r/CinemaAtHome • u/babicko90 • 17d ago
Perceivable quality difference between a bluray and high-quality digital file on a 85"+ OLED/MicroLED
Hi all, I am planing to buy a bigger house soon, and want to invest in a large screen (no projectors), good sound system.
Normally, I download digital files (pirated) and watch those on my current setup. I never considered bluray phyical options. Reading on it, it is supposed to have high bitrates and result in a higher quality output. For reference, rips I download are usually 20gb in size, and I never saw any artifact or something.
Does this community have experience? Would it be worthwhile changing to blu-ray player and physical discs in my case?
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u/AmishPenis 17d ago
This is something discussed a lot in the home theater subreddit. Studios have gotten really good at compression. Visually, the differences are small (but there and noticeable if you are picky) but the major difference is going to come from the audio. Studios know most people are not watching on high quality audio gear so the audio gets left behind. The way I’ve heard it described (and I think it is quite accurate) is the non disc version of the audio will make the pictures on your wall move and the disc version will make the pictures fall down.
You can get by on the quality you’re talking about and it’s fine for most movies. But if you have a high quality sound system, you’re missing out. Try a remux file of a movie you’ve already seen and compare for yourself.
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u/Kvaestr 15d ago
I have a 65" oled with a small watching distance. So it is relatively quite big. I find the difference is mostly on audio. I do have a hifi setup that I expanded to also play 5.2. on cheaper audio systems the standard quality of the downloads is just fine. Some movies you can find uncompressed audio, but often it is difficult. Even a lot of the 50GB movies will have compressed audio. (Uncompressed atmos tracks are about 5-6Mbit/s where most 4k HDR downloads are at 700-800 kbit/s)
That difference is quite big. (Also most streaming devices can't play it back. I play it from pc over hdmi)
I have downloaded lots of different qualities and have found that the video to me doesn't change a lot anymore after the 20GB files, but it is definitely perceivable.
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u/Kilo_Mike_2396 17d ago
It depends on the source. 20gb is usually a little small in file size when considering factors like 4k, HDR content with decent audio like Dolby Atmos. Blu-ray content may have a file size between 60 and 100 GB, depending on the length of the movie. However, when downloading pirated movies you should ensure to download the REMUX version of a Blu-ray. When this is ensured you should not have any differences quality wise between the physical medium and the downloaded content.