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I wonder at his premise that consumers are choosing things based on wanting larger file sizes and higher bit rates. Most of my friends literally could not tell

I wonder at his premise that consumers are choosing things based on wanting larger file sizes and higher bit rates. Most of my friends literally could not tell you anything about their mp3 or movie collection in terms of bit rate. Half of them you'd need to explain what "bit rate" means, before even asking the question. I only think about it for my DJ music collection (and VBR is fine in that context, I'm just ruling out CBR stuff below ~192kpbs, because sometimes it sounds a little harsh on the high end over the big speakers); never worry about it for video or music streaming. If it's HD and looks/sounds OK, I don't think about it at all. Netflix and Amazon both have acceptable quality, so I don't think about it, I just consume it. I think the success of Spotify and Pandora and Rhapsody are proof that consumers don't care about quality. I don't know exactly what bit rate they're streaming at, but, it sounds pretty bad on mobile, so I assume it's something quite low. But, even though I recognize the crappiness of it, sometimes I listen to them in the car (my truck has a crap stereo, anyway, so no big deal there). In short: Cool article, but the suggestion that consumers will stop it because they want bigger files seems weird.

swang 11y ago
I think you're missing the point. Consumers don't care, until some listicle website or advertising firm points out that Amazon/Apple short you on your mp3s by not even offering 128kbps all the way through. Or imagine Amazon goes with pure VBR, then Apple makes an ad claiming their sound quality is "better" because their bitrate never dips below 128kbps. It's bullshit, but how is an average consumer suppose to figure this out? They'll probably err on the side of caution and buy the CBR version since, "it can't be any worse than the VBR one, but I don't lose bits and it's the same price!" The whole article was talking about streaming vs. downloading. Streaming is _fine_ and Netflix will probably get away with their compression, but will Amazon/Apple be able to do that with downloads? He doesn't think so. People are fine with Spotify/Pandora because there is no perceived ownership of the songs they're streaming. People who actually buy and download audio or video, they have money in the game so they want "the best" and any loss of that is viewed as Amazon/Apple screwing them over.
- SwellJoe 11y ago
  Has that ever happened? I mean, have there been consumer revolts over bit rate that have cost Apple or Amazon customers? Pono and Tidal don't seem to be killing the existing players, but perhaps I'm just not up to speed on the state of the industry.
  - swang 11y ago
    There is no actual "revolt" because both Apple and Amazon make sure it doesn't happen by using CBR. You're right in that consumers don't care about it all that much. But let's say Amazon decides to go with VBR to save space and download speed, now there's an easy way for Apple to attack Amazon. "We never dip below a certain quality. Amazon does. We care. Amazon doesn't" Maybe that ad/slogan works, or maybe it doesn't. But if you're Amazon would you be willing to risk some weird consumer backlash over it? And if you're Apple it is an easy point to attack, and if it doesn't work, no harm no foul (and then secretly also switch to VBR and announce it at the next Apple conference!)
    - dexterdog 11y ago
      And the VBR company can claim that their codec gets higher that the others when it needs to giving better definition to the complex parts of the sound. It's not a hard sell and most people won't care.
      - lbotos 11y ago
        Except I'm reasonably intelligent and still get CBRs because irrationally I don't trust VBR files (and VBRs with DJ software)
        SwellJoe 11y ago
        Have you noticed a difference in handling of VBRs in your DJ software? I use Mixxx, and that's not been something I've noticed. Someone I regularly have tag-team DJed with uses VirtualDJ and he never complained about me sharing VBR files with him. I have noticed that older pre-2.0 versions of Mixxx would sometimes get glitchy (warbly) when using the pitch-correction feature (key lock, I think is the name in the UI), but, I don't think it's related to VBR vs CBR, but I never thought to check. The only time I've noticed an audible sound quality problem when DJing was with low bit rate (usually 128kbps) files.
fndrplayer13 11y ago
This is exactly what I thought while reading this. I don't think todays consumers care about that stuff. I think maybe they did somewhat more when we all had the original iPods or napster or whatever, but those days are long since past. I think these days most consumers are back to focusing on the picture and audio quality without regard to "geeky" numbers. I'm an engineer who has spent quite a bit of time dealing with video encoding in my career, and to be honest, I've never really bothered looking much into what Netflix, Google Play, iTunes, etc send my way. Thats because the quality is always good enough.
- johnpowell 11y ago
  I run a plex server and share with 12 people. A few months ago I asked everyone to watch the same shows in SD and 720P and pick if the 720P version was worth the extra bandwidth and the size of my library being drastically reduced. Three people picked the 720p option. But they were the three that watch very little. Movies were different. I did the same thing but with 720p and 1080p versions of movies. The majority wanted 1080p even if it meant a smaller library.
martinald 11y ago
Aren't they also saying that 5800kb/s is not enough for some bits of some movies? I've definitely noticed this - on 1080 full bluray files the bitrate swings enormously - from 2mbit/sec up to 50mbit/sec (so much so my Chromecast wifi can't keep up in high action scenes). So I definitely think they will be able to make improvements to their 1080p content (and definitely 4k content - I don't think 25mbit/sec CBR is enough IMO).
driverdan 11y ago
> I don't know exactly what bit rate they're streaming at, but, it sounds pretty bad on mobile Free Pandora maybe but Spotify doesn't. Spotify's bitrates are pretty good for most content and very good if you have a paid account with high bitrates turned on. Some content is poorly recorded, mixed, and/or mastered which will sound bad at any bitrate.
- mortenjorck 11y ago
  Indeed - Spotify premium goes up to 320k (Ogg Vorbis). I don't claim to be an expert, but it certainly sounds great to me on my Yamaha DAC and Sony 7506 monitor headphones.
- SwellJoe 11y ago
  I checked their site, out of curiosity, because Spotify sounds, um, spotty, to me on mobile. And, it is at 96kpbs on mobile when on "normal" mode, which even for Ogg Vorbis (which does sound better at lower bit rates than mp3) is a bit low. But, I learned there is a higher bit rate mode (160kbps) available, I just need to turn it on, which is cool. It's too bad Spotify isn't as good at predicting my preferences as Pandora.
damieng 11y ago
Author seems to think that they'll choose one file as the winner - that's not the case. Each video needs to be available not just in a few bitrates but also in different resolutions, codecs and profiles for broad compatibility with the various player apps many of which aren't updated any more. While I haven't keep that abreast of video encoding tech I'm surprised people are saying animated shows will take less bandwidth. Typically video codecs use DCTs which are great at roughly approximating complex patterns but do a bad job at solid blocks of color and contrast. The result is ugly artifact especially on the edges. Perhaps things have greatly improved with h.264
- jerf 11y ago
  "Author seems to think that they'll choose one file as the winner" I suggest reading it again.
  - damieng 11y ago
    "To do that, Netflix will transcode every one of their videos a bazillion times at different resolutions and at different bitrates, finally selecting the smallest one for a particular title that doesn’t suck visually."
balls187 11y ago
> I think the success of Spotify and Pandora and Rhapsody are proof that consumers don't care about [absolute] quality That is, after a certain threshold, quality is no longer a concern. As ears are typically less fidelity than eyes, that threshold bar is higher for video than audio. As an aside, this http://test.tidalhifi.com/intro http://test.tidalhifi.com/intro is an interesting little test.

swang 11y ago

I think you're missing the point. Consumers don't care, until some listicle website or advertising firm points out that Amazon/Apple short you on your mp3s by not even offering 128kbps all the way through. Or imagine Amazon goes with pure VBR, then Apple makes an ad claiming their sound quality is "better" because their bitrate never dips below 128kbps. It's bullshit, but how is an average consumer suppose to figure this out? They'll probably err on the side of caution and buy the CBR version since, "it can't be any worse than the VBR one, but I don't lose bits and it's the same price!" The whole article was talking about streaming vs. downloading. Streaming is _fine_ and Netflix will probably get away with their compression, but will Amazon/Apple be able to do that with downloads? He doesn't think so. People are fine with Spotify/Pandora because there is no perceived ownership of the songs they're streaming. People who actually buy and download audio or video, they have money in the game so they want "the best" and any loss of that is viewed as Amazon/Apple screwing them over.

SwellJoe 11y ago
Has that ever happened? I mean, have there been consumer revolts over bit rate that have cost Apple or Amazon customers? Pono and Tidal don't seem to be killing the existing players, but perhaps I'm just not up to speed on the state of the industry.
- swang 11y ago
  There is no actual "revolt" because both Apple and Amazon make sure it doesn't happen by using CBR. You're right in that consumers don't care about it all that much. But let's say Amazon decides to go with VBR to save space and download speed, now there's an easy way for Apple to attack Amazon. "We never dip below a certain quality. Amazon does. We care. Amazon doesn't" Maybe that ad/slogan works, or maybe it doesn't. But if you're Amazon would you be willing to risk some weird consumer backlash over it? And if you're Apple it is an easy point to attack, and if it doesn't work, no harm no foul (and then secretly also switch to VBR and announce it at the next Apple conference!)
  - dexterdog 11y ago
    And the VBR company can claim that their codec gets higher that the others when it needs to giving better definition to the complex parts of the sound. It's not a hard sell and most people won't care.
    - lbotos 11y ago
      Except I'm reasonably intelligent and still get CBRs because irrationally I don't trust VBR files (and VBRs with DJ software)
      - SwellJoe 11y ago
        Have you noticed a difference in handling of VBRs in your DJ software? I use Mixxx, and that's not been something I've noticed. Someone I regularly have tag-team DJed with uses VirtualDJ and he never complained about me sharing VBR files with him. I have noticed that older pre-2.0 versions of Mixxx would sometimes get glitchy (warbly) when using the pitch-correction feature (key lock, I think is the name in the UI), but, I don't think it's related to VBR vs CBR, but I never thought to check. The only time I've noticed an audible sound quality problem when DJing was with low bit rate (usually 128kbps) files.

fndrplayer13 11y ago

This is exactly what I thought while reading this. I don't think todays consumers care about that stuff. I think maybe they did somewhat more when we all had the original iPods or napster or whatever, but those days are long since past. I think these days most consumers are back to focusing on the picture and audio quality without regard to "geeky" numbers. I'm an engineer who has spent quite a bit of time dealing with video encoding in my career, and to be honest, I've never really bothered looking much into what Netflix, Google Play, iTunes, etc send my way. Thats because the quality is always good enough.

johnpowell 11y ago
I run a plex server and share with 12 people. A few months ago I asked everyone to watch the same shows in SD and 720P and pick if the 720P version was worth the extra bandwidth and the size of my library being drastically reduced. Three people picked the 720p option. But they were the three that watch very little. Movies were different. I did the same thing but with 720p and 1080p versions of movies. The majority wanted 1080p even if it meant a smaller library.

martinald 11y ago

Aren't they also saying that 5800kb/s is not enough for some bits of some movies? I've definitely noticed this - on 1080 full bluray files the bitrate swings enormously - from 2mbit/sec up to 50mbit/sec (so much so my Chromecast wifi can't keep up in high action scenes). So I definitely think they will be able to make improvements to their 1080p content (and definitely 4k content - I don't think 25mbit/sec CBR is enough IMO).

driverdan 11y ago

> I don't know exactly what bit rate they're streaming at, but, it sounds pretty bad on mobile Free Pandora maybe but Spotify doesn't. Spotify's bitrates are pretty good for most content and very good if you have a paid account with high bitrates turned on. Some content is poorly recorded, mixed, and/or mastered which will sound bad at any bitrate.

mortenjorck 11y ago
Indeed - Spotify premium goes up to 320k (Ogg Vorbis). I don't claim to be an expert, but it certainly sounds great to me on my Yamaha DAC and Sony 7506 monitor headphones.
SwellJoe 11y ago
I checked their site, out of curiosity, because Spotify sounds, um, spotty, to me on mobile. And, it is at 96kpbs on mobile when on "normal" mode, which even for Ogg Vorbis (which does sound better at lower bit rates than mp3) is a bit low. But, I learned there is a higher bit rate mode (160kbps) available, I just need to turn it on, which is cool. It's too bad Spotify isn't as good at predicting my preferences as Pandora.

damieng 11y ago

Author seems to think that they'll choose one file as the winner - that's not the case. Each video needs to be available not just in a few bitrates but also in different resolutions, codecs and profiles for broad compatibility with the various player apps many of which aren't updated any more. While I haven't keep that abreast of video encoding tech I'm surprised people are saying animated shows will take less bandwidth. Typically video codecs use DCTs which are great at roughly approximating complex patterns but do a bad job at solid blocks of color and contrast. The result is ugly artifact especially on the edges. Perhaps things have greatly improved with h.264

jerf 11y ago
"Author seems to think that they'll choose one file as the winner" I suggest reading it again.
- damieng 11y ago
  "To do that, Netflix will transcode every one of their videos a bazillion times at different resolutions and at different bitrates, finally selecting the smallest one for a particular title that doesn’t suck visually."

balls187 11y ago

> I think the success of Spotify and Pandora and Rhapsody are proof that consumers don't care about [absolute] quality That is, after a certain threshold, quality is no longer a concern. As ears are typically less fidelity than eyes, that threshold bar is higher for video than audio. As an aside, this http://test.tidalhifi.com/intro http://test.tidalhifi.com/intro is an interesting little test.