
Delivering Breaking Bad on Netflix in Ultra HD 4K - conorgil145
http://techblog.netflix.com/2014/06/delivering-netflix-in-ultra-hd-4k.html
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beloch
For a small to medium displays at typical viewing distances (this includes
most "big screen" panels you can buy at your local electronics shop), 1080p
meets or exceeds the limits of the typical human eye's resolving power.
Without using a projection system and a large screen or a stupendously
expensive (>100" diagonal) flat-panel, 4K is a subtle upgrade at best.

When video is encoded with insufficient bandwidth, compression artifacts (e.g.
macroblocking) are anything but subtle. These artifacts typically are not
constrained to one or two pixels, but ramify to much larger portions of the
image. Netflix has, by necessity, used insufficient bandwidth on practically
their entire library. My money is on Netflix's over-compressed 4K being
inferior in quality to Bluray 1080p for the vast majority of users.

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rorski
This might be useful in illustrating your point:
[http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html](http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html)

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ars
Am I the only one who watches stuff on his computer, and sits about 2-3 feet
from it?

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michaelgrafl
What screen size are you on? 27 inches? Can you make out individual pixels
with film material (which usually has no sharp edges in it)?

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richforrester
Not arguing against what you are saying, but there's a significant difference
between "making out individual pixels" and "noticing a difference".

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michaelgrafl
That's true.

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te_platt
I'm old enough to remember tv shows making a big deal about being in color,
then stereo, then HD. The big change in going to 4K is that Netflix doesn't
need regulatory permission or ten years of drafting standards to make the
upgrade.

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josephlord
"...Netflix doesn't need...ten years of drafting standards..."

When do you think standards work started on HEVC? When do you think NHK were
first demonstrating UHDTV?

They were both being worked on by 2004 and much of the research work will have
preceeded that.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_High_Definition_Televisi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_High_Definition_Television)

~~~
te_platt
Good point. And I'm sure Netflix engineers had a certain amount of internal
bureaucracy to deal with as well. The point I was trying make was just that
it's easier now to make a change like this than what had to be done in
previous iterations.

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orik
The biggest problem holding back adoption for 4k media is vendor lock in. You
can't get 4K unless you're on a Sony/LG/Samsung "Smart TV".

There is not a legitimate technical reason why I can't watch House of Cards in
4K on my Seiki through my PC. I watched the trailer in 4K over a dozen times
on YouTube.

Gamers want to play games on low input lag 4K screens from brands like Asus,
Dell, Acer. 4K is much more easily justifiable when users can buy a single
screen for their games and ultra-hd content.

Gaming PC's are about the only units with enough compute for highly compressed
h.265 playback without built in hardware acceleration, so I don't understand
why the market has not made this content accessible for me to purchase.

~~~
josephlord
You are right there is no technical reason why you can't but there are
probably commercial and practical reasons.

The number of people with gaming PCs is relatively small and the complexity of
providing it to them might be quite high. I don't know what the availability
of stable HEVC decoders is like or what the licensing cost for them is or the
difficulty of integrating them with Silverlight or whatever it is that Netlix
use.

The Youtube trailer was probably VP9 not HEVC but was possibly using a higher
bitrate that could effectively be downloaded rather than streamed for a short
trailer.

Basically the complexity of supporting the small group of gamers with the
right PC's and 4K monitors was probably not worth it initially especially
considering the backlash from customers who's PC's weren't fast enough. It is
easier to launch on a set of known devices and then they can expand from
there. I'm sure it will come.

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sixQuarks
This is great and all, but what are we gonna do with 4K streams when Comcast
can't even deliver a low-quality stream?

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hudibras
That's the whole point.

(Warning: conspiracy theory ahead)

Netflix is rolling this out to illustrate to consumers how internet providers
are failing to fulfill their contractual obligation for high-speed, unlimited
internet at a set price.

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NamTaf
How many GB/min of footage is this? I can't imagine ever being able to stream
that here, where our high-end quotas are measured in 100s of GB/month.

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jasoncartwright
15Mbps [1], which will consume around 6.8Gb/hr [2]

[1]
[http://bgr.com/2013/09/26/netflix-4k-streaming/](http://bgr.com/2013/09/26/netflix-4k-streaming/)
[2]
[http://web.forret.com/tools/filesize.asp?speed=15&unit=Mbps&...](http://web.forret.com/tools/filesize.asp?speed=15&unit=Mbps&dur=3600)

~~~
nemasu
It's actually ~6.6GB/hr. Note: _Actually_ GiB, but who writes GiB...

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barrystaes
Netflix; I dont need that, we already watched it. It was great.

Please add more shows to the EU/Dutch region.. the US and UK catalog are
interesting.. why cant we see this?

Also, i'd pay extra if i could watch ANY movie as soon as it got out of the
theatre.

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SamuelKillin
Wait, my back of the envelope says you'll need to pull down around 650mb a
second to stream 4K. That's uncompressed, sure, but anything in that power of
ten isn't feasible.

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gibybo
Typical compression of 4k video ends up being more than a factor of 10
smaller.

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SamuelKillin
Yikes you're right. Looks like 2 powers of 10.

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broodbucket
Wait, only on select smart TVs? So I can't watch this on netflix.com with my
4k monitor? (not that I have the connection to stream it anyway)

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JohnTHaller
Nope. See 'proprietary DRM' and 'vendor lock-in'. You can basically use
specific Sony/LG/Samsung TVs and that's it.

Or pirate it after it's released and watch it the way you want to.

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Kiro
In what resolution are the original negatives?

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gibybo
It was almost certainly shot with 35mm film. Film is analog so it doesn't have
a well-defined resolution, but modern 35mm is pretty comparable to 4k (maybe a
little less, depending on the quality of the camera/printing/etc)

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bluedino
AMC still shoots their originals on film.

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izzydata
Too bad their 4k content has bitrates that should only be acceptable for 1080p
or less. Downscaling their 4k to 1080p would almost look as good as if they
just had proper 1080p to begin with. And a proper 1080p upscale to 4k would
look better than this poor excuse for 4k.

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aditya
How do I know what quality stream I'm getting?

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dirtyhand
Smurfs 2, really?

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iMark
Sponsored by Comcast. It's one way of reducing the bandwidth demands ;)

