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This is really tragic to watch. I like Netflix in many respects but this is just incompetent. Not one Academy Award Winning film for best picture would qualify

This is really tragic to watch. I like Netflix in many respects but this is just incompetent. Not one Academy Award Winning film for best picture would qualify for these specs. Not one. I expect very few if any nominees either. The Arri Alexa is eliminated by these specs, for crying out loud. The single most popular camera amongst high end feature cinematographers. This is driven by some misguided belief that input resolution == output resolution AND that resolution is the measure of quality. I really hope they get their head out of their asses on this at some point. It's good to have quality standards, and thank god they aren't Turner Classic Movies (the fuck was that all about??). But these specs are as arbitrary as saying all of your food must be cooked in copper cookware. We tell stories, not pixels.

mattalbie 9y ago
The Arri Alexa 65 is on their list.
- joshuak 9y ago
  Yes, and not the camera I'm referring to.
  - dsl 9y ago
    Pretend most of HN has no idea what you are talking about, especially which n is "THE n".
    - joshuak 9y ago
      Good point. And I suppose I didn't do a good job making my point clear. It isn't a matter of which camera is better, but that the camera is a part of the creative process of filmmaking and is not strictly tied to the quality of deliverables. It is a brush with which an artist chooses to paint, for creative and practical reasons. For a company like Netflix to control quality the goal must be to capture the creative intent with the highest fidelity[0]. Keeping in mind that the pixels serve the content, the content does not serve the pixels, and pixels are just one of very many things that serve the content. This can and should be done by specifying the quality of the result, the deliverables, not the tools used in the creation process. [0] Fidelity as apposed to quality is an important distinction (that seems to be lost on Netflix). "Pi", "Saving Private Ryan", "No Country for Old Men", and "Deadpool" have different objective measurements of image quality, but they can all be presented to an audience at high fidelity.
      - dsl 9y ago
        Thank you, that makes much more sense to me. Otherwise it is on par with a developer complaining about their workload running on equivalent AMD processors vs Intel. It sounds like Netflix could use someone like you.
nso 9y ago
Netflix sells pixels. Not stories. They are the McDonalds of movies, and a McDonalds is all about standardization and efficiency. If only allowing for cameras that deliver a narrow and predictable band of technologies let's them work more efficiently, and if they are able to make and save money that way, it makes perfect sense for someone who works at scale to do exactly what they are doing. They are a market marker now, and thus can afford to play around with previously established norms.
- joshuak 9y ago
  They may be marketing pixels "more is better", but they are selling content. Customers come, and remain because of content. Bad content at 4k is still bad content. It's true good image quality does help, but my point is they already have both simply by specifying the delivery requirement. What they are doing is more like a company that says they won't buy software that's written on anything other than emacs, or Notepad.
  - ams6110 9y ago
    I don't and will never own a 4K TV, but having seen it at friends' houses I think image quality can go too far. It is so "uncanny" vivid and sharp it's distracting. Maybe because I grew up with NTSC when a 20" TV was a "big" television, but I can't watch the 4K stuff without getting queasy.

mattalbie 9y ago

The Arri Alexa 65 is on their list.

joshuak 9y ago
Yes, and not the camera I'm referring to.
- dsl 9y ago
  Pretend most of HN has no idea what you are talking about, especially which n is "THE n".
  - joshuak 9y ago
    Good point. And I suppose I didn't do a good job making my point clear. It isn't a matter of which camera is better, but that the camera is a part of the creative process of filmmaking and is not strictly tied to the quality of deliverables. It is a brush with which an artist chooses to paint, for creative and practical reasons. For a company like Netflix to control quality the goal must be to capture the creative intent with the highest fidelity[0]. Keeping in mind that the pixels serve the content, the content does not serve the pixels, and pixels are just one of very many things that serve the content. This can and should be done by specifying the quality of the result, the deliverables, not the tools used in the creation process. [0] Fidelity as apposed to quality is an important distinction (that seems to be lost on Netflix). "Pi", "Saving Private Ryan", "No Country for Old Men", and "Deadpool" have different objective measurements of image quality, but they can all be presented to an audience at high fidelity.
    - dsl 9y ago
      Thank you, that makes much more sense to me. Otherwise it is on par with a developer complaining about their workload running on equivalent AMD processors vs Intel. It sounds like Netflix could use someone like you.

nso 9y ago

Netflix sells pixels. Not stories. They are the McDonalds of movies, and a McDonalds is all about standardization and efficiency. If only allowing for cameras that deliver a narrow and predictable band of technologies let's them work more efficiently, and if they are able to make and save money that way, it makes perfect sense for someone who works at scale to do exactly what they are doing. They are a market marker now, and thus can afford to play around with previously established norms.

joshuak 9y ago
They may be marketing pixels "more is better", but they are selling content. Customers come, and remain because of content. Bad content at 4k is still bad content. It's true good image quality does help, but my point is they already have both simply by specifying the delivery requirement. What they are doing is more like a company that says they won't buy software that's written on anything other than emacs, or Notepad.
- ams6110 9y ago
  I don't and will never own a 4K TV, but having seen it at friends' houses I think image quality can go too far. It is so "uncanny" vivid and sharp it's distracting. Maybe because I grew up with NTSC when a 20" TV was a "big" television, but I can't watch the 4K stuff without getting queasy.