

Compression Sucks - bhauer
http://tiamat.tsotech.com/compression-sucks

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DanBC
> _We tolerate it today because we've grown accustomed to it and we accept
> low-bandwidth distribution channels such as today's "broadband" Internet
> connectivity._

Many people do not accept this unless "accept" means "have no power to do
anything but use the lines provided to them by companies; while complaining
and campaigning for more bandwidth to be delivered".

> _Connectivity is considered by many as "good enough" because you can shove a
> lossy-compressed 1080 video down without worry over a connection measured in
> the paltry few megabits per second._

When I'm watching movies or TV I almost never care about the resolution. I
wish the plots were not so obvious or the characters were not so cardboard-
cutout or with silly motivations or that the film was a bit morally braver. I
might wonder why a lighting decision was made, or I might wonder whether it'd
be better without that music. But I hardly ever think "This movie would be a
better movie if it looked better".

See, for example, Clerks. That's a lo-fi movie which is significantly enhanced
by being lo-fi. All the slightly wonky acting is excused because the movie
reminds us that it was shot on a personal credit-card budget.

See also the discussion about "The Hobbit" with some people saying the double
framerate has made some things "too realistic", thus de-immersing them from
the experience.

> _Even the most avid technophiles (broadbandophiles?) among us chuckle to
> ourselves when we upgrade our connection from 25Mbps to 35Mbps. We know it's
> in large part for ego, so we can post screen caps of bandwidth meters._

Well, this is a good point. Consumers appear to buy big (or small) numbers.
"Megapixels? MORE IS BETTER!!" even though it's not true. Thus, we've ended up
with a "Bandwidth? Bigger number is better! Price? Lower is better!" even
though that says nothing about contention or reliability or fair-use
allowances. We end up with odd situations where a user buys an "unlimited"
account, manages to get full speed for 8 minutes, and then has their
connection throttled for the rest of the month because they've gone over their
fair use allowance. That's a rant worth having.

I'd be interested to see if there are any competitions for "compression of
video" - these could go alongside the Hutter Prize.

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georgemcbay
Kind of a useless rant, IMO.

Even Bluray movies are lossy compressed, so you can't paint with a brush so
large that it encompasses all "lossy compression". Be more specific.

Lossless compression is not a realistic option for video over networks given
current technology. Not today, not 5 years from now, probably not 10 years
from now, especially if we keep bumping the resolution of video streams up (eg
from 1080p to 4K formats, etc).

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mullr
_Please_ fix your website so there aren't things moving in the background
while I try to read what appeared to be some well-written text. I lasted about
5 seconds, and it's a shame.

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bartl
You're just fooling yourself if you believe that a photograph that is not
lossily compressed would be sharp in every single detail. That's not how
lenses (or our eyes) work.

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nemothekid
A raw 1080p movie at 24fps would require a 1.5 Gb/s connection, and I am
pretty sure there aren't any lossless video codecs out there.

Low-bitrate HD content sucks.

~~~
gizmo686
Not nessarilly. The majority of possible videos are highly improbable, so from
an information theory standpoint, it should be possible to have lossless video
compression.

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sounds
Off-topic but I found this website unusable on Firefox/Mac. :)

~~~
justinlloyd
Worked on Firefox/Windows but I had to enable scripts and then enable cookies
and then got stuck with a stupidly annoying animating background that totally
distracted from whatever the author was trying to say. I got about a half-
sentence in and then said to myself "F this, I've got better things to be
doing than screwing with my eyesight at one-thirty in the morning."

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tuananh
wow this website can be used as a CPU stress test.

