Podcast #1136: Password Sharing Crackdown

HDTV and Home Theater Podcast

On this week’s show we discuss how Boutique Blu-ray labels are keeping physical media alive, we give you the pros and cons of streaming vs physical media and we talk a bit about password sharing. Plus we read your emails and take a look at the week’s news.

News:

• Hulu is cracking down on password sharing, just like Disney Plus and Netflix
• YouTube now has more than 100 million Premium subscribers
• YouTube plans to create a native app for Apple Vision Pro after all
• Netflix to Start Billing Florida Subscribers an Additional 5.07% for State Communications Taxes

Other:

• Lovesac - Sactionals with StealthTech Sound + Charge

Boutique Blu-ray Labels Keep Physical Media Alive — and Preserve Film History in the Process

The supposed demise of physical media has been well covered and long lamented, with each passing year bringing reports of yet another nail in the coffin of the once flourishing DVD and Blu-ray market. Fall 2023 brought a double whammy of bad news: Netflix shipped its final discs to customers before closing up its DVD department for good, and a month later, Best Buy announced that it would be phasing out the sale of physical media. Yet, while DVDs are no longer the massive revenue generator for studios that they were throughout the first decade of the 2000s, it has never been a better time to be a physical media enthusiast. Thanks to independent labels like Criterion, Kino Lorber, Shout! Factory, Arrow, Imprint, Indicator, and many others, every month sees the release of well over a dozen exceptional titles, often lovingly restored and with indispensable scholarly extras. Full article here…

Blu-ray vs Streaming

4K Blu-ray discs run at up to 128Mbps. This is the amount of data sent to your screen every second. By contrast, streaming services tend to top out at around 17Mbps. This also means you’ll get better color and blacker blacks via disc since there will be compression artifacts with streaming.

As far as audio goes, Dolby Atmos is available both on disc and via streaming, but streaming services deliver it in the compressed Dolby Digital+ format while discs have the full Dolby TrueHD track. If you want DTS:X, you need to be watching on a disc. Here the difference is not as great. Compressed Dolby Digital+ is almost indistinguishable from True HD.

Some players may add noise, fan noise into your environment. During loud passages this is not an issue. But if there are long periods of low volume some players can actually be distracting. Of course if you have a good setup, you AV gear will be out of sight and out of earshot.

If your setup consists of a 60” or less TV with a soundbar, this may all be moot for you.

You can’t beat the convenience of streaming either. Buy once, stream everywhere, including at 30,000 feet!

Password Sharing

With an increasing number of streaming services following Netflix’s and Disney+'s lead in cracking down on password sharing, one in three U.S. TV content viewers (33%) are still borrowing log-in credentials or sharing the costs of at least one streaming service they can access, according to findings from Horowitz’s "State of Media, Entertainment, and Tech: Disruptions" report.

Main Drivers

• Someone I know already had an account
• I can’t afford it at this time
• I am just doing it to access a specific show/type of content for a short period of time.”

Concerns

• 23% very worried access will be blocked
• 26% somewhat worried access will be blocked

Half of those who borrow the log-in or share the cost for Netflix, Max, Disney+, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and Paramount+ would be willing to pay the full price for those services if they were not able to share anymore.

Password Sharing By Age

• 18-34 54%
• 35-49 37%
• 50+ 17%

Think it is unethical

• 18-34 13%
• 35-49 24%
• 50+ 41%

Younger viewers are also more likely to believe it is OK to password share even with people who are not family members.