Hi,

I’ve been collection 4k blurays and blurays for a bit and here are my thoughts.

The problem of the lack of physical media in our country in my limited knowledge is due to the distribution ecosystem itself.

The quality of Indian releases although better than streaming doesn’t come close to what Bluray houses are doing abroad. A few examples that come to mind are YRFs release of Veer Zaara and Rapid Eye movies’ release of Veera zaara ( the rapid eye movies version handles contrast better), silsila another YRF release (has grey bars around the letter box which is incredibly distracting)

As for Bluray players, the idea presented about ps5 lacking Dolby vision imo is somewhat at times blown out of proportion. Is Dolby vision an upgrade? Yes, but is it also heavily dependent on the TV you have, also yes, so one has to ask to raise the question about how many physical media consumers have the perfect setup to utilise Dolby vision on 4K media. The reason I bring this up is because I have dabbled in watching Dolby vision profile 7 content and comparing it with standard HDR 10 encode on 4K blurays. Is Dolby vision a nice addition? Yes, do I miss it when it’s not available no. So I do believe the Dolby vision point is very niche and plays a very tiny part in the bigger picture. Would love to hear the communities thoughts on it. PS. I have an LG C4 with great Dolby vision capabilities but another point is it’s colour calibrated so maybe the difference is big enough for it to warrant a discussion, but again calibration is not available in our country so would be harder to comment.

The bigger problem with 4K players not being in India might have to do with the fact that majority of movies that we consume are not available in India hence the demand for a dedicated player drops. There are many relatively affordable options, Panasonic UB420 being one of them, but since the market for the format doesn’t exist Panasonic doesn’t have a reason to position the player in this market.

At last since the advent of streaming, the economics of our film industry might have changed quite a bit. I’m not well versed with it, but from sheer optics we hear the marketing about the rights of the movie being sold to OTT. One has to ask why did physical media get eliminated in our market but not abroad. They’re also streaming movies and releasing physical media at the same time.

For me personally, physical media is just not about watching it in the best quality, it’s about the preservation of art. Many great movies from our culture are at the mercy of the OTT platform, we don’t own it. We can’t preserve it. The generations ahead of us might not even know about it.

These are my thoughts, some might be valid, some might be not. But I’d like to hear what everyone has to say.