# True 1080p Video



## marmiteonpizza (Dec 9, 2014)

I was just wandering, as none of my downloaded films are ever true 1080p (not as pin sharp as they should be): can digital films ever be true 1080p? Because they must all lose quality somewhere along the process of getting from disc to digital, so does that mean Blu-Rays are the only way of watching true 1080p videos?


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## RCoon (Dec 9, 2014)

Digital streaming and BluRays are all 1080p for me. All my digital downloads are in full HD. There are a number of distributors and publishers that distribute a 720p file and upscale it to 1080p to claim it's HD. I have a couple of subscription services, usually within 2 days of a title's official release I'll be able to get a "true" 1080p stream of the file.

Depends how badly your distributor encodes/compresses the file. It's not that hard to reencode a digital movie file without a loss of quality, it just takes some time. I reencode videos on a daily basis for work and home, and can maintain the quality with a number of programs.


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## marmiteonpizza (Dec 9, 2014)

Okay thanks for letting me know =) Loving the unicycle giraffe by the way


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## RCoon (Dec 9, 2014)

Joel Charig said:


> Okay thanks for letting me know =) Loving the unicycle giraffe by the way



Told my friend if he could draw a giraffe riding a unicycle in paint I'd set it as my staff sig. He does Maths at university, so I expected him to fail miserably. Unfortunately it turned out rather well.


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## newtekie1 (Dec 9, 2014)

Joel Charig said:


> I was just wandering, as none of my downloaded films are ever true 1080p (not as pin sharp as they should be): can digital films ever be true 1080p? Because they must all lose quality somewhere along the process of getting from disc to digital, so does that mean Blu-Rays are the only way of watching true 1080p videos?



Any compressed video, including the video on Blu-Rays, has lost quality.  It is just a matter of how much quality is lost, which usually is largely effected by how much the video is compressed.


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## Blue-Knight (Dec 28, 2014)

Joel Charig said:


> can digital films ever be true 1080p?


Interesting point.

From my experience, 1080p, 4K, 8K or whatever name they call future resolutions are just resolutions and has nothing to do with quality.
The quality will depend on many factors, such as camera and/or lens used, and the codec used to encode the video, unless they distribute in raw format (which wouldn't satisfy me either, unless it is from a VERY HIGH END camera, ultimate quality, the best of the best).

Some frames from Blu-ray movies (100% crop):


Spoiler: image












If you say that looks good on your TV, then your TV is very good at hiding details (and I believe they are exactly made for this, to hide details so it looks better to your eyes).
I wouldn't even consider that as high quality... It is medium quality for me (4 out of 10).

That's why I resize all those 1080p or whatever resolution movies by half or more... They look much better and their defects are much less apparent:


Spoiler: image











Stupid or not, it is just my opinion.


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## Dent1 (Dec 28, 2014)

Joel Charig said:


> I was just wandering, as none of my downloaded films are ever true 1080p (not as pin sharp as they should be): can digital films ever be true 1080p? Because they must all lose quality somewhere along the process of getting from disc to digital, so does that mean Blu-Rays are the only way of watching true 1080p videos?



I know this thread is old.

But when you download a movie via a torrent or online in general the file has been compressed massively to make it small enough to download. The resolution may still be 1080p, but the bitrate is reduced thus compromising the quality. Understandably, most Blu-ray discs are 30+ GB, most people don't have the patience,  internet connection, storage space to download such a large file, so the person that rips the original Blu-ray video has to compress it to a more reasonable size.

It you hunt long enough on torrent sites you could download an authentic untouched blu-ray copy, but 9/10 you wont have the internet connection, storage space, or  enough seeders to complete the download.


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## marmiteonpizza (Dec 29, 2014)

Blue-Knight said:


> That's why I resize all those 1080p or whatever resolution movies by half or more...


Interesting solution, but I prefer my videos to be full screen while being of good quality; being full screen in really important to me because it helps with the immersion of the film. Watching a whole film which is downgraded in size by that much will just induce distractions around the video for me.


Dent1 said:


> When you download a movie via a torrent or online in general the file has been compressed massively to make it small enough to download. The resolution may still be 1080p, but the bitrate is reduced thus compromising the quality. Understandably, most Blu-ray discs are 30+ GB, most people don't have the patience,  internet connection, storage space to download such a large file, so the person that rips the original Blu-ray video has to compress it to a more reasonable size.


I think I may just go and buy a Blu-Ray optical disc drive then, and build up a collection of Blu-Rays. I'll have to start paying for my films, but I'd rather that and get the best quality out of my films.


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## W1zzard (Dec 29, 2014)

Use MadVR for video rendering (on PC), massively improves quality.


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## marmiteonpizza (Dec 29, 2014)

W1zzard said:


> Use MadVR for video rendering (on PC), massively improves quality.


So what can you actually do with this? Can you improve the quality of any video on your PC?


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## W1zzard (Dec 29, 2014)

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/madVR

Yup, works with any DXVA video player and improves the output quality (it does not modify the original file)


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## marmiteonpizza (Dec 29, 2014)

I can't work out how to set it up on VLC, can it be done? Or do you recommend another media player?


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## Blue-Knight (Dec 29, 2014)

Joel Charig said:


> being full screen in really important to me because it helps with the immersion of the film.


Then you could just sit further from the screen, it works almost (or exactly) the same way.



Joel Charig said:


> I can't work out how to set it up on VLC, can it be done?


I would never recommend VLC, especially if you're on Linux. But as I see you're on Windows there should be tons of better options available to you... But if you are happy with VLC, there's no reason to change.


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## W1zzard (Dec 29, 2014)

Joel Charig said:


> I can't work out how to set it up on VLC, can it be done? Or do you recommend another media player?


I'm using it with media player classic


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## marmiteonpizza (Dec 29, 2014)

Blue-Knight said:


> Then you could just sit further from the screen, it works almost (or exactly) the same way.
> 
> 
> I would never recommend VLC, especially if you're on Linux. But as I see you're on Windows there should be tons of better options available to you... But if you are happy with VLC, there's no reason to change.


Well your theory is kind of plausible, but sitting further away defeats the point I said about preferring fullscreen; I like fullscreen because I like my films as big as possible, hence the reason people go to the cinema once in a while 

Well to me VLC has a really straight forward interface and I'm kind of used to it. So I shall stick with VLC until I get a Blu-Ray ODD, at which point I may get another player that can play Blu-Rays, depending on how much of a hassle it is to find/install a plugin for VLC.


W1zzard said:


> I'm using it with media player classic


I decided against MadVR: I tried it and didn't see enough difference for it to be worth it (downloaded a different media player to use it) and it was more effort than it was worth in my opinion so I've stuck with VLC  I think a Blu-Ray ODD is what I need, watch films uncompressed.


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## marmiteonpizza (Dec 29, 2014)

I've actually gone and decided to download a cracked copy of PowerDVD 14 Ultra, it upscales videos and does a lot more! Plus plays Blu-Rays. Win-win.


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## Aquinus (Dec 29, 2014)

Joel Charig said:


> I've actually gone and decided to download a cracked copy of PowerDVD 14 Ultra, it upscales videos and does a lot more! Plus plays Blu-Rays. Win-win.


I would highly recommend keeping that to yourself.


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## Toothless (Dec 29, 2014)

Joel Charig said:


> I've actually gone and decided to *download a cracked copy of PowerDVD 14 Ultra*, it upscales videos and does a lot more! Plus plays Blu-Rays. Win-win.


Not the smartest thing to let the world know..


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## chr0nos (Dec 29, 2014)

Joel Charig said:


> I've actually gone and decided to download a cracked copy of PowerDVD 14 Ultra, it upscales videos and does a lot more! Plus plays Blu-Rays. Win-win.



LOL

Give MPC+MadVR another try, it has really good results, but try reasonable settings for the gpu youre using because it can be really gpu intensive if configured incorrectly.


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## marmiteonpizza (Dec 30, 2014)

Aquinus said:


> I would highly recommend keeping that to yourself.





Toothless said:


> Not the smartest thing to let the world know..


I thought most of you on here were into torrents - there's a whole thread based on the closing down of The Pirate Bay...but yes, I'm not terribly smart, am I?


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## Aquinus (Dec 30, 2014)

Joel Charig said:


> I thought most of you on here were into torrents - there's a whole thread based on the closing down of The Pirate Bay...but yes, I'm not terribly smart, am I?


To neither confirm or deny that, I will say that stating publicly that you're violating copyright laws is a dumb thing to do.


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## rtwjunkie (Dec 30, 2014)

Joel Charig said:


> I thought most of you on here were into torrents - there's a whole thread based on the closing down of The Pirate Bay...but yes, I'm not terribly smart, am I?


 
Torrenting, yes.  Lots of legal stuff gets torrented.  Torrenting is just a means of distribution. Cracked equals pirated, and THAT is against the rules of the forum, regardless of anyone's personal views.  I'll share my own view though:  Everyone that creates something should be paid for their work, unless they choose to make it free.


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## marmiteonpizza (Jan 1, 2015)

rtwjunkie said:


> Torrenting, yes.  Lots of legal stuff gets torrented.  Torrenting is just a means of distribution. Cracked equals pirated, and THAT is against the rules of the forum, regardless of anyone's personal views.  I'll share my own view though:  Everyone that creates something should be paid for their work, unless they choose to make it free.


Okay I hear you. But I have cut down the content I torrent illegally; I used to get literally everything through torrenting. But now I pay for my games and music, will stop torrenting films when I get my Blu-Ray ODD on Saturday and on occasion torrent programmes.
Most of my torrents are films, so from Saturday I'll be cutting down massively


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## RejZoR (Jan 1, 2015)

Main reason for pirating is lack of services. We used to pirate games a lot, but now that we have awesome global game services like Steam and GOG there is no excuse not to buy games. And people are buying them a lot now, even though pirating was almost our national sport. But for movies and music, pretty much everything is limited to US. Is it my fault if they don't like my money? Give me native Netflix and alike support (without the need to fake my IP with proxies and fake my street address) and I'll gladly pay for movies and series. Same for music. Bunch of small services and nothing properly big (that isn't stupid iTunes).


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