I can watch content in lower resolutions, I can’t watch content that I don’t have access to at all.
In this day and age of compression, you can get a very small file in good quality.
If your hardware will run it, MKV/265 is fantastic! Especially the 10 bit rips
Every time I pirate something x265, it looks like somebody took the pixels and threw it in the blender. Like I could notice the degredation in quality and it irritates me since it’s supposed to be 1080p.
I download the normal x264 and everything looks fine.
And I doing piracy incorrectly?
265 is more bandwidth efficient than 264. If you put two video streams next to each other, 100% identical, running at the same bitrate, except one is H.264 and one is 265, 265 will look better.
265 can achieve the same visual fidelity as 264 at 20-40% lower bitrate, depending on a few factors. The trade off is you need more processing.
If either are looking pixilated, you’re getting ones with to much compression. I still try and get ones at around a gig or larger. Especially if you’re watching on a big screen. And like I said, if your hardware will run it without getting all laggy, 10 or 12 bit is good for rgb color depth
The issue is that, while x265 is more efficient, it’s not THAT much more efficient until you get to 4k or high bitrates. Encoders using x265 tend to be overly focused on file size, and prioritize it over video quality. And that sort of makes sense - x265 needs a lot more decoding power, and excludes a lot of otherwise capable devices. Why would you do that to only save a small percentage of the space needed?
Me gusta
does MKV combined with H265 really do a thing?
It do do dat thang
wat thang do it do, doe?
It do da thang it do, dawg
is it better than the H265 alone without changing the container format?
H.265 isn’t a container format, it’s an encoding format. You have to have a container to hold the encoded video stream, whether it be MKV, MP4, etc.
i know. that’s what i’m asking. which one is better, H265 with MP4 as container (since it’s the standard) or MKV as container… i do transcoding a lot but haven’t experienced using MKV as the container. that’s why i’m asking.
MKV is open, so I prefer that. My TV and Plex/Jellyfin also plays them fine. So I tend to prefer that. It’s also more powerful than MP4 if I’m not mistaken? Like it can hold subtitles and stuff? I don’t remember off the top of my head.
(Also the piracy scene tends to prefer MKV nowadays as far as I can tell. At least for larger stuff like movies and long-episode television series.)
Or AV1
My Shield Pro shits itself trying to play those at 4K though.
I never play anything in 4k simply because my eyes can never tell the difference lol
Are they that heavy?
I don’t think it’s got a hardware decoder in it for AV1. Whether it can play is very much dependent on the file.
I can’t see the extra pixels, but they tend to be the only versions with Dolby Vision, etc. I do think the HDR version looks better.
I can’t think of any device with hardware decoder for AV1. I think it’s mostly by CPU with some GPU accel.
It’s mostly handled with GPU acceleration, yes. But it’s a fairly recent addition. Certainly newer than my Shield Pro (which they don’t seem to have updated since).
CPU alone would require a decent processor. Certainly at 4K. It knows the format, but smooth playback either happens or it doesn’t depending on the file.
my eyes can never tell the difference
Do you have a TV that can display 4K though?
Nah, I’d go for books and music.
I’d include video games.
You can get a small roguelike that’ll provide a ton of playtime.
I think I’m in this camp. I can juggle a few roguelikes if I want to check-out from reality. My guitar/piano would be my priority though, maybe I can actually finish writing the damned song.
A couple emulators and a few console’s entire collection of games takes up a surprisingly small amount of space.
Regardless of outage, I decided quantity is better. I currently have ~5,500 movies. If I chose high grade 4k I would only have storage for ~300 of what I deem as the absolute best of cinema. With quantity>quality I can store everything that was mildly successful.
How much space does that take?
Id probably go for a middle ground. 720 is fine by me.
Yeah there’s definitely diminishing returns but if you go too low it starts looking like shit enough to matter. 720p is probably my cutoff for that too.
Nah, you just grab a shitload of podcasts.
That is 0p resolution, and you can store a huge number of them on a small disk.
Depends on your goal: do you want to preserve what you can at its best, or do you want to ensure you have plenty of entertainment to go by?
I’d probably go with the lower quality. We watched TV in 480i and under for decades, and 720p is still quite watchable even today. In HEVC or AV1 you can really pack a decent collection.
More stuff in lower resolution, and focus on less-popular (or less-collectible) material.
The internet isn’t going to go out just for you, it’s going to go out for everyone (at least in your region). You’re going to be without it for the long-term, so you’ll want variety in what you can watch and listen to. But your friends and family will also be looking for entertainment, so you’ll be providing for a range of tastes over a long period.
You want to focus on less-popular / less-collectible material because trading networks will spring up, and the less-popular material will be the stuff that’s in demand. There’ll be plenty of people with a full collection of Star Trek or all the Best Picture winners, that kind of thing. But there’ll also be people who suddenly realize that they want to re-watch all of Law and Order or they’ve always meant to watch Miami Vice and now is the perfect time.
I’ll also point out that you’ve hypothesized that it’s just the internet that’s gone down. There would still be broadcast tv and radio, and I think people would re-adapt to broadcast viewing and listening.
Lower resolution and a lower resolution viewer (older TV).
i can have hundreds of movies in 1080p, thousands of pages of manga if I prefer that, my issue would mostly be music, last.fm shows that I listen to 2000 unique music in a month
I’m completely fine sacrificing resolution. I don’t care about 4k resolutions at all, from where I sit to watch I can barely see the fly poops near the corners of the screen, and those are huge compared to the size of the pixels.
Lower res, for sure. Modern GPUs/drivers and some media players can do a decent job of making them a bit nicer to look at ‘on-the-fly’, too.
Better to own physical media and not worry about it. :) You can rip it yourself and use whatever compression you’re comfortable with or just play it directly.
Up until the disc rot gets ya.
I have CDs and laser discs from the 80s that still work perfectly well. Rot is an overblown phenomenon.
There are some known issues with Warner Brothers releases from a certain period of years, but that’s limited to Warner and 2006-2008.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/still-clinging-to-dvds-some-warner-bros-discs-have-started-rotting-away
Depends on the stuff and on what you will be watching it.
TV shows that were originally aired in SD will be fine in low resolution. Cartoons can usually be pretty low quality too. Old cartoons in SD on a CRT usually look great.
However stuff made for HD will probably need better quality to be enjoyable.
I’ve been collecting since the days of RealPlayer and still have lots of stuff in SD. Some shows are getting difficult to watch on a giant screen but the advantage of the small files is that they can be read by a toaster.
TLDR: More in lower resolution unless it’s some modern shows or movies where HD is a necessity.
Have you ever thought of just buying and therefore owning DVDs or BDs?
Have you ever thought of just buying
owning
Um… no, I just pirate and put everything in harddrives/ssds
Harddrives takes up less physical storage than a bookshelf full of DVD/Blurays.
(Also: I’m broke lol)
But then you have to deal with physical media or rip it, and also deal with the anti theft protections. Skip all of this and simply download files.
Works fine in the DVD player, and allows me to use a number of languages, comments, and extras.
I frequently have this conundrum as I upload a lot of stuff on my phone when getting ready to go somewhere for work. I find that TV shows gives me more bang for the byte over movies, but I need a few of them to swap between so that I don’t get burned out watching just one show.
Since it’s on my phone anyway, resolution isn’t that important to me. 720p is usually fine. For movies I tend to be a little more picky, so I usually go for 1080p.
Usually I pack my phone with 3-4 movies and 2 seasons each of various shows.
