[DevoidSimo]

Why do you say subtitles and secondary audio (I assume you mean multiple language tracks) don't work well? I've downloaded files with multiple subtitles and audio tracks, which VLC makes easy to switch between. Admittedly, many/most torrents don't offer these but that doesn't mean they can't.

[developer2]

Subtitles are not a burden; downloading a single torrent with a dozen subtitle tracks adds negligible bytes to the overall download size. Audio tracks are a tad rougher; the good torrents come with multiple tracks, but you are downloading all audio tracks even if you only play a single language–and the size of those audio tracks is not as negligible. Most people with large or unlimited bandwidth simply don't care about "paying the price" for multiple audio tracks; it takes a few extra minutes, at $0 additional financial cost.

The rest is your parent justifying their job/industry as if they're a Godsend–perhaps as compared to cable? It's an indefensible position thus far. The streaming services are all trash with pathetic bitrates; all streams average the same ridiculously low bitrate over the entire stream, without accounting for dark scenes that require orders of magnitude more bandwidth. Every Netflix (and competitors') 1080p streams with dark scenes are unwatchable. It's highway robbery to deliver what looks like 180p frames for a 1080p stream. We're supposed to be at 4K these days, yet they can't even deliver acceptable 1080p. Until the streaming services are willing to stop compressing everything far beyond watchable levels, they don't deserve anyone's business. Netflix, I believe, averages ~3-5 GB for a 90-120 minute movie? That number should be, at least via opt-in to those with the bandwidth for it, 20-40+ GB.

I don't necessarily expect fully uncompressed Blu-ray quality, but the standard should be to deliver something watchable, without banding artifacts. At a minimum that would mean massively variable bitrates, where the highest bitrate of a stream should be allowed to be 10-20x+ its minimum bitrate. Compressing a 60+ GB original file into a download of than 5 GB is flat out unacceptable and unjustifiable.

[zbobet2012]

Netflix and other (similar) streaming services which user per-title encoding technologies deliver a harmonic mean PSNR of greater than 45 and greater than 94 VMAF on their highest rendition, which most well connected users pull. This is visually indistinguishable from a lossless encode.

Complaining about the _size_ or _bitrate_ of encoded file isn't worthwhile. Encoding technology has advanced substantially since blue-ray days and we simply no longer needs the 40mbps bitrate.

Indeed HEVC can offer a mathematically lossless encode at around 90mbps for most content.

[krageon]

I'm sure you're very knowledgeable and correct about a lot of things, but where your argumentation falls down most is user experience.

A concrete example: You say here that what Netflix provides is "visually indistinguishable from a lossless encode". Try actually doing this with an open mind and then make this claim again. It was definitely not the case when I last tried it (very recently).

Argumentation of this nature is sort of endemic in the tech industry: "You think you see or experience this, but I know what you see and experience and you are wrong". It happens in discussions about battery life, visual appeal of different encoding options, basically anything which is at some point subjective and while the people claiming to see a difference could be (factually) wrong in a lot of cases (I often cannot tell), it is very arrogant to sit/stand there and tell them that you know better than them what they see.

[dual_basis]

But what about when it has been tested and proven that people cannot discern the difference? I don't know if this is what was done with the per-title encoding that the parent comment was referring to, but I know it is the situation with audio. So many audiophiles swear they can hear a difference between FLAC and high quality VBR MP3, but it has been repeatedly demonstrated that, when presented with both, humans cannot distinguish them better than chance.

[krageon]

> But what about when it has been tested and proven that people cannot discern the difference?

The way people perceive (and how to measure it) is in fact not a solved problem. There are studies done and we can often say with a high degree of certainty that something is probably not visible/distinguishable, but claiming something like that for everyone is too strong and also misrepresenting the state of our learning.

[developer2]

Huh? Open Netflix and play any recently added 1080p stream that contains dark scenes. Those scenes are literally unwatchable. I don't mean "not perfect". I mean they look like they were encoded with a 256 color palette. Bitrate is what matters–even with current codecs used by streaming services–and they do not provide something watchable.

[zbobet2012]

VLC works for the subset of subtitles you, an English speaking user, uses. VLC subtitle support does not support things like ASA or EBU subtitles which are used in other parts of the world. In addition rendering of those subtitles is very constrained. These can be added or configured of course.

Secondary audio is not only additional languages but things like descriptive video services (narration for the blind). VLC does not generally support having multiple active audio tracks without flagging things on the command line.

[mijamo]

Arabic/chinese/japanse subtitles work perfectly in VLC work perfectly and look much nicer tahn on Netflix for instance.

I have never seen descriptive video services in any streaming service so I very much doubt it is a major issue, and even in that case why wouldn't you be able to mix it with the main track in a separate channel (which is what is done on TV, as TV does not support multiple active tracks either) ?

[zzo38computer]

Even so, being able to mix the premixed descriptive video track with the normal audio track may still be helpful to users who want different mixing levels than what they used (because sometimes the music is too quiet, for example). (I don't like descriptive video so much myself, but some people do use it, and so may wish to alter the setting.)

[afiori]

> I have never seen descriptive video services in any streaming service

netflix has them

[fooker]

What if some particular video doesn't? If I have a file I can download a .srt and have the video player display it.

[imtringued]

How are they constrained? I remember this HN submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19150484 Basically the entire video is contained in the subtitles.