This may be a stupid question, but I just got back into pirating some shows and movies and realize that many of the QxR files are much smaller than what I downloaded in the past. Is it likely that I am sacrificing a noticeable amount of quality if I replace my files with the smaller QxR ones?

For example, I have Spirited Away from 2017 at 9.83 GB, but I see the QxR is only 6.1 GB. I also have the office from 2019 and the entire show (no bonus content) is about 442 GB, while the QxR version is only 165.7 GB. Dates are what they are dated on my hard drive, can’t speak to their actual origin, but they would’ve been from RARBG. (Edit to add: I also can’t really speak to the quality of the downloads, back then I was just grabbing whatever was available at a reasonable size, so I wasn’t deliberately seeking out high quality movies and shows - a simple 1080p in the listing was enough for me).

I did some side by side on episodes of the Office (on my PC with headphones, nothing substantial), and I don’t notice any differences between the two.

Thoughts on this? Are people better at ripping/compressing/whatever now that they can do so at a smaller size without sacrificing noticeable quality?

  • 0x4E4FEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Yeah, I can related to that 😔. I work in a TV station in a country that had the PAL standard, and… well, every fucking shot is interlaced 🤦. Not only that, but the output from the station is as well 🤦. Why? Backwards compatibility… what in the actual fuck 🤦… it’s a stream, the decoder doesn’t care about that, it can decode any frame rate, any frame type, it’s all digital now 🤦. Tried explaining this, nope, we’re still doing interlaced.

    And, of course, after the cable companies have their way with the signal, the output is shit… not to mention they also archive the material as interlaced 🤦… and then people from outside the station complain about the matrial being garbidge… they still don’t budge.

    Just goes to show you what management is all about these days. They have the power, so they’re gonna use it any way they see fit. Why? Cuz they’re THE BOSS GOD DAMN IT 😠.

      • 0x4E4FEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Lol 😂. Actually, it doesn’t take 3 seconds (well, 3 seconds for the stream output, yeah), there are workstations that need to be adjusted as well, but in a course if a day or 2, yeah, you can change the whole thing 👍. You could do the cameras last, that’s not such a big problem, they can shoot interlaced for a few days, edit it that way, export it non-interlaced.