3 ms·

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?

by graynk 2y ago

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.

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?

by 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.