Streaming quality is really starting to look like dung

[jinjuku]

Watching Amazon's 'Mr and Mrs Smith' and the color banding is just atrocious. You can't get bit perfect masters in the form of physical media in many instances and even if I could I would be worried they would be just as compromised out of spite.

This isn't what I'm paying for.

And yes I have 300MB symmetric service.

 

[TLS Guy]

Watching Amazon's 'Mr and Mrs Smith' and the color banding is just atrocious. You can't get bit perfect masters in the form of physical media in many instances and even if I could I would be worried they would be just as compromised out of spite.

This isn't what I'm paying for.

And yes I have 300MB symmetric service.

Not the streams I watch.

 

[jinjuku]

Not the streams I watch.

I don't know... What streams do you watch? I didn't say all but I think it's more and more common. HBO has been fine.

Louis Rossman has been doing a YT series on this. It's not a one off phenomenon.

 

[TLS Guy]

I don't know... What streams do you watch? I didn't say all but I think it's more and more common. HBO has been fine.

Louis Rossman has been doing a YT series on this. It's not a one off phenomenon.

I admit I don't watch the usual streams. We sign up to Netflix if there is a series we really want to watch. We watch Acorn, and I think my wife has some others she uses.

I have been a member of the Berlin Digital Concert Hall for 12 years now. Their 4K picture is superb, and you now have a choice of lossless FLAC or AFLAC or Dolby Atmos 7.2.4. In my view the BPO are the world leaders in AV streaming. They now have 2.5 million subscribers. Medici TV also have high quality streams, but quality does vary with the source. The quality of the Metropolitan Met player is also excellent, and continues to improve. But it has always set a high standard.
I should also mention the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Their concerts streamed live in 4k video and excellent sound are really good. They have a hall with a fantastic acoustic. They have been using straight Decca Tree with subtle and distant miking of soloists.

I think that having a picture is having a beneficial effect on audio. I note increasingly a more natural balance on soloists, in that there may be no solist mic or it is turned very low. If you don't have a picture then the temptation is to make the soloists too hot. A picture allows for a much more natural concert hall balance

There is a lot of really good AV available on YouTube also.

The classical music/Opera domain has always led audio advances, and now AV. This is because this genre demands the highest quality and the highest engineering standards. Almost all advances have been led, and standards maintained from this quarter since Caruso, at the turn of the previous century. It was his recordings that put audio recording and its mass distribution on the map.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

I don't know... What streams do you watch? I didn't say all but I think it's more and more common. HBO has been fine.

Louis Rossman has been doing a YT series on this. It's not a one off phenomenon.

Exactly right. Unless everything is exactly right (such as the operating system, drivers, browser, video card, monitors, cables, etc.), the chances of getting the actual 4k on a PC are near zilch.
As for dung quality, you know the reason as well as I do - at least one piece of your streaming playback isn't quite right.
As Louis said correctly, he doesn't pay Netflix for a 4k package to make it hard for him, but the opposite should be true - paying for top-tier service should provide top-tier convenience because, at the end of the day, this is what Netflix is - convenience for the price of subscription.

Sauce:

How to use Netflix on your Windows computer or tablet

Learn to use Netflix on Windows. Includes setup for browsers and the app, plus requirements for Ultra HD and HDR on Microsoft Edge and Windows 10 or later.

help.netflix.com

 

[TLS Guy]

Exactly right. Unless everything is exactly right (such as the operating system, drivers, browser, video card, monitors, cables, etc.), the chances of getting the actual 4k on a PC are near zilch.
As for dung quality, you know the reason as well as I do - at least one piece of your streaming playback isn't quite right.
As Louis said correctly, he doesn't pay Netflix for a 4k package to make it hard for him, but the opposite should be true - paying for top-tier service should provide top-tier convenience because, at the end of the day, this is what Netflix is - convenience for the price of subscription.
View attachment 65719
Sauce:

How to use Netflix on your Windows computer or tablet

Learn to use Netflix on Windows. Includes setup for browsers and the app, plus requirements for Ultra HD and HDR on Microsoft Edge and Windows 10 or later.

help.netflix.com

We watched the reason Crown series on Netflix and the 4K picture and the audio was superb. No complaints at all.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

We watched the reason Crown series on Netflix and the 4K picture and the audio was superb. No complaints at all.

My point isn't that Netflix streaming quality always sucks, but to get real 4k, a windows pc has to comply with the long and incomplete list of requirements above.

 

[TLS Guy]

My point isn't that Netflix streaming quality always sucks, but to get real 4k, a windows pc has to comply with the long and incomplete list of requirements above.

I have a good windows 11 4K HTPC, but it is handier to use the App in the L TV and use eARC for the audio.

For the BPO I have to use the BPO app to get Atmos. But the picture is excellent whether I use the TV app or the HTPC.

 

[dolynick]

Getting a stream in 4k from Netflix is not an issue. An apple TV box, virutually all the built-in streaming included with TVs and most atermarket streaming solutions (that are worth having) will do it. The problem is the compression and the data bandwidth. A typical 4k HDR stream from one of the services runs 20-25 Mbps. Blurays run around that range for full quality 1080p (Yes, I know, h.264 vs h.265 but 8bit vs 10bit color more than covers that too). The bitrate on any actual UHD movie is at least double and in the range of 50-100 Mbps.

I'm not going to say that 4k streams aren't enjoyable. I often don't notice any major issues. Some are far worse than others though and in almost all cases, if you go looking, you can see the sacrifices of squeezing that stream into an envelope that will fit in more of the masses internet service than just those who can afford premium ISP plans (if even available in the area).

I'm betting that's more what jinjuku is getting at. Having said that, I haven't encoutered too many cases of obvious compression/codec issues lately. Some buffering issues occassionally lately when Amazon is having a bad day, but I haven't noted purple compression blocks in darks scenes, for instance, in a while.