Vikings were pirates*, and we've had plenty of Viking movies. I'm reminded of Gene Roddenberry's remark that Star Trek was a wagon train to the stars. Just take an old genre -- one that may be a bit worn and in need of a breather -- and transpose it to a different setting.

And speaking of space "westerns" ... well, I haven't watched that kind of film for years, but aren't there plenty of piratical types in sci fi films?

Not all pirates have to have eyepatches, wooden legs, and a Hollywoodized Elizabethan English accent.

*Yeah, yeah, I know: Vikings were a lot of other things besides pirates -- but raiders and pirates are homeground for Viking lore in the movies, largely because that is how they primarily impacted the (slightly) more civilized peoples of the British Isles and France, and the slightly more civilized victims of Viking pirates raids, in the end, were the people who wrote the history books.

Thanks. I will try some side by side comparisons between a blu ray and streaming.

Thanks. There's nothing I can do about what the streaming networks do at the front end. Which for a technophobe like me means it is one more thing I don't have to worry or educate myself about. I suppose the streamers will get nudged along by competitive pressures as 4k TV's become more common. (That assumes the difference is enough for most home viewers to notice or care about.)

Do you know what the current market penetration is for 4k's?

My tech sophistication doesn't go much beyond changing batteries and hitting the power button. So a question:

I know that the streamers' ability to stream 4k is still a bit of a mixed bag. Some older content (especially old tv shows) is still SD, but since I don't watch tv shows, that's not a serious issue for us. A lot is still HD. More and more is 4k, but it's a mix. 4k is becoming the standard, but it will take time.

When we upgraded, we had to upgrade our cable speed and swap to a new 4k ready cable box. (I've thought about switching to fios but that's a separate issue.) My tv tells me the quality of the video I'm getting on any given movie.

My question: can you explain what the gap is between the "4k" listed for a given film and the "full fidelity 4k" to which you refer?

Surround sound is not an issue. We considered that, but we're in an old house and the tv is in a finished basement, but the configuration and wiring issues raised a lot of complications. We settled for a high quality sound bar, which for our room is more than enough.

Definitely, and I'm on the older side (the Pleistocene Age on the Reddit spectrum) with eyesight that is still functional but nowhere near what it used to be.

Which is why we recently upgraded to a large screen 4k OLED. Compared to our old HD flatscreen, it's night and day. The old tv was perfectly functional. It was a decent midlevel tv when we got it. It served us well for many years. The upgrade was a conscious concession to age.

That's 4k. But when we were in the store (the Magnolia section in our local Best Buy, not some exotic high end specialty store), there were a couple of tv's on display that were just jaw-droppingly good in every dimension. The biggest of them had a price tag of $25,000, which of course very, very few of us would even consider buying unless we won the lottery. Naturally, however, both the picture quality and the price tag attracted my attention, and I felt compelled to ask about it. It WAS unmistakably better than anything else on display. It was a very large screen 8k OLED.

Yes, you can tell the difference with normal vision. You can tell the difference with significantly suboptimal vision.

The folks at the store were very quick to emphasize that this tv was on the floor simply to demonstrate the technology and alert people to what they might be considering 10+ years from now. Possibly sooner? Who knows? But it's good to see what's out there over the horizon.

They also emphasized that the pictures we were seeing on the 8k were specially made demo pieces, again simply to demonstrate the technology, that there is basically no 8k content available now, and that no one is anywhere close to streaming it. The good news, however, is that prices are coming down. That particular model will be only $17,000 next year. Not that this would make any difference to us.

How soon will 8k be a player in the Harry Homeowner market? Good question.