Post Your Recent Physical Media Purchases Thread

[BLUEVOODU]

Since we have been talking a lot about Physical Media lately... it's time to have the purchases thread!  This trend seems to be getting bigger and bigger as physical media releases are slowly becoming less and less.

This thread is about Vinyl, CD, DVD, Blu-Ray, 4K Blu-ray, even mini-disc, VHS and any format way back covering movies, videos, music... etc. The gaming purchases thread could be utilized for gaming physical releases.

Physical Media Crusade Thread:
https://www.chickendinnergaming.com/forum/general-discussion/physical-media-crusade!/

Post it up!

[retro junkie]

My Wife has a love for Bonanza. We have been stalking eBay for each Season. We are purchasing one Season a month. Season 5 is in the mail and on its way.

My recent purchases,
Season 4 of Star Trek: Enterprise Blu Ray(I did not know this existed, it switched networks and became the last season.)
Thor Ragnarok Blu ray
Captain America: Winter Soldier DVD

[BLUEVOODU]

Alright... over Black Friday... We found several good physical media deals:
Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Steel Book
Wednesday Season 1
Monk DVD - full series
Avatar the Last Airbender Blu-ray set
Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

and a bunch of ridiculousness:
Falcon and Winter Solider Steel Book
Wandavision Steel Book
Loki Season 1 Steel Book
Loki Season 2 Steel Book
Hawkeye Steel Book
Moon Knight Steel Book
Mandalorian Season 1 Steel Book
Mandalorian Season 2 Steel Book
Mandalorian Season 3 Steel Book

There were some deals going on and we missed many of these special editions the 1st time around.   Amazon wasn't charging the right price either... and so I called them on that and got an extra discount. Still, it was a decent amount of money, but we wanted these for the collection

[Mai Valentine]

The last few things I've bought have been spread out over the year but since it's not much I can remember it 

I got steelbox Blu-rays of The Last Unicorn and the first part of Frieran.

For music I bought the CD Kpop Demon Hunters soundtrack.

[BLUEVOODU]

I ended up getting the physical CDs of:
Dream Theater Parasomnia and also Train of Thought

[retro junkie]

hmmm.... I think I put this in the wrong thread today...............


Just got four DVDs of the 1948 Dick Tracy movies, all for $5 with a little over $4 shipping. I am trying to get all of the old Charlie Chan movies with Sidney Toler playing the lead role. 1938 stuff. Also trying to get all of the Mr Moto DVDs with Peter Lorre, also around the same time period. There is just something about a lot of those old movies that had a certain quality in the acting and production.

[CreepinDeth]

I got the Fantastic Four: First Steps and Thunderbolts movies on 4K Blu-ray for Christmas. 

Now that Christmas is over, I can spend some money next year on buying up some more physical media.

EDIT: Almost forgot. I also got the complete DVD collection of The Critic. The animated show that came out in the '90's and the main character was voiced by Jon Lovitz.

[Grindspine]

Christmas DVD/Blu Ray sets;

Rick & Morty


Psych complete series


Metalocolypse: Army of the Doomstar


Call of the Night


Pom Poko


The Boy and the Heron


That leads me to the question, what physical media player are ya'll using for DVD and Blu Ray nowadays? I still have my trusty old PS3 (upgraded with SSD), but want to also have a 4k Blu Ray capable player on hand. Is PS4/PS5 still the best way to go for that?

[CreepinDeth]

That leads me to the question, what physical media player are ya'll using for DVD and Blu Ray nowadays? I still have my trusty old PS3 (upgraded with SSD), but want to also have a 4k Blu Ray capable player on hand. Is PS4/PS5 still the best way to go for that?

PS4 can't play 4K Blu-rays at all and the PS5 does not support Dolby Vision HDR, only HDR10. So it's up to you on what you you're looking for.

If you want the best, then a standalone 4K Blu-ray player is the way to go, but now where getting to the point of how much do you want to spend?

This player is considered the best as far as I've seen around the internet - Panasonic UB820

Panasonics tend to get recommended the most. I have the DP-UB420 but it doesn't do Dolby Vision.

Dedicated players are starting to go away though. Some companies have already stopped manufacturing them. If you want one that has all the bells and whistles, like Dolby Vision, then you should pick one up sooner rather than later.

[Grindspine]

Hmm, I didn't even know what Dolby Vision was as we just moved to a 4k TV last holiday season. I just got a soundbar with Atmos support this holiday season.

We don't currently have any 4k blu ray discs, but I also passed on a few media deals because of the lack of a 4k player.

I guess that the choice is down to either the Panasonic standalone player for the best media experience, or something like a ps5 if I want to have gaming with my media player.

Thanks for the recommendation!

[BLUEVOODU]

Nice scores @Grindspine @retro junkie and @CreepinDeth

Grind --> what did you think about The Boy and the Heron?  We saw that in the theater... it was interesting for sure.

In terms of Blu-Ray 4K... you know, I started with the PS3 for Blu-Ray and a Blu-Ray player.  I ended up getting internal Blu-Ray players for my PCs back in the day as well.  I did buy my wife an External TV Blu-Ray player... it wasn't 4K.  There are some internal laptop 4k players ... but I cannot find the old 5.25" drive bay 4K Blu-Ray players.  Like this (this one says BDXL but I don't know if it's actually 4k):
https://amzn.to/4qtWo9a

Creepin's suggestion is great - 100%.  Personally, I use my PS5 at this point for a 4K drive.  Right now, we are watching the Mandalorian Season 3 4K on the PS5.  IT IS larger if you're looking for something more portable.  However, I can play games, watch 4K Blu-Rays and do everything else I want to do.  If we want to take it somewhere, we just do.  It's not super portable... but it is what it is and we just deal with it.

It's insane to see how expensive these players have become.  I paid $20 for DVD internal players, $40 for my old Blu-Ray players (haven't bought one since 2013)... and the external TV stand Blu-Ray player was $50-60ish on sale.  The prices I am seeing are insane for the drives now...

[CreepinDeth]

but I cannot find the old 5.25" drive bay 4K Blu-Ray players.

That's because they don't really exist anymore. I went down this rabbit hole a few years back because I wanted to rip my 4K UHD Blu-rays. I ended up buying an LG model and flashed it with custom firmware so that it could read and rip 4K discs.

There were a few that existed but they required certain Intel CPUs in order for them to work, I believe. Intel has since ripped out the instructions in their CPUs so doesn't appear possible without custom firmware in your drive. There were some Pioneer drives that had specific firmware that worked out of the box but they've since been updated and I'm reading that they can't be downgraded.

BDXL just means that you can write to 128GB discs for archiving data.

[BLUEVOODU]

BDXL just means that you can write to 128GB discs for archiving data.

I haven't done a lot of searching on this.  Doesn't that mean that the internal Blu-Ray player has the capability to read those type of discs... you just have to have the 4K codecs on your computer at that point?   I'm asking since you already went down this rabbit hole and looking at what you have found.  It seemed like this was the case on initial search, but it could be wrong.  Almost like we need a whole topic for this... it's pretty interesting.

It's crazy how this landscape has changed... Then again, I haven't looked into it in FOREVER as I just haven't personally used desktops since 2018 outside of Linux and creating work "stuff" (long discussion I think mentioned in one of the Linux topics) for desktops.