6 ms·

Delivering Breaking Bad on Netflix in Ultra HD 4K

75 points by conorgil145 12y ago

SamuelKillin 12y ago
Wait, my back of the envelope says you'll need to pull down around 650mb a second to stream 4K. That's uncompressed, sure, but anything in that power of ten isn't feasible.
- oneeyedpigeon 12y ago
  Can't it be buffered?
- gibybo 12y ago
  Typical compression of 4k video ends up being more than a factor of 10 smaller.
  - SamuelKillin 12y ago
    Yikes you're right. Looks like 2 powers of 10.
Kiro 12y ago
In what resolution are the original negatives?
- gibybo 12y ago
  It was almost certainly shot with 35mm film. Film is analog so it doesn't have a well-defined resolution, but modern 35mm is pretty comparable to 4k (maybe a little less, depending on the quality of the camera/printing/etc)
  - bluedino 12y ago
    AMC still shoots their originals on film.
- smackfu 12y ago
  For practical purposes, the better question is what resolution is the digital intermediate. That's effectively the highest resolution you are going to get without spending a lot of money to redo work. And for a decent chunk of recent history, that's going to be 2K. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_intermediate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_intermediate
te_platt 12y ago
I'm old enough to remember tv shows making a big deal about being in color, then stereo, then HD. The big change in going to 4K is that Netflix doesn't need regulatory permission or ten years of drafting standards to make the upgrade.
- mattzito 12y ago
  Except that at least back then, all you had to do was pay to upgrade your tv and you got the content. Today, not only do you have to buy the new TV, you have to hope your ISP has enough bandwidth to deliver the content, possibly pay more for that, then hope that your wifi network is high-speed enough to deal with the new bandwidth requirements.
  - kalleboo 12y ago
    > Except that at least back then, all you had to do was pay to upgrade your tv and you got the content. Pay to upgrade your TV, hope you lived in a market with a channel that broadcast in color, hope you got good enough reception to receive the color carrier, maybe redirect the antenna on your roof with someone downstairs yelling "the picture looks good now!". Maybe you needed to even get a new antenna with VHF band coverage instead of UHF... Technology has never been easy.
    - lyricsboy 12y ago
      You might say living on the cutting edge never has a dull moment.
- josephlord 12y ago
  "...Netflix doesn't need...ten years of drafting standards..." When do you think standards work started on HEVC? When do you think NHK were first demonstrating UHDTV? They were both being worked on by 2004 and much of the research work will have preceeded that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_High_Definition_Television https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_High_Definition_Televisi...
sixQuarks 12y ago
This is great and all, but what are we gonna do with 4K streams when Comcast can't even deliver a low-quality stream?
- ars 12y ago
  Don't stream it? Buffer it in advance. But Comcast rates highly in googles ISP test, so I think they'd be fine.
- hudibras 12y ago
  That's the whole point. (Warning: conspiracy theory ahead) Netflix is rolling this out to illustrate to consumers how internet providers are failing to fulfill their contractual obligation for high-speed, unlimited internet at a set price.
NamTaf 12y ago
How many GB/min of footage is this? I can't imagine ever being able to stream that here, where our high-end quotas are measured in 100s of GB/month.
- jasoncartwright 12y ago
  15Mbps [1], which will consume around 6.8Gb/hr [2] [1] http://bgr.com/2013/09/26/netflix-4k-streaming/ http://bgr.com/2013/09/26/netflix-4k-streaming/ [2] http://web.forret.com/tools/filesize.asp?speed=15&unit=Mbps&dur=3600 http://web.forret.com/tools/filesize.asp?speed=15&unit=Mbps&...
  - nemasu 12y ago
    It's actually ~6.6GB/hr. Note: Actually GiB, but who writes GiB...
- kalleboo 12y ago
  Checking out the top google results for "netflix 4K bitrate" seems to suggest a 15.6 Mbps bitrate rate for these streams.
beloch 12y ago
For a small to medium displays at typical viewing distances (this includes most "big screen" panels you can buy at your local electronics shop), 1080p meets or exceeds the limits of the typical human eye's resolving power. Without using a projection system and a large screen or a stupendously expensive (>100" diagonal) flat-panel, 4K is a subtle upgrade at best. When video is encoded with insufficient bandwidth, compression artifacts (e.g. macroblocking) are anything but subtle. These artifacts typically are not constrained to one or two pixels, but ramify to much larger portions of the image. Netflix has, by necessity, used insufficient bandwidth on practically their entire library. My money is on Netflix's over-compressed 4K being inferior in quality to Bluray 1080p for the vast majority of users.
- rorski 12y ago
  This might be useful in illustrating your point: http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html
  - ars 12y ago
    Am I the only one who watches stuff on his computer, and sits about 2-3 feet from it?
    - michaelgrafl 12y ago
      What screen size are you on? 27 inches? Can you make out individual pixels with film material (which usually has no sharp edges in it)?
      - richforrester 12y ago
        Not arguing against what you are saying, but there's a significant difference between "making out individual pixels" and "noticing a difference".
        michaelgrafl 12y ago
dirtyhand 12y ago
Smurfs 2, really?
- iMark 12y ago
  Sponsored by Comcast. It's one way of reducing the bandwidth demands ;)
aditya 12y ago
How do I know what quality stream I'm getting?
orik 12y ago
The biggest problem holding back adoption for 4k media is vendor lock in. You can't get 4K unless you're on a Sony/LG/Samsung "Smart TV". There is not a legitimate technical reason why I can't watch House of Cards in 4K on my Seiki through my PC. I watched the trailer in 4K over a dozen times on YouTube. Gamers want to play games on low input lag 4K screens from brands like Asus, Dell, Acer. 4K is much more easily justifiable when users can buy a single screen for their games and ultra-hd content. Gaming PC's are about the only units with enough compute for highly compressed h.265 playback without built in hardware acceleration, so I don't understand why the market has not made this content accessible for me to purchase.
- josephlord 12y ago
  You are right there is no technical reason why you can't but there are probably commercial and practical reasons. The number of people with gaming PCs is relatively small and the complexity of providing it to them might be quite high. I don't know what the availability of stable HEVC decoders is like or what the licensing cost for them is or the difficulty of integrating them with Silverlight or whatever it is that Netlix use. The Youtube trailer was probably VP9 not HEVC but was possibly using a higher bitrate that could effectively be downloaded rather than streamed for a short trailer. Basically the complexity of supporting the small group of gamers with the right PC's and 4K monitors was probably not worth it initially especially considering the backlash from customers who's PC's weren't fast enough. It is easier to launch on a set of known devices and then they can expand from there. I'm sure it will come.
- avian 12y ago
  > The biggest problem holding back adoption for 4k media is vendor lock in. That's where that government regulation and ten years of drafting standards mentioned above come into the picture.
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  No legit technical reason? How about 'user experience'? To my understanding this sort of pilot program is limited to proven-good configurations to keep the kvetching to a minimum before they generalize it for launch.
broodbucket 12y ago
Wait, only on select smart TVs? So I can't watch this on netflix.com with my 4k monitor? (not that I have the connection to stream it anyway)
- JohnTHaller 12y ago
  Nope. See 'proprietary DRM' and 'vendor lock-in'. You can basically use specific Sony/LG/Samsung TVs and that's it. Or pirate it after it's released and watch it the way you want to.
- gambiting 12y ago
  Apparently not.
barrystaes 12y ago
Netflix; I dont need that, we already watched it. It was great. Please add more shows to the EU/Dutch region.. the US and UK catalog are interesting.. why cant we see this? Also, i'd pay extra if i could watch ANY movie as soon as it got out of the theatre.
izzydata 12y ago
Too bad their 4k content has bitrates that should only be acceptable for 1080p or less. Downscaling their 4k to 1080p would almost look as good as if they just had proper 1080p to begin with. And a proper 1080p upscale to 4k would look better than this poor excuse for 4k.

75 points by conorgil145 12y ago

Wait, my back of the envelope says you'll need to pull down around 650mb a second to stream 4K. That's uncompressed, sure, but anything in that power of ten isn't feasible.

oneeyedpigeon 12y ago
Can't it be buffered?
gibybo 12y ago
Typical compression of 4k video ends up being more than a factor of 10 smaller.
- SamuelKillin 12y ago
  Yikes you're right. Looks like 2 powers of 10.

Kiro 12y ago

In what resolution are the original negatives?

gibybo 12y ago
It was almost certainly shot with 35mm film. Film is analog so it doesn't have a well-defined resolution, but modern 35mm is pretty comparable to 4k (maybe a little less, depending on the quality of the camera/printing/etc)
- bluedino 12y ago
  AMC still shoots their originals on film.
smackfu 12y ago
For practical purposes, the better question is what resolution is the digital intermediate. That's effectively the highest resolution you are going to get without spending a lot of money to redo work. And for a decent chunk of recent history, that's going to be 2K. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_intermediate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_intermediate

te_platt 12y ago

I'm old enough to remember tv shows making a big deal about being in color, then stereo, then HD. The big change in going to 4K is that Netflix doesn't need regulatory permission or ten years of drafting standards to make the upgrade.

mattzito 12y ago
Except that at least back then, all you had to do was pay to upgrade your tv and you got the content. Today, not only do you have to buy the new TV, you have to hope your ISP has enough bandwidth to deliver the content, possibly pay more for that, then hope that your wifi network is high-speed enough to deal with the new bandwidth requirements.
- kalleboo 12y ago
  > Except that at least back then, all you had to do was pay to upgrade your tv and you got the content. Pay to upgrade your TV, hope you lived in a market with a channel that broadcast in color, hope you got good enough reception to receive the color carrier, maybe redirect the antenna on your roof with someone downstairs yelling "the picture looks good now!". Maybe you needed to even get a new antenna with VHF band coverage instead of UHF... Technology has never been easy.
  - lyricsboy 12y ago
    You might say living on the cutting edge never has a dull moment.
josephlord 12y ago
"...Netflix doesn't need...ten years of drafting standards..." When do you think standards work started on HEVC? When do you think NHK were first demonstrating UHDTV? They were both being worked on by 2004 and much of the research work will have preceeded that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_High_Definition_Television https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_High_Definition_Televisi...

sixQuarks 12y ago

This is great and all, but what are we gonna do with 4K streams when Comcast can't even deliver a low-quality stream?

ars 12y ago
Don't stream it? Buffer it in advance. But Comcast rates highly in googles ISP test, so I think they'd be fine.
hudibras 12y ago
That's the whole point. (Warning: conspiracy theory ahead) Netflix is rolling this out to illustrate to consumers how internet providers are failing to fulfill their contractual obligation for high-speed, unlimited internet at a set price.

NamTaf 12y ago

How many GB/min of footage is this? I can't imagine ever being able to stream that here, where our high-end quotas are measured in 100s of GB/month.

jasoncartwright 12y ago
15Mbps [1], which will consume around 6.8Gb/hr [2] [1] http://bgr.com/2013/09/26/netflix-4k-streaming/ http://bgr.com/2013/09/26/netflix-4k-streaming/ [2] http://web.forret.com/tools/filesize.asp?speed=15&unit=Mbps&dur=3600 http://web.forret.com/tools/filesize.asp?speed=15&unit=Mbps&...
- nemasu 12y ago
  It's actually ~6.6GB/hr. Note: Actually GiB, but who writes GiB...
kalleboo 12y ago
Checking out the top google results for "netflix 4K bitrate" seems to suggest a 15.6 Mbps bitrate rate for these streams.

beloch 12y ago

For a small to medium displays at typical viewing distances (this includes most "big screen" panels you can buy at your local electronics shop), 1080p meets or exceeds the limits of the typical human eye's resolving power. Without using a projection system and a large screen or a stupendously expensive (>100" diagonal) flat-panel, 4K is a subtle upgrade at best. When video is encoded with insufficient bandwidth, compression artifacts (e.g. macroblocking) are anything but subtle. These artifacts typically are not constrained to one or two pixels, but ramify to much larger portions of the image. Netflix has, by necessity, used insufficient bandwidth on practically their entire library. My money is on Netflix's over-compressed 4K being inferior in quality to Bluray 1080p for the vast majority of users.

rorski 12y ago
This might be useful in illustrating your point: http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html
- ars 12y ago
  Am I the only one who watches stuff on his computer, and sits about 2-3 feet from it?
  - michaelgrafl 12y ago
    What screen size are you on? 27 inches? Can you make out individual pixels with film material (which usually has no sharp edges in it)?
    - richforrester 12y ago
      Not arguing against what you are saying, but there's a significant difference between "making out individual pixels" and "noticing a difference".
      - michaelgrafl 12y ago

dirtyhand 12y ago

Smurfs 2, really?

iMark 12y ago
Sponsored by Comcast. It's one way of reducing the bandwidth demands ;)

aditya 12y ago

How do I know what quality stream I'm getting?

orik 12y ago

The biggest problem holding back adoption for 4k media is vendor lock in. You can't get 4K unless you're on a Sony/LG/Samsung "Smart TV". There is not a legitimate technical reason why I can't watch House of Cards in 4K on my Seiki through my PC. I watched the trailer in 4K over a dozen times on YouTube. Gamers want to play games on low input lag 4K screens from brands like Asus, Dell, Acer. 4K is much more easily justifiable when users can buy a single screen for their games and ultra-hd content. Gaming PC's are about the only units with enough compute for highly compressed h.265 playback without built in hardware acceleration, so I don't understand why the market has not made this content accessible for me to purchase.

josephlord 12y ago
You are right there is no technical reason why you can't but there are probably commercial and practical reasons. The number of people with gaming PCs is relatively small and the complexity of providing it to them might be quite high. I don't know what the availability of stable HEVC decoders is like or what the licensing cost for them is or the difficulty of integrating them with Silverlight or whatever it is that Netlix use. The Youtube trailer was probably VP9 not HEVC but was possibly using a higher bitrate that could effectively be downloaded rather than streamed for a short trailer. Basically the complexity of supporting the small group of gamers with the right PC's and 4K monitors was probably not worth it initially especially considering the backlash from customers who's PC's weren't fast enough. It is easier to launch on a set of known devices and then they can expand from there. I'm sure it will come.
avian 12y ago
> The biggest problem holding back adoption for 4k media is vendor lock in. That's where that government regulation and ten years of drafting standards mentioned above come into the picture.
sliverstorm 12y ago
No legit technical reason? How about 'user experience'? To my understanding this sort of pilot program is limited to proven-good configurations to keep the kvetching to a minimum before they generalize it for launch.

broodbucket 12y ago

Wait, only on select smart TVs? So I can't watch this on netflix.com with my 4k monitor? (not that I have the connection to stream it anyway)

JohnTHaller 12y ago
Nope. See 'proprietary DRM' and 'vendor lock-in'. You can basically use specific Sony/LG/Samsung TVs and that's it. Or pirate it after it's released and watch it the way you want to.
gambiting 12y ago
Apparently not.

barrystaes 12y ago

Netflix; I dont need that, we already watched it. It was great. Please add more shows to the EU/Dutch region.. the US and UK catalog are interesting.. why cant we see this? Also, i'd pay extra if i could watch ANY movie as soon as it got out of the theatre.

izzydata 12y ago

Too bad their 4k content has bitrates that should only be acceptable for 1080p or less. Downscaling their 4k to 1080p would almost look as good as if they just had proper 1080p to begin with. And a proper 1080p upscale to 4k would look better than this poor excuse for 4k.