The Future of Home Video

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Trees · #251 Post by **Trees** » Wed Dec 30, 2015 4:11 am

There are basically three bitrate types, one for physical/optical/drive-based media (think blu-ray at 20-40mb for 1080p), another for downloads (think torrent rips and iTunes at 7-15mb for 1080p) and then another for streaming (think Amazon Prime and Netlflix 5-10mb). Streaming is always going to be more compressed with a lower bitrate. File-based downloads, however, can be done at the downloader's leisure and therefore allow for higher bitrates (larger file sizes). Physical media allows for even larger file sizes still. Red camera company demonstrated a 10mb wavelet-compressed 4K stream a couple years ago, which came as a surprise to many, as 10mb is generally associated with 1080p streams and downloads, which are only 1/4 the data of 4K streams. Netflix's current 4K stream is around 15mb, I think, but advances in compression might get that 4K stream number down to 10mb in the not-too-distant future (per Red's tests).

MichaelB · #252 Post by **MichaelB** » Wed Dec 30, 2015 6:34 am

An iTunes 1080p download looks appreciably worse than the equivalent on a dual-layer BD, especially if the original master has been conscientious about preserving the original grain structure. Which is exactly what you'd expect given that the former is a fraction of the size of the latter.

And given that you need an enormous screen to derive a noticeable benefit from 4K, is there any real point if the file is going to be compromised through far greater compression than it would get on physical media?

TMDaines · #253 Post by **TMDaines** » Wed Dec 30, 2015 8:25 am

The encoding on sites like iTunes is pretty shit on the whole though and shouldn't be seen a representative as what you can do with a specific bitrate/filesize. The quality that some encoders on private sites can squeeze into a compressed rip a fifth the size of the original is pretty staggering. As much as I love having a library of discs, I'd rather have all my barebone discs ripped or the content downloaded into Plex/Kodi.

Trees' description of "three bitrate types" is a bit heavy handed. You can perfectly stream video of the bitrate of uncompressed Blu-rays, but no legal sites offer it as the vast majority of people are unable to discern quality video at all. Why bother?

Trees · #254 Post by **Trees** » Wed Dec 30, 2015 9:03 am

I didn't mean to oversimplify things or be too heavy handed, I was just trying to present a general overview of physical media vs downloads vs streaming. If anyone is curious about specific bitrates for specific platforms like Netflix or iTunes or Blu-ray, those bitrates are easy to google. As TMDaines points out, some of the private encoders (who tend to be bit-torrent rippers) have achieved very impressive results using extreme compression ratios. It's a bit of an art form to them. As time goes on, compression always gets better and better. I would not be surprised to see beautiful 4K video rendered from 10mb bitrates in the next 5 years or so, for example. Major corporations like Google are busy working on video compression algorithms. If you are willing to deal with 30mb - 50mb, beautiful 4K is already achievable.

MichaelB, the question of whether 4K is "worth it" has been debated at length across the internet for years. I would not want to open up such a can of worms here. My own personal opinion is that 4K is coming and will be the gold standard for feature-film consumption for the next decade or so at least. Some older films will never truly be native at 4K, but films that have been preserved carefully or that have been shot in the last 30 or 40 years can indeed often be restored to 4K. Also, films shot on larger formats like 65mm (Lawrence of Arabia) or anamorphic 35mm (The Thin Red Line) will certainly benefit from 4K display. In terms of screen size, you are correct that under typical viewing conditions (a couch and a TV on a wall), the display will need to be very large to really discern the difference between 1080p and 4K. However, 4K monitors on computers are fast becoming popular, including on laptops. Even the Sony Xperia Z5 Premium phone has a 4K screen. Many PC games are played in 4K now. Also, TVs are generally getting larger and larger, so at some point, all of this is going to converge. If you have ever had a chance to see 4K content on a 30-inch computer monitor, for example, it's breathtaking.

MichaelB · #255 Post by **MichaelB** » Wed Dec 30, 2015 11:23 am

I'm afraid you completely missed the point that I was making. I'm fully aware of the differences between 1080p, 2K and 4K, and indeed between multiple gauges of film formats, but I was specifically asking whether it was worth watching a 4K video stream that had been compressed to the extent that you suggest is acceptable - given that, as TMDaines has just pointed out, iTunes 1080p downloads look pretty crappy even on a comparatively small HD monitor, at least compared with their BD counterparts.

Trees · #256 Post by **Trees** » Wed Dec 30, 2015 11:45 am

It just depends. That's maybe more of a personal taste issue. As we've been discussing, I have seen iTunes 1080p movies that look horrible but seen 1080p bit torrents that look dazzling at lower bitrates than iTunes was using. It's just that the compression was done more expertly. It can also depend on the content. A Ghibli anime movie, for example, will look great even with higher compression. A darkly lit live-action movie, on the other hand, will get macro-blocking in the blacks at high compression ratios. It's the same with 1080p. I would think that for the next couple years, 4K downloads or physical media would be much better than 4K streams, until there is a significant gain in compression efficiency or a significant gain in internet speeds (I.E., Google Fiber comes to your neighborhood).

Right now what I think a lot of streaming companies are doing is using, say, 7mb for 1080, but only 15mb for 4K, when mathematically, they should be using 7mb x 4 = 28mb for 4K, since it is 4x the data. They cheat like this on 4K because the average home ISP user may struggle at 28mb.

Still, having said that, I have a 4K monitor here and almost always choose the 4K quality option if it's available on Youtube or Vimeo.

calculus entrophy · #257 Post by **calculus entrophy** » Wed Dec 30, 2015 1:52 pm

Trees wrote:It just depends. That's maybe more of a personal taste issue.

Not to argue with the viewer perspective, but from a truth in advertising perspective, is this false? If a product costs more due to its resolution, does there need to be a different name or standard once Netflix (similar to a torrent) takes the content and then alters it?

When so much effort is put into the transfer and encoding when it comes to high resolution formats, why then do people skimp on the delivery without hesitation?

#258 Post by **swo17** » Wed Dec 30, 2015 1:58 pm

Resolution (immutable) and bitrate (qualitative) are two different things. Is it false advertising for both McDonalds and Five Guys to call what they sell a hamburger?

Trees · #259 Post by **Trees** » Wed Dec 30, 2015 2:14 pm

It's just buyer beware, I guess. calculus, your question could also apply for existing 1080p streaming and download platforms. You guys are making an interesting point, though. With MP3 music, for example, the quality is rated by bitrate. 192kbps is considered decent quality, while 320kpbs is much higher quality. A better way of judging video should be both resolution and bitrate. Right now, resolution is advertised, but often bitrate is hidden behind a curtain.

calculus entrophy · #260 Post by **calculus entrophy** » Wed Dec 30, 2015 2:51 pm

swo17 wrote:Resolution (immutable) and bitrate (qualitative) are two different things. Is it false advertising for both McDonalds and Five Guys to call what they sell a hamburger?

They certainly are, but in regards to your analogy, it would be more appropriate to focus in on the comment I made about higher res content costing more. So, this would not be hamburgers to hamburgers, it would more likely be a basic hamburger vs. some kind of deluxe or other add on.

It might just be better to stay away from analogies and stay with the specific topic of charging for 1080p or 4k when the compression/bit rate just brings it back down to a lower quality level.....

MichaelB · #261 Post by **MichaelB** » Wed Dec 30, 2015 3:41 pm

calculus entrophy wrote:It might just be better to stay away from analogies and stay with the specific topic of charging for 1080p or 4k when the compression/bit rate just brings it back down to a lower quality level.....

I've said this elsewhere (possibly in this thread), but I genuinely think that an SD Digibeta projection makes for a more satisfying cinema-sized experience than a Blu-ray projection. Because for me, visibly poor compression comprehensively undermines the advantages of a higher resolution, and I've been quite startled by how comparatively poor Blu-ray looks when projected in a cinema given how great it looks on my home setup.

A 1080p BD and a 2K DCP are more or less the same resolution, but the DCP's vastly bigger filesize and consequently much higher bitrate makes a pretty whopping difference. And it's this (extensively practical and first-hand) experience that makes me very suspicious indeed of claims that 4K will still look great even at a filesize lower than that of a well-encoded Blu-ray, for all the improvements between the H264 and H265 codecs.

Ribs · #262 Post by **Ribs** » Wed Jan 06, 2016 12:59 pm

Word coming in from several sources that the UHD format will not feature region coding. Surely a sign of the dwindling market yet simultaneously absolutely amazing news.

perkizitore · #263 Post by **perkizitore** » Wed Jan 06, 2016 1:30 pm

What about region-locked blu-rays, is there a chance that UHD players will be able to switch blu-ray regions? It will be increasingly hard to find region free players in the future, our best bet will be to find a blu-ray player and apply a hardware mod.

Ribs · #264 Post by **Ribs** » Wed Jan 06, 2016 1:54 pm

It appears that will not be the case, they'll still be mostly locked for DVD and BD.

TMDaines · #265 Post by **TMDaines** » Wed Jan 06, 2016 1:56 pm

perkizitore wrote:What about region-locked blu-rays, is there a chance that UHD players will be able to switch blu-ray regions? It will be increasingly hard to find region free players in the future, our best bet will be to find a blu-ray player and apply a hardware mod.

Or just any old Blu-ray drive and a PC.

perkizitore · #266 Post by **perkizitore** » Wed Jan 06, 2016 2:09 pm

Yeah, an HTPC is definitely the way to go.

TMDaines · #267 Post by **TMDaines** » Wed Jan 06, 2016 3:20 pm

I would never be without one for my main setup now. Once you live with the benefits (and work around the odd drawback) it's difficult to go back. As much as I love shopping for films, discovering what's upcoming and buying new releases, the DVD and Blu-ray formats are really quite clumsy. They were/are a revelation over VHS but are such utterly shitty restrictive formats in all honesty. You compare it it to an MKV file, for instance, and it's embarrassing.

Saying all that, I suspect I'm in the distinct minority of HTPC owners who are Blu-ray enabled or consider it to be a core feature of having one.

calculus entrophy · #268 Post by **calculus entrophy** » Wed Jan 06, 2016 4:35 pm

HTPC also altered my movie watching habits. Call me weird, but I like to go QUICKLY from about 30 minutes of one movie, to a scene from another genre, followed by the intro/first scene from a totally different era. Usually there is some link like the director/setting/actor, but sometimes I just need a change up.

And also, I always wanted to re-watch certain parts of films to concentrate on them fully because I couldn't (or didn't) fully appreciate them when viewing them within the context of 2 straight hours of a film.

The HTPC has made that much more easy than using physical media, and I couldn't go back now to ONLY watching films from beginning to end.

Plus I seem to break/scratch/chip everything I own anyways.

Zot! · #269 Post by **Zot!** » Wed Jan 06, 2016 4:48 pm

calculus entrophy wrote:HTPC also altered my movie watching habits. Call me weird, but I like to go QUICKLY from about 30 minutes of one movie, to a scene from another genre, followed by the intro/first scene from a totally different era. Usually there is some link like the director/setting/actor, but sometimes I just need a change up.

And also, I always wanted to re-watch certain parts of films to concentrate on them fully because I couldn't (or didn't) fully appreciate them when viewing them within the context of 2 straight hours of a film.

The HTPC has made that much more easy than using physical media, and I couldn't go back now to ONLY watching films from beginning to end.

Plus I seem to break/scratch/chip everything I own anyways.

Woah dude, slow down man. You're ADHDing all over your HTPC.

TMDaines · #270 Post by **TMDaines** » Wed Jan 06, 2016 7:03 pm

With great power comes great responsibility: just because you can rapidly flick from one movie to another doesn't mean you should.

Gregory · #271 Post by **Gregory** » Wed Jan 06, 2016 7:24 pm

Yeah, why should you when you could watch them all simultaneously?

"I can't stand what's happening to you, whatever it is!"

calculus entrophy · #272 Post by **calculus entrophy** » Wed Jan 06, 2016 7:50 pm

Manny Karp · #273 Post by **Manny Karp** » Wed Jan 06, 2016 8:31 pm

calculus entrophy wrote:HTPC also altered my movie watching habits. Call me weird, but I like to go QUICKLY from about 30 minutes of one movie, to a scene from another genre, followed by the intro/first scene from a totally different era. Usually there is some link like the director/setting/actor, but sometimes I just need a change up.

And also, I always wanted to re-watch certain parts of films to concentrate on them fully because I couldn't (or didn't) fully appreciate them when viewing them within the context of 2 straight hours of a film.

The HTPC has made that much more easy than using physical media, and I couldn't go back now to ONLY watching films from beginning to end.

Plus I seem to break/scratch/chip everything I own anyways.

calculus entrophy · #274 Post by **calculus entrophy** » Thu Jan 07, 2016 1:10 am

Hmmm....I I'm still watching films start to end, but now able to do that PLUS the ADHD thing on films I have watched dozens of times.

Is it bad form to watch only the scenes in the King of Comedy where Rupert is in a dissociative fantasy, then to only the scenes in Naked Lunch where Burroughs is in Interzone, followed by only the scenes in Network where Beale is hosting his show if you've seen these films dozens of times all the way through?

I'm either coming across as gauche, pompous, or both.

tenia · #275 Post by **tenia** » Thu Jan 07, 2016 6:19 am

I don't think doing digest of movies you've seen dozens of time is actually very unusual. You might want to rewatch a specific sequence you enjoy a lot or fast forward the boring parts.
I know I can't watch Matrix anymore without fast forwarding through parts of it, for instance.