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The deception of “buying” digital movies

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Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#91

Post by nsxwolf »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #72
nsxwolf wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have much physical media since finally going 4K HDR, but so far my experience hasn't been great. I purchased the Mission:Impossible boxed set, and it came with a download code to use on iTunes. The discs look like trash. Noisy, grainy, just bad. The iTunes versions look phenomenal. It would be nice if there was a way to know how good the quality of a particular release is before buying it. Reviews I read don'…

"Noisy, grainy, just bad." AKA, it was shot on film. Film has film grain, which can only be removed by Digital Noise Reduction. DNR removes film grain, but also scrubs away detail and can leave waxy faces among other artifacts, as well as a fairly artificial and non-cinematic look. Film grain compresses very badly over streaming, so DNRing the streaming version before compression is probably what you are seeing. In t…

Which explains the downvotes I'm getting. I've apparently angered the cinephiles.

Edit: I'm bemused that my subjective personal preferences have made multiple people this upset.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#92

Post by fein »

alex_suzuki wrote: post #15
fbanon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still alive and kicking. You just need to know where to look.

TPB has added really annoying “on-click” BS lately, super shady. Any alternatives you might have heard of? Not for me, for a friend of course…

qbittorrent + jackett. Click on however many pub trackers you want to search in jackett then set the search plugin on qbit to point to your jackett instance.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#93

Post by BiteCode_dev »

IYasha wrote: post #53
kalleboo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have DRM attached and need to be played on a computer that has logged in to your iTunes account and been "blessed". But unless something has changed, as long as you keep that computer offline it will be able to play those videos in eternity. You can un-bless all your other computers (as you can only have 5 computers blessed at once) but I guess if the other computers are offline they can keep playing old downloa…

> But unless something change :)

Found the spartan.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#94

Post by kranke155 »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #72
nsxwolf wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have much physical media since finally going 4K HDR, but so far my experience hasn't been great. I purchased the Mission:Impossible boxed set, and it came with a download code to use on iTunes. The discs look like trash. Noisy, grainy, just bad. The iTunes versions look phenomenal. It would be nice if there was a way to know how good the quality of a particular release is before buying it. Reviews I read don'…

"Noisy, grainy, just bad." AKA, it was shot on film. Film has film grain, which can only be removed by Digital Noise Reduction. DNR removes film grain, but also scrubs away detail and can leave waxy faces among other artifacts, as well as a fairly artificial and non-cinematic look. Film grain compresses very badly over streaming, so DNRing the streaming version before compression is probably what you are seeing. In t…

It’s funny if the poster is actually complaining about grain. Digital compression, like the one that Netflix uses, will often clean up the image of grain as a secondary effect of the compression algo.

Essentially grain is a lot of detail that video compression algorithms have been taught to ignore/remove. H.264 was notorious for virtually removing all grain making it impossible to have authentic film grain on YouTube for years. (I work in advertising).

Exactly like you said - grain is a common first victim of video compression.

The other curious thing - modern movies that are shot on film / have grain actually get it removed during VFX stages. You have to do it so you can integrate CGI - grain is usually “sampled” first by the compositing software (The Foundry’s Nuke in 99% of occasions) and removed since the CGI image won’t have any grain from the CG renderer so you have to integrate it onto a denoised image. You then re add it at the end!

Using the same software you then re-add the sampled noise back onto the image, and since you’ve now integrated the CGI, the noise goes on top of everything helping it all get integrated.

Just saying this because you are right - using noise reduction to remove film grain for release is considered a sin (I myself would agree with the sentiment). Yet actually most films today will go through some denoise stage in VFX. Which is an interesting thing to think about - we actually remove the grain for a lot of the work then re add to keep the filmic texture.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#95

Post by barelysapient »

the_af wrote: post #40
abraxas wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately geolocking isn't new or unique to the pure bits movie format. DVDs were regionally locked as well and even analog media like VHS tapes used color encoding formats that were specific in different regions (NTSC vs PAL vs SECAM). That said, the situation is quite a bit worse now as the modern DRM is harder to circumvent and geolocking more granular than ever before. But the intent to lock us down was alway…

> DVDs were regionally locked as well To be fair, those of us who tend to complain about these things also raised hell about DVDs back then. Geo-locking is such an obviously bad idea for consumers. It was such a relief when the restrictions were hacked away (was it that an encryption key got leaked? I don't remember the details).

And let's not forget, that if you brought your DVD player with you, you could still play your DVD's no matter what region you were physically in.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#96

Post by gjsman-1000 »

Liquix wrote: post #82
abraxas wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately geolocking isn't new or unique to the pure bits movie format. DVDs were regionally locked as well and even analog media like VHS tapes used color encoding formats that were specific in different regions (NTSC vs PAL vs SECAM). That said, the situation is quite a bit worse now as the modern DRM is harder to circumvent and geolocking more granular than ever before. But the intent to lock us down was alway…

Anyone interested in the history of DVD DRM / region locking may be interested in the "illegal number": a hex code which defeated DVD AACS encryption, prompting an attempt by the industry to surpress it across the internet, leading to a streisand effect and the end of effective DVD DRM. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controve...

That was a leaked Blu-ray Processing Key that was quickly revoked - but the industry was livid that it was allowed to propagate before they could revoke it (which takes 90 days). This means, ultimately, that if you have a player that hasn't had a Blu-ray Disc made since 2008 inserted into it, and are trying to decrypt a disc made before ~2008, then maybe with the right tools you could. It's a shallow victory meaningless nowadays.

[Even then, a Processing Key isn't nearly as interesting as a Device Key, plenty of which have been leaked since without much attention. Blu-ray has so many keys...]

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#97

Post by metalliqaz »

awoimbee wrote: post #57
jijji wrote: post #6

whatever happened to downloading a mp4 torrent of the movie and watching it instantly whenever you want?

Then the TV show you love gets cancelled because everyone is pirating it. I guess it's the fault of the studios for pushing us towards piracy, but it's a shame.

The best anti-piracy tool of all time was old Netflix. Then they had to go and screw it up. Yearrrrgh!

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#98

Post by hatware »

Last year, I bought a blu-ray player and two blu-rays to see if buying the media was worth it. At the very least, I'd have alternatives in case power goes out for an extended time. One of the blu-rays I bought was It's a Wonderful Life.

At the penultimate scene, with the bell ringing on the tree when George is back home with his family, the blu-ray just stopped, glitched out, and I could not get it to play properly. Something to do with firmware and others were experiencing similar issues.

I tried! It's incredible that even when you follow all the rules, you still get the shaft.

Never again.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#99

Post by dfxm12 »

josh_fyi wrote: post #10

Has anyone tried a legal challenge to the word "buy"? It seems like a straightforward case of misrepresentation.

I don't know if this is exactly the same thing, but this ruling from the EU, coming from reselling oracle licenses, comes to mind: https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/201...

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#100

Post by justsomehnguy »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #72
nsxwolf wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have much physical media since finally going 4K HDR, but so far my experience hasn't been great. I purchased the Mission:Impossible boxed set, and it came with a download code to use on iTunes. The discs look like trash. Noisy, grainy, just bad. The iTunes versions look phenomenal. It would be nice if there was a way to know how good the quality of a particular release is before buying it. Reviews I read don'…

"Noisy, grainy, just bad." AKA, it was shot on film. Film has film grain, which can only be removed by Digital Noise Reduction. DNR removes film grain, but also scrubs away detail and can leave waxy faces among other artifacts, as well as a fairly artificial and non-cinematic look. Film grain compresses very badly over streaming, so DNRing the streaming version before compression is probably what you are seeing. In t…

I'm not a collector, but I hate vaxy faces. Which is also the reason I could spot CGI for years, until we had the ability to simulate even a pores of skin, but then again it were tuned to 11 and I could spot it again.
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