Compression. While Compression tech HAS improved, its been maintaining our current quality while reducing bandwidth needs.
A 1080p Bluray disk will look far far better than Netflix in 4k every time because its not compressed. The reality is that any form of compression will cause loss in fidelity in some way, so the only way to really improve video is to increase the bandwidth of the video.
I talk to IT nerds frequently who are asking things like “why do you need 16x 400GB ports of non blocking bandwidth” to which I have to explain that a SINGLE stream of uncompressed UHD is 12GB/s and we are trying to put 200+ streams onto their network.
A 1080p Bluray disk will look far far better than Netflix in 4k every time because its not compressed.
You’re not wrong about the quality difference but video on a Blu-ray is compressed. There is no way to get raw video unless you’re shooting it yourself.
any form of compression will cause loss in fidelity in some way
Lossless video compression also exists although I don’t think any consumer products have it.
Yep. On a Blu-ray disk, you have 25-100GB of space to work with. The Blu-ray standard allows up to 40mbps for 1080p video (not counting audio). Way more for 4K.
Netflix recommends a 5mbps internet connection for 1080p, and 15mbps for 4K. Reportedly they cut down their 4K streams to 8mbps last year, though I haven’t confirmed. That’s a fraction of what Blu-ray uses for 1080p, never mind 4K.
I have some 4K/UHD Blu-rays, and for comparison they’re about 80mbps for video.
They use similar codecs, too, so the bitrates are fairly comparable. UHD Blu-rays use H.265, which is still a good video codec. Some streaming sites use AV1 (at least on some supported devices) now, which is a bit more efficient, but nowhere near enough to close that kind of gap in bitrate.
Why not download? Streaming is always going to be dogshit quality unless we find something faster than light. I don’t really understand the context. There’s really barely any difference between YouTube’s “”““1080p””“” and Netflix. But throw on a BDRemux or even a decent X265 10 bit BDRip encode from a trusted release group and let your eyes feast.
Not all content can be downloaded, and for many people they want to watch what they want to watch right now, and waiting for the download is not something they are interested in.
Also rights holders dont want you to have an offline copy if they can avoid it, that way its easier to monetize for them.
Also rights holders dont want you to have an offline copy if they can avoid it, that way its easier to monetize for them.
Well ain’t that a shame. I’ll weep for them I swear.
Not all content can be downloaded,
Like livestreams? That being the exception but most ‘content’ isn’t live.
and for many people they want to watch what they want to watch right now, and waiting for the download is not something they are interested in.
Bet they use YouTube through the home page too. Some people are animals and it can’t be helped. That doesn’t mean the rest of us must suffer.
Like livestreams? That being the exception but most ‘content’ isn’t live.
A shocking amount of content is live, and then encoded for streaming. Given that you are on Lemmy I would guess that your interests dont overlap much with content that requires live transmission. So this is an expected selection bias, not being critical, and totally not judging, just pointing it out so you can be aware. I bet your parents still have cable.
My parents barely know how to use a computer at all, but they’re old and don’t have internet. They mostly just watch their own DVD movie collections or tune in to movies on DVDs.
I did teach my dad to find news on YT instead of TV (they are Russian, I’d rather they listen to Meduza than Putinist propaganda channels).
I honestly dunno what content requires live transmission apart from livestreams? I didn’t just mean twitch btw I meant sports games etc. None of those require a very high bitrate or quality etc.
Most news is real-time transmission and over the air TV is still running very high bandwidth. It’s you plug in an HD antenna or ATC.3.0 antenna it will blow away the video quality is Netflix Amazon or YouTube.
Then why does it look like dogshit?
Diminishing returns. It’s already hard for many people to see the difference between 1080p and 4k. The difference between 4k and 8k is almost nonexistent at significantly higher storage costs.
Yep. There are already systems designed to watch and play back 8k video at home, but it is largely seen as not worth the expense of implementing the system.
fullHD already looks pretty good
actually transfering all the data is a problem, like my wifi struggles even with streaming fullHD sometimes, so 4K is just unusable (+ you need a more expensive screen to actually show the 4K which I don’t have either)
I’m pretty sure that most devices have to compress the data going over HDMI and DisplayPort cables anyway.
Because the details get harder and harder to notice the difference.
I mean, I have difficulty seeing the difference between Blu-Ray and DVD, maybe in some cases if some effort were to be put in. But even so.
1080p and 4K? Barely can tell.
Things like going from VHS to DVD, yeah you can tell significantly. 360p to 720p to 1080p? You can tell, less pixelation.
Now I understand that it’s all about being great quality in greater resolutions, I get that, but really I don’t get the big freaking deal for 4K and 8K and all that.
Odd. I can immediately tell the difference.
I did an empirical test with friends comparing various bitrates and resolutions of the same source (on a 100 inch projector screen with a good 4k projector). I could guess 100% of the time correctly.
on a 100 inch projector screen
That’s why. You notice it because more pixels do help a lot with huge screens. I was watching some old series shot for TV recently, on my 34" monitor it doesn’t look too bad. On my projector with a ~100" screen it looks terrible with artefacts all over the place.
(My monitor is 1440p and the projector is only 1080p but I don’t think it mattered in this case since the source video was 480p)
It’s cyclical, years ago, video quality improved dramatically, and then stagnated for almost 40 years as prices fell until it was economical for video quality to improve again. We likely won’t see a meaningful improvement for another 15-20 years, then prices will come down and then we’ll see another improvement.
As others mentioned it’s diminishing returns, but there’s still a lot of good innovation going on in the codec space. As an example - the reduction in the amount of space required for h265 compared to h264 is staggering. Codecs are a special form of black magic.
1080p is enough for most people’s eyes. What do you want?
Depends on your setup. On my 100 inch projector screen you can immediately tell when it’s not 4k. And low bitrates (like Netflix) become especially noticable with rubber banding and loss of sharpness.
Those are compression and bandwidth issues, not resolution.
No I’m also talking about resolution too. You can tell on 100 inches. On 100 inches a 1080p pixel is more than one millimeter in diameter. You can definitely see that when you sit 3 meters away from the screen. 4k will give you visibly more sharpness. Provided of course that you don’t butcher your movie with terrible bitrate compression.
Honestly I’m not sure I completely agree, we’re pretty close to a perfect TV with new LED technology.
But maybe we’re talking about a next stage here, like true 3D or something else like smell? I’m not sure what the future will be, but TVs look pretty good to me and I’m not sure what perfections the current ‘variant’ needs.
Mean on TV or YouTube videos or what?
