Retina screen and streaming video content

[Laupala]

This may be a silly question (I'm not terribly tech savvy) but will the retina screen make a big difference in terms of the quality of video streamed from sites like Hulu or Netflix? Or is that quality more limited by bandwidth/the source material isn't high quality enough for a retina screen?

Thanks (and might I add that the posters on this site, from my brief perusal of it, seem to be much kinder to incessant questions from novices than other forums I frequent, I applaud you!)

 

[dagamer34]

No. The quality of streaming video always leaves something more to be desired.

 

[skywalkerr69]

Nope just in pictures gaming etc

 

[Stetrain]

There won't be a big difference in resolution (sharpness) because of bandwidth constraints.

The new display does however have better contrast, darker blacks, and better viewing angles:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5998/macbook-pro-retina-display-analysis

 

[Xcelerate]

No. The quality of streaming video always leaves something more to be desired.

Haha, really. I think the next big industry "thing" will be uncompressed video.

(Tangent-)
What's interesting is that a lot of people think 1080p is 1080p regardless of where it came from. This isn't true. 1920x1080 is very rarely the actual resolution of what's playing on television. For one thing true optical resolution is measured by a series of tests, often involving the number of distinguishable lines. H.264 (the compression algorithm used in pretty much everything nowadays) has different profiles that remove some of the high frequency picture information and motion detail. Not to mention most footage is shot on a camera that uses a Bayer filter, which means color information is interpolated (guessed) from nearby pixels.

All in all, the actual resolution of most content you see on television is a bit of a disappointment. Blu-rays are pretty good, although I doubt they reach 1080 vertical lines. The stuff that streams from content providers -- rubbish. If you watched raw uncompressed RED 4k footage downsampled using a high quality, sinc-based filter, you would be blown away by how amazing it looks on just an ordinary TV.

Of course, most TVs aren't even color-calibrated correctly, but that's a different story.

 

[dagamer34]

Haha, really. I think the next big industry "thing" will be uncompressed video.

(Tangent-)
What's interesting is that a lot of people think 1080p is 1080p regardless of where it came from. This isn't true. 1920x1080 is very rarely the actual resolution of what's playing on television. For one thing true optical resolution is measured by a series of tests, often involving the number of distinguishable lines. H.264 (the compression algorithm used in pretty much everything nowadays) has different profiles that remove some of the high frequency picture information and motion detail. Not to mention most footage is shot on a camera that uses a Bayer filter, which means color information is interpolated (guessed) from nearby pixels.

All in all, the actual resolution of most content you see on television is a bit of a disappointment. Blu-rays are pretty good, although I doubt they reach 1080 vertical lines. The stuff that streams from content providers -- rubbish. If you watched raw uncompressed RED 4k footage downsampled using a high quality, sinc-based filter, you would be blown away by how amazing it looks on just an ordinary TV.

Of course, most TVs aren't even color-calibrated correctly, but that's a different story.

1) Blu-ray can store 1080 lines, but aspect ratios mean than not all 1080 lines are used.
2) You aren't going to see uncompressed video anywhere outside of going from a camera to some professional hi-res codec like ProRes or when a CGI movie is being rendered before final compression.
3) It really doesn't take a high bitrate to get good web video, like 3-4Mbit/sec for 720p and 7-8Mbit/sec for 1080p. But the problem is finding someone to serve you that much data, and it's usually a paid service.

 

[Xcelerate]

1) Blu-ray can store 1080 lines, but aspect ratios mean than not all 1080 lines are used.
2) You aren't going to see uncompressed video anywhere outside of going from a camera to some professional hi-res codec like ProRes or when a CGI movie is being rendered before final compression.
3) It really doesn't take a high bitrate to get good web video, like 3-4Mbit/sec for 720p and 7-8Mbit/sec for 1080p. But the problem is finding someone to serve you that much data, and it's usually a paid service.

1) I don't understand what this really has to do with optically measurable resolution...
2) True but doesn't invalidate my point
3) 7 Mbps is 426.5 times smaller than uncompressed 1080p60. I guarantee you, even someone with the worst eyesight can easily tell the difference (even using a compressor like x264 with Psy optimizations).

I have the H.264 standard sitting on my desk at the moment as I do quite a bit of programming involving codecs and video.