5 ms·

Conscious and subconscious awareness are different things. The mythical "most person" can't describe the difference between a blocky artifacted video and a cle

Conscious and subconscious awareness are different things. The mythical "most person" can't describe the difference between a blocky artifacted video and a clean high-bitrate video, but they will prefer the clean over the blocky and enjoy it more.

Waterluvian 7y ago
I think that's probably true if they got to A B test the options.
- jakear 7y ago
  Further, they aren’t going to cancel their subscription because it’s blocky. What would they do instead, go out and buy The Office box set, and a optical drive to play it with?
  - Dontrememberit 7y ago
    No, but they might pirate (but I bet yify is even worse)
    - monkpit 7y ago
      What makes you think it’s worse exactly?
    - jakear 7y ago
      This is much harder than simply opening the netflix app built into your TV. I'm bothered by the netflix quality every time I use it, but the hassle to download the movie before hand, connect my laptop to the HDMI, need to get up to control it, need to get up to move the mouse to make it disappear, etc. makes it a non-option. Sure there are solutions to those problems, but they're also work.
    - saulrh 7y ago
      On the contrary, the pirated media I've seen has been by far the highest-quality. It doesn't have to be delivered live, so encoding can be more efficient, and the source is almost always a 4k blu-ray or whatever else is the best that can be bought. In many cases it's even better than playing it through a DVD player because your computer uses better codecs.
      - fulafel 7y ago
        Netflix (and most of Youtube) is offline encoded.
        setr 7y ago
        I believe the limitation being referred to is that they're bandwidth-constrained -- encoding for streaming needs to strongly favor size over quality. Netflix needs a movie to be 500MB whereas torrents can happily be 2-8GB
        ElFitz 7y ago
        Or 50GB, for some torrents 4K torrents.
        cpeterso 7y ago
        I've heard from Netflix people that they re-encode their entire library every month. They are continually improving their encoding and storage tools so the streaming bandwidth/quality savings dwarfs the costs of re-encoding.
      - martius 7y ago
        Is it really easy to find high quality pirated content? I've got the impression that highly-compressed content is often so popular that bigger/higher quality files are hard to find.
        soylentcola 7y ago
        As someone who occasionally downloads unlicensed content, I find that most movies (and occasionally high profile TV shows or those with a focus on visuals--like BBC's nature docs) are available in multiple qualities. There are the basic 300-700mb copies for people who just want to watch something and don't have the time or bandwidth to bother with amazing quality (these look like your typical compressed cable or "tube" stream). Then there are the 720/1080 versions which are still pretty compressed but at least encoded with decent settings and at a resolution that doesn't look bad on an average TV. Often these are "webrips" where someone capped the stream from Amazon or whatever online streaming rental service had the movie. And last are the massive bluray rips that can go over 50GB in size and include 10bit HDR video, Dolby Atmos, etc. I never bother with these because honestly, if I'm pirating a movie/show it's because I'm not sure I'll enjoy it or it's just not available for me to watch yet. The movies I would want in maximum quality are the ones I would be buying anyway. I'm sure plenty of people can't or won't buy the official blurays so these are the alternative, but for me, "bootleg" copies are the equivalent of "I'd watch it if it was on TV" but not a replacement for stuff I'm really invested in seeing at max quality because I love it.
  - achow 7y ago
    These experience degradation pushes people gradually towards a cliff. Another competing thing comes up in people's life (it need not be even in the same category), the previous one would be dropped if there are unpleasant association with it - conscious or subconscious. OR, ..need to cut back (finance, digital wellbeing, etc.), again the first thing would go out is the one which is associated with less value i.e., of lesser quality, not living upto expectation, and so on..
  - coryrc 7y ago
    You would still buy the burger even if it has a few fewer sesame seeds, would you? ... until there are just three artfully placed seeds on each bun and nobody buys any?
ramblerman 7y ago
Sure, but OP argued they didn't care. I don't think its a question of conscious awareness, but rather opportunity cost. The lessened quality is not something (most) people will cancel their subscription for, nor would they go out and buy the dvd just to get the better quality.
- mnsc 7y ago
  That's true now but in the future when people start realizing that "Pay this premium for amazing 16K content!" doesn't do shit when they sit in their couches with their normal size tv:s we are gonna start hearing "Pay this premium for our 4k option with our Premium Non-Blocky Patented Compression Algorithm SilkComper™"

Waterluvian 7y ago

I think that's probably true if they got to A B test the options.

jakear 7y ago
Further, they aren’t going to cancel their subscription because it’s blocky. What would they do instead, go out and buy The Office box set, and a optical drive to play it with?
- Dontrememberit 7y ago
  No, but they might pirate (but I bet yify is even worse)
  - monkpit 7y ago
    What makes you think it’s worse exactly?
  - jakear 7y ago
    This is much harder than simply opening the netflix app built into your TV. I'm bothered by the netflix quality every time I use it, but the hassle to download the movie before hand, connect my laptop to the HDMI, need to get up to control it, need to get up to move the mouse to make it disappear, etc. makes it a non-option. Sure there are solutions to those problems, but they're also work.
  - saulrh 7y ago
    On the contrary, the pirated media I've seen has been by far the highest-quality. It doesn't have to be delivered live, so encoding can be more efficient, and the source is almost always a 4k blu-ray or whatever else is the best that can be bought. In many cases it's even better than playing it through a DVD player because your computer uses better codecs.
    - fulafel 7y ago
      Netflix (and most of Youtube) is offline encoded.
      - setr 7y ago
        I believe the limitation being referred to is that they're bandwidth-constrained -- encoding for streaming needs to strongly favor size over quality. Netflix needs a movie to be 500MB whereas torrents can happily be 2-8GB
        ElFitz 7y ago
        Or 50GB, for some torrents 4K torrents.
      - cpeterso 7y ago
        I've heard from Netflix people that they re-encode their entire library every month. They are continually improving their encoding and storage tools so the streaming bandwidth/quality savings dwarfs the costs of re-encoding.
    - martius 7y ago
      Is it really easy to find high quality pirated content? I've got the impression that highly-compressed content is often so popular that bigger/higher quality files are hard to find.
      - soylentcola 7y ago
        As someone who occasionally downloads unlicensed content, I find that most movies (and occasionally high profile TV shows or those with a focus on visuals--like BBC's nature docs) are available in multiple qualities. There are the basic 300-700mb copies for people who just want to watch something and don't have the time or bandwidth to bother with amazing quality (these look like your typical compressed cable or "tube" stream). Then there are the 720/1080 versions which are still pretty compressed but at least encoded with decent settings and at a resolution that doesn't look bad on an average TV. Often these are "webrips" where someone capped the stream from Amazon or whatever online streaming rental service had the movie. And last are the massive bluray rips that can go over 50GB in size and include 10bit HDR video, Dolby Atmos, etc. I never bother with these because honestly, if I'm pirating a movie/show it's because I'm not sure I'll enjoy it or it's just not available for me to watch yet. The movies I would want in maximum quality are the ones I would be buying anyway. I'm sure plenty of people can't or won't buy the official blurays so these are the alternative, but for me, "bootleg" copies are the equivalent of "I'd watch it if it was on TV" but not a replacement for stuff I'm really invested in seeing at max quality because I love it.
- achow 7y ago
  These experience degradation pushes people gradually towards a cliff. Another competing thing comes up in people's life (it need not be even in the same category), the previous one would be dropped if there are unpleasant association with it - conscious or subconscious. OR, ..need to cut back (finance, digital wellbeing, etc.), again the first thing would go out is the one which is associated with less value i.e., of lesser quality, not living upto expectation, and so on..
- coryrc 7y ago
  You would still buy the burger even if it has a few fewer sesame seeds, would you? ... until there are just three artfully placed seeds on each bun and nobody buys any?

ramblerman 7y ago

Sure, but OP argued they didn't care. I don't think its a question of conscious awareness, but rather opportunity cost. The lessened quality is not something (most) people will cancel their subscription for, nor would they go out and buy the dvd just to get the better quality.

mnsc 7y ago
That's true now but in the future when people start realizing that "Pay this premium for amazing 16K content!" doesn't do shit when they sit in their couches with their normal size tv:s we are gonna start hearing "Pay this premium for our 4k option with our Premium Non-Blocky Patented Compression Algorithm SilkComper™"