All things considered, Disney Plus has had a very successful launch. Its flagship show The Mandalorian has gone over pretty well with both fans and critics, there’s a great selection of Disney movies available to watch and the upcoming MCU series all look very promising. The only real fly in the ointment so far has been that classic episodes of The Simpsons are being shown in the wrong aspect ratio, but a fix is apparently on the way for early 2020. Now, though, some fans are expressing their displeasure with the standard of the video on it, specifically in Avengers: Endgame.
A Reddit post that’s gone viral has shared a number of direct comparisons between the Blu-ray release and the Disney Plus version, and the streaming one comes off much worse. It appears that the film has been substantially lightened from its intended format, resulting in pixelation and lighter dark areas in the image.
Of course, many replies point out that a streaming version of a movie will always look worse than a Blu-ray. To stream a film remotely from a server the video has to pass through a compression algorithm in order to allow smooth play, meaning that in anything other than absolutely ideal conditions it can never match up to local media.
One reply also points out that it’s likely that Disney Plus’ video format takes into account the multiple devices that the video can be accessed from. While a Blu-ray can be mastered specifically for large-screen televisions, streaming media can be accessed on phones, tablets, laptops and consoles, with the smaller screens benefiting from the brightness of the image being boosted.
But whatever the reasons behind it, it’s true that Avengers: Endgame on Disney Plus does indeed look worse than on Blu-ray. Then again, I suppose it’s ultimately up to the consumer whether they choose the accessibility and convenience of streaming or the raw quality of disc-based media, right?
