UHD subscriptions for TV streaming - are they worth it !!

Steve C said:

Time for an eye test?

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Lol. No, I think I am good. I just can't see the difference in resolution at the distance I described.

Catnip said:

Lol. No, I think I am good. I just can't see the difference in resolution at the distance I described.

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On a test to a studio with real full 8K UHD then even down rezzing to 4K UHD on a typical 50 inch domestic TV -- not those mega expensive things - it was clearly visible as an improvement compared with bog standard 4K UHD as output for example the Wimbledon tennis on BBC's iPlayer.

What was even more spectacular was that on a typical older 32 inch 1080p so full standard HD was the 8K signal down rezzed to HD was still clearly an improvement over the base SD signal !!whereas the BBC's 4K UHD wimbledon signal made no difference at all down rezzed or watched in native on some basic 50 inch typical TV's.

What was great about this test was that the SAME picture was being shown so you could compare easily. What I hate is if you go into a store to check out this stuff you get different pictures accross the various TV sets. That IMHO is a 100% USELESS comparison.

So it looks like choose TV and viewing areas with extreme care - you don't always get what you think you are getting !!!

So my conclusion is now unless I go for an expensive TV upgrade which I can't be bothered to do I'll sit this one out and see what "Black Friday" or Santa brings (are we nearly there already !!!! - this year has gone quick).

Cheers
jimbo.

jimbo45 said:

On a test to a studio with real full 8K UHD then even down rezzing to 4K UHD on a typical 50 inch domestic TV -- not those mega expensive things - it was clearly visible as an improvement compared with bog standard 4K UHD as output for example the Wimbledon tennis on BBC's iPlayer.

What was even more spectacular was that on a typical older 32 inch 1080p so full standard HD was the 8K signal down rezzed to HD was still clearly an improvement over the base SD signal !!whereas the BBC's 4K UHD wimbledon signal made no difference at all down rezzed or watched in native on some basic 50 inch typical TV's.

What was great about this test was that the SAME picture was being shown so you could compare easily. What I hate is if you go into a store to check out this stuff you get different pictures accross the various TV sets. That IMHO is a 100% USELESS comparison.

So it looks like choose TV and viewing areas with extreme care - you don't always get what you think you are getting !!!

So my conclusion is now unless I go for an expensive TV upgrade which I can't be bothered to do I'll sit this one out and see what "Black Friday" or Santa brings (are we nearly there already !!!! - this year has gone quick).

Cheers
jimbo.

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The best TV is always available next year

Good luck currently getting 8K TV signals. It's hard enough getting 4K and even if you pay extra on Netflix only a small portion are 4K.

Here in Greece some shops use an HDMI splitter and display the same video across many TVs so the potential buyers can compare the image quality. The problem is that this comparison is not subjective because the shop has deliberately tweaked the color settings at all models making sure the one they want to sell looks better than the others. It might be truly better, it might be tweaked to look better, one cannot be sure. So we mostly buy based on the specs, on reviews we have read in technology magazines and our preference for a specific manufacturer. The good news is that almost all models look very good if the colors are carefully calibrated. Of course the average buyer has no idea how to calibrate the colors and just rely on the default settings which are almost always set to dynamic to make the colors more vivid but slightly unnatural.

FrancoDT said:

Good luck currently getting 8K TV signals. It's hard enough getting 4K and even if you pay extra on Netflix only a small portion are 4K.

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The 8K signals were done in a Studio test area - so not standard broadcast -- not sure if anybody is doing those in public anywhere yet - and the 4K signals were probably also of better quality than the "public" signals.

However I'm sure as Internet speeds routinely become around 1Gbps and more with the old wired stuff going the way of the dodo I'm sure people will want higher resolution / better quality transmission (although currently I'd rather have better programming even if in SD than ultra high definition garbage stuff. !!

Cheers
jimbo

Those of us watching Netflix will see than not every single movie or series is available at 4K. Some of them are, mostly new productions, but a lot of older series and movies are available at 1080p or some very old even standard definition. Until 4K is the default standard everywhere, in Netflix, in digital TV broadcast etc, we still have a long way to go, let alone 8K. And as you said, I would rather have better content in 1080p than rubbish at 4K. Besides those that want the absolute quality in 4K don't rely on Netflix, they buy the movie on 4K (aka UHD) Blu Ray and have multiple times the average Netflix bitrate with much better quality overall. Even if this is not obvious except for very fast scenes that might show compression artifacts at Netflix or lower bitrates. Watching the same fast scene at 4K Blu Ray with 4-5 times the Netflix bitrate you will never see any artifacts and the image feels superior, even if you cannot see the difference.

I haven't watched television for about 35 years! And, I still don't own a Smart TV!

Due to working hours and time with the kid, I cannot watch live TV. I watch my favorite series online afterwards from the respective channel's website either on my smart TV or on my smartphone. Much better since at first there were no ads, but lately they do display ads. Fortunately not all channels do that. A workaround is to download the respective video and watch it without ads.

The funny part with DVD and BR standard is that with proper re-encoding you can get a pixel and audio perfect copy at a fraction of the size. A 50GB BR movie, shrinks down to a few GB with no quality loss, even in fast moving scenes. Same for an 8GB DVD movie, goes down to about 1GB.

But the advantage of the original format is that while using a lot of bandwidth, it is relatively low on hardware resources.

Standard Blu Ray (1080p) can be converted to AVCHD-DVD disc which is a DVD disc with 720p or 1080p AVC video that plays on most Blu Ray players. With careful encoding any bitrate close to 5Mbit or higher gives very good quality without artifacts. If you don't care about backwards compatibility you can convert to same bitrate HEVC video or even 2/3 that bitrate still artifact free. For comparison standard definition video with at least 600KB AVC or at least 400KB HEVC compression is almost artifact-free. Standard definition at 2Mbit or higher HEVC compression is almost as good as lossless. This is the bitrate most digital channels use for standard definition broadcast. When I want to capture a standard definition video (so I can use for artifact-free editing) I use 4Mbit HEVC compression and you can't tell the difference from uncompressed standard definition while taking a fraction of the disk space.

Compression quality when targeting small size is quite a bit more complicated than just selecting a flat bitrate.

It also takes a really long time to do even on modern hardware.

There are two methods to compress video in AVC and HEVC. You either select some quality setting and the encoder tries to keep the quality there, but you cannot predict the final size on disk, or you set a specific average bitrate so you can more or less achieve a specific file size. I always choose variable bitrate encoding and set a specific average bitrate so I can fit the final video on a blank DVD+R (4483MB) or DVD-R disc (4489MB). So I set the target size at 4480MB (to have a safe margin of error) and I set the calculated bitrate to the nearest lower ten. For example if the result is 6509, I do it 6500, but is it is 6502 I do it 6490, just in case. There are cases that the calculated average bitrate produces a smaller or larger file than expected due to many factors. I then recompress the original video calculating the correct average bitrate like 4480 / original_size * original_bitrate This always gives a file size close to the target 4480MB. You are right that it takes a long time to compress the video using software encoder like x264 (AVC) or x265 (HEVC), but is the only way to achieve a controlled file size. Hardware accelerated encoders such as NVEnc AVC or NVEnc HEVC do not use the specific average bitrate you set, but the closest available they support. This makes is almost impossible to achieve the target file size. Either the bitrate is too small and the file size is much smaller than 4480MB, or the bitrate is too large and the final size won't fit on a blank disc. I use hardware encoders only when I don't care about the final file size. Trying to correct the bitrate with the above formula doesn't work because again the encoder ignores the average bitrate you set and uses the closest one supported. It sucks. For comparison on my PC (2nd system specs) the software encoding in AVC 1080p is a little faster than real time (30-35fps for 25fps video) while with NVEnc AVC is can be 200fps or faster!