I have a very slow Internet connection (5 Mbps down, and even less for upload). Given that, I always download movies at 720p, since they have low file size, which means I can download them more quickly. Also, I don't notice much of a difference between 1080p and 720p. As for 4K, because I don't have a screen that can display 4K, I consider it to be one of the biggest disk space wasters.
Am I the only one who has this opinion?
To be fair, resolution is not enough to measure quality. The bitrate plays a huge role. You can have a high resolution video looking worse than a lower resolution one if the lower one has a higher bitrate. In general, many videos online claim to be 1080p but still look like garbage because of the low bitrate (e.g. like on YouTube or so). If you go for a high bitrate video, you should be able to tell pretty easily, the hair, the fabric, the skin details, the grass, everything can be noticeably sharper and crisper.
Edit: so yeah, I agree with you, because often they are both of low bitrate...
Here's my twisted life exposed...I have no issue watching 1080p on my QLED 4K TV. I game at 1080p happily, I honestly don't give a shit about 4K content.
1080p looks good enough for me, and I actually watch 720p on my phone screen half the time too.
And not because of lack of speed, I have a 1Gbps+ fiber line up and down.
And tbh, if it means I get to own and control my media, I would tolerate even worse quality if that's what I needed to do.
Grunge computing ftw! Quality at the cost of your soul? Fuck that!
Pretty much the same here. the storage to quality ratio isn't a big enough difference to make it worth it to me for anything over 1080. 720p is noticable but I'll still use it no problem.
I like to watch TV shows in the background where I'm not going to be watching the screen obsessively, so I have several shows in 480P or sub-480P. There are also some shows where the "official" HD versions are just awful (most 90s sitcoms) or the show was made for 4:3 and has a different feel converted to 16:9 (MASH, The Wire).
Going beyond that though, I spent years on a really limited connection (2.6m down/400k up) and my instinct for saving bandwidth and storage space is still there, along with my need to pay it forward since I ain't no leech. I've become fond of making what I call "Bonsai Encodes", where the files are small enough to be sent over damn near anything. With mono Opus and VP9 video you can cram 45 minutes of perfectly watchable content into a sub-25mb file that'll play in Discord, with VTT subtitles even (though those won't play in Discord itself). Looks a bit like watching it on an old tube TV, but it's watchable.
1080p is way better if you have a screen that is a good size. Also if you are into surround sound (I am) there is a lower chance to get it on 720p rips.
I prefer the opposite. I want the best quality I can get often 4K remux. Storage is cheap nowadays and I don't mind waiting a few days for a movie to download. Also I do have a 500/500 connection which helps.
I do have a 4k tv, and a 1080p one. But personally I don't see big difference on 720p vs 1080p vs 4k. I have to be like 4 feet from the tv to notice it. 720p is sufficient.
Those must be tiny screens then. 4k vs 1080p is minor in difference, even in a 77" OLED screen. There is a difference, but I can do with 1080p a lot of the times. 720p is only acceptable for older shows. Otherwise it immediately shows.
But if it's visually appealing content, then you bet I'll take the 4k stream at the highest Bitrate I can find.
720p is fine, but I'd prefer 1080p most of the time.
It mostly just comes down to bitrate. A 4k video at 1Mbps is probably gonna look like shit. My drone and my go pro shoot 4k footage at 60Mbps h265 and that looks amazing. But if I'm acquiring a fuck ton of movies I'm not gonna download that shit at that bitrate. As long as the video is like 1080p and 5Mbps or higher I'm happy. If the file size is >6 gigs for a movie I ain't downloading that shit even if I can, and that's with a 1gb symmetrical internet connection and a 30TB NAS.
I usually watch youtube (well via Freetube) on 480, maybe 720 when I am paying attention and 360 when I am laying down. I prefer these small file sizes because I can skip left and right in the video time with the arrow buttons like the file is local and not online. I haven't pirated a movie in years (I would not want to watch anything new) but I download a lot of old racing from the 80s and 90s and it is already 480p, so as long as it is in english, not black/white I am happy.
I don't often go for the full 4K Blu-ray Remux releases, since they're massive and I can't really tell the difference over a 10-15GB rip, at least visually. Just a webrip is fine, depending on the source. Plus even my nVidia Shield Pro struggles with them at times.
Only when the artifacts in 4k look bad - like black squares on a black background due to compression. 1080p in that case is preferable.
My internet has been so bad for so long that 720p looks way too clear for a video. Primarily 240p life
I’m not downvoting you but I hella disagree for certain things. But only certain things. Will I notice The Office is 720p? Heck no. The Holy Mountain? Absolutely.
Not just you. Low(er) quality downloads are still a huge part of the torrent scene, see how popular most 720p YIFY uploads are even though their encoder quality is pretty garbage. Most people in general want a fast download and are viewing on a small laptop or even phone screen and don't give a rats ass about fidelity, LQ works perfectly fine for this. Even I'll grab a LQ once in a while if it's something my girl and I want to watch that night and I didn't plan ahead.
The desire for high quality uploads is more for people running home setups like Plex, where it's better to keep a HQ source file and have it transcoded to lower resolutions by your home server setup as necessary. They generally aren't storage constrained as an 8tb hard drive for a normal PC is fairly cheap these days. I'd wager maybe <30% of torrenters actually go after ultra HQ uploads based off seeder numbers.
Personally I stick to stuff that is at least 1080p with HDR and H265 encode preferred, because I archive most everything I download due to similar problems with internet speed. Over maybe 12 years of torrents I've amassed a hair over 5tb of content, and that's a LOT of movies l, it all fits on a single $120 external HDD.
I usually take BDRAW, transcode by myself. Or the best quality I can find. Does it look better? Not really. Just the data hoarder inside kicked in. 720p is totally fine.
I download everything in the best quality I can find and will sometimes replace it when there’s better quality available. I can afford storage and I don’t really care how long it takes to download as I have other stuff to watch/play anyways.
I typically look for 1080p X265 encodes around 2-4 mbps to save disk space. I will download higher bitrates for anything with a lot of film grain since it will get very blocky at lower bitrates.
I can't tell much difference between 1080p and 4K unless I'm very close to a large screen. Also, most 4K files are HDR and I don't have anything that supports HDR.
