Not sure what you are streaming that a DVD looks better. Any 720p stream is better, let alone higher resolution ones.
I had forgotten how much worse streaming quality was after being stuck on it for a while.
Popped in an old DVD and was surprised how much better stuff looked. Not to mention BR…
I always knew it, but actually seeing it in front of me made me sad for how much I’ve missed, and now I can’t go back.
Eheran@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Ottomateeverything@lemmy.world 11 months ago
No. It’s not. The bit rates tend to be lower.
Glowstick@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I would bet that a 720-upscaled dvd will look better than a low bitrate 720 stream. Hell, a 720-upscaled dvd probably looks better than a low bitrate 1080 or 4k stream. In many aspects a lower resolution video with a high bitrate will always look better than a video at higher resolution with a bitrate that’s too low. Excess compression makes visual quality turn to ugly garbage. Even just a little bit of additional compression quickly starts to cause color banding, blocky artifacts, and visual noise in motion sequences.
Eheran@lemmy.world 11 months ago
DVDs have a maximum Bitrate of 10 Mb/s. This is like 5 Mb/s with H264 or 2.5 Mb/s with H265, since the compression back then was MPEG2. Feel free to look up Bitrates of streaming services. YouTube is at roughly 15x that with 4K videos. 720p uses about the same.
Glowstick@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Bitrate per pixel is what we’re talking about. Bitrate alone tells you nothing. If you’re actually receiving a full as-advertised bitrate stream with a well-implemented compression algorithm then obviously if all else being equal then higher resolution = higher quality. But in reality many streams are overly compressed to save on their bandwidth and server costs, and often due to tech inefficiencies you won’t actually receive the full bit rate, resulting in even more additional compression losses.
Again, a perfectly-implemented, perfectly-transported stream in 720p will always look better than a dvd with a 480p video file stored on it. But in reality there are many situations where a stream is imperfectly-implemented and imperfectly-transported, sometimes to the point where visual quality worsens to below what you would get from an upscaled 480p dvd.
holycrapwtfatheism@kbin.social 11 months ago
Depending on how you watch audio is way better on bluray vs streaming, as well. 5.1 or any good aftermarket receiver + speaker combo will sound much better.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 11 months ago
audio especially is just so heavily compressed. Once you notice the video compression in the skies and in dark scenes and audio compression missing the “full body”-ness you just can’t go back. You can tell where compression clips out the bits it can.
_number8_@lemmy.world 11 months ago
plus it just feels so much better knowing you have the whole movie right there, playing off of something sitting in your den and not some shitty malignant corporation’s servers
UnspecificGravity@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
It’s amusing since that audio compression is the reason why my pirated copy of interstellar is actually watchable as opposed to the streaming version which leaves your eardrums bleeding.