4 ms·

I consider streaming 720p to be DVD quality at best. (And no, i'm not basing that on bitrate. I know modern compression is much better.)

latexr 2y ago
> I consider streaming 720p to be DVD quality at best. But it’s not, DVD quality is 480p. This isn’t a matter of opinion, we can look up the numbers.
- pkroll 2y ago
  That's too simple a comparison, against something that's a little more complicated. A 720p stream without adequate bandwidth can have terrible artifacts, mostly showing up during fast motion/panning/action. They can look objectively worse than DVDs.
- 7734128 2y ago
  That's similar to saying that a 20 megapixel front facing camera of a cheap chinese phone is superior to a 12 megapixel DLSR.
  - CharlesW 2y ago
    You're right that vertical resolution is just one factor, but streaming uses radically more efficient codecs than DVD, so at typical broadband speeds, streaming 480P on YouTube will look far better than DVD did.
    - 7jjjjjjj 2y ago
      That's not even close to true, WTF. YouTube 480p has criminally low bitrate, even the crappiest DVDs have better quality.
      - CharlesW 2y ago
        I encourage you to try it. Because I wasn't sure, I already had (using the new 28 Years Later trailer) before I posted. You can use yt-dlp to see that the 480P YouTube version is AV1 at 572 Kbps, which is notably better than a DVD Video-compliant MPEG-2 encode from the highest quality source available.
        codedokode 2y ago
        Wikipedia say that "Typically, the data rate for DVD movies ranges from 3 to 9.5 Mbit/s" [1] which is much more than 572 Kbit/s. The Youtube quality issues are easy to spot on highly dynamic clips (with fireworks, flashing lights etc). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Video https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Video
- hedora 2y ago
  Yeah, but switching to downscaled 4k streams on my 1080p TV was at least as big a jump as upgrading the set from 720p to 1080p.

latexr 2y ago

> I consider streaming 720p to be DVD quality at best. But it’s not, DVD quality is 480p. This isn’t a matter of opinion, we can look up the numbers.

pkroll 2y ago
That's too simple a comparison, against something that's a little more complicated. A 720p stream without adequate bandwidth can have terrible artifacts, mostly showing up during fast motion/panning/action. They can look objectively worse than DVDs.
7734128 2y ago
That's similar to saying that a 20 megapixel front facing camera of a cheap chinese phone is superior to a 12 megapixel DLSR.
- CharlesW 2y ago
  You're right that vertical resolution is just one factor, but streaming uses radically more efficient codecs than DVD, so at typical broadband speeds, streaming 480P on YouTube will look far better than DVD did.
  - 7jjjjjjj 2y ago
    That's not even close to true, WTF. YouTube 480p has criminally low bitrate, even the crappiest DVDs have better quality.
    - CharlesW 2y ago
      I encourage you to try it. Because I wasn't sure, I already had (using the new 28 Years Later trailer) before I posted. You can use yt-dlp to see that the 480P YouTube version is AV1 at 572 Kbps, which is notably better than a DVD Video-compliant MPEG-2 encode from the highest quality source available.
      - codedokode 2y ago
        Wikipedia say that "Typically, the data rate for DVD movies ranges from 3 to 9.5 Mbit/s" [1] which is much more than 572 Kbit/s. The Youtube quality issues are easy to spot on highly dynamic clips (with fireworks, flashing lights etc). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Video https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Video
hedora 2y ago
Yeah, but switching to downscaled 4k streams on my 1080p TV was at least as big a jump as upgrading the set from 720p to 1080p.