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The vertical resolution of a DVD is either 480 (NTSC) or 576 (PAL). This usually matched the visible vertical resolution of the TV you were using. A 1080p scre

The vertical resolution of a DVD is either 480 (NTSC) or 576 (PAL). This usually matched the visible vertical resolution of the TV you were using. A 1080p screen has 6 times as many pixels as an NTSC DVD. A 4k screen has 24 times as many pixels as an NTSC DVD.

tehwebguy 7mo ago
I don’t think DVDs look bad on a 1080p TV, others that assume they will may be surprised!
- to11mtm 7mo ago
  I think too many people remember DVDs but mostly remember them on Interlaced displays. Or hooked their DVD player to the HDTV with an RCA cable and were disappointed. On the flipside, if you had a DVD player capable of progressive scan and Component or HDMI-out, it's fine for couch viewing. That said, there are plenty of DVDs out there (extreme case, single layer DVD with extras on same disc as movie) where the bitrate can show, but that's not a fault of the format.
  - prmoustache 7mo ago
    I am watching DVDs on a 1080p projector to the large wall of my living room. It is a 10y old cheap aliexpress one so it is not the sharpest you can get and it actually makes the DVD enjoyable as it smoothen a bit the whole thing. I don't really know what is at play but I can only say it seems to blur the image in a pleasant "optical way", not like if I was applying a gaussian blur and was watching it on an high dpi screen.
    - mrec 7mo ago
      Makes perfect sense; old CRT TVs had the same kind of effect in making low resolutions bearable. (If you think DVD is bad, you'd have loved long-play VHS at around 230p...)
- b112 7mo ago
  It really depends on the size of the unit I think. When you get over 50", it seems to me you can really tell 480p vs 1080p, especially if you watch lots of 2160p content. If your TV is under 50", I don't think you'd notice quite so much.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
mschild 7mo ago
Most movies and tv shows are available for similar prices on blue rays, often in 4k versions. While the resolution may be higher on streaming, the bitrate is often significantly worse. Beyond that Netflix has done upscaling in the past with middling success. Nevermind the horrendous AI upscaling they tried last year. https://futurism.com/netflix-ai-upscaling-old-shows-horrific https://futurism.com/netflix-ai-upscaling-old-shows-horrific
- tombert 7mo ago
  I’ve noticed that a lot of newer releases, particularly TV shows, are not getting Blu-ray releases.
MrDOS 7mo ago
Resolution isn't the only problem. SD resolution (particularly PAL) is quite tolerable, if it's well-encoded from a good source. DVDs are not well-encoded, and the sources are typically poorer, too. DVDs store MPEG-2 Part 2 (H.262) video streams. It's an extremely old, inefficient codec. (It was published in 1996! Next month, it'll be 30 years old!) It looks best when the encoder is given a bitrate limit north of 20 megabits per second, but DVD-Video has a hardware limit of 10 Mbps, and that includes the audio and subtitle streams. Most video streams on DVDs get 4-5 Mbps. MPEG-2 also isn't a very good codec; no matter how much bandwidth you get it, it's never really considered to be “transparent” (that is, encoding artifacts are always visible). If you take a Blu-ray copy of a film (FHD or UHD, doesn't really matter), scale it down to SD resolution, and run it through a good HEVC (H.265) encoder, you'll usually find that a DVD-equivalent encoding takes about a third, maybe a quarter of the space. Or, if you go the other way and let the encode take as much space as the MPEG-2 one on the DVD, you'll almost certainly see an obvious difference, particularly in action scenes. Starting a physical media collection? Fantastic. Good for you (seriously). But get Blu-rays wherever possible. You'll mostly have to forego the thrift shop, fine, but if you're ever actually going to watch the film, you'll vastly prefer it.
- simpaticoder 7mo ago
  I have both Blu-ray and DVDs and I've found its the content that determines which is good enough. Kids in care not one bit about image quality. Obviously: people still like retro games, too. But then other movies, like anything by Villenueve or Nolan, or Baraka, really want to be on 4K Blu-ray. But kids movies on DVD are perfectly fine, and sitcoms like Community. (Personally I'd pay extra to NOT see Pierce in 4k). I recently purchased the Firefly Blu-ray and it was an interesting case because it's image quality isn't that much better than the DVD (but definitely better) however it's sound quality was astonishingly better than the DVD. I imagine this has a lot to do with the source material, how it was mastered, etc. I still stream, but I like that I have a core collection that will never disappear without warning, or be edited behind my back (which happens all the time, without notice, especially on YouTube and on Amazon Prime).
  - layer8 7mo ago
prmoustache 7mo ago
On paper yes it feels like a downside. Practically if the movie/show is good, you don't really mind. I have been watching a number of french and mexican movies from the 50's and 60's these last few weeks and video resolution was not an issue. Sound quality and mixing on the other hand was more of a problem if I didn't wanted to turn the volume too high, especially the mexican ones (Cantinflas). I don't know what is it with mexican movies, even movies to this day tend to have a terrible sound mixing. It is annoying because actors tend to speak in a much more natural and pleasant way than their US counterparts and their ugly vocal fry (women) or ridiculous mumbling (men).
toast0 7mo ago
The problem isn't really resolution, it's bitrate, codec, and effectiveness of the encoder. A sibling says dvds are trash bitrate and an old codec, and it's hard to argue with that... but some DVDs are better than others and many look fine on a large hires screen. When they put ten hours on a single disc, it's almot certainly going to look trashy though. Would a bluray look better? Probably. Does streaming look better? Often, but not always; streaming likes to measure quality by resolution, but more pixels doesn't help quality unless it comes with more bitrate and/or improved codecs and/or improved encoders... And sometimes streaming has pretty low bitrate.

tehwebguy 7mo ago

I don’t think DVDs look bad on a 1080p TV, others that assume they will may be surprised!

to11mtm 7mo ago
I think too many people remember DVDs but mostly remember them on Interlaced displays. Or hooked their DVD player to the HDTV with an RCA cable and were disappointed. On the flipside, if you had a DVD player capable of progressive scan and Component or HDMI-out, it's fine for couch viewing. That said, there are plenty of DVDs out there (extreme case, single layer DVD with extras on same disc as movie) where the bitrate can show, but that's not a fault of the format.
- prmoustache 7mo ago
  I am watching DVDs on a 1080p projector to the large wall of my living room. It is a 10y old cheap aliexpress one so it is not the sharpest you can get and it actually makes the DVD enjoyable as it smoothen a bit the whole thing. I don't really know what is at play but I can only say it seems to blur the image in a pleasant "optical way", not like if I was applying a gaussian blur and was watching it on an high dpi screen.
  - mrec 7mo ago
    Makes perfect sense; old CRT TVs had the same kind of effect in making low resolutions bearable. (If you think DVD is bad, you'd have loved long-play VHS at around 230p...)
b112 7mo ago
It really depends on the size of the unit I think. When you get over 50", it seems to me you can really tell 480p vs 1080p, especially if you watch lots of 2160p content. If your TV is under 50", I don't think you'd notice quite so much.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]

mschild 7mo ago

Most movies and tv shows are available for similar prices on blue rays, often in 4k versions. While the resolution may be higher on streaming, the bitrate is often significantly worse. Beyond that Netflix has done upscaling in the past with middling success. Nevermind the horrendous AI upscaling they tried last year. https://futurism.com/netflix-ai-upscaling-old-shows-horrific https://futurism.com/netflix-ai-upscaling-old-shows-horrific

tombert 7mo ago
I’ve noticed that a lot of newer releases, particularly TV shows, are not getting Blu-ray releases.

MrDOS 7mo ago

Resolution isn't the only problem. SD resolution (particularly PAL) is quite tolerable, if it's well-encoded from a good source. DVDs are not well-encoded, and the sources are typically poorer, too. DVDs store MPEG-2 Part 2 (H.262) video streams. It's an extremely old, inefficient codec. (It was published in 1996! Next month, it'll be 30 years old!) It looks best when the encoder is given a bitrate limit north of 20 megabits per second, but DVD-Video has a hardware limit of 10 Mbps, and that includes the audio and subtitle streams. Most video streams on DVDs get 4-5 Mbps. MPEG-2 also isn't a very good codec; no matter how much bandwidth you get it, it's never really considered to be “transparent” (that is, encoding artifacts are always visible). If you take a Blu-ray copy of a film (FHD or UHD, doesn't really matter), scale it down to SD resolution, and run it through a good HEVC (H.265) encoder, you'll usually find that a DVD-equivalent encoding takes about a third, maybe a quarter of the space. Or, if you go the other way and let the encode take as much space as the MPEG-2 one on the DVD, you'll almost certainly see an obvious difference, particularly in action scenes. Starting a physical media collection? Fantastic. Good for you (seriously). But get Blu-rays wherever possible. You'll mostly have to forego the thrift shop, fine, but if you're ever actually going to watch the film, you'll vastly prefer it.

simpaticoder 7mo ago
I have both Blu-ray and DVDs and I've found its the content that determines which is good enough. Kids in care not one bit about image quality. Obviously: people still like retro games, too. But then other movies, like anything by Villenueve or Nolan, or Baraka, really want to be on 4K Blu-ray. But kids movies on DVD are perfectly fine, and sitcoms like Community. (Personally I'd pay extra to NOT see Pierce in 4k). I recently purchased the Firefly Blu-ray and it was an interesting case because it's image quality isn't that much better than the DVD (but definitely better) however it's sound quality was astonishingly better than the DVD. I imagine this has a lot to do with the source material, how it was mastered, etc. I still stream, but I like that I have a core collection that will never disappear without warning, or be edited behind my back (which happens all the time, without notice, especially on YouTube and on Amazon Prime).
- layer8 7mo ago

prmoustache 7mo ago

On paper yes it feels like a downside. Practically if the movie/show is good, you don't really mind. I have been watching a number of french and mexican movies from the 50's and 60's these last few weeks and video resolution was not an issue. Sound quality and mixing on the other hand was more of a problem if I didn't wanted to turn the volume too high, especially the mexican ones (Cantinflas). I don't know what is it with mexican movies, even movies to this day tend to have a terrible sound mixing. It is annoying because actors tend to speak in a much more natural and pleasant way than their US counterparts and their ugly vocal fry (women) or ridiculous mumbling (men).

toast0 7mo ago

The problem isn't really resolution, it's bitrate, codec, and effectiveness of the encoder. A sibling says dvds are trash bitrate and an old codec, and it's hard to argue with that... but some DVDs are better than others and many look fine on a large hires screen. When they put ten hours on a single disc, it's almot certainly going to look trashy though. Would a bluray look better? Probably. Does streaming look better? Often, but not always; streaming likes to measure quality by resolution, but more pixels doesn't help quality unless it comes with more bitrate and/or improved codecs and/or improved encoders... And sometimes streaming has pretty low bitrate.