8 ms·

I wonder if these giant companies constantly trying to squeeze extra microcents out of everything is why pretty much all online video now looks horrible, despit

by dusted 2y ago

I wonder if these giant companies constantly trying to squeeze extra microcents out of everything is why pretty much all online video now looks horrible, despite us having the sharpest displays, fastest processors and fastest Internet in the history of mankind..

notRobot 2y ago
Yes, yes it is. I personally have just started to torrent stuff even if it is on the streaming services I am a subscriber to because the quality is just so much better even though both are called 1080p.
- readyman 2y ago
  [dead]
- graynk 2y ago
  If it’s a TV show - I’d expect it to be the same quality, because most of those are WEB-DL from those same services, no?
  - kranke155 2y ago
    No, because as others said, there are a bunch of checks that Netflix does to check whether your internet is fast enough etc. even if you get 1080p you will likely get a fairly compressed image. It’s possible that Netflix over filters for internet speed leaving you with inferior quality. Or you could use a 4K stream from Netflix (only available to premium premium subs) and encode it down to HD and likely get a better image.
    - entropicdrifter 2y ago
      Likewise, for shows that are on more than one service, or available on e.g. Paramount+ on Prime in addition to just on Paramount+, torrenting groups pick the highest bitrate/quality sources.
    - reaperman 2y ago
      > It’s possible that Netflix over filters for internet speed leaving you with inferior quality. This is absolutely true for all the streaming platforms. My Jellyfin/Plex servers with pirated content are set up in a fairly ridiculous way: I use sshfs across multiple seed boxes located on different continents to "merge" the filesystems in a way that is transparent-enough to Jellyfin that one server will serve up all the content. Even with this somewhat-absurd daisy-chaining, I can serve much higher bitrates to my home than Amazon, Disney, Netflix, Hulu, etc. The encoding quality is much better and even completely video-naive guests who know nothing about technology notice the difference and comment "Wow, the picture quality is so good!", especially with anything like Dune 2 or Planet Earth. Even when the video gets transcoded on the fly for device-compatibility, while it's degraded, it ends up still being better visual quality than the major streaming services. The streaming platforms are definitely optimizing for minimizing their costs rather than serving decent bitrates that the user-agent can handle. If you really care about visual quality, I do reccomend trying to get a membership to PassThePopcorn, or rip content from BluRays yourself, which you can rent from libraries. Ripping is really not much effort once you learn enough to do it once or twice. I'll start using the major streaming services again when I can actually receive not-mangled visual quality from them.
      - bobdvb 2y ago
        Streaming isn't a particularly profitable business, if you aim to run a sustainable business then you need to optimise. Added to that, you can comfortably overload an ISP's peering and send infrastructure costs rocketing. Practicalities, things might work on an individual scale, but when you have millions upon millions of users, it creates problems.
kalupa 2y ago
someone's gotta pay for it, i guess. unfortunately, in this case, it's us and our eyeballs
tracker1 2y ago
I think it varies and depends a lot on your connection speed and latency from the nearest source. There's a lot of effort to give a "good enough" quality at different screen sizes, throughput and devices. Even if you look at torrent content, you can find a given movie anywhere from a few gb (1080p) to a few dozen gb in size at 4k with higher relative throughput and quality. Not to mention the encoder settings. Personally, I don't go for the highest quality encodes because I don't see the difference well enough. I tend to favor x265 over x264 only because the blur degredation is less annoying than blotchiness imo. When you are streaming, the level of encoding will swap out, even at the same resolution a number of times depending on what you're getting. You may well do better with a 1080p stream over a 4k stream depending on your screen and device's upscaling behavior. 4k takes at least 4x the bandwidth, and has tighter latency needs. There are others that can go over this and explain it much better than I can, but it's not malicious, it's partly cost sure, but it's also a matter of what your connection can handle.
- ruszki 2y ago
  Netflix, Disney+, and others don’t allow better quality than 1080p on laptops. I think Disney+ doesn’t even allow more than 720p. So they are never 4K. It’s quite annoying and obvious on large monitors. Edit: Netflix changed this sometime in the past half years: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/30081 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/30081
  - tracker1 2y ago
    I usually think in terms of streaming devices vs. laptop/desktop use. I think the artificial limitations are mostly BS.
maxsilver 2y ago
Yes, it's crazy to me that Netflix puts so much effort into improving encode quality, and then they don't let most people see that version -- almost no one gets to see the "good" versions of their encodes. Whether it's because Netflix locks the good high-bitrate encodes to the most expensive subscription plans many people aren't on, or because their "Roku 4K" or "Fire TV 4K" or whatever is actually negotiating the 1080p-H.264-low-bitrate stream, or because their internet connection latency was auto-detected too low, or their device doesn't have enough memory to buffer nicely or whatever. I bet Netflix is absolutely capable of delivering something really nice. But in my experience, Netflix quality as delivered looks about on-par with "YouTube free 1080p" -- so much so, that even plugging in a 1080p-only-Blu-Ray, is a huge improvement even non-techie folks can notice.
- felixg3 2y ago
  1080p Blu-ray vs Netflix 2160p Dolby Vision? I‘d choose the blu-ray any day.
  - EligibleDecoy 2y ago
    1080p blu ray’s 50 Mbps vs Netflix 4K 15 Mbps [1]. Hell yea blu ray is so great to watch. Plus, no random drops in quality and dts audio basically guaranteed. [1] https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306
- inhumantsar 2y ago
  I found out the other day that many android set top boxes (and I'd assume smart TVs) aren't Netflix certified and don't get to run a native app but rather the packaged form of their web app.
  - kasabali 2y ago
    Yes, and even being Widevine L1 certificated isn't enough, Netflix runs their own licensing program.
islewis 2y ago
> Reed Hastings announced that the company was expanding into almost every country around the world — including markets with subpar broadband infrastructure and consumers who primarily accessed the internet from their mobile phone. The optimistic take here is that the purpose of this encoding work is to make Netflix accessible consumers in ALL countries- not consumers with beefy internet. IMO the realistic take is that Netflix knows it can do this while saving $$$ serving lower quality video to consumers who cant tell the difference.
cainxinth 2y ago
4k resolution at a VHS bitrate.
bbstats 2y ago
Yeah everything online looks so terrible
whalesalad 2y ago
I’d imagine a substantial amount of Netflix’s operating costs are in bandwidth. I bet a little bit of optimization goes a long way.

by dusted 2y ago

notRobot 2y ago

Yes, yes it is. I personally have just started to torrent stuff even if it is on the streaming services I am a subscriber to because the quality is just so much better even though both are called 1080p.

readyman 2y ago
[dead]
graynk 2y ago
If it’s a TV show - I’d expect it to be the same quality, because most of those are WEB-DL from those same services, no?
- kranke155 2y ago
  No, because as others said, there are a bunch of checks that Netflix does to check whether your internet is fast enough etc. even if you get 1080p you will likely get a fairly compressed image. It’s possible that Netflix over filters for internet speed leaving you with inferior quality. Or you could use a 4K stream from Netflix (only available to premium premium subs) and encode it down to HD and likely get a better image.
  - entropicdrifter 2y ago
    Likewise, for shows that are on more than one service, or available on e.g. Paramount+ on Prime in addition to just on Paramount+, torrenting groups pick the highest bitrate/quality sources.
  - reaperman 2y ago
    > It’s possible that Netflix over filters for internet speed leaving you with inferior quality. This is absolutely true for all the streaming platforms. My Jellyfin/Plex servers with pirated content are set up in a fairly ridiculous way: I use sshfs across multiple seed boxes located on different continents to "merge" the filesystems in a way that is transparent-enough to Jellyfin that one server will serve up all the content. Even with this somewhat-absurd daisy-chaining, I can serve much higher bitrates to my home than Amazon, Disney, Netflix, Hulu, etc. The encoding quality is much better and even completely video-naive guests who know nothing about technology notice the difference and comment "Wow, the picture quality is so good!", especially with anything like Dune 2 or Planet Earth. Even when the video gets transcoded on the fly for device-compatibility, while it's degraded, it ends up still being better visual quality than the major streaming services. The streaming platforms are definitely optimizing for minimizing their costs rather than serving decent bitrates that the user-agent can handle. If you really care about visual quality, I do reccomend trying to get a membership to PassThePopcorn, or rip content from BluRays yourself, which you can rent from libraries. Ripping is really not much effort once you learn enough to do it once or twice. I'll start using the major streaming services again when I can actually receive not-mangled visual quality from them.
    - bobdvb 2y ago
      Streaming isn't a particularly profitable business, if you aim to run a sustainable business then you need to optimise. Added to that, you can comfortably overload an ISP's peering and send infrastructure costs rocketing. Practicalities, things might work on an individual scale, but when you have millions upon millions of users, it creates problems.

kalupa 2y ago

someone's gotta pay for it, i guess. unfortunately, in this case, it's us and our eyeballs

tracker1 2y ago

I think it varies and depends a lot on your connection speed and latency from the nearest source. There's a lot of effort to give a "good enough" quality at different screen sizes, throughput and devices. Even if you look at torrent content, you can find a given movie anywhere from a few gb (1080p) to a few dozen gb in size at 4k with higher relative throughput and quality. Not to mention the encoder settings. Personally, I don't go for the highest quality encodes because I don't see the difference well enough. I tend to favor x265 over x264 only because the blur degredation is less annoying than blotchiness imo. When you are streaming, the level of encoding will swap out, even at the same resolution a number of times depending on what you're getting. You may well do better with a 1080p stream over a 4k stream depending on your screen and device's upscaling behavior. 4k takes at least 4x the bandwidth, and has tighter latency needs. There are others that can go over this and explain it much better than I can, but it's not malicious, it's partly cost sure, but it's also a matter of what your connection can handle.

ruszki 2y ago
Netflix, Disney+, and others don’t allow better quality than 1080p on laptops. I think Disney+ doesn’t even allow more than 720p. So they are never 4K. It’s quite annoying and obvious on large monitors. Edit: Netflix changed this sometime in the past half years: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/30081 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/30081
- tracker1 2y ago
  I usually think in terms of streaming devices vs. laptop/desktop use. I think the artificial limitations are mostly BS.

maxsilver 2y ago

Yes, it's crazy to me that Netflix puts so much effort into improving encode quality, and then they don't let most people see that version -- almost no one gets to see the "good" versions of their encodes. Whether it's because Netflix locks the good high-bitrate encodes to the most expensive subscription plans many people aren't on, or because their "Roku 4K" or "Fire TV 4K" or whatever is actually negotiating the 1080p-H.264-low-bitrate stream, or because their internet connection latency was auto-detected too low, or their device doesn't have enough memory to buffer nicely or whatever. I bet Netflix is absolutely capable of delivering something really nice. But in my experience, Netflix quality as delivered looks about on-par with "YouTube free 1080p" -- so much so, that even plugging in a 1080p-only-Blu-Ray, is a huge improvement even non-techie folks can notice.

felixg3 2y ago
1080p Blu-ray vs Netflix 2160p Dolby Vision? I‘d choose the blu-ray any day.
- EligibleDecoy 2y ago
  1080p blu ray’s 50 Mbps vs Netflix 4K 15 Mbps [1]. Hell yea blu ray is so great to watch. Plus, no random drops in quality and dts audio basically guaranteed. [1] https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306
inhumantsar 2y ago
I found out the other day that many android set top boxes (and I'd assume smart TVs) aren't Netflix certified and don't get to run a native app but rather the packaged form of their web app.
- kasabali 2y ago
  Yes, and even being Widevine L1 certificated isn't enough, Netflix runs their own licensing program.

islewis 2y ago

> Reed Hastings announced that the company was expanding into almost every country around the world — including markets with subpar broadband infrastructure and consumers who primarily accessed the internet from their mobile phone. The optimistic take here is that the purpose of this encoding work is to make Netflix accessible consumers in ALL countries- not consumers with beefy internet. IMO the realistic take is that Netflix knows it can do this while saving $$$ serving lower quality video to consumers who cant tell the difference.

cainxinth 2y ago

4k resolution at a VHS bitrate.

bbstats 2y ago

Yeah everything online looks so terrible

whalesalad 2y ago

I’d imagine a substantial amount of Netflix’s operating costs are in bandwidth. I bet a little bit of optimization goes a long way.