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What will look better?

  • 4K Streaming

    Votes: 14 41.2%
  • 1080p (blu-ray) upscaled to 4K via receiver or tv

    Votes: 20 58.8%

Netflix 4K Streaming vs 1080p Blu-Ray Upscaled to 4K

11K views 19 replies 7 participants last post by  imagic 
#1 ·
My buddy and I were chatting the other day and he is all excited about Netflix promising to offer 4K Streaming but I've been working on building up my internal media library with blu-ray quality 1080p. Neither of us are experts when it comes to Audio and Video fidelity so we are bringing this debate to the community here where we know there is experts and we can get your opinion.


Do you think streaming 4K content will look better than taking a Blu-Ray 1080p movie and allowing your Receiver or TV upscale it from 1080p to 4K assuming you have a Receiver or TV that can do so.
 
#3 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by GregLee  /t/1527819/netflix-4k-streaming-vs-1080p-blu-ray-upscaled-to-4k#post_24618281


Assuming 1 means internet streaming and 2 might also have upscaling in a BD player, I vote 2.


In this post from Scott Wilkinson, there is a comparison between upscaled 2k and 4k: http://www.avsforum.com/t/1527651/harmonic-live-uhd-60p-uhd-upscaling-uhd-120-hz-frame-interpolation-at-nab-2014/0_60 .

Well then if upscaled 1080p isn't much different than natural 4K then I have to imagine that upscaled 1080p beats out compressed 4K, right?
 
#4 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by bradsour  /t/1527819/netflix-4k-streaming-vs-1080p-blu-ray-upscaled-to-4k/0_60#post_24618328


Well then if upscaled 1080p isn't much different than natural 4K then I have to imagine that upscaled 1080p beats out compressed 4K, right?
Right. If. But the demo that Wilkinson reports on is tailored to show off a specific upscaler. So let's not be hasty.
 
#5 ·
first you need to take into account the 4k netflix stream of house of cards was worse then a bluray copy. You just cant win with any type of compression so yes a 1:1 1080p bluray will look better upscaled or not to 4k over a streamed 4k stream. You are taking a 40mbit bitrate and pushing it across to a 15mbit bitrate no matter how good hevc compression is which im sure it will increase over time its still a new codec its just not possible.


http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/news/4k-streaming-201404063713.htm
 
#6 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by halfelite  /t/1527819/netflix-4k-streaming-vs-1080p-blu-ray-upscaled-to-4k#post_24618435


first you need to take into account the 4k netflix stream of house of cards was worse then a bluray copy. You just cant win with any type of compression so yes a 1:1 1080p bluray will look better upscaled or not to 4k over a streamed 4k stream. You are taking a 40mbit bitrate and pushing it across to a 15mbit bitrate no matter how good hevc compression is which im sure it will increase over time its still a new codec its just not possible.


http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/news/4k-streaming-201404063713.htm

So why not just give us better 1080p streaming and let our devices do the upscaling to 4K for us? It seems that everyone just assumes that streaming won't get better and it's not if we allow the hype to keep moving to the next tier. Personally I'd rather 15 Mbps 1080p streaming from Netflix. Give me that!
 
#7 ·
HEVC is no where near its potential yet. its still new and still being developed. When the time comes HEVC should give better streaming results. So if you take a bluray and rip say 15,000 avg bitrate from 1080p or rip 15,000avg bitrate from 4k in theory HEVC will give better streaming options. In practice not so much. What you are asking cant be achieved . Either a 15Mbps stream from a bluray is still just that a compressed version. HEVC in the long run will offer better results then h264 did but as of now in current form its hit and miss
 
#8 ·
Source quality is vital.


Realistically nothing shot digitally up to this moment in time really maximises the potential of a 4K display. In the same way that Attack of the Clones doesn't deliver reference quality 1080p. That includes House of Cards unfortunately.
 
#9 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by bradsour  /t/1527819/netflix-4k-streaming-vs-1080p-blu-ray-upscaled-to-4k/0_60#post_24619026


So why not just give us better 1080p streaming and let our devices do the upscaling to 4K for us? It seems that everyone just assumes that streaming won't get better and it's not if we allow the hype to keep moving to the next tier. Personally I'd rather 15 Mbps 1080p streaming from Netflix. Give me that!
It's because there's a bandwidth bottleneck to getting video into people's homes, for most of us and for most ways of doing it. A few people have optical fiber running to their homes, mostly if they are down town, but predominantly it's copper wire. That's what I have, with DSL from my phone company for my internet connection. I get 17mbps that way, now, and I could pay for a bit more bandwidth, but even that is pretty good for DSL, and is due to me being only a short distance from a phone company substation. Cable has bandwidth limitations, too.


So far as I know, the only video service without this bandwidth bottleneck is satellite. But I haven't heard anything positive about the satellite services upgrading to uhd. Last Fall, the CEO of DirecTV said something to the effect that it was going to be very cautious before it was clear that 4k would actually succeed.
 
#10 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by GregLee  /t/1527819/netflix-4k-streaming-vs-1080p-blu-ray-upscaled-to-4k#post_24633775


It's because there's a bandwidth bottleneck to getting video into people's homes, for most of us and for most ways of doing it. A few people have optical fiber running to their homes, mostly if they are down town, but predominantly it's copper wire. That's what I have, with DSL from my phone company for my internet connection. I get 17mbps that way, now, and I could pay for a bit more bandwidth, but even that is pretty good for DSL, and is due to me being only a short distance from a phone company substation. Cable has bandwidth limitations, too.


So far as I know, the only video service without this bandwidth bottleneck is satellite. But I haven't heard anything positive about the satellite services upgrading to uhd. Last Fall, the CEO of DirecTV said something to the effect that it was going to be very cautious before it was clear that 4k would actually succeed.

I understand what you are saying for that. But they are already putting 1080p into different tiers based on bandwidth and what I'm saying is that they should expand and add more tiers of 1080p that gets us closer to Blu-ray quality rather than having them start delivering sub-par 4K. If sub-par 4K is the 4K that people see first it's going to fail.


I just want to be delivered a better experience at 1080p before they move on to 4K and then have it fail.
 
#11 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by bradsour  /t/1527819/netflix-4k-streaming-vs-1080p-blu-ray-upscaled-to-4k/0_60#post_24633978


I understand what you are saying for that. But they are already putting 1080p into different tiers based on bandwidth and what I'm saying is that they should expand and add more tiers of 1080p that gets us closer to Blu-ray quality rather than having them start delivering sub-par 4K.
And I understand what you want. I would love to be able to stream 1080p blu-ray quality in my home, also. I'm trying to be clear about why I don't think that's going to happen. Sorry.
 
#12 ·

Quote:
I understand what you are saying for that. But they are already putting 1080p into different tiers based on bandwidth and what I'm saying is that they should expand and add more tiers of 1080p that gets us closer to Blu-ray quality rather than having them start delivering sub-par 4K. If sub-par 4K is the 4K that people see first it's going to fail.

The best 1080p streams are already close to Bluray quality, and absolute Bluray quality 1080p streaming is not going to happen any time soon because it's not an efficient or logical use of bandwidth.


If we have a 2Mbps 1080p stream and we double the bitrate to 4Mbps, the quality difference is huge. It is very much worth the extra bitrate.


If we double the bitrate to 8Mbps, again, the quality increase is very noticeable. Is the quality increase worth double the bitrate? Yes, absolutely.


If we double the bitrate to 16Mbps... now we are experiencing diminishing returns. Is the quality better? Sure, a little bit. Will the average viewer notice? Not really. Is the small increase in quality worth double the bitrate (when bandwidth is at a premium)? No, unfortunately not.


And the same to 32Mbps. We are now in Bluray quality realm but the improvement over 8Mbps is barely noticeable to the average customer despite a 4 fold increase in bitrate. That's a 4x increase in bandwidth costs on Netflix's end, it will eat into users caps 4x faster, take up 4x more space on the server farm etc. These are very tangible costs, and for very little benefit.
 
#13 ·
They are focusing on 4k for the HEVC. In theory you can get better quality using HEVC then you could using h264 at smaller bitrates. The main problem is its new and still under development so full potential is not there yet. In theory hevc should be able to stream video at 35.4% bitrate deduction over h264. So if netflix is streaming a movie in hevc at say 8Mbps it would equal 10Mbps stream of h264 video. 2Mbps is not much but say they did jump to 16Mbps the h264 counterpart would need to be 22Mbps stream.


And just to clarify satellite has a bandwidth limit. they have only so many frequencies but a quick estimate is a transponder at 20MHz can do about 32Mbits/s and they most liked fit anywhere between 4-10 channels on a given transponder. it has the same limitations as cable tv. The difference satellite makes is they only have to upgrade a few locations to move to something like hevc and 4k. where the cables co's have hundred/thousands of head end locations that will all need updated.
 
#14 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by halfelite  /t/1527819/netflix-4k-streaming-vs-1080p-blu-ray-upscaled-to-4k#post_24635176


They are focusing on 4k for the HEVC. In theory you can get better quality using HEVC then you could using h264 at smaller bitrates. The main problem is its new and still under development so full potential is not there yet. In theory hevc should be able to stream video at 35.4% bitrate deduction over h264. So if netflix is streaming a movie in hevc at say 8Mbps it would equal 10Mbps stream of h264 video. 2Mbps is not much but say they did jump to 16Mbps the h264 counterpart would need to be 22Mbps stream.

It's more like 50% subjectively... which of course is the only thing that matters. PSNR is irrelevant and outdated.


In reality it's not so simple and exact, the gain is not the same across all resolutions, source types, bitrates etc. You get bigger gains at higher res. And the biggest gains are at low, bitrate starved conditions - as you approach transparency, diminishing returns kicks in and all codecs tend to converge in efficiency. And the HEVC encoder they are using is in the very early stages of development, we should be careful not to judge HEVC in it's entirety based on the very first commercial application of one single encoder.


But speaking very generally, eventually I would expect a 4-5Mbps HEVC 1080p stream to look as good as what we are currently delivering with 8Mbps H.264.
 
#15 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by halfelite  /t/1527819/netflix-4k-streaming-vs-1080p-blu-ray-upscaled-to-4k/0_60#post_24635176


And just to clarify satellite has a bandwidth limit. they have only so many frequencies but a quick estimate is a transponder at 20MHz can do about 32Mbits/s and they most liked fit anywhere between 4-10 channels on a given transponder. it has the same limitations as cable tv.
It's not the same at all. They put many SD channels on a transponder, fewer HD channels, and presumably would put still fewer UHD channels, with greater bandwidth per channel. It would cost them, but greater capacity per channel is available. The total bandwidth of the system obviously depends on the transponders available and the frequencies they are licensed for --- I'd have to look at some references for that, but I believe it is substantially above the capacity of a cable system.
 
#16 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by GregLee  /t/1527819/netflix-4k-streaming-vs-1080p-blu-ray-upscaled-to-4k#post_24636201


It's not the same at all. They put many SD channels on a transponder, fewer HD channels, and presumably would put still fewer UHD channels, with greater bandwidth per channel. It would cost them, but greater capacity per channel is available. The total bandwidth of the system obviously depends on the transponders available and the frequencies they are licensed for --- I'd have to look at some references for that, but I believe it is substantially above the capacity of a cable system.

It is above the cable co capacity. just because they have a bigger frequency range but when all said and done they will not run with 15Mbps streams per channel. They can have many transponders at different degrees if you have a tracking dish. but the biggest is 32 transponders at 101 degree with i think direct tv having 131 transponders in total. which gives for some pretty heavy bw so if you take a a transponder at 33Mbit and get 4 UHD running at 8Mbps that gives you 540 channels if my quick math is right might be wrong.
 
#19 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by imagic  /t/1527819/netflix-4k-streaming-vs-1080p-blu-ray-upscaled-to-4k#post_24684117


I'd be interested to see Netflix 4K footage downscaled to 1080p versus native 1080p Blu-ray footage.

Netflix adaptive streaming doesn't work like that. The client knows the displays native resolution and therefore will not use a stream with resolution greater than what the display can support. So there's never a notation of downscaling wrt netflix streaming.
 
#20 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by apw2607  /t/1527819/netflix-4k-streaming-vs-1080p-blu-ray-upscaled-to-4k#post_24686787

 
Quote:
Originally Posted by imagic  /t/1527819/netflix-4k-streaming-vs-1080p-blu-ray-upscaled-to-4k#post_24684117


I'd be interested to see Netflix 4K footage downscaled to 1080p versus native 1080p Blu-ray footage.

Netflix adaptive streaming doesn't work like that. The client knows the displays native resolution and therefore will not use a stream with resolution greater than what the display can support. So there's never a notation of downscaling wrt netflix streaming.
 

I wish there was a hack for that, then. Software that spoofs Netflix into thinking it is serving video to a UHD display and performs a high-quality downscale interpolation. 
 
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