How Disney and Warner Bros. Are Causing Internet Piracy to Boom | Platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+ were supposed to do away with pirated media. Instead, they may make them stronger than ever.::Platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+ were supposed to do away with pirated media. Instead, they may make them stronger than ever.
This is why I pirate Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. I have a subscription to pretty much every streaming service in my country (Netflix, prime video, HBO max, apple TV, Sky showtime, etc. ) but Sky only has SNW in 1080p SDR. I can download it in 4k HDR. I don’t feel one bit guilty about it, I pay for the damn service that offers it. Just not in an acceptable picture quality.
It’s not just quality compared with UHD rips, it’s things like prime video refusing to play anything except 480p on a web browser… WTF are they thinking?
I don’t use if on a browser, but even on my Shield Pro it’s not great. Prime Video seems to use a very low bitrate, there’s lots of compression artifacts, even on the 4k streams.
It’s just more enshittification. If they can get away with smaller files, they absolutely will.
What do you mean with SDR?
Standard Dynamic Range. It’s a term adopted to differentiate non-HDR video from HDR video.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard-dynamic-range_video
Here’s the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
Standard-dynamic-range video (SDR video) is a video technology which represents light intensity based on the brightness, contrast and color characteristics and limitations of a cathode ray tube (CRT) display. SDR video is able to represent a video or picture's colors with a maximum luminance around 100 cd/m2, a black level around 0.1 cd/m2 and Rec.709 / sRGB color gamut. It uses the gamma curve as its electro-optical transfer function.The first CRT television sets were manufactured in 1934 and the first color CRT television sets were manufactured in 1954. The term "standard-dynamic-range video" was adopted to distinguish SDR video from high-dynamic-range video (HDR video), a new technology that was developed in the 2010s to overcome SDR's limits.article | about
Oh, cool. Another gimmick that we are going to be fighting about which standard to use for the next few decades, making terabytes of libraries seem obsolete, and another convenient excuse for the manufacturers to discontinue old models and keep the TV prices up despite offering no real improvements and manufacturing costs and quality dropping to the floor. Nice.