this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2024

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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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Even in this poorly made comparison shot I made you can tell the difference between streaming and "self hosting" (lemmy.world)

submitted 10 months ago by SpiceDealer@lemmy.world to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

77 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Jack Ryan S3 E3

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[–] 7u5k3n@lemmy.world 124 points 10 months ago (6 children)

Man... Im watching Stargate sg1 with my kiddo. My Plex server is down for a bit.. so I switched over to prime for an episode or two..

It's dark, it's audio is horrible, it's 4:3 formatted it's horribly compressed and it has commercials.

Talk about a poor viewing experience.

Not watching is better than watching...

[–] Zahille7@lemmy.world 37 points 10 months ago

"it's a strange game. The only way to win is not to play."

[–] WallEx@feddit.de 29 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You shoukd consider cancelling prime, bezos doesn't need more moneys ^^

[–] 7u5k3n@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago (2 children)

That's super tempting honestly. Idk that it benefits is at this point.

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[–] Whirlybird@aussie.zone 24 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Stargate was 4:3, so there's that....

[–] Khrux@ttrpg.network 12 points 10 months ago

Yeah I really doubt streaming would change anything to 4:3.

Disney+ famously changed classic Simpsons to 16:9 and in the process, cropped enough to make some visual gags not work, but I can't imagine them preferring 4:3 over 16:9.

[–] crossover@lemmy.world 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The worst part is that even buying SG1 on Bluray gives a bad experience, because they fucked up the 5.1 audio.

So what did the pirates do? Combined the Bluray video with the better DVD 5.1 audio! Best of both worlds.

[–] 7u5k3n@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

Huh I wondered. That makes a lot of sense.

The version I have looks and sounds so much better than the blurays I have... Tho like you said better audio, widescreen and I'm fairly certain it's been ai upscaled as well. I'd have to go back and look but my physical disks don't hold a candle..

[–] plz1@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago (3 children)

SG1 was shot in 4:3 until like season 8 or so.

[–] aeronmelon@lemmy.world 40 points 10 months ago (1 children)

SG-1 was shot in widescreen from day one, on cameras that had framing marks for 4:3 and 16:9. A 4:3 cut was sent to TV networks and a 16:9 cut was canned until the show was released on DVD.

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[–] Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world 16 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

SG1 was shot in film and mastered in 16:9. 16mm in the first 3 seasons, 35mm 3-7, and then they moved to digital HD cameras season 8 onwards.

Many shows from the 90s were [edit: shot on film]. That's why you can get a widescreen HD release of Seinfeld, among others.

[–] Steve@communick.news 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

That's not always a good thing. If it was meant to be 4:3 the extra space on the frame can have set rigging, lights, microphone booms, and in case of stunts even crash pads.

It's one of the reasons the HD rescan of Buffy:TVS sucks. That still needs a proper 4:3 HD remaster.

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[–] dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Right, but the general public only ever saw the broadcast versions, which were predominantly in 4:3. Also, Seinfeld was only shot in 4:3 as it's a multi cam sitcom. The widescreen version you've seen is a crop of the original 4:3 picture.

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[–] kumatomic@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's what I'm watching right now too! I rewatch every year or two.

[–] 7u5k3n@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

Such a great universe! :)

[–] _number8_@lemmy.world 84 points 10 months ago (7 children)

streaming just has godawful UX now as well. the apps play you commercials while in the menu, you have to worry about buffering, you aren't allowed to take screenshots (which is the most numbskulled DRM i've ever seen; they allowed it in the old days and everything was fine AND either way people have ALREADY managed to rip and share the raw footage. what's the point??), 75% of the fucking content on amazon you have to pay an extra fee for, media appears and disappears at the whim of pigheaded suits, prices go up every 6 months because fuck you, the blindingly stupid netflix 'single family home' restriction....

watching tv is meant to be fun, not introduce a whole other layer of bureaucratic bullshit into our lives

[–] Fisch@lemmy.ml 7 points 10 months ago

And don't forget that Amazon Prime doesn't just make you pay extra, they make you subscribe to additional subscriptions. I think there's like 3 extra sunscriptions for anime alone.

[–] Kekin@lemy.lol 6 points 10 months ago

IIRC the screenshot thing was the tipping point for me. Tried taking a screenshot in the Crunchyroll app for Android, and it came out black...

Looked into plex, and it's all been better ever since

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[–] jawa21@startrek.website 46 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Maybe I'm blind, maybe it's me viewing this on a phone, but I legitimately can't tell the difference.

[–] Rexios@lemm.ee 18 points 10 months ago

Zoom in on the guy’s face. The one on the right is crystal clear in comparison to the left.

[–] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 15 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I can see the difference around the actor's skin and the environment, its less fuzzy. It's hard to tell the difference, definitely. It's compression quality.

What you have to understand about lossy compression is:

it throws out data you won't be able to perceive in ideal conditions (color ranges)
it throws out data that doesn't change between frames

[–] frogfruit@slrpnk.net 12 points 10 months ago

If you're using an app, you may need to adjust image quality in the settings. I thought the same thing until I tapped the HD button in Boost.

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[–] CCMan1701A@startrek.website 35 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, if the streaming providers ever switch over to AV1 that would be an interesting comparison.

[–] SpiceDealer@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago (2 children)

AV1? that's a codec, right? I see in the preferences section for Piped. Is better than AVC (h.2640)?

[–] TheImpressiveX@lemmy.ml 37 points 10 months ago (2 children)

It's also better than H.265/HEVC. Plus, it's open-source and royalty free.

[–] SpiceDealer@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago

Sweet!

[–] Reddfugee42@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Better quality per file size than HEVC? cite?

[–] CCMan1701A@startrek.website 19 points 10 months ago (11 children)

Yes, AV1 is the next big deal. You can compress the hell out of the video and it still looks near original. I've re-encode some of my locally ripped movies for fun to see how it looks and it's really impressive.

[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 13 points 10 months ago (2 children)

it still looks near original.

Presumably you know, but for anyone else: the word for this is "transparent." It's when the codec leaves no noticeable artifacts.

[–] SatyrSack@lemmy.one 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

How would you use that in a sentence? Like "You can compress the hell out of the video and it's transparent"?

[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 4 points 10 months ago

You'd describe the encoding, not the source. The fun part is that it also applies to audio. "At 256 kbps, MP3 is transparent."

It only applies to lossy codecs. Lossless codecs, by definition, have no error. "Error" itself being a borrowed term. Good encodings don't have fewer errors... they have less error. For example, measured as mean squared error, where an individual sample being very wrong counts more than many samples being slightly wrong.

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[–] Petter1@lemm.ee 6 points 10 months ago

I wonder if the apple vision pro is able to play AV1 files 🤔 i guess, would be really bad if not

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[–] Gestrid@lemmy.ca 19 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Depends where you get your alternatively-sourced shows from. Downloaded a torrent yesterday that was so dark that I could barely see anything even with my screen's brightness turned all the way up. Downloaded another torrent of the same episode, and it was much easier to see everything.

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[–] Fenrisulfir@lemmy.ca 16 points 10 months ago

The big difference for me is the audio quality.

[–] satan@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 10 months ago

Hard to tell a difference on my phone, so I'm assuming most people won't care.

[–] Moonrise2473@feddit.it 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

But isn't the "alternatively sourced" a rip from Amazon prime?

But indeed on my Android tv if I use Amazon prime most of times it decides to use 720p with a low bitrate

[–] accideath@lemmy.world 14 points 10 months ago (2 children)

A lot of "alternative sources" are BluRay or even 4K Bluray rips. Of course there oftentimes also are Prime Video or Netflix rips but that just depends on availability. Usually there’s a choice. You can also download rips that are more compressed than Netflix would ever be but if you’re out for quality you just don’t download those unless there’s nothing better available.

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[–] DannyMac@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago

I have a story, so I get wanting great video quality and why people get remuxes, but I have a friend who is borderline legally blind. His vision is so poor that he has to wear contacts and glasses at the same time. He has to get the remux version of things and complains about minor encoding artificacts from versions of things with smaller file sizes that I feel wouldn't bother 99.9% of the population. Hell years ago, before he got an updated prescription, he was driving and he mentioned how bad his vision was getting and I asked him if he could read the license plate for the car stopped in front of us and he laughed and said no. Anyway, I feel like the extra quality is wasted on him. He's like an audiophile who is hard of hearing. I just find this funny and wanted to share.

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago

Yup.

Canceled my Prime sub a month ago when they announced they were going to make people pay more to stay add free.

It's the high seas for me.

[–] Varyk@sh.itjust.works 6 points 10 months ago

Wow that is absolutely ridiculous, thanks for sharing

[–] doctorcrimson@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago

It's wider?

[–] jaykay@lemmy.zip 3 points 10 months ago (4 children)

And here is me, not being able to find Jack Ryan anyway lol

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