4K Blu-Ray Vs. 4K Streaming

Considering that Netflix doesn’t have Discovery here in Canada, since the rights are owned by Bell and it streams on Crave and iTunes. And yes I can see a difference. At best, the picture quality looks as good as a DVD upconverted to 720p. And the dark scenes were very noisy with compression artifacting.

I compared another show that’s on Netflix to a hard copy that I have, “Jessica Jones”. It was only issued on DVD, and the DVD looked a heck of a lot better than the garbage that Netflix was offering for 1080p.

 

Sometimes I can tell the difference, sometimes I can't. Compression tools are getting better all the time.

 

Or it could be your TV isn't setup correctly.

I can say that I don't see compression artifacts in dark scenes with Discovery from Netflix.

 

My TV’s setup correctly. It’s just that streaming is garbage.

 

The picture quality of season 1 of Discovery and season 3 are not equal. Season 1 had added "grain". It looked pretty bad on Netflix and it wasn't much better on blu-ray.

However S2 and S3 of Discovery didn't have this grain, and they are easily the best examples of 1080 HDR/DV on Netflix. It looks better than a lot of 4k shows they stream and some so called "4k" blu-rays.

The S2 Discovery blu-ray also looked immaculate, but I give the edge to Netflix because of HDR/DV. You really can't go wrong with either choice. The show really excels when it comes to delivering PQ.

 

Quite the nuanced view there...

There are several conditions that affect the streaming experience.

 

It has a time and place, certainly. Anything on film in HD looks decent overall, but high end video existed since laserdisc when quality via other mediums, even OTA boadcast, wasn't there. For casual viewing, it's great - until you're pay $100/mo for a dozen service providers, on top of the internet and other required components, as amortized. And people griped about '90s cable back int the day except their SD material didn't look as choppy. But there was no HD either...

Granted, I've not looked lately - maybe bundled packages involving many providers leads to a net lower cost instead of buying them all separately. But that's not the only possible issue: The means to compress, including frame stripping, does become an issue for some shows (usually anything that came from a videotaped finished master, even DS9 and VOY as those are coming from 29.97fps - despite being transferred from 24FPS film to VT. Then to make room for streaming, frames are yanked and the result is choppier than the results of a slap chop...)) There's also noise reduction algorithms used in encoding and decoding, not to mention the TV can also do its share of cleanup and even on-the-fly frame interpolation - yet everything is still sold as "high definition" after frame rate and bandwidth are reduced and noise reduction that selectively blurs the image... by the time 200mb/s is ubiquitous then we might see bona fide improvements in higher bitrates as well. As long as the service providers still keep the shows available and that's yet another issue people don't seem to be happy with.

Also note, adding artificial grain also helps compression. Of course, nobody wants to watch something filmed or recorded in 2019 yet looks like a 16mm scanned film neg from 1970, back when that was deemed good enough since only SD existed and 16mm was higher in quality...

And if the TV's brightness is set too high, or if it has a MVA or PVA panel and you're looking from too steep an angle, that causes contrast shift (looks brighter) and a lot of artifacting is in the darker areas so it can't be seen as easily. (Of course, excessive artifacting will show issues everywhere, that stand out royally on a paused frame and on material that hadn't been given noise reduction, or if said compression is so high that no amount of reduction techniques can mask the issues... then again, if it looks decent while not paused...)

Also, speaking of a slap chop:


Nuts, huh?

 

Pretty much anything between the streaming server and you can downgrade the quality.

 

Streaming is like VHS SLP.

 

I am not the biggest fan of streaming, but this post is complete and utter bullshit. If you are truly getting VHS like results, then you need to quit using dial-up.

 

I don’t use dial-up. And you are full of it.
You are talking to a guy who works with video. And streaming is like VHS SLP; it’s acceptable for your average consumer, but it’s extremely poor quality when compared to Blu-Ray/4K Blu-Ray or the original studio masters. Blu-Ray/4K Blu-Ray is like Laserdisc, while DVD is like S-VHS SP.

 

Judging by a lot of your posts on the subject, I have a hard time believing you work in any kind of video field. Watching Murder Among the Mormons right now on Netflix and the video quality is very good on my Samsung 4K HDR 65”.

If you work with video, you know the quality of the source material is very important. Much like streaming, all physical media experiences are not created equal.

 

I've seen Discovery from Netflix in 1080p/HDR and on my 55" LG UHD TV, it does look good.

Some older programs don't look all that good. But then they were not recorded/filmed all that well. DS9 (for example) is very poor. I've seen DS9 shown on SyFy (HD) and it was very fuzzy.

I've also seen some UHD/HDR streaming that's very good.

 

Don't even own any 4K BluRays. If a movie I like is available in 4K, I'll just get it from iTunes and watch it on my AppleTV. Looks fine to me.

As for streaming in general: I really don't have a problem with it except for (on the Paramount+ app) some early episodes of Blue Bloods which have some pixelation. Not enough to ruin the enjoyment, though. And evem then I suspect it's the fault of the source material.

 

Please give me a title on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, or Apple TV that's streaming in 4k/HDR that looks like VHS SLP.

 

Sorry but it’s you who is. I’ve also been working with streaming since videos were at 160x120. Streaming, whether it’s 480p, 720p, 1080p or 4K is like VHS SLP when compared to DVD, Blu-Ray & 4K Blu-Ray. It’s garbage. And most of the shows on streaming, like “Jessica Jones” in 1080p HD or 4K look about as good as an upconverted DVD at 720p.

 

Continuing to dig...

 

It’s you who’s digging. Streaming is garbage.

When you got something that is only using 10 to 12 million bits a second versus a device that uses 25 to 100 million bits per second, the quality is not there, and it doesn’t matter how good the source material is. You only need one conversion to something else to give you garbage.

 

Once again, you come across as not having a clue as to what you are talking about. Check out Murder Among the Mormons on Netflix, where VHS tape is interspersed with current interviews. You can clearly see the difference between the two. Unless you've dug yourself in to a point that you look like an idiot if you backtrack...