. You can interact with it, you can pick it off of a shelf, there’s some intentional decision making there which streaming does not offer. And if you want access to the deepest catalog of TV shows and movies and entertainment, you have to consider the DVD and Blu-ray format as part of your collection. Shutting those formats out shuts out 90% of everything that’s ever been released on physical media.
So, Is 4K A Scam?
It may seem like that is where I am leaning, but no, 4K Blu-ray is not a scam. It’s not overkill. I’ve heard many people say that. You may think that way because of your setup. If you are sitting 12 feet away from a 65-inch TV, you could put in a 4K disc and easily say, “This is a scam. I don’t see any difference.” I completely understand that mindset, and those people are right with their situation.
Those are the types of people and the types of setups that should just buy Blu-rays and DVDs. You can get them for $5 at thrift stores, at pawn shops, and on Facebook Marketplace. You can find DVD sets at a great price and let your TV upscale it. You’re going to be fine.
But it isn’t a scam with the right seating distance, screen size, equipment, and what you want out of your home theater. 4K Blu-ray is still the best experience at home. Nothing, even 4K streaming at its highest quality, can match what 4K Blu-ray can deliver. It’s just important to know it’s not the only way to have a great experience at home.
So the mortal of the story is to keep collecting great movies and investing in physical media, no matter what the format is.
Good discussion, I genuinely appreciate the breakdown. I am definitely a DVD-type. Even more than Blu-ray. I just never made the jump intentionally, even to Blu-ray. I'd already had most of my collection as DVD anyway. My Blu-ray purchases were basically movies that came with both discs. Recently in fact I was revisiting my X-Files collection, all purchased in the early 2000s, when the seasons would role out on DVD every few months. I had watched an up-scaled episode on Hulu but, weary of the ads, decided to pop in my old DVDs. Man, the difference was jarring. So much so that I began to dig into the cost of upgrading my X-Files collection to something better. But no joke, after about half an episode, I was easily comfortable again. As with your The Office example above, I re-visit the X-Files often not for the incredible picture but for the episodes themselves, as well as the nostalgia. And that DVD collection has always been one of my favorites, pieced together with patience and intention. I wouldn't really want to abandon it anyway.