>Visit a friend.
>He is watching 720p YIFY rip of Mad Max with his PS3 connected to 40" Sony.
>DNLA streaming with PS3 media server.
>Picture converted to mpeg2 with burned in subtitles.
>Audio converted from aac to ac3.
>Make a comment about the potato quality.
>Friend says he doesn't care because it just works.
If he doesnt care, why should you?
>>51318513
Maybe he actually cares about watching a movie OP and not your fucking autistic shit.
>>51318513
>your friend can sit down and enjoy a movie without worrying that every pixel has been preserved, and carry on with his life
>you can't
Who's the real loser here?
>>51318513
I watch 420p movies on my laptop.
How does that make you feel?
Most people don't care about quality as long as it "just works." My uncle ridicules me for buying Sennheisers and says shit like, "just go to that Arab convenience store and get a pair of $5.00 headphones. They do the same thing!"
>>51318513
>Visit a friend.
Cool story bro. There is no way somebody as autistic as you would have any friends to visit.
>>51318513
I have a mental illness to OP
>literally telling people how to enjoy things
Personally, I find that high enough video quality does significantly enhance the experience of watching videos for me. There's a certain threshold of sharpness, usually around the 4GiB/hour mark at 720p (but higher for some material, especially noisy film), where it's enough to convince to convince your eyes that your screen is a window into the movie's world rather than a blurry artefact-ridden video file.
There's a second threshold, when the resolution is sufficient that your eyes can pick up more or less all the detail they want to. I find that 1080p normally hits this on most displays, providing the bitrate is sufficient.
Higher quality than that is also noticeable, although with diminishing returns and depending on the source and, y'know, the actual production quality in terms of visual effects.
I realise these are really subjective and non-scientific claims, but the differences are significant enough that I do sometimes have to wonder if the people watching 360p xvid rips literally just don't know what they're missing. But I almost never actually bring it up, because it generally sounds really presumptuous and snobby.
>>51319184
How did you survive the VHS and the DVD era?
>>51319184
Neuroscience rant inc
Our brain's processing power is limited, we can't keep track of too many things. Even something like keeping track of a 3-way conversation can get tricky.
>The limitation of consciousness is demonstrated by the fact that to understand what another person is saying we must process 40 bits of information each second. If we assume the upper limit of our capacity to be 126 bits per second, it follows that to understand what three people are saying simultaneously is theoretically possible, but only by managing to keep out of consciousness every other thought or sensation. We couldn’t, for instance, be aware of the speakers’ expressions, nor could we wonder about why they are saying what they are saying, or notice what they are wearing.
>Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
People watch TV in 2 ways, active or passive. In passive mode:
>The plots and characters of the popular shows are so repetitive that although watching TV requires the processing of visual images, very little else in the way of memory, thinking, or volition is required. Not surprisingly, people report some of the lowest levels of concentration, use of skills, clarity of thought, and feelings of potency when watching television.
When engaged in this mode, it doesn't matter whether you pick up details or don't. Your brain is half awake half in the clouds, you're mindlessly consuming entertainment.
What you're doing is focusing on the experience, increasing it's complexity and quality by focusing on the details of the pictures. While this is definitely better for you as a person than being a zombie in front of the TV, it is by no means the only way of having a sense of fulfillment. There ARE things you're missing, like actors' expressions, how the individual stories relate to each other, the sounds, etc and for a lot of them video quality doesn't matter.
It's not like your way is wrong, but video quality is not the be all and end all of an enjoyable experience.
>>51318905
Doesn't matter as long as it's your money.
It's your money, right?
>>51318826
> not 240
>>51319213
>DVD
720x576p MPEG2 isn't so bad when it's all you have available. It's relative; now that I'm used to Bluray-level encodings, DVD looks mediocre compared. (Still better than certain ultra-low-bitrate "720p" encodes, though.)
>VHS
I don't think I've watched one since I was at most 9, so I don't really remember/didn't care about the quality.
>>51319337
Okay that's actually really interesting anon, and the "active/passive" thing makes a lot of sense, so thanks. It's true that I usually sit down to intently watch things rather than zoning out or putting them on "in the background".
However-
>There ARE things you're missing, like actors' expressions, how the individual stories relate to each other, the sounds, etc
I don't completely get this, because of course I'm paying attention to those; it's not like I'm staring at artefacts or making notes on the contrast instead of actually comprehending the video.
I simply find that I usually enjoy the movie/show more if the quality exceeds the first threshold I described, and that some content benefits from exceeding the second one too.
It's not an absolute thing. I'm actually in the middle of watching a TV series over a paltry DSL connection, and Netflix usually stays in one of its lowest-bitrate SD modes. It's definitely noticeable and I would take the time to improve it if this were reasonable possible, but I'm still really enjoying it.
>download several films in shitty 720p
>watch them
>delete shitty rips
>download bdremux for ones I like
