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?
To be fair, resolution is not enough to measure quality. The bitrate plays a huge role. You can have a high resolution video looking worse than a lower resolution one if the lower one has a higher bitrate. In general, many videos online claim to be 1080p but still look like garbage because of the low bitrate (e.g. like on YouTube or so). If you go for a high bitrate video, you should be able to tell pretty easily, the hair, the fabric, the skin details, the grass, everything can be noticeably sharper and crisper.
Edit: so yeah, I agree with you, because often they are both of low bitrate…
Here’s my twisted life exposed…I have no issue watching 1080p on my QLED 4K TV. I game at 1080p happily, I honestly don’t give a shit about 4K content.
1080p looks good enough for me, and I actually watch 720p on my phone screen half the time too.
And not because of lack of speed, I have a 1Gbps+ fiber line up and down.
And tbh, if it means I get to own and control my media, I would tolerate even worse quality if that’s what I needed to do.
Grunge computing ftw! Quality at the cost of your soul? Fuck that!
I like to watch TV shows in the background where I’m not going to be watching the screen obsessively, so I have several shows in 480P or sub-480P. There are also some shows where the “official” HD versions are just awful (most 90s sitcoms) or the show was made for 4:3 and has a different feel converted to 16:9 (MASH, The Wire).
Going beyond that though, I spent years on a really limited connection (2.6m down/400k up) and my instinct for saving bandwidth and storage space is still there, along with my need to pay it forward since I ain’t no leech. I’ve become fond of making what I call “Bonsai Encodes”, where the files are small enough to be sent over damn near anything. With mono Opus and VP9 video you can cram 45 minutes of perfectly watchable content into a sub-25mb file that’ll play in Discord, with VTT subtitles even (though those won’t play in Discord itself). Looks a bit like watching it on an old tube TV, but it’s watchable.
1080p is way better if you have a screen that is a good size. Also if you are into surround sound (I am) there is a lower chance to get it on 720p rips.
I prefer the opposite. I want the best quality I can get often 4K remux. Storage is cheap nowadays and I don’t mind waiting a few days for a movie to download. Also I do have a 500/500 connection which helps.
