Streaming Inflation

[Rodolfo]

A recent report compared streamed image quality to Blu-ray, as it was tested by several viewers with different abilities. The report provided some interesting points. I few months ago I drafted my own research on the subject but I postponed the publishing of the article because other articles required prompt attention. I still plan to publish the article, hopefully soon.

The matter of comparing streaming vs. pre-recorded media in terms of quality, convenience, number of viewers reported by research companies, features, etc. has appeared on the press many times. A common denominator in most cases is that usually the whole picture is not analyzed.

Articles mainly respond to...

Read Article

[videograbber]

> [i]...it is an acceptable plan-B if for example you are missing some episodes of “24” and do not want to wait for a mailed disc or visit Redbox for an old movie.[/i] <

Agreed. In this very limited scenario. Where you have 1 or 2 episodes you may have missed.

> [i]During my tests I conveniently watched [b]several early seasons[/b] of the series, about 100 one hour episodes viewed back-to-back in a few weeks with no advertisement as the icing-on-the-cake. Quality? Not on a 130+ inches screen even when upscaling to 1080p with my projector. But for plan-B it was OK.

What was the primary goal of that particular plan-B? The content and the convenience, indeed, and to that objective [b]I tolerated image blurriness, softness, pixelization, macro-blocking, etc.[/b][/i] <

Wow! I can't believe you sat through 100 hours of that crap. Or to be more PC, "reduced quality video and audio". One or two, maybe. But when there are 100 episodes under consideration, I'd go to the "inconvenience" of obtaining the Blu-ray rentals. I certainly wouldn't waste 100 hours of my life on lo-Q content, if there was any other option available.

- Tim

[Rodolfo]

Videograbber,

I predominantly watch movies and documentaries. I do not watch most of the content shown in TV because of its low content quality and its heavy advertising, but I have to do sometimes when I test equipment.

The series “24” was merely used as an example in the article to just make the point. All started when a few years ago a friend of mine was staying home and on Monday after dinner he told me if I would watch “24” that evening. I did not know what he was talking about. Although I never watch any TV series, I sat thru the program as a courtesy and found similitude in the intensity and action speed to the action movies I collect.

When I was testing streaming equipment I had to go over hundreds of short views from different sources and boxes, such as Roku, Oppo93, Xbox, etc. to evaluate the hardware and image/audio quality as I wanted. On that process I found the old seasons of “24” in Netflix and used that as part of the tests, and to learn to recognize the importance that streaming may have to many regardless how old and imperfect certain content maybe.

I must say that the highly regarded Oppo93 did not do well on many SD programs, I was testing the pre-release version of the player I purchased (by personal policy I never accept anything free) from the company November 2010 before the unit was available for sale to the public.

Roku and Xbox did not show that video processing problem. That motivated me to intensify my testing using the “24” type of content because of the many dark scenes that made the image errors more obvious and allowed me to debug the problem to describe it to Oppo, which later was also experienced by others in a pre-release thread in the AVS Forum. At the same time it gave me the chance to see how the story of the characters evolved in the plots.

Regarding your statement of “crap”, as with any content, one person’s interest may be another person’s waste of time, so I always choose to respect everyone’s reasons without denigrating their choices, and implicitly themselves for those choices.

I must say that once I finished the long testing I have not streamed any content for months, so my plan B served its purpose for my testing objective and certainly did not change my taste for quality or content, but I gained respect and understanding for those that switch over to streaming for the reasons I expressed in the article.

Best Regards,

Rodolfo La Maestra

[alice]

Finally an intelligent article on the value of streaming

[videograbber]

[quote="Rodolfo"]I predominantly watch movies and documentaries. I do not watch most of the content shown in TV because of its low content quality and its heavy advertising, but I have to do sometimes when I test equipment. The series “24” was merely used as an example in the article to just make the point.[/quote]

The rest of a lengthy and unnecessary justification removed. I have absolutely no problem with "24" whatsoever. As it turns out, that's not one I personally got invested in, but I watch a number of other episodic programs every week via OTA networks, that are probably of even lesser "content quality". But certainly better than streaming-video quality. So no "apologia" is required.

[quote]Regarding your statement of “crap”, as with any content, one person’s interest may be another person’s waste of time, so I always choose to respect everyone’s reasons without denigrating their choices, and implicitly themselves for those choices.[/quote]

Good for you. I never denigrated your choice of programming, and my reference to "crap" was (I thought) pretty clearly tied in to your comments on the transport mechanism, "[i]image blurriness, softness, pixelization, macro-blocking[/i]". To me, that's as crappy as it gets. That's difficult enough to watch on a 60-inch screen, to say nothing of a 100+ inch screen. It was in no way referencing your programming choice. I'm sorry you misread it, then chose to be insulted by it.

Watching 100 hours of (lower) quality streaming video is quite a sacrifice, and I understand you did it "in the name of science". You're a better man than I, Gunga Din.

Sadly, lots of OTA viewers will be watching streaming-quality "HD" video as well soon. And not by choice. Based on my local FOX affiliate, who I see has now throttled their primary network feed back to 7.2 MBit/sec (during prime-time. I've seen it drop to 5.9 MBit/sec at other times), in order to cram in more subchannels, I suspect we'll see HD quality continue to deteriorate, until there's no reason to retain OTA broadcasts at all. But that's another issue entirely.

- Tim