The Betamax revival.
Videophiles will be able to see the superior picture quality in the revival of the old tapes. Sales of Betamax cassettes will quickly outsell 4K discs. I’m looking forward to the self-styled Youtuber movie connoisseurs stroking their chins and enthusing about the “new” betamax releases of Scorsese’s Gangs of New York in 333 x 486 resolution.
I can’t see there being another physical format until there is a big leap forward in what goes on the disc, or an emerging very cheap way of producing media.
VHS to DVD was the massive jump to digital.
DVD to BD was a jump in perceivable resolution, colour gamut, and standardisation (remember how films used to get sped up?)
BD to UHDBD was another jump in colour gamut, dynamic range, metadata, and a (perhaps less noticeable) resolution bump.We’re now kinda at the limit of what the studios put out, however. Many studios still produce at a 2k intermediate. Other than full-fat Atmos, and bumping the bitrate to what a cinema gets, I think it’ll be UHDBD and varying streaming services.
That’s my feeling and I don’t think 8k is going to provide enough of an upgrade to convince many people to release physical media for it. It’s why I wasn’t completely joking about holograms.
What’s next is you never truly owning another movie once Blu-ray finally dies.
My guess is that as companies are trying to push 8K TV that 8K disc would come
Adverts will have multiple choice questions at the end which you have to pass to continue what you were doing.
And a Captcha…
2026 is the year of the glorious return to video rectangle. VHS2, baby!
ITT: Why isn’t this image an entire Wikipedia article
2026: BD2 - Blu-ray 2 designed to accommodate the data for the new holographic displays
2036: BD3 - Brain downloads
