Advantage of lower resolution higher bitrate files?

[deadman]

I thought you might have some thoughts on this topic, deadman.

Most movies and shows you don't want to keep permanently.

It has taken me decades (dating back to the VHS era) to just begin to START admitting that to myself ...

I moved a few years back - that's when you realize just how much shit you've kept in your closets and stashed in the basement that you should've known you were never going to use, but hey ... you had the space so why throw it out?

There's less physical labor involved in cleaning out a hard drive but it's every bit as tedious. Don't keep everything just because you've got plenty of space at the moment. Don't do it! You'll be sorry!!!

[Night457]

I moved frequently as a child, and hated it, so as an adult I stayed put and gathered moss. And a lot of now mostly useless stuff.

My hard drives all fit in two shoe boxes, so they don't take up much space. The oldest ones are the painfully slow USB-2.0. Why would I want to reuse them for new files when it takes so long to transfer a file onto it? It is easier to just buy another, and it would be the faster 3.0. As it stands, I have (... counts ...) EIGHT hard drives that cover my time at FLM, and 3 of them are 4Tb drives. (This does not include the one drive I dropped 3 months after getting it, and the files are inaccessible.) I "have" to keep all of them so I can reshare files as needed. Just because *I* may not watch something again does not mean someone else doesn't want it!

As for the physical media, there is always eBay. My holding onto much of it does not benefit anyone. (But there are very few videotapes still in demand, just some of the rarer stuff.)

[kast1j]

I'm as bemused as you are with this kind of thing.

If you're watching on a smaller screen ie laptop/tablet/phone then smaller resolution/higher bitrate is the better option (720p with 5000kbps bitrate will most likely look better on my laptop than 1080[ with 2500kbps) but if you've got a big screen then you want better resolution to reduce the space between the pixels and there is a limit to how low you want to go with the bitrate.

If I were to watch something on my 55" TV I'd favour high bitrate 1080 over low bitrate 4K but if the bitrate is the same you want higher resolution.

And that is about the limit of my knowledge on the subject. If someone who knows more could offer thoughts, that might well be helpful.

I commented on this recently in the thread for Tigermilch, and I agree. Lower resolution and/or bitrate is good for watching movies on phones or tablets - something I tend not to do, because .... why would you do that? I've used a tablet on airplanes. That's it.

With a small screen, you can't really tell the difference between mediocre quality and top notch. If you're watching a 55" 4K screen on the other hand you want the best resolution and bitrate possible. Those 1.5 GB bluray rips aren't so good. With a brightly lit and mostly static scene it looks alright, but a dark scene or one with rapidly moving people or objects you can get blurring and pixelation. Some backgrounds also pixelate the image. Hard to say why.

If you're cursed with super slow internet, low bitrate and reduced resolution versions may be the only option. Otherwise download the best quality you can find and delete it afterward. Most movies and shows you don't want to keep permanently. View them and then feed them to the recycling bin, so they're not sitting on your hard drive just taking up space.

This is so true. I struggle with getting rid of things because of OCD but I do my best not to keep stuff I won't rewatch and the things I will I try to get in the best quality possible.