“Can the convenience of streaming outweigh the quality of UHD Blu-ray?” It is a question we asked ourselves back in 2016. 4K Blu-ray discs had just become available to the public, and movie streaming services were quickly gaining popularity.
It was an uncertain time for home cinema fans. Would streaming overtake physical media completely, or was it just as fleeting as the breeze? Trawling through the archives of What Hi-Fi? certainly reflects this uncharted territory, made clear by a magazine feature comparing the new 4K Blu-ray discs with 4K streaming.
Unlike today, there were only a handful of 4K discs on the market. You had the choice of movies including The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Fantastic Four, and Maze Runner: Chapter II: The Scorch Trials. Plus, 4K streaming was in the early stages and was equally limited.
We compared the two based on ease of use, as well as picture and sound quality. Streaming took the crown for the first of these, as we said that “there are more titles than would fit on your shelf, all available at the touch of a button”.
For picture and sound, though, 4K Blu-rays came out on top with more “dynamism and subtlety” than both 4K streaming and 1080p Blu-rays. We concluded: "We want the best picture and sound possible, so buying into 4K Blu-ray is a no-brainer.”
Quite a lot has changed in ten years, though. First off, there are a lot more streaming platforms to choose from. In 2016, you could only really find a small selection of 4K movies on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video (which had only just transitioned from the name Amazon Unboxed).
Now there is a whole range of options, including the What Hi-Fi? Award-winning Apple TV, which boasts a higher bitrate than the likes of Disney+ and Netflix. That makes for a sharper, cleaner picture performance, and it delivers a good sense of detail in terms of audio.
Sony Pictures Core, which launched in 2021, also represents a leap in streaming technology, offering bitrates up to 80Mbps. That’s not quite the same level as 4K Blu-ray (you can get a bitrate of up to 144Mbps), but it is still an impressive feat.
Still, even ten years on, 4K Blu-ray is the top performer for both picture and sound.
The team at What Hi-Fi? spend countless hours in our test room watching the same content on 4K Blu-ray and 4K streaming to test out a range of home cinema kit. That means we have seen first-hand the difference in quality.
Thanks to the lower compression in 4K Blu-ray which results in better HDR, the disc delivers brighter highlights, blacker blacks and more detail compared to even the best 4K streaming services.
That’s not to say that you have to buy every movie or TV show you want to watch in the format – unless you somehow have the cash and space to do that. If you do, then I may well be speaking to Bruce Wayne himself.
In fact, in our original comparison, we said that the ideal solution is to “go for both”. But, if you want to keep your favourite films on your shelf without the threat of them being quietly removed from your preferred streaming service, then it is certainly still worth investing.
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