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.
Why not download? Streaming is always going to be dogshit quality unless we find something faster than light.
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.
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.
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.
While 4K resolutions provide a very detailed image for average viewers, 16K resolutions exceed the detail the human eye can perceive at typical viewing distances. Therefore, most people may not notice significant improvements with higher resolutions like 16K.
https://9meters.com/technology/highest-resolution-the-eye-can-see
These links explain it technically, but in summary, 4k or 5k video is really all we can perceive up close. Anything beyond this is really just wasted, unless you’re talking really large screens.
We’re almost at the limits of what we can see, so improvements beyond this like IMAX aren’t needed for most applications unless you’re recording 360⁰ video, or projecting onto a huge cinema screen.
Diminishing returns.
4k on a 75in and 8k on a 75in isn’t a big difference.
Not to mention most streaming content is 1080 for bandwidth and tvs upscale to 4k. So while there is difference, it’s hard to quantify upscaling, and even if you find a store with displays, they’re being fed native 4k.
If you go to rtings.com or a similar site you can compare specifics and see that there is advancement happening.
It’s just not like back in the day when they could keep doubling resolution.
OEMs forgot to add hardware support for AV1 because H.265 jumped the gun in an attempt to stay relevant with clout from H.264 lol.
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.
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)
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.
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.
