Streaming services' quality vs Bluray?

[shae]

Assuming streaming services used bitrates similar to Bluray, would the quality be similar, worse, or better than Bluray?

If worse, the potential future disappearance of physical media would be disconcerting.

I'm thinking, maybe they're more rigid than Bluray in their average bitrate targeting (are they?). On the other hand, as a more dynamically evolving ecosystem, and usually controlled end-to-end, they generally have more flexibility in terms of other parameters.

[kolak]

Quality is not the problem anymore. Netflix is at the level (eg. with current Dolby Vision) which is even "too much" for typical household.
Some people like physical media, packaging (or even trip to the shop) etc. and quality has nothing to do with it. Both mechanisms can coexist and did for many years already.

[shae]

Yes, they've been coexisting, but quality was lower. And I suppose it still is?
If Netflix's recommendations (https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306) are the maximum bitrate: 1080p at 5Mbps, 4K at 15Mbps.

I don't know what's a typical household. Some people are happy with DVD (https://www.the-numbers.com/home-market/dvd-sales/2021).

[StainlessS]

I buy lots of 2nd hand (used) DVDs (and recently Blu-Ray) disks from CEX UK, [ https://uk.webuy.com/ ]
I only recently noticed that Blu-Ray disks are quite often cheaper than DVD [and sometimes even come with DVD disk too],
cheapest DVD disk now £1.00 (pre covid £0.50), but cheapest Blu-Ray £0.50.

Looks like maybe people still buy DVD (especially during covid), but blu-ray guys have migrated to online digital.
Go figure.

EDIT: From News section posted by Orion44: [DVD Sales Surpass Blu-ray in 2021 ]
https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=183480
Blu-ray has been around for 15 years now. The disc standard for Full HD and 4K content has been making its way into the audiovisual market, both in movies and games.

However, despite its improvements in quality and compatibility, a spectacular number of DVD movies are still being sold in the middle of 2021.

DVD sales skyrocket in the last year

This is revealed by data from Nielsen VideoScan, which analyzes physical purchases in the US market.
DVD sales have exploded, while Blu-ray sales have plummeted. The reasons seem to be clear: the pandemic has changed consumer habits.

[shae]

The figures from the-numbers.com say, at least for new films and in the US, that Blurays sell better than DVD:
https://www.the-numbers.com/home-market/bluray-sales/2021
https://www.the-numbers.com/home-market/dvd-sales/2021

I don't know how reliable that data is (the unit counts seem too low?).

Still, it's not unthinkable that in the near future new physical media may be rare or extinct.
And so I wonder about the quality (potential?) of streaming services vs Bluray.

[StainlessS]

I guess you could compare with sales counts in earlier years [I have not].

[Blue_MiSfit]

Serious collectors still buy UHD BluRay discs or (if they're rich) use services like Kalidescape.

Most people are really not very sensitive to video quality, at least not to the extent that most folks on this board are!

Streaming services invest a lot of time and money into determining just how few bits they can spend to keep people happy with image quality. This is actually a really good thing because the fewer bits they have to deliver the more efficient they can be with cache and transit bandwidth. The worst possible thing in a streaming session is a pause / rebuffer. Nothing pisses customers off more.

Consider that most folks have inexpensive TVs mounted at imperfect angles, often at long distance. They also often use crappy ISP provided WiFi routers, probably on a relatively meh Internet connection. All of this means:

1) The effective bandwidth they can stream is lower than you'd think (due to bad ISP, bad WiFi, and cheap devices with slow CPUs and small memory so they can't buffer as much as you'd expect)

2) The display itself doesn't look great due to off-axis viewing of a VA panel, no calibration / in full torch mode to maximize brightness to contend with reflections, and often with noise reduction and motion interpolation turned on

Combine this with how distracted people often are with kids, phones, etc, and there really just isn't as much critical viewing happening as you might think. :) Don't even get me started on mobile viewing, especially of free / UGC content!

Still, streaming services recognize that consumers like "us" exist! That's why they support new standards like 4K, HDR, and immersive audio.

I work for Disney and there's a lot of effort spent here delivering a premium video experience. I'm very happy with the top quality Dolby Vision encodes that are delivered on D+!

Taking my Disney hat off and speaking purely as a consumer, I'm generally very happy with the 4K video quality on other services, especially Netflix and (with a few exceptions) Amazon.

I'm EXTREMELY fortunate to have a fantastic calibrated LG C9 display with near ideal placement, a proper 5.1.4 Atmos setup, really good mesh WiFi, and gigabit fiber internet. I'm also exceedingly picky about video quality, but I rarely experience any compression related quality issues that take me out of the immersion in good content!

Earlier in my life when I did most of my content viewing at very close distances on my PC monitor I was actually more critical of compression issues. I'm sure that's due to a multitude of factors, including older technology / poorer compression, me having more time on my hands, and me viewing the content much closer to my eyeballs.

[hubblec4]

I have Netflix, and I hate it :-)

I always see the bad compression for the video and the audio is for the german language reduced to 2.0 stereo. What a shame.

When possible I order the Blu-ray. Nothing is so good like a disc.

[shae]

Blue_MiSfit:
What bitrates does D+ use?
Any observations on how optimal these encodings/used settings are, compared to Bluray?

Optimized encodings could mean better quality at a given rate, but if it's "good enough" for most people, it might also result in reduced bitrate and staying at the same place. The video equivalent of 128kbit CBR mp3.

By your logic I think all signs point to: we are doomed. :)

Unless, like in the music market, when storage and bandwidth improve enough so that compression isn't such a big concern, more splurgy encodings would become a common option. Though I'm not sure if there are any video content services that aim to offer downloads rather than streaming.

hubblec4:
Already today some streaming-originating content is not available on Bluray.

[microchip8]

I agree. Streaming services have a long way to go to even closely match the quality of BD media. It was not too long ago when their content was terrible to watch and it hasn't improved that much either these days. I still buy physical BD discs because I want to own it (collection) and I want superb quality.

[hubblec4]

hubblec4:
Already today some streaming-originating content is not available on Bluray.

Yes that's true, but for me not a problem. I can wait a half or full year to buy/rent BD discs, there is no hurry for me.

[shae]

I don't mean waiting. There are not-that-new movies, owned or produced by streaming companies, that aren't on Bluray (nor DVD, BTW).

Some examples...
Netflix: Okja (2017) (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3967856/), Mowgli (2018) (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2388771/), Klaus (2019) (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4729430/)
Amazon: The Vast of Night (2019) (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6803046/)

[QBhd]

All you need to do is look at the file size to know that you are losing a lot of quality streaming.

https://dsm01pap006files.storage.live.com/y4m26mumobnbtrk_3yGi7Vx9cZYTvJpp_iUEJ9qavAV8VAE4RnZxIUVwVzedsJ_Sm_B4o07x6pk41vaqEHvzV9_tEiwdLT5C7J8MTWqPL6okhB-awhmnF44cBzRcpA6PEz0AuqK6tefJiWUmW61dboXCaQ0I4J4KfASGuSUud_bpeQRaGf9nJCgNffWz2tXjUQb?width=679&height=223&cropmode=none

That's 14.3 Mbps compared to 48.2 Mbps

QB

[hubblec4]

I don't mean waiting. There are not-that-new movies, owned or produced by streaming companies, that aren't on Bluray (nor DVD, BTW).

Some examples...
Netflix: Okja (2017) (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3967856/), Mowgli (2018) (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2388771/), Klaus (2019) (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4729430/)
Amazon: The Vast of Night (2019) (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6803046/)


Yes, some series can be watched at Netflix only, or Amazon.
And sometimes I watch such series but it is not a pleasure.

[kolak]

I buy lots of 2nd hand (used) DVDs (and recently Blu-Ray) disks from CEX UK, [ https://uk.webuy.com/ ]
I only recently noticed that Blu-Ray disks are quite often cheaper than DVD [and sometimes even come with DVD disk too],
cheapest DVD disk now £1.00 (pre covid £0.50), but cheapest Blu-Ray £0.50.

Looks like maybe people still buy DVD (especially during covid), but blu-ray guys have migrated to online digital.
Go figure.

EDIT: From News section posted by Orion44: [DVD Sales Surpass Blu-ray in 2021 ]
https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=183480

Reason is simple- 4K BDs are way to expensive to master. Independent studio/content owners can't simply justify costs of making them. Even big studios are not so keen.

[kolak]

Yes, they've been coexisting, but quality was lower. And I suppose it still is?
If Netflix's recommendations (https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306) are the maximum bitrate: 1080p at 5Mbps, 4K at 15Mbps.

I don't know what's a typical household. Some people are happy with DVD (https://www.the-numbers.com/home-market/dvd-sales/2021).

Of course quality is lower (on + side Netflix original content is "forced" to be well produced, so it's easier to encode). I worked in DVD and then BD business and quite often we had issues with masters. BDs in their days could be way better if masters were good. If you have clean HD master than what you really need is 15-20Mbit (which is still way more than Netflix uses). Anything above this is only about preserving high frequencies- original noise/grain etc.
HD Netflix content is streamed at eg 2-3Mit, but as mentioned, this is enough for average audience. Maybe it's also down to the fact that many people watch Netflix on laptops with small screens, so then all looks "better" than on big TVs.

Discs may became a niche product for videophiles, like eg. DVD-Audio did and streaming will be for masses. Studios care about 1 thing only- $. Times when anyone was interested in producing good content, audience, quality etc. are long gone.
I don't really care that much anymore about quality (even if I'm pedantic when it comes to encoding) as bigger problem is the lack of good content :) There is nothing to watch these days for me. Most content is sooo poor.

[kasper93]

Assuming streaming services used bitrates similar to Bluray, would the quality be similar, worse, or better than Bluray?

It really depends. Streaming services sometimes have better/newer master which wasn't (yet) released on blu-ray. Services like Bravia Core have similar and often better quality than UHD Blu-Ray. Generally though if we are talking Netflix and alike, they have lower bitrate and if the master was same that will lose with full blu-ray disc.

If worse, the potential future disappearance of physical media would be disconcerting.

Physical media will disappear whether you like it or not. Even nowadays it is more collectible hobby to build your collection. Streaming it just way more convenient, cheaper and for most people just better.

As for quality though, don't worry. They have to sell their fancy TVs, Projectors and sound systems. And only way to do that is when you can back it up with high quality files to showcase hardware capabilities. That's why Sony have premium streaming service that have better quality than Blu-Ray and you can rest assure that there will be always high quality option available, whether it is physical disc or other delivery medium.

[shae]

Streaming services sometimes have better/newer master
Though a true comparison would be with the same source material.

Bravia Core have similar and often better quality than UHD Blu-Ray.
First time I hear of them. The claimed 30-80Mbps (https://www.sonypicturescore.com/faq/EN/us) in their high-quality mode indeed seems higher than others (though misleadingly they throw in the word "lossless"). But unless Sony plans to make it a generally available service it might not affect Netflix and the others.

Physical media will disappear whether you like it or not.
Myself, I'm not concerned about the physical aspect, but about quality (and offline).

there will be always high quality option available, whether it is physical disc or other delivery medium.
Hopefully. The last few years seem to have dropped the average quality when calculated as: number of viewers * average bitrate * codec type. But maybe it was a local nadir.

Anything above this is only about preserving high frequencies- original noise/grain etc.
That's desirable too. Next, maybe we can have 4:2:2 or 4:4:4. :)

4K BDs are way to expensive to master.Why? I can see why it might have been initially, but a few years later you had faster and cheaper hardware for editing and encoding. As for the shooting hardware, it's already gone 4K regardless of the final delivery format.

[Frank62]

(and offline)
Apart from quality for me as consumer one of the most important points. Offline! If online your favourite movie might suddenly disappear, due to lost rights or many other reasons, no guarantee at all that you can watch it tomorrow.
Regarding quality to me the worst thing is also the dynamic bitrates that fluctuate with their bandwidth. Horrible. I watch 95% offline, whenever possible (even learned a lot how to download streams in the last few months).

[kolak]

That's desirable too. Next, maybe we can have 4:2:2 or 4:4:4. :)



For progressive sources 4:2:0 is fine in most cases. Maybe anime suffers a bit, but "natural" footage doesn't that much. Maybe 4:2:2, but don't see any need for 4:4:4. It may still happen one day.

[kolak]

Why? I can see why it might have been initially, but a few years later you had faster and cheaper hardware for editing and encoding. As for the shooting hardware, it's already gone 4K regardless of the final delivery format.

4K BDs are way to expensive to master.




Authoring, encoding (still slow with h265, even on 40 cores machines), licensing, encryption fees, disc production costs...It's rather expensive medium.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Apart from quality for me as consumer one of the most important points. Offline! If online your favourite movie might suddenly disappear, due to lost rights or many other reasons, no guarantee at all that you can watch it tomorrow.



I'll plug for a moment here. Disclaimer, I worked on the below :)

The studios have tried a few things to mitigate this. UltraViolet was an early attempt, and Movies Anywhere is a good modern alternative.

Basically, it's a service that synchronizes libraries across different streaming services, so if you buy content on one service (e.g. iTunes) it will be available on many others like Amazon, VUDU, etc. This works in all directions.

The limitation is that not all studios have signed up to be a part of Movies Anywhere, but it's a start :)

[wswartzendruber]

I'll plug for a moment here.
The limitation is that not all studios have signed up to be a part of Movies Anywhere, but it's a start :)
Looking at you, Paramount!

[Frank62]

Basically, it's a service that synchronizes libraries across different streaming services, so if you buy content on one service (e.g. iTunes) it will be available on many others like Amazon, VUDU, etc. This works in all directions.
This might increase probability, but doesn't make 100% SURE that you can watch your favourite movie tomorrow. On DVD/other media/harddisk you can, plus with stable quality. ;)

[shae]

Can anyone with streaming accounts (and a way to tell bitrates) report what bits per pixel you're seeing at various stream quality levels?

I wonder both about the major services (Netflix, Amazon, Disney) and others (HBO, Paramount, Hulu, Peacock).

[SquallMX]

Can anyone with streaming accounts (and a way to tell bitrates) report what bits per pixel you're seeing at various stream quality levels?

I wonder both about the major services (Netflix, Amazon, Disney) and others (HBO, Paramount, Hulu, Peacock).

They use some form of VBR, Netflix its usually in the lower bitrate zone. Some examples:

Disney Andor S01E09:
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 5 387 kb/s
Maximum bit rate : 12.7 Mb/s

Disney Chucky S02E01:
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 5 795 kb/s
Maximum bit rate : 12.7 Mb/s

Amazon Law and Order SVU S24E05:
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 9 453 kb/s
Nominal bit rate : 10 000 kb/s

Amazon NCIS Los Angeles S14E04
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 8 278 kb/s
Nominal bit rate : 10 000 kb/s

Netflix Lucifer S06:
Bit rate : 5 603 kb/s

Netflix Enola Holmes 2:
Encoding: H264
Bit rate: 3 352 kb/s

Netflix Enola Holmes 2:
Encoding H265 HDR
Bit rate : 1 058 kb/s !!!!!!

[shae]

Thanks.

What are the resolutions (and frame rates)?

Are you sure these are indicative of the raw streams?
(1Mbit for 1080p HDR seems unlikely even for bitrate-starved streams.)

[ABDO]

Personally, I’ve noticed differences when streaming versus watching on Blu-ray, especially for action-packed or visually detailed movies. I’d say streaming is convenient, and the quality has gotten much better with Dolby Vision and similar tech, but when I’ve compared bitrates myself, Blu-ray always seems sharper, especially for fast-moving scenes.

That said, these days I stick mostly to streaming for convenience, but I get why some people still prefer physical copies. If affording multiple platforms is tough, there are ways to balance it. I found a site with the best streaming services (https://cashyeah.com/blog/what-are-the-best-streaming-services) with affordable options through creative methods like rewards platforms.

[Sunspark]

Streaming is awful these days. They keep lowering bitrates and you can see this in darker scenes where you see square blocks shifting around.

[LunaRabbit]

It depends on the streaming service and content. For example, the content I deal with the most is usually higher quality from the streaming services than the blurays. But only because the blurays are authored very badly and use some commercial codec and/or process that destroys the chroma and sometimes luma. So what we end up doing is attempting to restore the bluray when possible. If not possible we take the luma from the bluray and do filtering to the chroma from the streaming service. Often times from multiple streaming services. Then merge those together.

Right now I'm working on a show where I'm having to cobble together something from;

1) Uncensored lower bitrate streaming source
2) Censored slightly higher bitrate streaming source
3) Japanese bluray release with bad chroma
4) Japanese DVD release with some extra scenes that didn't make the bluray (original film was lost)
5) Italian bluray (good chroma/luma but some scenes were lost).

As to why the Japanese seem hellbent on destroying their own content through badly authored blurays I don't know. It isn't just the chroma/luma they nuke either. Sometimes they have rescaled every other scene using a different resolution. Which I can sort of understand due to using lower resolution assets then wanting to scale them up to 1080p for distribution. But sometimes they'll do things like take something that was native 720p, scale it up to 1080p, add native 1080p credits, scale it back down to something like 809p, then finally rescale it back up to 1080p again. When possible we try to reverse this process through blindly trying different kernels to descale then rescale back up to 1080p using a better kernel than they did. But it isn't always possible.

It's ironic that the best source for the content I typically work with isn't from the native countries' release of such content. Typically, the best source to work from is a German or Italian one. But those aren't always available. Frankly, the truth is 99% of viewers don't notice. But I mainly only work with shows that are "lost" or "mostly lost" as a means of preserving them for future generations. So it can be very frustrating to wait for years (sometimes decades) for a bluray to come out and spending $200+ on the set only to discover it's worse than the VHS tape I already had.

In fact, for a bunch of stuff I've worked on the old VHS tapes and LDs are the best source out there. They're even better than the "remastered" blurays most of the time. So in the end the only thing of value on the bluray ends up being the audio tracks.

I have made several attempts to contact people authoring blurays for the content I work on. All have fell on deaf ears. From what I've been told they're under contract to use whatever process and commercial codec they're using. The excuse is they want to make the content fit on the set of discs. But then they turn around and only release 2-4 episodes on each disc and inject a ton of artificial grain to prevent banding. So I'm just going to assume they're lazy.

One show we worked on this year was so bad that we had to recreate the credits in the opening/ending using styled subtitles then apply those to an old VHS copy of the opening/ending from the original release in the 80s that I applied a lot of filtering to and upscaled to 720p to make them the same resolution as the episodes. All because the originals were claimed to be lost so they did some kind of horrible upscale job from the VHS release where they didn't even bother to IVTC before running them through the upscaler. It took about 30 man hours per-episode to restore them. It required manually walking through each episode frame-by-frame and inserting my own upscales from the VHS about every few hundred frames when I couldn't get a good one off the bluray disc. This is after I spent many hours restoring the chroma channels.

In my opinion things are as bad as they've ever been. Since a lot of old content isn't being properly authored before distro even to the streaming services. Add in the lower bitrates, censorship on purpose and the fact that so many old tapes have been lost or taped over and it's a recipe for disaster.

[GeoffreyA]

I think it's great what you and your colleagues are doing, and always appreciate the time and effort it takes to do this unofficial restoration work. It is challenging but necessary, and most viewers don't notice it. I am reminded of anime-encoding groups and the lengths the best of them often go through, such as Beatrice, to perfect a series.

Your mentioning of different countries' Blu-rays being of varying quality brings to mind the anime Steins;Gate, whose Japanese BD is problematic, whereas the Italian one is a marked improvement. It is not perfect, though, the studio having made suboptimal choices in the anime's production.

I suppose there's always a tradeoff; for example, the Evangelion GKIDS BD has, arguably, better picture than the Japanese BD but lacks the iconic "Fly Me to the Moon," without which the anime is not the same.

[Wolfe999]

I personally look online on Google, I don't complicate myself. I don't have any subscription to anything) All movies and series can be easily found on 123moviesfree (https://123moviesfree.net/)