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    Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

    (tedium.co)
    641 points shortformblog | 12 comments | 05 Feb 25 14:47 UTC | HN request time: 0.229s | source | bottom
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    lxgr ◴[05 Feb 25 15:40 UTC] No.42950057[source]▶
    Old movies have been available on various "free ad-supported streaming television" for a while now, so I'm actually more surprised it took copyright holders that long to realize that Youtube also shows ads and doesn't require people to install some wonky app that might or might not be available for their platform.

    Of course, region-specific copyright deals are incredibly complex etc. etc., so I could imagine it was just a matter of waiting out until the last person putting up a veto retired or moved on to other things.

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    SteveNuts ◴[05 Feb 25 16:17 UTC] No.42950694[source]▶
    I assume that bandwidth is by far the biggest cost for running your own streaming service, so letting Google take that hit makes a lot of sense.
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    TuringNYC ◴[05 Feb 25 18:37 UTC] No.42953063[source]▶
    >> I assume that bandwidth is by far the biggest cost for running your own streaming service, so letting Google take that hit makes a lot of sense.

    Judging from the clunky, buggy, nonsensical experiences on 2nd tier streaming services (i.e., everything except Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Disney+, Max), I'd say the biggest cost is probably hiring a decent Engineering+Product+Test team. There are complexities here, like making these things work on different TV brands, versions, older models, etc.

    Pushing all the complexity to YT seems like a total no-brainer.

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    jmholla ◴[05 Feb 25 18:51 UTC] No.42953291[source]▶
    > Judging from the clunky, buggy, nonsensical experiences on 2nd tier streaming services (i.e., everything except Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Disney+, Max)

    With the exception of Netflix, these other companies' apps are similarly buggy and painful to use. I run into an at least issue daily (usually multiple times a day) in every streaming app I use except Netflix.

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    deelowe ◴[05 Feb 25 19:30 UTC] No.42953820[source]▶
    I LOATHE peacock. I don't know what checks they do at the start of the stream, but they always peg me at 720p or lower resolution despite having over 300mb. Its not an issue on any other streaming app and they give you no option to set it manually. Streams look like a dog's breakfast on my 4k TVs.
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    1. znpy ◴[05 Feb 25 20:12 UTC] No.42954447[source]▶
    Maybe the issue is on their side. Their best outcome is you paying for 4k hdr and streaming 720p. Bandwidth is expensive and slow to provision.
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    2. Dylan16807 ◴[05 Feb 25 21:06 UTC] No.42955122[source]▶
    > Bandwidth is expensive and slow to provision.

    Not enough to hurt a paid service. Let's say 6Mbps for pretty solid 1080p. And at peak maybe we have .5 streams per account going simultaneously (I bet the real number is significantly lower). So we need 3Mbps per account. How much does a Mbps cost? "Across key cities in the U.S. and Europe, 400 GigE prices range from $0.07 to $0.08 per Mbps."

    Peacock doesn't even offer 4K most of the time or on the olympics, but for services that do a $1 upcharge should be more than enough to cover the bandwidth difference.

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    3. lostlogin ◴[05 Feb 25 22:05 UTC] No.42955947[source]▶
    I laughed.

    Netflix 4K is some bs in my experience. A 4K file of the same show, pirated, is vastly better quality. Whatever they do to it is just vandalism.

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    4. throwaway287391 ◴[06 Feb 25 00:04 UTC] No.42957206[source]▶
    IME Netflix is a close 2nd best after Apple, which I don't think I can distinguish from a 4K BluRay. I've found that the quality depends on the platform a little -- for Netflix the native LG app seems to look best on my LG TV, while Apple looks best on the Apple TV app (perhaps unsurprisingly).

    Amazon Prime 4K HDR on the other hand looks like garbage on every platform I've used -- the compression is unbearable in any dark scene.

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    5. lfam ◴[06 Feb 25 01:15 UTC] No.42957744[source]▶
    4K doesn't really say anything about image quality, just the resolution of the picture, which tells you the theoretical maximum level of visual detail.

    Focusing on resolution is like asking "how strong is one meter of rope" without talking about the composition of the rope.

    With streaming video, image quality ultimately comes down to the codec and the bitrate. They probably use a relatively low bitrate regardless of codec.

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    6. deelowe ◴[06 Feb 25 01:37 UTC] No.42957892[source]▶
    I'd be happy with 1080p.
    7. dylan604 ◴[06 Feb 25 02:15 UTC] No.42958189[source]▶
    Who does 6Mbps for 1080p? I thought HD topped out at 3Mbps, and 4K was around the 6+Mbps
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    8. Dylan16807 ◴[06 Feb 25 02:37 UTC] No.42958337{3}[source]▶
    Twitch is typically 6Mbps+ and 1080p, though with more time to encode you can get the same quality out of fewer bits. Netflix can go up to about 20Mbps for 4K if my searches can be believed, but I didn't test it myself. When I've grabbed videos off Nebula they're a lot bigger than youtube; one here that doesn't even have much motion is 4Mbps at 1080p. And crunchyroll has a lot of 8Mbps at 1080p.

    But acceptable quality can definitely go smaller. Especially if "acceptable" is judged by the significant compression artifacts I see on actual cable TV all the time.

    9. iinnPP ◴[06 Feb 25 15:33 UTC] No.42963328{3}[source]▶
    Bitrate can be massive with a low quality video so that also doesn't tell you much.
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    10. mulderc ◴[06 Feb 25 19:08 UTC] No.42965449{3}[source]▶
    I would put Disney+ after apple. Both AppleTV+ and Disney+ consistently looks great to me. Netflix is strange as it generally looks good but whatever compression they use does something funny to the picture which makes it look fuzzy and sharp at the same time to me.
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    11. xp84 ◴[06 Feb 25 21:22 UTC] No.42966620{4}[source]▶
    Bitrate, resolution, and codec are all of course critical, and not knowing all three makes it impossible to judge how good or bad it will look. Sadly the resolution is the only one of the three that's easy to describe to consumers, so here we are.
    12. martinald ◴[06 Feb 25 21:54 UTC] No.42966875{4}[source]▶
    Netflix is actually the lowest bitrate offering.

    Netflix: 15-18 Mbps Disney+: 25-30 Mbps Amazon Prime Video: 15-18 Mbps Apple TV+: 25-40 Mbps HBO Max: 15-20 Mbps

    This is from an LLM but it tallies with what I remember reading. Apple TV is by far the best, followed by Disney+.

    Netflix unfortunately seem to use any improvement in compression encoding efficiency to reduce bitrates, rather than improve PQ at the same bitrate. It's definitely got worse over time. I also remember reading that for content they deem more compressible they use a lower bitrate.

    I can sort of get that on the lower plans, but its frustrating they won't improve PQ (or at least keep it the same) for the (expensive) 4K plan.