I have a very slow Internet connection (5 Mbps down, and even less for upload). Given that, I always download movies at 720p, since they have low file size, which means I can download them more quickly. Also, I don’t notice much of a difference between 1080p and 720p. As for 4K, because I don’t have a screen that can display 4K, I consider it to be one of the biggest disk space wasters.
Am I the only one who has this opinion?
I like to watch TV shows in the background where I’m not going to be watching the screen obsessively, so I have several shows in 480P or sub-480P. There are also some shows where the “official” HD versions are just awful (most 90s sitcoms) or the show was made for 4:3 and has a different feel converted to 16:9 (MASH, The Wire).
Going beyond that though, I spent years on a really limited connection (2.6m down/400k up) and my instinct for saving bandwidth and storage space is still there, along with my need to pay it forward since I ain’t no leech. I’ve become fond of making what I call “Bonsai Encodes”, where the files are small enough to be sent over damn near anything. With mono Opus and VP9 video you can cram 45 minutes of perfectly watchable content into a sub-25mb file that’ll play in Discord, with VTT subtitles even (though those won’t play in Discord itself). Looks a bit like watching it on an old tube TV, but it’s watchable.
You don’t really prefer a lower resolution, you just work within the limitations you have.
Also, I don’t notice much of a difference between 1080p and 720p
Either your display is really shitty or you need (better) glasses. This isn’t like the difference between 60 and 144hz where its barely visible for untrained eyes.
Completely true, but also compression can make anything bad. I’ve seen 480p better 1080p simply because the 480p was using more bitrate, where the 1080p is encoded without enough relatively speaking.
Yes, resolution is not the only factor. Bitrate is equally if not more important.
You’re not alone.
On a good large screen, 1080p is a noticeable upgrade from 720p.
But the distance you’d have to sit at, to get much out of 2160p over 1080p, is just way too close.
However the High Dynamic Range that comes with 4K formats and releases IS a big difference.On the other hand, storage is pretty cheep. A couple cents per GB really.
But you’re talking more about bandwidth, which can be expensive.But yeah. You’re not alone.
the High Dynamic Range that comes with 4K formats and releases IS a big difference.
Pro-tip right here peeps
Storage is cheap if you are lucky, in my country storage is so overpricedto the point thatI don’t wanna bother with it.
Spinning metal storage is cheapish now, but now a 4K movie takes up a much larger amount of space.
If you measure storage by €/1 hour media with 4k HDR vs older prices and 720p, it is likely quite similar.
To be fair, resolution is not enough to measure quality. The bitrate plays a huge role. You can have a high resolution video looking worse than a lower resolution one if the lower one has a higher bitrate. In general, many videos online claim to be 1080p but still look like garbage because of the low bitrate (e.g. like on YouTube or so). If you go for a high bitrate video, you should be able to tell pretty easily, the hair, the fabric, the skin details, the grass, everything can be noticeably sharper and crisper.
Edit: so yeah, I agree with you, because often they are both of low bitrate…
Great wizard of the bitrates, grant me your wisdom…
I can’t wrap my head around bitrate - if I have a full hd monitor and the media is in full hd then how is it that the rate of bits can make so much difference?
If each frame in the media contains the exact 1920 × 1080 pixels beamed into their respective positions in the display then how can there be a difference, does it have to do something with compression?Exactly, this is about compression. Just imagine a full HD image, 1920x1080, with 8 bits of colors for each of the 3 RGB channels. That would lead to 1920x1080x8x3 = 49 766 400 bits, or roughly 50Mb (or roughly 6MB). This is uncompressed. Now imagine a video, at 24 frames per second (typical for movies), that’s almost 1200 Mb/second. For a 1h30 movie, that would be an immense amount of storage, just compute it :)
To solve this, movies are compressed (encoded). There are two types, lossless (where the information is exact and no quality loss is resulted) and lossy (where quality is degraded). It is common to use lossy compression because it is what leads to the most storage savings. For a given compression algorithms, the less bandwidth you allow the algorithm, the more it has to sacrifice video quality to meet your requirements. And this is what bitrate is referring to.
Of note: different compression algorithms are more or less effective at storing data within the same file size. AV1 for instance, will allow for significantly higher video quality than h264, at the same file size (or bitrate).
If each frame in the media contains the exact 1920 × 1080 pixels …
This image has the same number of pixels on the top and bottom half, but you can probably see the bottom half looks worse. That’s what lower bitrate does. It’s like turning up the compression on a jpg – you are not getting the exact same pixels, just the exact same image size.
Simple explanation, the higher the bitrate, the more data is dedicated to each frame to be displayed, so the higher the quality of each frame assuming the same resolution. This means fewer artifacts/less blocking, less color banding, etc.
Lower bitrate is the opposite, basically. The video is more compressed, and in the process it throws out as much information as possible while trying to maintain acceptable quality. The lower the bitrate, the more information is thrown out for the sake of a smaller filesize.
Resolution is the biggest factor that affects picture quality at the same bitrate. A 1080p video has a quarter of the resolution of a 2160p video, so it takes much less data to maintain a high quality picture.
Yes, every video you download or stream is actually compressed quite a lot, the bitrate just determines how much compression is applied. Higher bitrate means the file is bigger and less compression is done, while low bitrate means the video has a lot less bits to store all that data and so has to do more compression.
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That’s less of an opinion and more of a hardware restriction, isn’t it?
If I had a 5 Mbps connection or no display that can display 4k, I also would not download in 4k.
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You’re not alone, I definitely spent the majority of my time on 720p rips. I couldn’t tell the difference between them and 1080. Though these days, actually just recently, I’ve switched over to 1080, and I can tell when it’s lower.
But most my collection is still 720 and I feel no need to go back through and update everything. Maybe when I get arr set up I’ll let it go through and do it for me 🤷♂️
I prefer 720, both for file/bandwidth reasons and for quality reasons. Once you start getting into higher quality, it starts looking like you’re actually there in the room with the actors, and I don’t like that. It’s unsettling. I want my TV and movies to look like TV and movies.
I mean, quality is nice. But prefer the better streaming experience and faster d/l of 1080 vs 4k. Won’t go lower than that though. What really gets me is when audio quality isn’t good or not clearly listed that it’s 5.1 channel though. I don’t like to skimp on audio experience.
Here’s my twisted life exposed…I have no issue watching 1080p on my QLED 4K TV. I game at 1080p happily, I honestly don’t give a shit about 4K content.
1080p looks good enough for me, and I actually watch 720p on my phone screen half the time too.
And not because of lack of speed, I have a 1Gbps+ fiber line up and down.
And tbh, if it means I get to own and control my media, I would tolerate even worse quality if that’s what I needed to do.
Grunge computing ftw! Quality at the cost of your soul? Fuck that!
Pretty much the same here. the storage to quality ratio isn’t a big enough difference to make it worth it to me for anything over 1080. 720p is noticable but I’ll still use it no problem.
1080p is way better if you have a screen that is a good size. Also if you are into surround sound (I am) there is a lower chance to get it on 720p rips.
Nope. I have fast internet and good displays and I still prefer 720p video. I just don’t see the benefit of multiplying the filesize by 4 to see marginally more detail. Even 4k, if I wanted to have a 4k display, I’ve seen people’s displays and after the initial disorientation and crispness, the appeal wears off. 720p is perfectly adequate.
I’ve tested converting DVDs at different resolutions, and playing them on a 60" screen sitting 6’ away.
720 is just fine. I really can’t tell a difference between 720 and 1080, usually. Surprisingly.
720p is TOTALLY fine but if it’s something beautiful or something I really enjoy (say, Climax or Baraka or even animu like Your Name) there’s zero chance I’m getting a 720p version of it. Even older stuff like THE BEST SHOW EVER MADE, Six Feet Under, I’m getting the best quality possible… even if it’s 4:3.
For regular shows and movies and things that I don’t hold dear to my heart, 720p is no problem.
Stats: gigabit, tons of storage, and 1440p
I typically look for 1080p X265 encodes around 2-4 mbps to save disk space. I will download higher bitrates for anything with a lot of film grain since it will get very blocky at lower bitrates.
I can’t tell much difference between 1080p and 4K unless I’m very close to a large screen. Also, most 4K files are HDR and I don’t have anything that supports HDR.
Depends on the media.
Minimum it has to be web-dl and 1080p.For media that needs it or I want to (e.g. Interstellar), I will search high bitrate web-dl/bluray or a remux.
If it’s something I will for certain only watch once, I’ll be fine with a regular 1080p mid bitrate file.Nope. Most of my stuff is 720p because I won’t be watching it again. My library has significantly dwindled in size. Only my absolute favorites are stored in high quality. Everything else is SD and quite a bit has been deleted.
Let’s be honest, most stuff is shit and forgettable / not watching again. They are just remakes of readaptations of sequels. You know that by the time you want to watch it again, there will be a remake just as bad.
Dealing out the harsh truths I see!
I prefer the opposite. I want the best quality I can get often 4K remux. Storage is cheap nowadays and I don’t mind waiting a few days for a movie to download. Also I do have a 500/500 connection which helps.
