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12 years later, has video streaming quality matched blu-ray?

RowdyReverb

RowdyReverb

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,934
Austin, TX
In summer 2006, Blu-ray brought full HD video to the masses. Since that time, video streaming quality has steadily improved, and now we see 4K HDR offerings from the major providers, but does the compression still put the overall video quality behind 1080p blu-ray quality?
 

moeppel

Member
Oct 26, 2017
325
streaming still sucks quality wise, especially on the audio side. I would like to have a high quality option on Netflix, the current bitrates are just bad :/
 

Deleted member 39374

Banned
Feb 1, 2018
5,083
Not always. Streaming is usually a variable bit rate based on your connection quality.

People buy blu ray because they know it's going to be a solid picture always. Plus the sentimentality / collectability of the packaging, and the special features.
 
JdFox17

JdFox17

Member
Oct 26, 2017
439
No. Netflix's 4K streams still don't match the quality of 1080p blu-rays and won't anytime soon.
 
gozu

gozu

Member
Oct 27, 2017
10,341
America
youre_serious_futurama.gif



Bitrates are night and day, my friend. Bluray is miles ahead of even Amazon Video Streaming (which is the best streaming video available today). This is especially noticeable in scenes with particles, smoke, rain and other very noisy video scenes, which are allergic to compression. Compression likes predictability and slow change.

With that said, most normies without a 60" + TV and a $1000+ Surround sound system won't notice a difference.

I mean, people stream shit instead of downloading torrents today, and the difference in quality is way bigger than BluRay vs Amazon Video.
 
Xe4

Xe4

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,295
Not even close. 4K strems struggle to hit 1080, and regular streams struggle to hit 480.
It doesn't help that if you have poor internet the stream usually chooses to drop resolution rather than buffer.
 
itwasTuesday

itwasTuesday

The Fallen
Oct 30, 2017
8,078
No, this can be seen in any drone shot flying over a forest. Pause the movie and all you will get is muddy pea soup.
The encode just isn't built for it.

I imagine streaming sites will evolve and offer high bitrate content protected downloads to a set top box someday.

maybe
 

Gatti-man

Banned
Jan 31, 2018
2,359
Not even close and the audio is really shockingly bad. It's a shame they haven't figured it out yet. All the fine detail of the audio is washed out on my studio speakers when streaming vs UHD/Blu
 
Kida

Kida

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,899
Watching The Grand Tour in 4K on Amazon Prime and Blue Planet II in 4K on Iplayer are the only two streaming experiences I've had that compare to 1080p Blu-Ray. 1080p/4K streaming on most things still has a very low bitrate and are nowhere near matching 4K Blu-ray.
 
SwampBastard

SwampBastard

The Fallen
Nov 1, 2017
11,040
No, but for me, the convenience of streaming is worth the trade-off. I don't have high-end A/V equipment, so it's less noticeable anyway.
 
Jessie

Jessie

Member
Oct 27, 2017
9,921
Is 4K streaming really that bad? I think it looks amazing, and I never get buffering.

I also don't really care about audio. I listen to everything with headphones because I live in an apartment with thin walls.
 
Sinneslöschen

Sinneslöschen

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
1,332
BluRays have a bitrate of 20 mbps up to 40 mbps for a 1080p movie. While Netflix is closer to 5-6 mbps variable based on connection speed. With some titles higher around 8 and 4k content around 15-20. An UHD BluRay would be more around 100 mbps.
 

Deleted member 9486

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
4,867
No, but its good enough for us. And just 1080p as we have no plans to replace our two 55" TVs until they break. Just wasteful given neither of us are videophiles and a bulk of our screen usages is cable and we have no 4K channels. 4K streaming would also kill our 1TB data cap with how much my wife streams stuff (or watches On Demand). I moslty regret my Bluray collection as we so seldom rewatch anything. I should have limited it to just things like Star Wars and LOTR that we do rewatch periodically.
 
dallow_bg

dallow_bg

Member
Oct 28, 2017
10,629
texas
Haven't seen buffering in ages.
UHD streams with HDR (Vudu, iTunes) looks fantastic to me. Worth the convenience easily.
 
a916

a916

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,838
No, Bluray is still a step ahead.

There's usually noticeable compression.
 
Strangelove_77

Strangelove_77

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
13,392
Absolutely not. Its going to be a while before that happens with the shitty slow internet a lot of us in the US have.
 

Deleted member 4247

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
8,896
Xe4 said:
Not even close. 4K strems struggle to hit 1080, and regular streams struggle to hit 480.
It doesn't help that if you have poor internet the stream usually chooses to drop resolution rather than buffer.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

What. My 4K streams are 4K for sure. They look really great, but not as perfect as BD of course.
norm9 said:
Blu rays don't buffer.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Neither does Netflix for me. Alright, maybe for 2-3 seconds right at the start, but then it's smooth sailing. Y'all need better internet connections.

(100/100 here FWIW.)
 
TaterTots

TaterTots

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,966
Streamed Planet Earth II on Netflix recently and I couldn't tell the difference. People tend to forget there are only a couple of browsers that actually stream Netflix and such at 1080p. Chrome and Firefox aren't one of them, on Windows anyway.
 
Slayven

Slayven

Never read a comic in his life
Moderator
Oct 25, 2017
93,143
Nope, but I say the vast majority of people don't care. Folks still hooking up 6o inch 4k tvs with component cables
 
hendersonhank

hendersonhank

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
1,390
Let's get some numbers in here.

Amazon 1080p streaming version of an episode of Legion season 2: bitrate of roughly 10mbps

Bluray version of an episode of Legion season 1: bitrate of roughly 27mbps


BUT to make it interesting, there are bluray re-encodes at 14mbps that are indistinguishable from the bluray for all practical purposes.

With HEVC, it should be entirely possible to get indistinguishable from the bluray at around the bitrate Amazon is currently using for 1080p.
 
Doctoglethorpe

Doctoglethorpe

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,214
Blah blah blah bitrates blah blah blah.

Bitrates aren't a good comparison because the encoding for streaming is different. It's like comparing MP3 and AAC. The reality is, 4K streams from iTunes are arguably better than standard Blu-ray, and the difference between it and UHD Blu-ray is likely completely negligible to anyone who isn't going out of their way to examine a single frame and go "aha! I found a difference!" Like yeah, sure, if your gonna nitpick it then uncompressed always beats co pressed, but that's missing the point. Everyone embraced AAC and MP3 because the compromise was worth it. Save a lot of data bandwidth in exchange for negligible decrease in quality. Now, sure, the difference for standard streaming is fairly stark, but it's no longer the case for 4K streaming. 4K has reached that sweet spot that mp3 did. There will always FLAC fanatics and the video equivalent, but they are a tiny minority. Unless your a paranoid pixel counter, then yes streaming has caught up.

This will be called a hot take or something. Lol.
 
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