I have BD's of HD content played back with MPC-HC + madVR and many don't look as good as Netflix SuperHD! How is that possible? For example, X-Files on Netflix was recently upscaled/downscaled to SuperHD. Now it looks incredible where you can see pores on people's faces. Many BD's don't look as good!

I thought higher bitrate = higher quality AND I know compression plays a big role. Does Netflix use some kind of super-compression? I know they often use film grain and dithering to improve image quality but that alone wouldn't make video's look so good. How does Netflix manage such excellent image quality @ only 6Mbps???

I had another thought - maybe the resolution from which the image was downscaled plays a big role? For example, maybe content downscaled from 8K or even 16K resolution down to 1080p would look BETTER than content downscaled from 4K resolution down to 1080p EVEN though content downscaled from 8K/16K resolution would have a much lower bit-rate. Is that a valid theory?

Your opinion of Netflix streaming content being equal to or better than native full bitrate BD is not shared by everyone.

There are many factors to why a blu ray doesn't look good. To do a fair analysis, you would have to watch a blu ray on a large screen, and then the same movie on Netflix to really say if it is equal or better.

Where low bit rate is exposed in my experience is dark scenes, on a projector.

Netflix uses a coding scheme called H.265, or HEVC (High Efficiency Video Codec ). If your TV has this decoder, which it must because you are able to see 4K, then you will see a really great picture assuming that you have enough data bandwidth to stream at the highest rate. And yes, i'm one of those guys who agrees that most of their video streaming is "almost" as good as what you get with a good BluRay disk. So far Netflix has been on the leading edge of video streaming technology and the reason why they can do it at such a low price is because they have 65 Million subscribers! I understand that they will probably have to raise the price slightly soon but it's still a great bargain since recently they have added some really good movies and original content.

What size is your TV? Netflix looks amazing on my 50" flatscreen TV, but put it on the 120" PJ and its barely DVD quality.

HVEC is used for 4K content, what Netflix is calling ultra-HD. SuperHD is 1080p as opposed to the 720p they normally push out for HD. It still uses H.264 as most of the devices that are rated for Netflix SuperHD can't handle HVEC.

I agree that sometimes Netflix titles look sharper then some BD's, but most of that content is shot in 4K. When comparing 4k movies that are streamed in 1080p, performance is similar in terms of detail, but BD content looks much cleaner ( less dithering, color banding etc..) on my Panasonic 50'' PDP.

Ian

+1
Blu-ray movies played on my BDP makes Netflix's PQ look like crap.IMO NF @5.8 Mbps looks more like very good SD compared to Blu-ray.
I guess that's the diff.between the highly compressed 5.8Mbps from NF and the uncompressed 25-40Mbps from my BDP.

I don't think those who think Netflix's 6Mbps Super-HD looks good are judging the picture by the quality, but by the low bit-rate. I have a rather fast PC (3770K @ 4.8Ghz, GTX 980, 16GB RAM, SSD, Windows 10) and a fully calibrated 40" Samsung SPVA 1080p HDTV and I use madVR + 3DLUT + highest image quality settings when I view BD content OR my legit rips. Let's put it this way - there is NO way you can make 1080p BD rip at 6Mbps (video) that would look as good as Netflix Super-HD streaming @ 6Mbps, even with HEVC! This is what I am getting it - Netflix must use some kind of custom H.264 algorithm to get films to look as good as they do. I know Netflix Super-HD usse very low bit-rate audio, but even if you ripped BD with HEVC compression @ 6Mbps without audio, you still would not get the same quality as Netflix Super-HD, even if you used madVR with highest quality settings to view that BD rip!

I was talking about DOWNSCALING from 4K to 1080 and from 8K to 1080p. Maybe if the film was downscaled from 8K to 1080p instead of 4K to 1080p then it would look better at lower bit-rate than a film downscaled from 4K to 1080p at a higher bit-rate. Does it make sense?

I also think HEVC / H.265 compression can be used for any resolution, including 1080p and 720p, but the difference in video file size and quality would be negligible when compared against H.264 compression.

If most of your Netflix 1080p content looks like crap, or just very good SD, you either need a faster connection, better TV and or streaming device.

Ian

While you may think the Netflix 1080p movies look great I find that the 1080p encodes on Amazon Prime and VUDU look slightly better...likely due to the fact that they are streaming at 10+ Mbps.

Use of course, but you cannot deny for that 6Mbps Netflix Super-HD looks really good. There is no known tool or compression (including HEVC) to create a 6Mbps rips of a BD's that would look as good as Netflix's Super-HD at the same 6Mbps bit-rate. That is what puzzles me! What compression do they use? How do they do it? Do they just download from 8K or 16K to 1080p?

Yes, I agree Netflix 1080p (the Super-HD terminology is not used anymore) encodes look very good. But the results of whatever encoding tools they are using are being reduced by their reluctance or inability to stream at a higher bit-rate.

Do I think they look better or equal to Blu-ray? No, but they can be close at times. Netflix's image quality has improved steadily over the years and I've been impressed with their progress.

Can you give a specific title(s) you think is better than the Blu-ray version. I would be happy to compare them.

I wouldn't make blanket statements like that. They are obviously using H.264 encoding since this all started in 2013 and the devices that are certified -- like TiVo -- don't decode HVEC. It's probably very highly tweaked H.264.

There is a poster here, @DotJun , who is quite expert at H.264 encoding and understands how to tweak all those mystery parameters that the rest of us have no clue about and leave alone. He claims he can greatly reduce the file size of a BD rip to this size range with only minor PQ degradation -- something the rest of us can't even begin to approach using the canned profiles in Handbrake. I'm sure Netflix has their own cadre of experts doing their encoding with sophisticated tools.

That's probably because Netflix is king when it comes to producing bandwidth traffic, about 35% which is at least 10 times more then Amazon's, never mind the difference with Vudu.

Ian

Most modern day displays have several "video enhancement" features (like frame interpolation) that most users have no idea what they are and how to disable them. With these features enabled a lot of content tends to look the same.

AFAIK, Netflix is still using eyeIO (H.264) for their 1080 encodes.

Netflix 2160 (HoC S2 & S3 and couple of sample videos ) can, at times, approach BD as viewed via a Sony FMP-X10 and Sony VW600 projector.

I have also found plenty of Netflix 1080p content that approaches BD quality on my enhancement-less Panasonic plasma display. Original productions shot in 4k like Marco Polo look stunning. You don't have to own a 4k display to enjoy the advantages of 4k content. 5 reasons to shoot in 4k.

Ian

Tried to watch Marco Polo and several other Netflix originals (in UHD) but could not stand to watch because they were done using handheld cameras (read cheap). When the the picture is constantly changing it makes it hard to appreciate fine detail. At least HoC was done well.

That's why I hate found footage films, but I don't remember having that issue with Marco Polo. No issues with Dare Devil either, which rendered plenty of detail, but was a bit grainy with some posterization occurring in dark scenes.

Ian

I have very fast and stable internet and a fairly robust home network with all the gear in my main system hard-wired back to the router. I use Netflix, Amazon and Vudu extensively and the picture quality on my 65-inch 1080p set is generally quite good. The only places I find Blu-Ray to be obviously superior are scenes with low light or a lot of fast motion and the low light issues are by far the easier to spot. In general, I think these streaming services look very, very good. Not Blu-Ray good, but close for most material. Sound quality is a different matter, as nobody streams in Dolby TrueHD or DTS HD-Master. Still, you generally get very respectable Dolby Digital, which I can happily live with for television shows.

Netflix on my tv looks oustanding. much better than cable tv no matter what i watch. If you have a 2014 tv or newer, youve got the best codecs, anything before that and your using older compression codecs.

I actually prefer some netflix versions because netflix movies/shows are alot less grainy than blu ray and have "almost" as much detail. been watching netflix movies more lately and the quality really surprises me. not to mention the good 4k tvs do a great job of upscaling 1080P content (as oppposed to 720/1080i).

I too am very surprised that for such low bit rate, it looks as good as it does.

Netflix has a lot of compression artifacts in dark areas. I have many different devices that play netflix and this is easily visible on all of them. On top of that, netflix audio is much more highly compressed than what you would find in most BD rips.

This is the hallmark of the H.264/AVC codec vs. MPEG-2. When you bit-starve an MPEG-2 encoding the PQ falls off rapidly and gross visual artifacts such as macro blocking become quickly visible.

When you bit-starve H.264 -- and make no mistake about it, all streaming video is bit-starved -- the PQ degradation is gradual and can be more subtle -- lots of other things happen before obviously visible artifacts appear. The picture becomes progressively "softer". This may be less apparent to people with soft displays, but if you have a tack-sharp display like a good plasma and your viewing distance is reasonable, you will notice the softness. Grain, that is part of the original presentation for that "film-look", is smoothed out and progressively disappears. A surprisingly large number of people don't like grain and actually prefer it to be gone -- they consider it akin to noise and feel it makes the picture look less Hi-Def. As the bit-rate is lowered, fine detail in shadow areas is lost -- this is always a criterion reviewers use when comparing a reference BluRay encoding to a streamed offering. If you look for it, one of the most obvious effects of H.264 bit-starvation is that very dark scenes, lose their smooth homogeneity and look grossly blotchy because there is not enough bits available to provide a smooth gradation of blacks in dark areas. Once you know to look and you see it, you can never ignore it again. If you have a good panel with deep blacks (i.e.plasma) it can make you cringe [1].

H.264 is a "more efficient" codec but it is not a miracle codec -- you can't just drop 75% of the original bitrate and come out with something "just as good". H.264/AVC's hallmark is that when bit-starved it degrades the PQ in gradual less visibly obvious and less objectionable ways. What's objectionable is subjective to the viewer, his equipment and his tolerance for something less [2]

Audio is in an analogous situation. Steaming HD audio would be the parallel of streaming native BluRay in terms of bandwidth usage. Lossy DTS core tracks are encoded at 1.5Mbps and I see DTS-MA on BluRay to be in the 3Mbps range -- streaming either would be bandwidth prohibitive when your total A/V payload is in the 6Mbps range. In contrast DD/AC3 maxes bitrate at a very bandwidth friendly 640Kbps. Broadcast DD/5.1 content is generally around 380Kbps and even DVD DD/5.1 is usually in the 540Kbps range. The only 640Kbps DD/5.1 audio tracks I have seen are on BluRay. I suspect regular DD/5.1 is streamed at 380Kbps or less. What I'm seeing at Amazon Prime is a lot of shows coming over with DD+ which is a higher quality audio -- still not lossless but with a higher bitrate ceiling than DD/5.1. Since Prime streams their A/V payload at 10Mbps they can afford to spend say 1Mbps on the audio track.


[1] Ever since ABC cut the bitrate of their main channel to < 8Mbps so they could have an HD sub-channel, I find their shows to be borderline unwatchable because of the blotchy dark scenes. This was particularly true with How To Get Away With Murder which has a lot of dark scenes in each episode. The fact that broadcast OTA is MPEG-2 encoded just makes things all the more worse.
[2] I always find it amusing that people can talk with equal enthusiasm about the super resolution and clarity of 4K UHD displays and the viewing of bit-starved streaming content.

Nice post. I haven't found any audible difference between DD and DD plus. I believe DD plus uses a more efficient codec which is more appropriate for streaming applications. It also provides up to 7 channels, where as DD is limited to 5. I have to agree about ABC, most content looks borderline awful on my plasma. However, there are some exceptions such as 'Once Upon A Time' which doesn't look half bad.

Ian

The bitrate range for DD+ goes from 32Kbps to 6.1Mbps. They have a lot of range to play with when streaming and still call it DD+. It also supports up to 15.1 audio channels.

I think you make a good point about the differences between displays. I am still using an LED Light Engine DLP set, which is a rear projector and inherently softer. I am also limited to a 67-inch screen. Both of those factors make streamed content look less obviously inferior vs high end projectors on large screens. I also think it is important to note that not all streaming services are created equally. My comments were mainly focused on Vudu, a company that built their business by offering the best video and sound quality of any streaming service. Amazon has caught up with some of their content, but Netflix really hasn't. As good as Netflix is, Vudu is better.

I would be curious to know what bit-rate the various services use for their audio tracks. When I compress a Blu-Ray, I generally use the highest quality available (640kbps DD). I have to keep the total bit-rate below 15Mbps for device compatibility reasons and generally target something in the 12Mbps range. Those rips actually look and sound better than most streamed content.

There is quite a bunch of factors, which could do tricks.

-What device you are using watching Netflix? If TV´s app/other device than PC, are you sure your display calibration/picture settings affect Netflix´s picture similarly than MPC-HC via HDMI?
-What is madVR exactly doing in your 1080p -video chain with MPC-HC? It is a scaler/post processing program from DVD-era, shouldn´t have anything to post process nowadays 1080p -videos and 1080p -displays.
-Are your video levels (0-255/16-235) and color decoding (YCbCr/RGB) correct in MPC-HC and/or in your video card´s control panel (+ madVR)?

-Are you even comparing exactly same titles and -scenes, exactly same conditions, same lighting, same sobriety level? Many of Netflix´s recent own series are shot in 4k high end cameras, which yields distinctively superior image quality results against oldies-but-not-goldies -productions; for example McGyver BD Collectors Edition, Knight Rider Ultimate Directors Cut BD or X-Files -VHS rip.

I agree. However my point was, that it is widely used for streaming mainly due to it's more efficient codec.

Not according to Dolby http://www.dolby.com/us/en/technolog...ital-plus.html, or am I missing something?


Ian

Having a plasma is a double-edged sword. The last one I bought was a 65" Panasonic 65VT60 with the Kuro technology in late 2013 just before Panasonic stopped making plasma -- very sharp picture; ABC looks pretty bad. It's a pity none of these ABC series are available on Prime. I would love to see if the episodes streamed from Prime looked better than the OTA broadcasts. I honestly wouldn't be surprised.

According to a post from Michael Scott last year, the DD+ audio on Netflix streaming videos is an efficient but paltry 192 Kbps.

https://www.avsforum.com/forum/184-vi...l#post24594765

Apple TV 3 still uses DD 384 Kbps and I hear no audio difference between the two.