• WANTED: Happy members who like to discuss audio and other topics related to our interest. Desire to learn and share knowledge of science required. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!

streaming vs bluray

David Harper

Senior Member
Joined
Jul 7, 2019
Messages
359
Likes
434
So I streamed "Wonder Woman 1984" off of HBO max a few months ago. I was disappointed. The movie didn't seem that great. Today I rented the bluray of the movie and watched it at home. Holy Moly, it's much better than I thought!! The bluray picture is far superior to the (alleged) 1080 HD stream. Maybe I'm just in a different mood now but the bluray movie I'm watching now is WAY better than the stream.
 

artburda

Active Member
Joined
Feb 12, 2019
Messages
287
Likes
379
Location
Switzerland
So I streamed "Wonder Woman 1984" off of HBO max a few months ago. I was disappointed. The movie didn't seem that great. Today I rented the bluray of the movie and watched it at home. Holy Moly, it's much better than I thought!! The bluray picture is far superior to the (alleged) 1080 HD stream. Maybe I'm just in a different mood now but the bluray movie I'm watching now is WAY better than the stream.
Did the story improve as well?
 

AdamG

Proving your point makes it “Science”.
Moderator
Forum Donor
Joined
Jan 3, 2021
Messages
4,636
Likes
14,919
Location
Reality
What Story? Must be in the Bonus content I never watch. But yeah. Physical media will always trump streaming Audio/Video quality. Until such a time that transmission compression is a historical footnote.
 

TankTop

Senior Member
Joined
Jul 10, 2019
Messages
360
Likes
354
I think Apple TV has the best streaming quality so far. Specs for streaming WW84 from Apple TV are 4k Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. Obviously there is no spec for the story line as that was missing from the original production but it does feature Gal Gadot in a short skirt.
 

nerdstrike

Active Member
Joined
Mar 1, 2021
Messages
257
Likes
309
Location
Cambs, UK
I have seen this even in the early 4k streaming periods. Netflix and Amazon were both pumping 25 mbps. It looked great in static scenes until there's a lot of motion or classic codec kryptonite like confetti. Overall pretty good though.

A UHD bluray is also compressed but runs between 72 and 144 mbps by comparison. Between 3x and 6x compression ratio to the internet streams of 5 years ago.

Then came the realisation that bandwidth costs money, and if you reduce it per customer, you do better business. The 4k streams got recompressed and stepped down to 15 mbps and later to 10 mbps. HBO max seems to pump 8-11 mbps, so same ballpark. Now we're talking about a 7-10x ratio between disc and steam.

Lossy compression is not free, you lose something in the process. I don't care how much compute and machine learning you throw at it, you can't make a video compress that much without issues. You certainly wouldn't expect to not notice issues in a 120kbps mp3 versus FLAC. They hope you don't notice what is missing because it tends to be in low contrast areas, and in static parts of the image. As a result you can literally see more detail when nothing is moving on screen. Sadly we are watching these things called moving pictures.

A good 1080p bluray often works better (for me) than a 4k stream. It makes a big difference to moving scenes and you don't get blockovision moments when the adaptive codec has a panic about the available bandwidth. I hate that our internet capacity improves but we're not given the option to pull more data.
 
Joined
May 5, 2021
Messages
49
Likes
23
Location
North Carolina
Streaming quality, in general, cannot compete with a blu-ray, it absolutely cannot compete with a 4K Ultra HD disc. The transfer on Wonder Woman 1984 wasn't actually good on 4K either, so comparing them isn't that fair IMO.
Bit-rates, generally speaking still need to be higher on physical media still.
 
Top Bottom