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I'm a subscriber, but the Criterion apps do downloads right some of the time if you're lucky, the choice of subtitles is usually English or English, discovery is Netflix-level bad, they can't be bothered to create any interactive info, and most of the actual Collection is not available for streaming.

I still pay them every month because they have the goods but it's so frustrating that the people with the most film-buff oriented catalog and their hearts (presumably) in the right place have so little ability to deliver on UX.

(I used to subscribe to MUBI as well, which is stronger for new indie films, but didn't have time for both, and MUBI app was so bad it could have been a fork of the Criterion app.)

Right now it's usually CINEPHiLES remuxes, that pick absolute best sources available, and sometimes splice the video to get each shot the best possible treatment from the available bitstreams

A couple I can remember off the top of my head, since I can't check my server right now. Scrubs with original music, since they didn't have the license for the original songs for streaming (or the DVDs, I can't remember). Daria with the original music for the same reason. I can't think of any fan visual remasters of tv shows though.

The one they were talking about (based on scans of original film prints) is called 4K77/4K80/4K83 for the three films.

I believe the first project of this type for Star Wars was Harmy's Despecialized Edition but I think these days most people prefer the 4K77 versions, although it varies by film and by person.

I’m going to develop 8k streaming - it’s just the normal low bitrate shit, but if you pause it sends a full quality 8k frame.

Nobody will figure it out!

The marketing of a resolution really won out. People will fight you if you suggest a high bitrate 1080p encode can look better than a low bitrate 4k.

And that is good for you, giving you the benefit of the doubt that you meant 15mbps, but I know I can personally tell the difference between 15mbps and 50mbps. Seeing more detailed film grain and seeing less artifacts in fast moving scenes are two of the most noticeable.

Commercial 4k Blu-ray’s are twice that all the way up to 4x or sometimes more. And I’d say even on the best mastered disks there’s still obvious encoding artifacts.

...what service offers 15Gbps stream?

4k80 was finally released last year as well. Some notes on why it took so long: https://www.thestarwarstrilogy.com/project-4k80/

Yup. Team Negative One are doing some very important work in terms of film preservation/digital archeology.

Legend thank you

DVDs are 480i, the parent comment described far higher quality than DVD.

Yes, there was the official DVD release that included the original versions as a bonus. But the quality can not compare to 4K77.

Care to expand? I assume the result is still 480p or have they actually done more than that?

I full agree. I'm not trying to compare high quality naive source to AI upscale. That is a ludicrous comparison. Native will always be better.

But truth of the matter is that many times you don't have access to a higher quality source. Sometimes you only have something that's been re-encoded over and over or something that has degraded through the passage of time. I would not suggest overwriting the source, but the truth is that many people will find this a better viewing experience. Truth is that many of those remasters will use similar technologies, though with much more thought and care than your one click and it's done act like it is magic programs. Truth is that people do enjoy it in videogames and existing streaming and movie systems. People do prefer better native high resolution, but when that is just unavailable, what are you left with? But the truth is that most people are happy with lossy encodings and lower bit color schemes (most people don't even have a 10 bit monitor and (real) HDR isn't prolific).

If it is a choice between shitty quality and AI upscale, I'll choose AI upscale more times than not (but not 100%). But instead, if it is a choice between shitty quality, AI upscale, and high quality native, I'm choosing high quality naive 100% of the time. It's not even a question! But the point is that there are choices and not all of them require deep knowledge. I'm not arguing replace native with upscale, that's idiotic. But for an at home player where more people are going to have to make choices about storage spaces and won't care if it is lossy, then the option exists.

We're also talking about streaming services. Streaming services force the AI upscaling on you. Hell, even in some TV's it is hard or impossible to turn off (mine turns itself back on!). Let's let people decide, because we know that the incentives are too strong on the streaming service for them to hand you raw.