I am pretty sure that this won’t be accompanied by a respective price decrease for the time period that those who are on the 4K or HD plan will be receiving SD quality. That would be the decent thing to do...
People are going to have to adjust what their "thresholds for what is acceptable" drastically in the near future. Quality of streaming video is going to be pretty low on the list as far as importance.
Some people are going to have to, others wont. So far, everything is the same for me, and my usual standards are being maintained. I have standards, even during a crisis.
Yeah okay. If you're still bitching about bitrates when hundreds of thousands or millions of people are dead, don't expect any sympathy.
I still can't tell the difference between 720p, 1080p, and 4K content from a distance of 10 feet on a 65" TV and I have 20/20 vision. I can tell the difference from a few feet away, but that's too close to be watching a 65" screen.
The human eye does have a limited resolving power. As with everything "normal" is more akin to average normal, but regarding our viewing into the eye, optics for viewing *into* the eye hit the anatomic limit of resolution decades and decades ago. AO is the working (but expensive) solution to photographing individual rod and cone cells, etc. (Think AO the same as earth bound telescopes looking through the atmosphere to deep space)
Thanks for this... Indeed I understood 1.0 ~ 1.5x the screen diagonal as optimal 4K viewing distance.
I would ask if 1440p is perhaps a good compromise depending on viewing distance - 27" iMac 'native' resolution (110dpi eq) that I found a noticeable bump up at conventional desk distance from 1080p yet would still stream on a 6mb network.
Using a 4K 40" desktop monitor has been remarkably immersive for video, and seems to benefit from the distance suggested above (deep desk at 30" or so), as well as very efficient from a computing desktop (110dpi) standpoint. I have long asked if that might be a good option for an Apple Pro monitor or future iMac aka Apple TV, as well as 'full benefit' viewing distances for the much smaller LG 4K, 5K and now Apple 6K 'retina' displays...
It's ironic. Everyone cried when the FCC smartly rescinded the "net neutrality" rules imposed by a former administration. Now we see the government wanting to do exactly what people feared would happen in the free market but never did.
No, it is not “exactly what people feared would happen.”
The concern was, and continues to be, that ISPs would favor their own content over content provided by other providers.
The “free market” (or perhaps “free and fair market) solution to Internet congestion is to adjust the price of every byte sent in order to equalize demand and supply, not to favor one byte over another because of where it originated (a kind of “neutrality”, if you will). Then people could decide whether they really value the difference between 4K and 1080p. My guess is that most people would decide that 1080p is just fine (or even 720p, or even 480p) if they actually had to pay attention to the difference in cost.
The European solution isn’t a free market solution but it’s also not an “ISP gets to screw everyone else and make a ton of money” solution, either.
It's ironic. Everyone cried when the FCC smartly rescinded the "net neutrality" rules imposed by a former administration. Now we see the government wanting to do exactly what people feared would happen in the free market but never did.
This has absolutely nought to do with net neutrality.
This is the government limiting recreational use of a limited resource so that the economy can still happen.
Heck, not even that — they're not limiting the use of Netflix. They're just putting limits on how close you can sit to the TV without noticing artifacts, so that your neighbour can fucking work from home.
Oh noes! Those Commies are coming for my Freedom!
:: gets out his shotgun and slathers himself with Freedom Sauce and Coors beer ::
It's ironic. Everyone cried when the FCC smartly rescinded the "net neutrality" rules imposed by a former administration. Now we see the government wanting to do exactly what people feared would happen in the free market but never did.
No, it is not “exactly what people feared would happen.”
The concern was, and continues to be, that ISPs would favor their own content over content provided by other providers.
The “free market” (or perhaps “free and fair market) solution to Internet congestion is to adjust the price of every byte sent in order to equalize demand and supply, not to favor one byte over another because of where it originated (a kind of “neutrality”, if you will). Then people could decide whether they really value the difference between 4K and 1080p. My guess is that most people would decide that 1080p is just fine (or even 720p, or even 480p) if they actually had to pay attention to the difference in cost.
The European solution isn’t a free market solution but it’s also not an “ISP gets to screw everyone else and make a ton of money” solution, either.
Funnily enough, on the popular bittorrent sites for TV shows, 720p offerings are the most popular, I’m guessing due to a very reasonable file size compared to the 1080p and greater.
I don’t know how Netflix is working in Europe compared to the U.S. Netflix actually has their own servers located at different ISP’s in the U.S. this allows people to stream Netflix through just the ISP network and not through the general internet. This would help keep the general internet from clogging up. Is Netflix doing the same in other countries? I have no idea.
Did they ask Apple TV+ to reduce bandwidth too? Or still below the radar?
Yes they did, substantially in some areas with resolutions as low as 670p and higher compression than is usual for AppleTV+, causing visible artifacts while content is streamed.
I don’t know how Netflix is working in Europe compared to the U.S. Netflix actually has their own servers located at different ISP’s in the U.S. this allows people to stream Netflix through just the ISP network and not through the general internet. This would help keep the general internet from clogging up. Is Netflix doing the same in other countries? I have no idea.
From Netflix:
In normal circumstances, we have many (sometimes dozens) of different streams for a single title within each resolution. In Europe, for the next 30 days, within each category we’ve simply removed the highest bandwidth streams. If you are particularly tuned into video quality you may notice a very slight decrease in quality within each resolution. But you will still get the video quality you paid for.
On the ISP side, some partners in regions such as Latin America want us to reduce our bandwidth as soon as possible. But others want to continue with business as usual. This is understandable, as different ISPs around the world have built their networks in different ways, and operate within different constraints. For example, building a residential ISP network in a dense metropolitan area is quite a different prospect from building a residential ISP network in a sparsely populated rural area. Some ISPs build their networks with a substantial amount of excess capacity (“headroom”) others do not. Fortunately, we have a lot of experience delivering Netflix efficiently through our Open Connect program - as well as other technologies we’ve pioneered - and so we can respond to these different scenarios quickly.
So we will provide relief to ISPs who are dealing with large government-mandated “shelter in place” orders by providing the 25% traffic reduction we’ve started in Europe. For other networks, we’ll stick with our normal procedures - until and unless they experience issues of their own.
It's ironic. Everyone cried when the FCC smartly rescinded the "net neutrality" rules imposed by a former administration. Now we see the government wanting to do exactly what people feared would happen in the free market but never did.
No, it is not “exactly what people feared would happen.”
The concern was, and continues to be, that ISPs would favor their own content over content provided by other providers.
The “free market” (or perhaps “free and fair market) solution to Internet congestion is to adjust the price of every byte sent in order to equalize demand and supply, not to favor one byte over another because of where it originated (a kind of “neutrality”, if you will). Then people could decide whether they really value the difference between 4K and 1080p. My guess is that most people would decide that 1080p is just fine (or even 720p, or even 480p) if they actually had to pay attention to the difference in cost.
The European solution isn’t a free market solution but it’s also not an “ISP gets to screw everyone else and make a ton of money” solution, either.
Funnily enough, on the popular bittorrent sites for TV shows, 720p offerings are the most popular, I’m guessing due to a very reasonable file size compared to the 1080p and greater.
Perhaps that's because most of those TV shows are ripped from OTA/cable/satellite transmissions which are distributed in a maximum of 720p or 1080i and not 1080p? I think you'd have to rip from a Blu-Ray to get 1080p or 4K and that's assuming the show was originally recorded in that high of a resolution, right?
It's ironic. Everyone cried when the FCC smartly rescinded the "net neutrality" rules imposed by a former administration. Now we see the government wanting to do exactly what people feared would happen in the free market but never did."
No, it is not “exactly what people feared would happen.”
The concern was, and continues to be, that ISPs would favor their own content over content provided by other providers.
The “free market” (or perhaps “free and fair market) solution to Internet congestion is to adjust the price of every byte sent in order to equalize demand and supply, not to favor one byte over another because of where it originated (a kind of “neutrality”, if you will). Then people could decide whether they really value the difference between 4K and 1080p. My guess is that most people would decide that 1080p is just fine (or even 720p, or even 480p) if they actually had to pay attention to the difference in cost.
The European solution isn’t a free market solution but it’s also not an “ISP gets to screw everyone else and make a ton of money” solution, either.
Funnily enough, on the popular bittorrent sites for TV shows, 720p offerings are the most popular, I’m guessing due to a very reasonable file size compared to the 1080p and greater.
Perhaps that's because most of those TV shows are ripped from OTA/cable/satellite transmissions which are distributed in a maximum of 720p or 1080i and not 1080p? I think you'd have to rip from a Blu-Ray to get 1080p or 4K and that's assuming the show was originally recorded in that high of a resolution, right?
Stuff on BitTorrent gets released in SD, 720p, and 1080p all at the same time. Some shows even 2K or 4K depending on the source. Not sure where you got the idea you have to rip a Blu-Ray to get 1080p. The point being made is most people download 720p, probably because it’s more than “good enough” and the file sizes are significantly smaller. (Not advocating any of this for the record, just stating facts).
It's ironic. Everyone cried when the FCC smartly rescinded the "net neutrality" rules imposed by a former administration. Now we see the government wanting to do exactly what people feared would happen in the free market but never did."
No, it is not “exactly what people feared would happen.”
The concern was, and continues to be, that ISPs would favor their own content over content provided by other providers.
The “free market” (or perhaps “free and fair market) solution to Internet congestion is to adjust the price of every byte sent in order to equalize demand and supply, not to favor one byte over another because of where it originated (a kind of “neutrality”, if you will). Then people could decide whether they really value the difference between 4K and 1080p. My guess is that most people would decide that 1080p is just fine (or even 720p, or even 480p) if they actually had to pay attention to the difference in cost.
The European solution isn’t a free market solution but it’s also not an “ISP gets to screw everyone else and make a ton of money” solution, either.
Funnily enough, on the popular bittorrent sites for TV shows, 720p offerings are the most popular, I’m guessing due to a very reasonable file size compared to the 1080p and greater.
Perhaps that's because most of those TV shows are ripped from OTA/cable/satellite transmissions which are distributed in a maximum of 720p or 1080i and not 1080p? I think you'd have to rip from a Blu-Ray to get 1080p or 4K and that's assuming the show was originally recorded in that high of a resolution, right?
Stuff on BitTorrent gets released in SD, 720p, and 1080p all at the same time. Some shows even 2K or 4K depending on the source. Not sure where you got the idea you have to rip a Blu-Ray to get 1080p. The point being made is most people download 720p, probably because it’s more than “good enough” and the file sizes are significantly smaller. (Not advocating any of this for the record, just stating facts).
Is it really 1080p, 2K, or 4K or is it upsampled to those resolutions from a lower resolution source?
Take the popular show, Grey's Anatomy, for example. It appears the later seasons were digitally recorded using an Arri Alexa that has a maximum resolution of 2.8K and is distributed to TV stations as 1080i where it is then broadcast as 1080i or 720p.
It's ironic. Everyone cried when the FCC smartly rescinded the "net neutrality" rules imposed by a former administration. Now we see the government wanting to do exactly what people feared would happen in the free market but never did."
No, it is not “exactly what people feared would happen.”
The concern was, and continues to be, that ISPs would favor their own content over content provided by other providers.
The “free market” (or perhaps “free and fair market) solution to Internet congestion is to adjust the price of every byte sent in order to equalize demand and supply, not to favor one byte over another because of where it originated (a kind of “neutrality”, if you will). Then people could decide whether they really value the difference between 4K and 1080p. My guess is that most people would decide that 1080p is just fine (or even 720p, or even 480p) if they actually had to pay attention to the difference in cost.
The European solution isn’t a free market solution but it’s also not an “ISP gets to screw everyone else and make a ton of money” solution, either.
Funnily enough, on the popular bittorrent sites for TV shows, 720p offerings are the most popular, I’m guessing due to a very reasonable file size compared to the 1080p and greater.
Perhaps that's because most of those TV shows are ripped from OTA/cable/satellite transmissions which are distributed in a maximum of 720p or 1080i and not 1080p? I think you'd have to rip from a Blu-Ray to get 1080p or 4K and that's assuming the show was originally recorded in that high of a resolution, right?
Stuff on BitTorrent gets released in SD, 720p, and 1080p all at the same time. Some shows even 2K or 4K depending on the source. Not sure where you got the idea you have to rip a Blu-Ray to get 1080p. The point being made is most people download 720p, probably because it’s more than “good enough” and the file sizes are significantly smaller. (Not advocating any of this for the record, just stating facts).
Is it really 1080p, 2K, or 4K or is it upsampled to those resolutions from a lower resolution source?
Take the popular show, Grey's Anatomy, for example. It appears the later seasons were digitally recorded using an Arri Alexa that has a maximum resolution of 2.8K and is distributed to TV stations as 1080i where it is then broadcast as 1080i or 720p.
I'm sure it depends on the source entirely. There are various formats too, webrips vs web-dl, so forth. DLs should be as advertised, and I guess I don't know enough about streaming to know if there are ever cases where you're getting 720 upscaled to 1080, or just lower bitrates, etc. And yes, there are 4K web-dl encodings out there for the providers that have those shows available (Netflix, Disney I think). Either way this is all kind of beyond the point, no? We were talking about people grabbing 720p rips at a third of the size and lesser quality than that of 1080p rips. Not really interested in arguing over small details.
Comments
I would ask if 1440p is perhaps a good compromise depending on viewing distance - 27" iMac 'native' resolution (110dpi eq) that I found a noticeable bump up at conventional desk distance from 1080p yet would still stream on a 6mb network.
Using a 4K 40" desktop monitor has been remarkably immersive for video, and seems to benefit from the distance suggested above (deep desk at 30" or so), as well as very efficient from a computing desktop (110dpi) standpoint. I have long asked if that might be a good option for an Apple Pro monitor or future iMac aka Apple TV, as well as 'full benefit' viewing distances for the much smaller LG 4K, 5K and now Apple 6K 'retina' displays...
The concern was, and continues to be, that ISPs would favor their own content over content provided by other providers.
The “free market” (or perhaps “free and fair market) solution to Internet congestion is to adjust the price of every byte sent in order to equalize demand and supply, not to favor one byte over another because of where it originated (a kind of “neutrality”, if you will). Then people could decide whether they really value the difference between 4K and 1080p. My guess is that most people would decide that 1080p is just fine (or even 720p, or even 480p) if they actually had to pay attention to the difference in cost.
The European solution isn’t a free market solution but it’s also not an “ISP gets to screw everyone else and make a ton of money” solution, either.
Heck, not even that — they're not limiting the use of Netflix. They're just putting limits on how close you can sit to the TV without noticing artifacts, so that your neighbour can fucking work from home.
Oh noes! Those Commies are coming for my Freedom!
:: gets out his shotgun and slathers himself with Freedom Sauce and Coors beer ::
jbdragon said:
From Netflix:
In normal circumstances, we have many (sometimes dozens) of different streams for a single title within each resolution. In Europe, for the next 30 days, within each category we’ve simply removed the highest bandwidth streams. If you are particularly tuned into video quality you may notice a very slight decrease in quality within each resolution. But you will still get the video quality you paid for.
On the ISP side, some partners in regions such as Latin America want us to reduce our bandwidth as soon as possible. But others want to continue with business as usual. This is understandable, as different ISPs around the world have built their networks in different ways, and operate within different constraints. For example, building a residential ISP network in a dense metropolitan area is quite a different prospect from building a residential ISP network in a sparsely populated rural area. Some ISPs build their networks with a substantial amount of excess capacity (“headroom”) others do not. Fortunately, we have a lot of experience delivering Netflix efficiently through our Open Connect program - as well as other technologies we’ve pioneered - and so we can respond to these different scenarios quickly.
So we will provide relief to ISPs who are dealing with large government-mandated “shelter in place” orders by providing the 25% traffic reduction we’ve started in Europe. For other networks, we’ll stick with our normal procedures - until and unless they experience issues of their own.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-definition_television_in_the_United_States
And, since 720p in progressive, there are instances where it can actually look better then 1080i such as during fast motion, no?
https://lifehacker.com/why-you-should-watch-and-record-video-in-720p-instead-o-5908969
Take the popular show, Grey's Anatomy, for example. It appears the later seasons were digitally recorded using an Arri Alexa that has a maximum resolution of 2.8K and is distributed to TV stations as 1080i where it is then broadcast as 1080i or 720p.