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Am I the only one preferring low quality media over high quality one?

I have a very slow Internet connection (5 Mbps down, and even less for upload). Given that, I always download movies at 720p, since they have low file size, which means I can download them more quickly. Also, I don’t notice much of a difference between 1080p and 720p. As for 4K, because I don’t have a screen that can display 4K, I consider it to be one of the biggest disk space wasters.

Am I the only one who has this opinion?

RisingSwell ,

My internet has been so bad for so long that 720p looks way too clear for a video. Primarily 240p life

NoneYa ,

I always go for 720 or 1080 despite having decent 4K TVs. My reasoning is file size too but because I don’t have a ton of space to spare for all the stuff I want to store. I have about 2TB left but that’s going to get used up eventually.

There are some things I’ll go for the high quality stuff like Super Mario Bros which looks amazing but that’s rare for me.

30GB for one movie is nuts.

Tregetour ,
@Tregetour@lemdro.id avatar

When the remux is 30gb and the 1080 encode is 23gb emoji ✈️🏢🏢

kylian0087 ,

Oppenheimer 80+ GB 😅

empireOfLove2 ,
@empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Not just you. Low(er) quality downloads are still a huge part of the torrent scene, see how popular most 720p YIFY uploads are even though their encoder quality is pretty garbage. Most people in general want a fast download and are viewing on a small laptop or even phone screen and don’t give a rats ass about fidelity, LQ works perfectly fine for this. Even I’ll grab a LQ once in a while if it’s something my girl and I want to watch that night and I didn’t plan ahead.

The desire for high quality uploads is more for people running home setups like Plex, where it’s better to keep a HQ source file and have it transcoded to lower resolutions by your home server setup as necessary. They generally aren’t storage constrained as an 8tb hard drive for a normal PC is fairly cheap these days. I’d wager maybe <30% of torrenters actually go after ultra HQ uploads based off seeder numbers.

Personally I stick to stuff that is at least 1080p with HDR and H265 encode preferred, because I archive most everything I download due to similar problems with internet speed. Over maybe 12 years of torrents I’ve amassed a hair over 5tb of content, and that’s a LOT of movies l, it all fits on a single $120 external HDD.

matey ,

I prefer 720, both for file/bandwidth reasons and for quality reasons. Once you start getting into higher quality, it starts looking like you’re actually there in the room with the actors, and I don’t like that. It’s unsettling. I want my TV and movies to look like TV and movies.

Thorny_Insight ,

I prefer 1080p but if not available then 720p is perfectly fine as well. 4k is overkill and I don’t even have a monitor that could play it at native resolution. Where I do prefer “lower quality” though is framerate. I don’t like how 60fps looks so I force YouTube to play videos at 24fps.

pbjamm ,
@pbjamm@beehaw.org avatar

I have actually taken to downloading 1080p versions of things I have access to in 4kHDR from Disney and Amazon. Frankly I can not stand HRD/Dolby Vision versions of things. No matter how I adjust my TV they still suffer from that ghastly soap-opera effect. To me having the background bright and in focus flattens the image making everything look like a bad set. It also makes the tiny differences in lighting of digital effects elements more noticeably.

I hate it.

buffysummers ,

576p for life.

veniasilente ,

Where do you find such downloads? Most torrent sites I’ve seen barely give you anythng under 720p that is not 480p (or 144p 3gp for the lulz value, I guess?) these days.

mp3 ,
@mp3@lemmy.ca avatar

I usually stick to 1080p medium for movies and TV shows I want to rewatch, 720p for the stuff I’ll watch once.

For movies I try to stick to a 2-5GB filesize, and TV shows between 200-400MB per episode.

halm ,
@halm@leminal.space avatar

I’m with you. 720p unless I can’t find lower than 1080 — for my setup there isn’t much point. The TRaSH guide parameters make my head ache thinking how much I’d be shelling out on bandwidth and storage for no discernible difference on my home theatre.

Cano ,

I do this with music. All of my library is stored as mp3s, which doesn’t really make a difference quality wise considering I mostly just use a cheap pair of earphones. I’m not an audiophile anyways. In addition I also store a copy of my music library in my phone for offline usage, and that’s where the compression comes in handy.

can ,

High bit rate mp3s are still good. I only really go beyond that for editing work.

minibyte ,

I can’t hear the difference between 192 and 320, but my ears are shot – the whole library is in 320 kbps because to hell with the drive space.

can ,

That’s fair. I’ll still happily take 192 if it’s all that’s available.

Rai ,

I’m an audiophile and I can only hear the difference between 192 and FLAC if I have certain headphones on. I have a full-aaa system and sub in my car with a million speakers and a 192 sounds the same as a FLAC.

sleepybisexual ,

Well, 480p sucks

Appoxo ,
@Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Depends on the media.
Minimum it has to be web-dl and 1080p.

For media that needs it or I want to (e.g. Interstellar), I will search high bitrate web-dl/bluray or a remux.
If it’s something I will for certain only watch once, I’ll be fine with a regular 1080p mid bitrate file.

sag ,

I am in same boat

dRLY ,
@dRLY@lemmy.ml avatar

It really depends on the media and my level of interest in it. I was only bothering to try and get 1080p copies of stuff I liked due to only having a 1080p TV for so long. But I did make efforts to get 1080 where possible (and based on my drives at the time) even before I had a HD TV and the only thing I had to actually watch that resolution on was my laptop. And that was because I wanted to make sure I had (at the time) the best copies of torrented encodes of stuff I really loved and would want to look good later. But I got a 4K HDR TV a few months ago as my 13yo 1080p TV started just giving black screens on all inputs. And while a lot of things are fine, the limitations of the encodes are showing much more.

If I am just checking out something that I have heard about or was told to check out by a friend. I might just grab a 1080 or even 720 copy since they are often the top seeded results. Then go back and find 4k copies if I really get into it. Though my main issue today is similar to back when I was using my laptop. Storage space. I started ripping my Blu-rays and I am the worst about dealing with compression stuff. So I really really need to get on making that media server I have been “meaning to build” for years. Get some 18TB or 20TB drives and RAID the shit out of them for redundancy. lol.

wetnoodle ,
@wetnoodle@sopuli.xyz avatar

I downscale movies and shows I download to 480p and transfer them to my modded 3dsxl cuz they look good enough for me and I can fit a lot of stuff on it!

veniasilente ,

Huh, didn’t know the 3DSXL could do 480p well, I always thought its limits were at about 360p (or 400p if such a profile existed). Can I ask how do you perform such encoding? Like, what encoder and options are you using. Oh and the battery usage. It’s for a book.

wetnoodle , (edited )
@wetnoodle@sopuli.xyz avatar

Of course! I use handbrake with all default settings but change dimensions to 480p and then I use adapter to make it a m4v to be playable on the 3ds.

Battery usage is an absolute wreck, if it’s not plugged in you have like 15-30 minutes playtime. It definitely needs a battery bank to be truly portable but I usually use it plugged in to a wall.

Edit: it is a new 3dsxl if that changes things idk enough about the hardware.

Alice ,

I feel ya. I very rarely replace my devices and the internet speeds suck where I live anyway, so 720p is my go-to.

In my brain 720 is standard and 1080 is fancy, until I watch something at a friend’s house and sometimes it looks so good it’s unsettling

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