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In the US, lots of people have 55" TV's and bigger and at that size the streaming artifacts are really noticeable. A Netflix streaming 4k video looks terrible

In the US, lots of people have 55" TV's and bigger and at that size the streaming artifacts are really noticeable. A Netflix streaming 4k video looks terrible when the screen has a lot of black/gray gradients. It makes people wonder why they even bothered with a 4k. But, throw a blu-ray on there and you see how great the TV looks. Even better, throw a 4k Ultra Blu-Ray on and you see the brilliance of the TV and the amazing picture. This was my case - I got a 4k UHD from Redbox and now will never watch a blockbuster movie any other way.

asark 8y ago
Their 4k's also almost exclusively for their own content. So it's low quality and you can pretty much only use it for content that doesn't much benefit from it, assuming it's worth watching at all.
z3t4 8y ago
People are using the low bandwidth used for streaming as an argument to not invest in a fiber connection. 100 mbit is not even enough to stream 1080p with surround hd audio. And they're like but you only need 2 mbit to watch Netflix.
- phamilton 8y ago
  > 100 mbit is not even enough to stream 1080p with surround hd audio This doesn't seem right. A 50GB blu-ray that is 2 hours long can have a maximum bitrate of 55mbit. So if your claim is correct, you'd need a 100GB blu-ray (which exists) for a 2 hour movie, which doesn't match my experience, especially for 1080p.
  - zepearl 8y ago
    I agree. I bought a lot of Blu-rays (obsessed with "owning" the good movies which I then rip - I extract the original streams without reencoding and then I put the files on my mediaserver) and the biggest 1080p-file I have is the one of "Interstellar" being 39GB (original video and original 3 audio tracks and some subtitles), followed by "the dark knight rises" of 35GBs and otherwise all the rest is between 10-30GBs depending on the movie. Usually when I play a movie in the living room I see spikes of 2.5MB/s transferred data on the mediaservers, and this is original content ripped 1:1.
    - xienze 8y ago
      Yep, I have the same setup. Rip and play through Plex. Not sure what OP is getting at, even 4K UHDs only rarely hit 100Mbps.
    - bscphil 8y ago
      Lawrence of Arabia comes on two discs! If you mux together the entire film (just the main feature), it's over 57 GiB!
      - 4ad 8y ago
        My version of Lawrence of Arabia is 117GB.
  - 4ad 8y ago
    He's off by a factor of two (54Mbps vs 100Mbps), but that doesn't invalidate his argument.
    - z3t4 8y ago
      thanks. There have probably been thousands of man hours spent on video compression. I used to have a 100 Mbit home network and play HD video via a OpenWrt home router with a usb disk attached to it. The HQ videos lagged when there was a lot of sound and things happening on the screen at the same time. It probably was the HDD/router capacity that was the limit though, not the network. If you however measure the bit-rate between the computer and the monitor, it's significantly higher ... But imagine if we could stream via the Internet directly to the monitor. I'm thinking a VR headset that you just plug-in to the Ethernet socket, eg. no need to have a high end gfx computer. This would both mean cheaper/less hardware at home, and a easier business model for game developers as they wouldn't have to worry that much about people copying games.
mehrdadn 8y ago
...I had no clue Blu-Ray was already superseded. Thanks for mentioning this.
TylerE 8y ago
That's more an issue with encoding, though. I've streamed 4K content from Youtube on my TV that has looked utterly stunning.
- shados 8y ago
  Yup. It really makes it hard to test out your TV too... eg: LG OLED Tvs are pretty nice, but they have color banding issues. Also have really good contrast. Fire up an average Netflix show, and the banding is absolutely insane, causing one to immediately blame the TV (since it DOES have documented banding issues). But...it has nothing to do with the TV: it just makes the low quality of the stream very obvious. Watch some 4k HDR stuff on Youtube and it looks fine (there is some banding, but it's much, MUCH harder to see).
dragonwriter 8y ago
I don't pay the upcharge for Netflix 4K, but the streaming 4K content I have found (YouTube, mostly) has no such problems, so it's certainly not inherent to streaming.
- wodenokoto 8y ago
  Then you are not looking very closely. Even LG's OLED 4k promo video has artefacts when streaming from their yt channel to an lg 4k OLED.
drewmol 8y ago
This is why, despite having Netflix/Prime/Hulu I resort to Kodi with real-debrid to watch 4K content
spear 8y ago
Do you have examples? I have a 75" LCD/LED and I haven't noticed such problems. Altered Carbon and Lost in Space look spectacular. The Marvel shows look pretty good as well. I wish Netflix had more stuff in 4k, let alone HDR10/Dolby Vision because the nearby Redbox still doesn't carry UHD Blu-rays.
sand500 8y ago
> I got a 4k UHD from Redbox and now will never watch a blockbuster movie any other way. Oh shit didn't know Redbox did this. Wish Netflix did 4k Blu rays
- xxpor 8y ago
  Redbox has inferior copies sometimes though (usually sound).
  - bluedevil2k 8y ago
    No, a 4k is a 4k. The aqua man I just got has Dolby Atmos and HDR
pier25 8y ago
I regularly buy and watch 4K UHD Blurays and quite frankly the Netflix 4K Dolby Vision looks pretty good. I have a 65'' TV.
4ad 8y ago
Yeah, this drives me nuts. As encoding gets more informationally efficient, it becomes more and more vector-like. The resolution of a stream matters much less than the bitrate. And the bitrate of 4k streaming is absolutely pathetic. Get me 1080p Blu-Ray any day.

asark 8y ago

Their 4k's also almost exclusively for their own content. So it's low quality and you can pretty much only use it for content that doesn't much benefit from it, assuming it's worth watching at all.

z3t4 8y ago

People are using the low bandwidth used for streaming as an argument to not invest in a fiber connection. 100 mbit is not even enough to stream 1080p with surround hd audio. And they're like but you only need 2 mbit to watch Netflix.

phamilton 8y ago
> 100 mbit is not even enough to stream 1080p with surround hd audio This doesn't seem right. A 50GB blu-ray that is 2 hours long can have a maximum bitrate of 55mbit. So if your claim is correct, you'd need a 100GB blu-ray (which exists) for a 2 hour movie, which doesn't match my experience, especially for 1080p.
- zepearl 8y ago
  I agree. I bought a lot of Blu-rays (obsessed with "owning" the good movies which I then rip - I extract the original streams without reencoding and then I put the files on my mediaserver) and the biggest 1080p-file I have is the one of "Interstellar" being 39GB (original video and original 3 audio tracks and some subtitles), followed by "the dark knight rises" of 35GBs and otherwise all the rest is between 10-30GBs depending on the movie. Usually when I play a movie in the living room I see spikes of 2.5MB/s transferred data on the mediaservers, and this is original content ripped 1:1.
  - xienze 8y ago
    Yep, I have the same setup. Rip and play through Plex. Not sure what OP is getting at, even 4K UHDs only rarely hit 100Mbps.
  - bscphil 8y ago
    Lawrence of Arabia comes on two discs! If you mux together the entire film (just the main feature), it's over 57 GiB!
    - 4ad 8y ago
      My version of Lawrence of Arabia is 117GB.
- 4ad 8y ago
  He's off by a factor of two (54Mbps vs 100Mbps), but that doesn't invalidate his argument.
  - z3t4 8y ago
    thanks. There have probably been thousands of man hours spent on video compression. I used to have a 100 Mbit home network and play HD video via a OpenWrt home router with a usb disk attached to it. The HQ videos lagged when there was a lot of sound and things happening on the screen at the same time. It probably was the HDD/router capacity that was the limit though, not the network. If you however measure the bit-rate between the computer and the monitor, it's significantly higher ... But imagine if we could stream via the Internet directly to the monitor. I'm thinking a VR headset that you just plug-in to the Ethernet socket, eg. no need to have a high end gfx computer. This would both mean cheaper/less hardware at home, and a easier business model for game developers as they wouldn't have to worry that much about people copying games.

mehrdadn 8y ago

...I had no clue Blu-Ray was already superseded. Thanks for mentioning this.

TylerE 8y ago

That's more an issue with encoding, though. I've streamed 4K content from Youtube on my TV that has looked utterly stunning.

shados 8y ago
Yup. It really makes it hard to test out your TV too... eg: LG OLED Tvs are pretty nice, but they have color banding issues. Also have really good contrast. Fire up an average Netflix show, and the banding is absolutely insane, causing one to immediately blame the TV (since it DOES have documented banding issues). But...it has nothing to do with the TV: it just makes the low quality of the stream very obvious. Watch some 4k HDR stuff on Youtube and it looks fine (there is some banding, but it's much, MUCH harder to see).

dragonwriter 8y ago

I don't pay the upcharge for Netflix 4K, but the streaming 4K content I have found (YouTube, mostly) has no such problems, so it's certainly not inherent to streaming.

wodenokoto 8y ago
Then you are not looking very closely. Even LG's OLED 4k promo video has artefacts when streaming from their yt channel to an lg 4k OLED.

drewmol 8y ago

This is why, despite having Netflix/Prime/Hulu I resort to Kodi with real-debrid to watch 4K content

spear 8y ago

Do you have examples? I have a 75" LCD/LED and I haven't noticed such problems. Altered Carbon and Lost in Space look spectacular. The Marvel shows look pretty good as well. I wish Netflix had more stuff in 4k, let alone HDR10/Dolby Vision because the nearby Redbox still doesn't carry UHD Blu-rays.

sand500 8y ago

> I got a 4k UHD from Redbox and now will never watch a blockbuster movie any other way. Oh shit didn't know Redbox did this. Wish Netflix did 4k Blu rays

xxpor 8y ago
Redbox has inferior copies sometimes though (usually sound).
- bluedevil2k 8y ago
  No, a 4k is a 4k. The aqua man I just got has Dolby Atmos and HDR

pier25 8y ago

I regularly buy and watch 4K UHD Blurays and quite frankly the Netflix 4K Dolby Vision looks pretty good. I have a 65'' TV.

4ad 8y ago

Yeah, this drives me nuts. As encoding gets more informationally efficient, it becomes more and more vector-like. The resolution of a stream matters much less than the bitrate. And the bitrate of 4k streaming is absolutely pathetic. Get me 1080p Blu-Ray any day.