This may be a stupid question, but I just got back into pirating some shows and movies and realize that many of the QxR files are much smaller than what I downloaded in the past. Is it likely that I am sacrificing a noticeable amount of quality if I replace my files with the smaller QxR ones?

For example, I have Spirited Away from 2017 at 9.83 GB, but I see the QxR is only 6.1 GB. I also have the office from 2019 and the entire show (no bonus content) is about 442 GB, while the QxR version is only 165.7 GB. Dates are what they are dated on my hard drive, can’t speak to their actual origin, but they would’ve been from RARBG. (Edit to add: I also can’t really speak to the quality of the downloads, back then I was just grabbing whatever was available at a reasonable size, so I wasn’t deliberately seeking out high quality movies and shows - a simple 1080p in the listing was enough for me).

I did some side by side on episodes of the Office (on my PC with headphones, nothing substantial), and I don’t notice any differences between the two.

Thoughts on this? Are people better at ripping/compressing/whatever now that they can do so at a smaller size without sacrificing noticeable quality?

    • stifle867English
      7·
      1 year ago

      My understanding is that HDR formats utilise 10-bit color formats rather than being strictly equivalent.

      From Wikipedia:

      HDR video refers to a video encoded in an HDR format. Thoses HDR video have a greater bit depth, luminance and color volume than standard dynamic range (SDR) video which uses a conventional gamma curve.

      As it alludes, HDR is more than just a 10-bit color space. Encoding anime in 10-bit doesn’t take advantage of the greater luminance or dynamic range. It does take advantage of the color space to minimise banding.