Try listening to Uncompressed Audio on Bluray and 4K discs. Then listen to it streamed. Huge difference, and its the audio that immerses you into the movie.

The data infrastructure in the US has a long way to go. Vast swaths of the US have garbage DSL or Sat internet. I finally manged to get a stable 50Mbs ~11ms connection, unlimited, via WISP. Pretty amazing for being ~11 miles from the tower. Even stayed solid with a major snow storm. The R/T unit is about 75' up a 100' cedar. Ha... that tree will be there for a century. I digress...Nobody else around me has better than 1.5 DSL or sat or using their phone. If you're not withing five miles of I-5 or in a decent sized town, you're stuck. This is true all up and down the West coast and vast areas to the East with Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas. I also agree for the most part streaming quality is pathetic compared to physical media especially regarding audio. Physical media isn't an issue for me as long as you can download the same quality that is on the physical media.

This is somewhat concerning to me. We own a mid-sized movie collection, ~400 movies mixed on BD/DVD with the majority BD, and are still buying new stuff. Streaming is well and good, we're paying for three different services including Netflix and HBO Nordic, but that will never really replace buying physical media for a variety of reasons. The one that primarily comes to mind isn't video/audio quality, although I agree with previous posters here, but rather the fact that with streaming services I don't own anything. I can never be sure if a particular movie or show will be available from one day to the next, and certainly access will be cut the day I no longer pay for the service. I have nothing against streaming and rely on it exclusively for TV shows and such but it's not one-size-fit-all solution. It's nice to see Sony still in the space, for now, but it makes me concerned about the future of the media. I would consider upgrading to a PS5 somewhere down the line but only if it includes an UHD BD. At one point that seemed like a sure bet, if this is the trend in physical media that ends up a far more loose assumption though.

Exodite:

This is somewhat concerning to me. We own a mid-sized movie collection, ~400 movies mixed on BD/DVD with the majority BD, and are still buying new stuff. Streaming is well and good, we're paying for three different services including Netflix and HBO Nordic, but that will never really replace buying physical media for a variety of reasons. The one that primarily comes to mind isn't video/audio quality, although I agree with previous posters here, but rather the fact that with streaming services I don't own anything. I can never be sure if a particular movie or show will be available from one day to the next, and certainly access will be cut the day I no longer pay for the service. I have nothing against streaming and rely on it exclusively for TV shows and such but it's not one-size-fit-all solution. It's nice to see Sony still in the space, for now, but it makes me concerned about the future of the media. I would consider upgrading to a PS5 somewhere down the line but only if it includes an UHD BD. At one point that seemed like a sure bet, if this is the trend in physical media that ends up a far more loose assumption though.

The simple fact is, and you probably know this, bits are vastly cheaper than disks and it's associated packaging. If you can squeeze down even the bits (bit rate), the only thing stopping you dropping the quality further, is the customer complaining.