I watch a fair amount of series, but I’m not a data hoarder. I see the value in 2GB episodes, but I watch most series on my laptop, my simple 1920x1080 tv or even my phone where that value doesn’t make a difference. If I want to have a theater experience, I’ll go to the theater.
Most of the times I just want to enjoy a good story and relax before I go to bed.
I don’t have infinite storage and I hate when I want to download something new, but Im out of storage, so I have to delete stuff first.
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Good enough for who? You? Sure. But not everyone watches on a small screen. Some people might actually care about the quality too. Some of us can’t goto the theatre.
2GB isn’t large by any stretch. There are 720p versions of pretty much everything (at least that’s what I see on most Usenet Indexers). You could easily get a multiple terabyte external drive if your internal storage is full.
Yeah complaining about storage space in 2023 is a bit silly. You can go on eBay right now and get a used 4TB SATA drive for $25. Even cheaper if you get SAS drives, you just need a SAS expansion card which is also around $20 or so. 6TB SAS drives are going for $30.
ISP data caps are a bigger enemy than raw storage capacity these days. It costs me $50/mo to remove my 1TB cap. Which means it is more expensive to download 6TB than it is to buy 6TB of physical storage. And even SSDs are dirt cheap now. Storage has never been cheaper.
Am I the only one that doesn’t like the idea of used hard drives?
You are not. I wouldn’t trust a used hard drive in any way.
Not even in a zfs raidz2 of just 5 drives?
I am using unRAID so if one dies I can just replace it. About 4 years ago I bought a lot of fifteen 3TB SAS drives and I have had them running 24/7 since then. Funny enough not a single one has died. They all had around 5 years of power-on hours and now they are up to 9 and still going strong. Honestly I expected to lose at least one per year but they are surprisingly resilient.
Fair enough. Also using Unraid so I guess overall it’s not a bad idea. I just need to actually get the damn things.
I didn’t know data caps are still a thing. Where is this?
The good ol’ United States. Most of the major ISPs have caps here and you do not really have multiple choices because they basically have monopolies in their respective areas.
I did not know that! I remember data caps being a thing here in the middle of Europe in the early 2000s. There haven’t been data caps for home internet connections for a long time.
A family of 4 going to the theater is about 1TB of external SSD. Nowadays they are smaller than your regular phone.
This is going to be my new way of measuring “worth” how many TBs of SSD storage does thing X equate to lol.
The Chev principle
I spent about $80 for 4 people to see Oppenheimer coming up. I’ve also been seeing deals of 2tb m.2 drives for less than 100
Jesus, those really are cheap nowadays aren’t they
Maybe try watching a 1080p HEVC or AV1 episode, 200MB for half an hour or 400MB for an hour and it looks amazing
HEVC is a great codec. Not everyone is encoding with it yet. Couple that with “fun” scene rules and we get what we get. 😅
The amount of old content still on ancient codecs is disgusting
I’d even say that going to the theater sucks balls. The picture and sound quality usually sucks compared to a high quality download on a 75" 4k TV. Even a high bit rate 1080p video looks better than the theater.
It costs ,e over $100 to take the family out for a movie. As someone on disability right now that $100 is better spent on other things (Like a years worth of Usenet service ;) )
I see usenet, I upvote. Not on Reddit anymore but still a simple man.
People talking or looking at their phone. I hate going to the theater.
500mb 1080p HEVC for most shows on a 75" TV, but if it’s a space sci-fi show with lots of dark scenes I need that 1GB-2GB episode.
Some shows get by on 200MB, but it depends how static the scenes are and how much lighting there is.
Surely at that size you would notice the artifacts. Just for my sake can you try a Bluray remux. I expect it’s 4k so you could just grab a 4k web-DL and see if you can notice the difference.
Depends, for animation there’s no artifacts say that size
Yes animation like Rick & Morty are fine at even 100mb.
Not on my 65" 8k OLED they aren’t! You can absolutely tell the difference.
Smaller/low res screens though, sure.
That’s what I’m saying; not everyone watches media on their phones. I have a Plex server at home with a projector and a mediocre 5.1 (not a HTIB). No way I’m running anything less than 1080p.
Ha, yeah. I work from home, and when I’m out the last thing I want to do is look at my phone.
So I watch films at home. I paid for a high end home cinema set up, I’m gonna make the most of it. Otherwise it’s just a waste.
This may change as I’m having to downscale a bit for my new apartment…but yeah, 200mb still won’t be enough.
I paid for this 4k TV, so damn it I want all the pixels!
Seriously though, resolution is only half the equation. Bitrate, HDR, and compression methods are very important as well.
I feel you, but I also have a feeling this will be blasphemy to some.
Might as well download the episode in GIF format at that point, right guys? 😅
Too much resolution is confusing for my eyes. I need dithering and a max of 256 colors to truly enjoy television as intended.
I want my colours to have names, not hexadecimals
A
manperson of culture
Lmao. True. I know some people who think 1080p is still bad, and here I am content with 480 on my phone 😂
(don’t kill me, guys)
480
I’m pretty sure I started watching on 360p.
Yeah, 300-350MB h265 is great for anime. The 1GB+ are fine and all, but I’d rather save storage space.
Anime encoders squeeze the most out of the h265 codec… Its astounding how they achieve great quality video for the filesize, even in scenes with fast motion or odd vignettes/filters
Even the highest quality anime isn’t very complex compared to any live-action footage so it compresses incredibly well. The better groups also use vapoursynth filters to fix errors on the blu-rays like bad anti-aliasing and banding. So the best encodes will actually look better than a remux which is never going to happen with live-action.
The rise of HEVC and AV1 is arriving! Keeping the quality with a smaller file size. Plex and most android devices support AV1 now too!
Your best bet would be to use handbrake and transcode them down yourself. I have a relatively. I’ve setup for my living room and thus want to get the best quality I can. Exact opposite reasons to you but, It’s easy to downgrade, basically impossible to upgrade.
But that’s my two cents. Ideally, every file is uploaded with both of us in mind.
I was just going to say, handbrake is a good way to cut back a bit on file size if you get the settings right. It is very taxing on hardware tho.
As long as you are happy with that, all good. Fuck the people that sets a standard for you.
720p for most tv shows is fine for me. 1080p for films.
Why not just use those streaming sites then? You don’t need to download anything
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good, as they say
- Saving files for offline enjoyment/no dependence on internet connection.
- More player and playback options: easier rewind/fast-forward, chapter controls (for many releases), etc.
- Fewer ads/pop-ups/phishing/etc. nonsense (depending on how effective your browser’s adblockers are)
- Often, choice of subs and dubs. Generally better ones than the generic DVD release subs. And sometimes, even commentary tracks.
Most streaming sites are even worse quality.
Bearing in mind the community you’re posting in I wouldn’t think they were suggesting the big streaming companies.
Kodi + (insertname)debrid or stremio+ (insertname)debrid … either will let you stream torrents in much better quality than the streaming sites and no need to horde.
Also, i’m fairly sure there’s some torrent clients that allow streaming of the torrent file, I’m not sure if they’re still around but I think Vuze was one, I don’t used desktops any more just mobile/tablet so my knowledge might now be out of date.
I actually prefer the Jellyfin interface even when I have access to content through another service.
Was about to say the same. I mean to each his own, but I can hardly justify a release that has worse quality than online streaming
I sort by size, then seeders. I didn’t buy all my hifi tv and surround sound to watch compression in action. I couldn’t imagine those 200 to 300 mb episodes, but to each their own. i usually pull the 3 gb to 4 gb episodes.
A 12tb WD hard drive is like 200$ when they go on sale. That equates to about 0.015$/gb. So that 3 gb show costs all of a nickel to store.
Some of my TV shows are 15gb per episode lol
Now that just sounds like poor compression on the video.
H.265 is my favourite codec on the citadel
Could be, but they look amazing and I’ve got space for it
Stranger things s4e9 4k web dl is 16gb. They are rare, you got a lot of them?
my laptop, my simple 1920x1080 tv or even my phone
yeah well that’s cool but I like my media big and (when appropriate) loud, with as high a quality as I can get
You could transcode your downloads and store them at a lower quality if you want to save space. It is extra steps though.
Yes, for you and several others that is why those exist. Doesn’t mean there are no others who like to watch it in higher resolution on larger screens.
