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?

TwinTusks
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I have cheap tv and slow internet, so I am completely comfortable with 720P or 1080P (depends which streams faster). I am also and grew up with 420P, so that helps.

I’d rather wait a few days for a download then watch a movie with pixels

@VitabytesDev@feddit.nl
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I’d rather not. :)

@Alice@beehaw.org
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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

xiao
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Same here I use to watch videos at 720p (sometimes even at 480p) 👍

Reasons why MinX versions are usually available. Whether for bandwidth purposes, just not giving a fuck about HD, or not wanting to buy larger Hard Drives to save overlarge content, there’s plenty of people with plenty of reasons to prefer smaller files.

surchaw
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@VitabytesDev

You aren’t alone. I prefer 360 or 480 p
Because:

  1. It’s faster and not much difference I still get the content/knowledge
  2. It reduces my carbon footprint
umami_wasabi
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I usually take BDRAW, transcode by myself. Or the best quality I can find. Does it look better? Not really. Just the data hoarder inside kicked in. 720p is totally fine.

@matey@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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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.

Vanth
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deleted by creator

@Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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Oooo nice. Projectors also hide imperfections better than LCD/OLED screens.

@Cano@lemm.ee
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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@sh.itjust.works
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High bit rate mp3s are still good. I only really go beyond that for editing work.

@minibyte@sh.itjust.works
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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@sh.itjust.works
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That’s fair. I’ll still happily take 192 if it’s all that’s available.

@Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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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.

@empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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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.

m-p{3}
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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.

Handles
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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.

720 isn’t low quality

@Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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I’m not downvoting you but I hella disagree for certain things. But only certain things. Will I notice The Office is 720p? Heck no. The Holy Mountain? Absolutely.

@Steve@communick.news
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You’re not alone.

On a good large screen, 1080p is a noticeable upgrade from 720p.
But the distance you’d have to sit at, to get much out of 2160p over 1080p, is just way too close.
However the High Dynamic Range that comes with 4K formats and releases IS a big difference.

On the other hand, storage is pretty cheep. A couple cents per GB really.
But you’re talking more about bandwidth, which can be expensive.

But yeah. You’re not alone.

JustEnoughDucks
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Spinning metal storage is cheapish now, but now a 4K movie takes up a much larger amount of space.

If you measure storage by €/1 hour media with 4k HDR vs older prices and 720p, it is likely quite similar.

sunzu
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the High Dynamic Range that comes with 4K formats and releases IS a big difference.

Pro-tip right here peeps

CronyAkatsuki
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Storage is cheap if you are lucky, in my country storage is so overpricedto the point thatI don’t wanna bother with it.

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