By: Mia Francis

We’ve all come to love the convenience of streaming our favorite movies and tv shows, all the content we could possibly want is at our fingertips in 4K, HDR, Dolby Vision, and Dolby Atmos. What if I told you, that you’re leaving some of the best elements of your favorite media on the table?

The sound design and cinematography we’ve all inadvertently come to love and enjoy from our favorite movies and TV shows are disrupted by the compression that comes from streaming platforms. Streaming platforms have specific compression standards that allow for large amounts of information to be processed in a way that allows most of the resolution to be retained. However, we lose color detail and audio quality in the process. For instance, when we’re watching a dark scene or a very bright scene, the darkest shades of color are clipped and so are the brightest highlights. Making the use of HDR and Dolby Vision essentially less immersive than they should be. The same can be said about audio quality, we lose the crisp detail of higher frequencies and the lower tones of the best room-shaking bass. We are left with the passable but lackluster middle ground.

One of my favorite current examples is Dune (2021), which premiered on HBO Max in 4K and Dolby Vision. Though I had a somewhat enjoyable experience watching it at home this way, I cannot overstate how much it pales in comparison to the 4K Blu-ray. Dune (2021) on 4K Blu-ray, which also is in 4K, and Dolby Vision is an audible and visual marvel of modern cinema. The sound design and cinematography are truly highlighted by the much larger file size allowed by the physical disc. I felt as though I could close my eyes and be enveloped by the sounds of the desert. The 4K clarity and color detail glistened and danced on the screen in ways I had not seen on HBO Max.

This is also true for an older feature like Alien (1979), which is streaming in 4K and HDR on Amazon Prime. Because this movie was shot on film, digital compression gives the movie an overly soft texture detail and a loss of spectral color detail. We also lose the immersive nature of the phenomenal scoring of the film. On the 4K Blu-ray, we are entranced by the ominous sounds of Xenomorphs shrieks surrounding us. The texture detail is more present and crisper in the close-ups of all the characters and even the shine of the Xenomorphs head, shinning in the darkness.

If you haven’t already, I urge you to support physical media for your favorite movies and tv shows, it is a medium that is underappreciated and without our patronage, major studios are opting to stop releasing 4K Blu-ray. Once you experience the difference, you’ll be able to understand firsthand why owning your favorites on physical media is a must. As we’ve all seen in recent years with the advent of several new streaming services, some media is taken off of platforms we’re already paying for and onto a new platform we have to subscribe to. A bonus to owning it physically is the fact that it can’t be taken from you.