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Free HGO Go I got from T-Mobile got switched to HBO Max. I'm watching Godzilla vs. Kong on it and I'm not sure if I even want to, because it just doesn't look good. It says it's 4k but I feel like even a 4k YT video looks better.

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Why do people stream?!? I have a streaming service for free and I'm still disappointed.

Bruh, the higher quality reveals the flaws. His mouth looks like it's from a video game.

Trade off: higher quality makes flaws and imperfections more visible.
This looks like a standard game ground texture.

And I think I just noticed Kong's movement is choppy :lul:

:drake_dislike: Enjoying a movie
:drake_like: Ignoring a movie and looking for technical details and flaws

Oh yeah all the Godzilla movies are shit but it's fun seeing big monsters fight

@newt I think VLC messed up the screenshot. On my screen they both look the same.

@r000t I don't know how to on HBO Max, but articles says h264 7-10Mbps. The Bluray encode here is h265 30Mbps.

@r000t Looking at the network tab in dev tools, each video file it transfer has about 2,2MB so I guess that's the bitrate. I think it's really serving me lower quality 1080p because of my 1080p screen.

@r000t Nope. I downloaded the encrypted video file and media info says

@matrix
.... Are they just encrypting the video stream and not the container?

@r000t
Looks like it. All the streaming services use Widewine, but I'm not sure if it's the same everywhere or it's just HBO's implementation.

@matrix
Here's what I don't get

My GNU/compatible Firefox plays widevine content. How has widevine not been reverse engineered yet?

@r000t @matrix Most likely a patent/trademark reason, rather than a technical reason.

@r000t
What do you mean reverse engineered? People already know how to get the key and decrypt it.

@matrix @r000t Do you mean the hardware mode of operation has been cracked? I thought that relied on trusted execution cpu stuff that couldn't be trivially defeated.

The software has little practical value though.

@roboneko
No. I was sorta wrong since I wasn't sure. After looking up some stuff doesn't seem like the DRM was reversed engineered however streaming services use only level L3 which is done in software and you can hook into the browser and dump the keys.
@r000t

@r000t @matrix

> GNU/compatible Firefox

The browser downloads an opaque blob to process the DRM content with. This was highly controversial a few years back when it got incorporated into the spec. You can disable this "feature" under settings.
@r000t @matrix DRM is like that these days. HDCP is similar, if you grab the frame buffer there will be a rectangle that's either a black box or full of noise. Shits fucking retarded and now they've been adding support to the Linux kernel. Media companies need to die.

@roboneko @matrix that's the weird thing tho

I've captured widevine "protected" content with OBS, no problem, no workarounds required. It Just Works(tm). I even have a "Just Pirating" preset for OBS.

That said, if there's a way for, say, yt-dlp to grab the keys out of memory and grab the raw stream, I'd like that just a bit more.

@r000t @matrix I think that's due to software level implementation being used. Probably your distro hasn't gained support for the API for encrypting regions of the framebuffer yet. So once decoded it's sitting there free to grab.

Even once that API support lands as long as it isn't backed by GPU hardware attestation you will be able to fake it out with a custom kernel module or driver modification that misreports the status. However I expect the "feature" will eventually gain hardware level integrity similar to trusted execution on the CPU.

All of this is presumably a large part of why methods without hardware support are often not allowed to access the highest resolution streams. But even so you're still limited to recording as it plays back with such an approach and you have to reencode everything once you capture it. Better to grab the keys and use the original stream.

@matrix
Same problem had been bserved in 3D and 60FPS movies.

Tragic, but not critical. It just means, that people must be careful of detail in different places.

@matrix maybe blur+aa, is the camera rotating or moving? Is it a particle effect? Some of those are kinda 2d... Wait this is a show?

@coyote
Godzilla vs Kong
It's a reflection of Godzilla's breath. Yeah, camera is moving.

@matrix My gut tells me it's an effect on top of an effect but I can't be sure, moving cameras could do a lot if they try to add blur to the fx.. Dunno :p
@matrix resolution doesn’t mean much. Look at the bitrate. Many streaming services overcompress video to fit higher resolution into lower bandwidth. If your “4k” is under 12megabits/s, it’s probably not worth watching.
@matrix that is if it’s a movie. Relatively simple cartoons like South Park can be compressed very well. Anyway, my rule of thumb is 4 megabits for 1080p, 12 megabits for 4k, assuming h264 codec. Slash that by 1.5x for h265, probably. We targeted these numbers for good quality when I worked for a streaming company.

@newt I know. Everywhere a higher resolution means higher bitrate.
So it seems that HBO Max uses h264 and 4k is between 7-10Mbps.
It's also possible it just refuses to serve me the 4k stream because I have a 1080p display.

@newt @matrix 12 Mbps of h.265 would probably look pretty good depending on encoding settings. However, if you get a scene with a lot of detail and movement like a fight scene in Godzilla vs. King Kong it wouldn't be enough for 4K and you'd lose a lot of detail and possibly even get some artifacting.

Digital cable TV is even worse. I swear their encoding settings are h.264 CBR 2500k with the ultrafast preset. It looks okayish for stuff like Law and Order but if you try to watch sports or an action movie there are artifacts all over the place. And this is just regular cable TV these days.

Normies just don't seem to notice tho.

@sjw
The thing that absolutely killed it for me in this movie is some of the low light scenes. The transitions between grays combined with the noise looked just awful. Plus stuff like leaves or Kong's hair.
I have no clue how normies don't notice.
I was super excited when finally land TV got an upgrade, because with DVB-T we used like h263 6k 540p, text on the news was barely readable. Now it's h265 8k 1080p, but apparently nobody in my family noticed.
@newt

@sjw
Yeah. Compared to that streaming feels like cinema quality
@newt

@sjw @matrix yeah, I know. Encoding dynamic scenes is actually hard as fuck. Ideally, you'd need to insert a new key frame on every cut, but that's gonna make your stream bloated. And also requires some content recognition.

We tried doing that, but then I quit the company. And then they went out of business, last I checked :comfyjoy:
@matrix I get HBO from AT&T :att:

I just started watching Our Flag Means Death
https://play.hbomax.com/page/urn:hbo:page:GYf3LzwJV98JifQEAAAAO:type:series

It's based on the story of Stede Bonbet
https://youtu.be/vrGf4nJWVOU

So far it's pretty good
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