Here’s something possibly unexpected – at least it was to me: it’s very hard to buy a good Blu-Ray player. Now, that sentence possibly elicits a host of other questions, such as:
Why the hell would you want to get a Blu-Ray player?
Why would you want to get a 'good' player, isn’t it all just bits and bytes anyway?
All valid questions! No good answers! I’ll take a stab at it, though, but a few quick hits first:
Last Friday I saw Predatory Void live for the first time. Took some pictures, look at them over here. Been a big fan of this doom/shoegaze/black/death metal (yeah, I know, right?) band. If you haven’t had the pleasure and that weird descriptor sounds good, check out their latest release, Atoned in Metamorphosis. (PS Ter Ziele opened for them and they were great. Check out pics of them here.)
Once before I have decreed my love for Between Bodies. The band, thank the stars, is gearing up to release a new record soon and a few tracks of raw emopunk goodness are available already. Check 'em out.
Remember last week when I mentioned that new Converge record? Turns out there’s now a NEW new Converge record. Well, scheduled for June, but there’s a new track you can listen to, so go click that link.
If you, like me, get your music from different sources like streaming (Apple Music, in my case), downloads (Bandcamp) and like to hook in different services, there’s now a cool app that pulls all that together: Parachord. Hook up your different accounts and services and go!
Saw Project Hail Mary. Was alright. Cute alien. Three and a half stars.
Over on my Instagram page I like to do a little update on the books I’ve read. I’ve posted the first of four Books of 2026 (so far) on my stories, you can find them in the highlights. A few favourites: the last two parts of the M pentalogy by Antonio Scurati, Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders and Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson. Check out the stories highlight for more thoughts on there.
ON TO THE MAIN TOPIC!
So I bought a Blu-Ray player.
I hear the screams: "But why, papa, why?"
Why indeed, would I give up one of my only four coveted HDMI ports on my tv (a whole 25 percent!!) to a legacy format?1
Well, my dear child, it is because I’m sick of being at the mercy of streaming services, pernicious as they are. They have rendered expressions of this art form ephemeral to an extent that a piece might be here one day, gone the other. They have made art into content, to be made into grabbed attention, to be made into money. The point of the content is no longer an expression of art, it is an expression of capitalism.
Not to blow your mind here, but the medium is the message, dummy. Netflix dictates to restate the plot a few times per movie to make sure you dum-dums don’t stop watching because it’s getting too complicated. The execs are not here to challenge you artistically, they’re here to keep you watching. TV shows end on cliffhangers because they want you to stay subscribed when the new season drops. These decisions all have impact on the expression of art.
(Truth: artists, being what they are, will try and render art unto thee through any means necessary, including through devil-deals with the content barons. Blessed be them, but the risk is always that any successful expression gets caught up in the attention train, watering down the essence of the original expression.)
Anyway.
Another issue is that it’s hard to find stuff to watch that you want to watch, because streaming services will have a movie one day but will not the next. The licensing deal expires or it moves to another service, or the service shuts down – there are a lot dependencies going on.
You know what doesn’t go away?
A disc.
You buy that, you keep it, watch it when you want. Period. End of sentence.
And then there’s the metaphysical properties of things. The meaning we inject in objects, the feelings we have when holding something that contains a loved piece of art. A physical thing can be looked at, observed in a moment of repose, flooding the brain with thoughts and feelings inspired by what it holds. Pixels on a screen when you’re scrolling by a movie on HBO or Netflix hit different.
One last thing: it is stunning to see the difference in image quality when watching a 4K UHD disc compared to watching it through a streaming service, especially on a nice tv with good HDR. Maybe you don’t care, and I can’t blame you, but if you’re a snob about your movies, it’s worth getting into physical media.
At least for as long as you can still get a player, that is.
1(For what it’s worth I got this HDMI switch that’s been working quite well)