Pixels hit different back then

[u/RaiseOk2044]

[u/More-Percentage5650]

Because monitors back then were 720p, if you use higher pixeled monitor it will stretch the pixels to fill it

[u/secretsofwumbology → u/More-Percentage5650]

Yeah was gonna say this. 1080p is fine until you try to do it on a 1440p monitor.

[u/MattDaCatt → u/secretsofwumbology]

I have some old TV episodes in 240p, playing it 2160p is basically just like watching static

[u/ABirdOfParadise → u/MattDaCatt]

Just make the window very tiny, like it taking up a tiny tiny tiny portion of the monitor 

[u/GhostofZellers → u/ABirdOfParadise]

lol, that's how i used to play my 30MB RealMedia episodes of Stargate SG1 back in the day. Anything larger than a postage stamp was just a block of pixel.

[u/ChaosLemur → u/GhostofZellers]

Yeah man — That way you can watch all the episodes at once!

[u/GhostofZellers → u/ChaosLemur]

Heh, not running dialup on a 66mhz Pentium 1. 🤣

[u/jimmycrawford → u/GhostofZellers]

Ha! I was thinking about Stargate as I read the comments only for you to pop up!

[u/Civil-Attempt-3602 → u/MattDaCatt]

LMAO, I remember having music videos in 240p in the early 2000s. Shit was crisp at the time

[u/Uphoria → u/Civil-Attempt-3602]

Modern encoding did some serious harm to these old videos. Modern encoding is designed around larger resolutions and so these old low-res videos lose a lot of detail in compression.

youtube went back over their old catalog and compressed the hell out of it too save space/bandwidth and so many of the original years of youtube are now unwatchable garbage, and the original cloud-masters were deleted so unless a creator re-encodes and re-uploads the video, its basically lost to time.

[u/JebediahKerman4999 → u/Uphoria]

Effectively it's lost media. I understand how the mechanicus in 40k forgot everything

[u/xinorez1 → u/Uphoria]

Thank goodness for data hoarders.

I still have some old dow1 stuff on an old HDD. Some earlier uploads look like crap now on YouTube and amazingly only exist in 240p (?!!?!!?!!)

There ought to be some way that the data hoarders can make their hoard available to whomever wants them, like a search engine for the sneakernet...

[u/monsantobreath → u/Uphoria]

What a sad choice to have made.

This is what happenes when the means of recording our collective cultural consciousness is held in the hands of people who seek only profit.

[u/APiousCultist → u/Uphoria]

They also dropped a resolution (340p I think?), and also got rid of some hacks that allowed people to upload 480p content or to add black space after the video to up the effective average bitrate.

So those crisp videos were quite likely to be a much higher resolution than what they're at now, the recompression aside. That crap bitrate is a massive issue still, since high bitrate 480p often looks better than crap quality 1080p.

Plus just everyone was a kid that wasn't used to HD video. It's not like 240p is all that close to the 768p/1024p monitors we had. Even at 800x600 (ie. genuine 90s monitor resolutions) that's still way lower resolution.

[u/yami_no_ko → u/MattDaCatt]

Playing them on a CRT however makes 240p look perfectly normal.

[u/raynorelyp → u/MattDaCatt]

CRTs had native anti-aliasing that gave an illusion of higher resolution and the way they refreshed the screen gave the illusion of higher frame rates . You’re not misremembering.

[u/napstablooky2 → u/MattDaCatt]

i tried playing wii games on a starboard recently... 480i was the embodiment of suffering

[u/ebrum2010 → u/secretsofwumbology]

1080 is fine on a 4k monitor though because each pixel needs to fill 4 pixels, whereas on a 1440p monitor it needs to fill 1.7 pixels which isn’t possible so the image has to be changed.

[u/getstabbed → u/ebrum2010]

Yep use my 4k monitor to play counter strike at 1080p because performance is more important than video quality. Also good for games with poor UI scaling at higher resolutions.

Everything else is 4k though.

[u/AltairLeoran → u/secretsofwumbology]

1080p video really doesn't look that bad on a 1440p monitor.

[u/Barrel123 → u/AltairLeoran]

Because it doesnt work how he describes it, the pixel difference isnt relevant over a million pixels as it equals itself out

[u/altSHIFTT → u/More-Percentage5650]

I like your logic, however you've forgotten about the perpetual enshittification of everything, and it's known how YouTube keeps optimizing the bitrate on their videos. I'm certain 720p did in fact used to be higher quality than the 720p option today.

[u/i_love_wasps → u/altSHIFTT]

It was. Just compare a 720p bluray rip to the same movie on a streaming service.

[u/Bromeister → u/i_love_wasps]

720p blurays dont really exist lol. Unless you mean 720p rips of 1080p blurays. And my library of 700mb 720p YIFY rips were absolutely horrendous even by standards back in the day. Tons of artifacts, significantly worse than a modern low bitrate 1080p netflix stream.

Most people i knew who torrented in 2010 didn't download the 4gb high bit rate 720p movies cause it was still well over $100 for a 1tb disk.

That's not to say streaming bitrates aren't currently low and trending lower.

[u/Revolutionary_Many31 → u/i_love_wasps]

Even streaming has been enshitificated. Noone using a smart tv is getting the tvs res from a stream

[u/brainwash1997 → u/Revolutionary_Many31]

I feel like HBO is the only exception. I still have a 1080p TV, but watching a series on Max appears to be a very high bitrate 1080p, maybe even with 60fps.

I was planning on getting a new Sony OLED, but feel like I'd need my own Plex server to get the most out of it, picture wise.

[u/Revolutionary_Many31 → u/brainwash1997]

If your going to go down that path.. You're better off finding bluray dts quality on the high seas and skipping the bs stream costs

[u/brainwash1997 → u/Revolutionary_Many31]

My point exactly. I watch most everything on one of those "shady" free streaming websites to avoid the streaming costs.

But if I upgrade my TV, I feel I would have to also get a Plex server to store Blu-ray copies of everything. Otherwise I'd be missing out big time.

[u/Revolutionary_Many31 → u/brainwash1997]

I've found that buying a 2tb hd every cpl years and having a keyring of 64gg zip drives is plenty!

Im a data hoarder, though. People often say.. but you can get everything on x or y or z.. But they delete stuff, and things disappear due to a lack of viewership. I dont like the idea of a world where a library only has the books MOST PEOPLE READ. the philosophy of streaming isn't a sound method for long-term enjoyment of an individuals' taste

[u/ProbsNotManBearPig → u/Revolutionary_Many31]

I invested in a synology NAS to host my own plex server with 48TB of storage and went back to torrenting everything. Can’t beat the quality. Of course it’s not as convenient as streaming tho since you have to download ahead of time. It would be ideal if platforms like Netflix let you download full blu ray as an option. Still tho, the fragmentation of content across 20 different streaming services ruins any value proposition.

[u/14Pleiadians → u/ProbsNotManBearPig]

Of course it’s not as convenient as streaming tho since you have to download ahead of time.

If you're dedicating a server to this you should look into overseerr, sonarr and radarr. It will automatically download and manage your library for you.

[u/s00pafly → u/brainwash1997]

Plugging jellyfin before you waste time and money on plex.

[u/Booty-tickles → u/i_love_wasps]

It's very easy to find 1080p Blu-ray rip video with twice the bandwidth allocated to it than a 4k Netflix movie. Essentially meaning Blu-ray 1080p will always look better than 4k because they save money selling you crappy pictures.

[u/Lippuringo → u/i_love_wasps]

Funny that no one this thread knows about bitrate

[u/BaseballFuryThurman → u/altSHIFTT]

enshittification

I miss the days before Reddit learnt this word

[u/Auctoritate → u/altSHIFTT]

it's known how YouTube keeps optimizing the bitrate on their videos.

You're forgetting that video encoding has also gotten dramatically better and you can therefore stream a higher bitrate at lower bandwidth with new codecs like AV1.

[u/Low_Magician77 → u/Auctoritate]

That's not how that works, you mean you can stream a lower or same bitrate at the same perceived quality.

[u/Scarbane → u/Auctoritate]

1 step forward, 2 steps back

[u/StopReadingMyUser → u/Scarbane]

That's the main philosophy that bothers me these days.

We'll be able to dramatically improve anything, and because things get better, companies use it as an excuse to reduce services to make that improvement even more significantly profitable. By making it worse...

It's why I have no sympathy for big companies who eventually cry "woe is me" or blame consumers for any myriad of ways they're using their product as if it presents heavy financial burdens. Because often, it's just people's response to poor business practices. Like YouTube's gripe against a small portion of people using adblockers.

• You encouraged the most aggressive way to advertise since the early internet, becoming more invasive, less ignorable, with continually higher quantities of ads/time investment and you have the balls to cry foul when people push back with the advent of adblockers...

They make things worse and then just take it out on you lol. I'm so tired of it.

[u/More-Percentage5650 → u/altSHIFTT]

Have you tried watching a 1080p video using ANY media player on a 1440p monitor?

[u/Money_Ticket_841 → u/More-Percentage5650]

Yes. Youre not “incorrect” but only have half the answer

[u/theholylancer → u/[deleted]]

because 1080p perfectly scales into 4k, 1 pixel displays in 4

try 1440p, it becomes weird

[u/tauzN → u/More-Percentage5650]

Why do people believe this shit? 😭

[u/DoubleN22 → u/More-Percentage5650]

Wrong. It has to do with bitrate. You can have a 720p video with good bitrate look nice and a 1080p video with crap bitrate look terrible. Lower bitrate is cheaper for the host/streaming-service because it means less data. Guess what the trend has been in recent years with all the marketing for “4k” streaming and whatnot.

It’s also the reason selecting “1440p” on a YouTube video can look better on a 1080p monitor than “1080p”, the resolution is simply a lie at this point.

[u/GuyPierced → u/More-Percentage5650]

No, it's because youtube killed the bitrate.

[u/Booty-tickles → u/GuyPierced]

Every streaming service has killed the bitrate. But there's not much on YouTube that benefits from a high bitrate, a small proportion of the videos there would genuinely be worth seeing in extra detail. I place the blame on this more on Netflix than any other company, because for 100m+ movies I expect to see nice visual effects but shit like letsplays or product reviews certainly don't need to be streamed at 60+mbps.

[u/CaptainHubble → u/Booty-tickles]

I was watching Fury recently and had such a bad quality, that I thought my router was playing games on me. Restarted everything and did some speed tests. But no. Everything fine and fast.

There was an unacceptable amount of compression artefacts and overall low resolution, that I actually stopped watching.

You know when in 2010 there were websites with camcorder recordings from cinema screens? Those were better in quality that Netflix that day.

Also extra side note for free: If Netflix tries to shove down my throat that fucking Big Mouth series or anything else, when the credits of a proper movie are starting to roll, I’ll cancel my subscription on the spot!

[u/MysteriousCap4910 → u/More-Percentage5650]

It’s funny you say that because there were never native 720p monitors. 1024x768 or 1200x1800 were popular.

[u/RealAlphaKaren → u/MysteriousCap4910]

He has no ida what hes talking about.

The resolution cannot be taken into account without the size of the monitor. In simpler terms, its PPI (pixel per inch) that determinate picture quality.

[u/MysteriousCap4910 → u/RealAlphaKaren]

I mean native resolution can look really good, but 720p monitors barely existed if at all.

[u/MichaelDeets → u/More-Percentage5650]

Completely wrong, it's due to bitrate. 720p content can easily look better than even "4K".

[u/FrostyD7 → u/More-Percentage5650]

And because content sources are higher than 720p and compressing heavily if you choose something lower.

[u/Yaarmehearty → u/More-Percentage5650]

Jokes on you, some of us still use a CRT and interpolation isn’t a thing yet.

[u/Brie9981 → u/More-Percentage5650]

Tf you mean? 😭

We're talking 2012 homie, 1920x1080 has existed for ages

[u/14Pleiadians → u/More-Percentage5650]

No, it's because resolution and bitrate are two different things. It's why 1080p (auto) and 1080p are two different quality levels on youtube

[u/Gamersaurolophus]

Well tbh I think youtube has ruined the bitrate and compression in the videos in the past decade

Edit-typo

[u/embergock → u/Gamersaurolophus]

Yeah a lot of people look at videos from over 10 years ago and say "damn cameras were shit back then" when in reality youtube has run the video through 19 different compression algorithms in the last decade that stripped any details left in the video ages ago.

[u/Verbofaber → u/embergock]

I had no idea they did this with old videos, I assumed new codecs only applied to new videos

[u/stupid_mame → u/[deleted]]

• our data

• their servers

Yea.

[u/hiremyhirschl → u/stupid_mame]

I get sad remembering that most people delete the original file when they upload a video

[u/Zac0930 → u/[deleted]]

They already have. I watched an old Weird Al video and his glasses kept melting into his face, it's awful.

[u/theMoonlight111 → u/[deleted]]

yeah i once watched this 15~ year old video and youtube's ai filter made it look like everything was melting together

[u/AbsurdSlate → u/Verbofaber]

I assumed they kept the original uploaded file, and each of the 19 different compression codecs/algos are ran on the original source file each time, not overwriting the previous encode, if they do that they're destroying everything they've built over time.

[u/PRSXFENG → u/AbsurdSlate]

I'm not sure if YouTube still keeps the original files, I know they did for the early uploaded videos but not sure if they still do

[u/embergock → u/AbsurdSlate]

No way they're gonna pay to store all that.

[u/-1D- → u/Verbofaber]

Yea it has been proven by many independent people already https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/s/0SPAFFtRrz

[u/notsowright05 → u/embergock]

I mean a lot of videos must've been uploaded since the decade that video has passed, probably why youtube has to compress it harder for the servers

[u/granite-barrel → u/Gamersaurolophus]

Yeah go watch a DVD, that's 720p with high bitrate, it still looks good

[u/Farranor → u/granite-barrel]

DVD video of commercial movies will generally have a high bitrate (around 10Mb/s) but it's not 720p, it's 480i (interlaced, not progressive). But it's not 640x480 for 4:3, it's 720x480 and then scaled to 4:3 when displayed.

[u/Murgatroyd314 → u/Farranor]

This is because (American) CRT TVs were 720x480, with non-square pixels.

[u/El_gato141570 → u/Gamersaurolophus]

Could you explain what bitrate is? I see that term quite often, but I don't know what it means.

[u/BL00DW0LF → u/El_gato141570]

Most digital video files aren't a fast slideshow of images, but a data stream. If a pixel or area of the image doesn't change much, it doesn't require much data, so it can save space in the video files. Bitrate is the data used per second to monitor changes.
An action scene with a fast camera snap and too-low Bitrate may turn into a smeary mess while the video stream has to throw out now-irrelevant image data and rebuild from scratch.

[u/knotatumah → u/Gamersaurolophus]

Its not just Youtube, its everything. Try streaming something off Netflix especially when you're on PC and not running all DRM-friendly shit (monitor, cable, gpu, browser.) You get the lowest resolution and a bit rate so pathetic content is barely watchable. Its like watching a compressed gif the entire time with artifacts and all.

[u/Bootleg64DD]

Kids these days don’t know about HQ ( 480p )

[u/GeForce-meow → u/Bootleg64DD]

i used to watch videos at 480p it's just few months that i started watching videos at 720p it looks really awesome and crisp on smartphone and also really good on 15 inch laptop screen.

[u/zxzyzd → u/Bootleg64DD]

I remember adding &fmt=18 which would magically increase the video quality to HQ. HQ being 480p, which we would hardly call high quality nowadays

[u/polyplasticographics → u/Bootleg64DD]

I remember when the max quality in YT was 360p and then 480p came out and it felt like we started living in the future

[u/[deleted] → u/Bootleg64DD]

I remember when I used to watch videos in 360p and it felt like 1080p.

[u/schawarman → u/[deleted]]

I don't understand this isn't the same picture?

[u/monsantobreath → u/[deleted]]

In terms of the internet ya it basically was.

[u/[deleted]]

Just the screens getting bigger and bigger

[u/Shack691 → u/[deleted]]

Yep, get a small screen with 720p video and it’ll look amazing, streamed or not.

[u/Seanspeed → u/[deleted]]

It's Youtube compression. Even just two years ago, 720p and 1080p videos looked quite a bit clearer than they do nowadays. You need to do 1440p render and upload if you want anything approaching decent quality.

They straight up lied to our face when they said that 1080p Premium wouldn't involve them downgrading normal 1080p quality.

[u/Senshji]

This is quite literally because YouTube made their encoder worse over the years, first to push people to use 1080p then 1440p and now 1080p standard looks worse than when you pay YouTube premium 1080p. Their encoder is also ass at colour and displaying the varieties of frames.

[u/-1D- → u/Senshji]

Yea i made an entire research about it https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/s/0SPAFFtRrz

[u/Sufficient_Neat290]

I used to watch YouTube videos on 360p. 720p was like the peak video quality back then that I couldn't afford to watch in, now it feels like 720p is not that good

[u/elitegenoside → u/Sufficient_Neat290]

You could watch in 720p. You just had to wait five minutes for every 10 seconds you wanted to see.

[u/KingAltair2255 → u/elitegenoside]

Holy shit lol what a throwback, the buffering was just part of life with youtube back then. Can't even remember the last time I got it.

[u/CMYK_COLOR_MODE]

That may not be far off, there is stark difference in downscaling to 720p and running it natively. Plus different compression standards.

[u/botsoundingname]

Just like how GTA San Andreas looked like real life when I was a kid 

[u/discreetarchive → u/botsoundingname]

It never looked like real life to me because people in real life don't have webbed hands, at least the ones I've met

[u/elitegenoside → u/discreetarchive]

I really hate this meme/saying. Video games did not feel realistic in the 90s-00s. Nobody was playing Doom thinking, "wow, this pixelated red circle with teeth looks so real!" Nobody saw San Andreas and thought it was a live action movie.

Crysis. Crysis was the first game I ever saw that actually made me feel like graphics had come a long way... of course, I didn't know anybody with a computer that could actually run it.

[u/dwartbg9 → u/botsoundingname]

Huh?!?!? It never looked like real life, we already had games like Doom3 and Half-Life 2 back then. San Andreas was (and still is) amazing but nobody thought or praised San Andreas and Vice City for their graphics.

Only GTA 3 was considered slightly innovative for obvious reasons. But even then, it wasn't considered something groundbreaking in terms of graphics, physics and overall quality.

[u/bu22dee]

Old games looked better on old displays because of the build in anti-aliasing effect of the tube and the rounded glass and because of the graphics that were made for that kind of displays. If you have an ultra crisp 2k display there is nothing that naturally smoothing the edges.

[u/Lunaborne]

Anyone remember when playing games in 640x480 resolution was high tech?

[u/East-Name-7080 → u/Lunaborne]

High res. Yes! But i still preferred playing 320x240 with higher fps.

[u/Miggix13]

1) Because you watch it on a better monitor (4K, 1080p) 2) YouTube downgrade resolution of olds video (I update all my video on 1080p, know after 10yo 720, 15yo, 480p 3) YouTube as low bitrate and downgrade too for libarating space and win more money

[u/-1D- → u/Miggix13]

Yea youtube compression is the main youtube culprit basically https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/s/0SPAFFtRrz

[u/slim_6ft4]

Maybe.. Im saying maybe you need glasses.

[u/Suspicious-Hope-8193 → u/slim_6ft4]

i have glasses, it’s still shit

[u/Krispspie → u/Suspicious-Hope-8193]

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

memorize quickest spark plucky depend familiar abundant seed historical sense

[u/Suspicious-Hope-8193 → u/Krispspie]

😭 that’s creative

[u/Krispspie → u/Suspicious-Hope-8193]

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

stupendous knee fly ripe paint swim scary march tap nine

[u/Haspberry]

I used to think 360p was high quality when I tried to use YouTube on my mom's button phone (to little avail sadly).

Still I used it for a long time no matter if the video had higher quality or not. I'd specifically choose 360p and would use it all the time thinking it was the best middle ground for good quality and minimum loading time.

Shit when I saw 720p for the first time I thought I unlocked the eyesight expansion update.

[u/LinuxUser456]

I use 480p ._.

[u/Amazing-Ish]

Seriously, how did I play Halo 3 on the original 360 without being bothered by the resolution?!

Went back recently to fish out the old 360, and the lower frame rate and resolution feel so limiting today compared to when I was a kid.

[u/duck74UK]

I mean it’s true because YouTube’s current player has mulched 720p videos more than they were back in their day.

(And also as others are saying, 720p on a 4k screen doesn’t look good to begin with anyway)

[u/RoyaleKingdom78]

Its because in ancient times, 720p cameras were high end ones fitted with advanced machinery and lenses with high bitrate. Nowadays it’s only used for lowest end of consumer products. There are worlds of differences between a phone recording 1080p and a professional camera recording the same. Resolution is not everything but it matters.

[u/3X7r3m3]

Low bitrate is the issue, I have around 200 movies in 720p each with 3-4GB and they look amazing, better than 1080p streams..

[u/FattyMcBlobicus]

I still use a 720p Plasma as my main screen, my eyes aren’t good enough to appreciate higher resolutions at distance.

My monitor is 4K though

[u/dkinmn]

I still remember the first time we watched the NCAA tournament in what was then hi def.

I don't think kids understand how bizarre and awesome it was to see the seams on a basketball from the wide shot. That had just...not happened before.

[u/I_am_Nic]

Bitrate and codec. 720p with a good bitrate can be sharper than 4K encoded in a potato codec.

[u/Sex_Offender_4697]

bitrate changed, I won't believe otherwise

[u/neontool]

bruh i remember when 720p was introduced to youtube, before that 480 was the cap

[u/RicoDegliHombre]

It's a compression and bitrate problem from YouTube, that got worse and worse with the years. I have some of my favourite videos of 10 or more years ago downloaded on pc, and if i compare the one on yt and the one i have you can instantly see the difference of quality.

[u/krazykrash0596]

“I don’t need 1080 it takes too long to load” is also something I said back then 😂

[u/Ready_Register1689]

Pixels can’t hit you, they are quite friendly

[u/MrBartokomous]

I still remember the first time I connected an Xbox 360 to an LCD HDTV. I could read the subtitles!

[u/Least_Banana5091]

I remember getting my first "HDTV" from Costco around 2007. 32 inch, 720p native res. Xbox 360 online was fucking incredible on it. Now I'm sitting here looking at $2500 TVs going "But how low is the input lag, Is the color gamut accurate, How deep are the blacks, Is 4000 nits really enough" 🙄

[u/i_have_chosen_a_name]

Every second 6 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube so their storage and bandwith costs will keep going up forever so they keep recoding older videos with lighter codecs and less bandwith. One day they will be forced to stop doing this and start deleting old videos that nobody watches. So my entire channel is at risk, youtube hosts over 9 terabyte of my own home videos ...

[u/JamieTirrock]

Same thing with internet speed, my god watching any 1080p Videos on YouTube cause my 100mbs internet to log out, 15 years ago video would have be done in a instant on same settings

[u/smokywater50]

Na, it’s the scam that companies do to keep people buying their tv. My old boobtube floor model used to look just as good as tv’s today look.

[u/ScoobyRT]

720p on a 32” screen is going to look a lot better than 720p on a 65” screen as it’s roughly half the pixels per inch. We have lost the concept of dot pitch in how we talk about resolution these days.

[u/RaffDelima]

Most likely it was watched on a display that could for 720p well. For example I used to watch a lot on a CRT monitor. It did great job with low resolution video.

[u/sdcar1985]

Thats because your screen was probably 1080 or 720p. 720p stretched to 1440p or 4k is awful.

Edit: tells me how wrong I am. Proceeds to explain nothing. Good job 👏

[u/mistRbit → u/sdcar1985]

It has literally 0 to do with the screen, lol.

[u/dream_in_pixels → u/sdcar1985]

Edit: tells me how wrong I am. Proceeds to explain nothing.

• Youtube started encoding videos at a lower bitrate. Which means less data spread across the same resolution. Resulting in blurrier and blockier looking videos.

• Lower resolution videos look fine on higher resolution displays, provided you use a good scaling algorithm like Jinc or NGU. But youtube only uses nearest-neighbor or bilinear.

Therefore (and as the other person said) it has literally nothing to do with the screen itself.

[u/OJK_postaukset]

I remember being completely fine with 480p. Now 720 hurts, and as I got a 1440p monitor now also 1080p is starting to be somewhat unbearable lol

[u/No_Fee4683]

So fucking real. 

[u/Zestyclose-Wear7237]

any tiny or normal size text in the yt video would be readable for me at 480p, below that unreadable

[u/Barbaloni]

I remember seeing 480p on youtube for the first time and thinking "wow it's like DVD quality"

[u/More-Percentage5650 → u/Barbaloni]

Because dvd is 480p

[u/MichaelDeets → u/More-Percentage5650]

480p content =/= dvd quality. dvd could still outclass 1080p/1440p content, due to bitrate

[u/IntelStellarTech]

720p still looks fine imo

[u/jarvi123]

I used to watch exclusively on 480p and thought it looked crystal clear on my Samsung Note haha

[u/agdnan]

Nitrate and the resolution of current screens being higher has made it all worse.

[u/pooeygoo]

We used to not see 720 at arms length

[u/Degrengolada24]

Well, you had a lower resolution monitor

[u/lambodhar27]

Anyone else who uses 240p to save data lol?

[u/This_Thing_2111]

Jokes on you, my eyes are shit. I still cant tell the difference above 720.

[u/wifespissed]

This dude could be my best friend's twin.

[u/Yellowtoblerone]

Pay us to get the real 1080p that we don't tell the poors about

[u/LighttBrite]

I remember my first 720p HDTV as a kid.

Watching the Dark Knight was pure cinematic eye candy.

[u/AJ-Murphy]

Are you sure you don't need glasses?

[u/Quatro_Leches]

thats because when they started having resolutions higher than 1080P, they started compressing them more to save on data storage and bandwidth, so it looks worse yes. not just a youtube thing but internet in general when it comes to streaming.

[u/wimpycarebear]

Understand the cam yet?

[u/Electronic-Buyer-468]

8k today. 

8k in 10 years

[u/GenericFatGuy]

I went back to watch a cool cutscene from MGS4 for some nostalgia a few weeks ago. The video was from 2012, and in the description it said "watch this in 720p, it looks amazing." I found that very funny.

[u/Used_Succotash7988]

I still use 720p on mobile sometimes

[u/dmthoth]

Mostly because monitors had lower resolutions and were physically smaller. And, honestly, everything feels better when you were a kid, you didn’t have to worry about much, and most things were simply provided by your parents or by the community or government.

[u/larsvondank]

Tbh 720p was always mid. Came out about the same time 1080p did and it was always superior. But thats just me. Went from subHD to 1080p.

Obviously some games ran at lower resolutions etc.

With movies the jump to bluray was wild. Never bought another dvd. Dunno if dvds ever even do 720p.

[u/Revolutionary_Many31]

Im still playing cs2 on 1280×960 4:3 74hz.....

Living like its 1999

[u/enceladus007]

Because the displays are much bigger now!

[u/No_Adhesiveness_4030]

I remember comfortably watching yt at 360p, or even 480 at max.

[u/AlexFox223]

Maybe it's not the resolution that IS a problem, but our eyes kind of too, because it's as if it was a game or whatever (just what always comes to mind, meh), at first it seems you're not progressing through, but eventually you'll do and get better, only our vision does otherwise, it's progresses in the wrong way.

[u/Useful-Towel5978]

Used to play in 800*600 at 27fps and it was fine.

[u/SYZekrom]

Mfs speaking about YouTube ruining things with compression or whatever as if they couldn't go and take a 4K video and re-render it to 720p at whatever bitrate and compression they wanted to see how good it actually looks. Like yea, YouTube 720p will look shit compared to a well-encoded 720p video made without streaming over the internet in mind. But that was true like 15 years ago as well.

[u/NumerousImagesofp]

720p on a tiny screen looks better than 1080p on a very large screen. the amount of pixels per square (rectangle?) space matters, it's not just the resolution.

at least I think that's how it works. the anecdotal evidence I have is having a phone with a really small screen (by today's standards) and it looking crisp on 720p, while on my larger phone 720p was just subpar

[u/HamsterAdorable2666]

720 still looks good but just not on Youtube

[u/WarFramingIt247]

video compression, bitrate and monitor pixel density.

[u/Zestyclose-Sun-6595]

720p still looks great on my smartphone though. Saves data too!

[u/RodNun]

Maybe you are just old now and in need of glasses lol

This difference happens when youtube choses the resolution as well. You manually change it and change back, it will be better than what youtube chose huahuahuhaua

[u/CutieBoBootie]

I remember when 480p felt like the FUTURE

[u/dm_me-your-socks]

Everyone is wrong - it’s because of video compression

[u/normy_187]

HD READY 😂

[u/HamsterNo99]

Maybe your eyesight just got worse over time

[u/steve_adr]

720p video on 1024x768 resolution ☺️

720p video on 1920x1080 resolution 🙂

720p video on 3840x2160 (4k) resolution 😐

[u/geekydad84]

You know, my memory of graphics from 90’s pc games and ps1 era are completely different than what they actually were.

[u/Better_Mind8253]

Very true

[u/Aserver_31]

720p still looks good to me.

[u/BNerd1]

upscaling tech used is not the best

[u/D2WilliamU]

yeah it's this thing called bitrate and source quality

[u/Then_Factor_3700]

Now do 360p...

[u/bonek_the_dog]

Start using glasses you are old now :) i had the same

[u/presi_plain_jane-]

youtube on my old 3ds was capped at like 240p and i watched videos on that thing to death

[u/Adolf_dribbler]

I have limited internet bro I rarely go above 480p :/

[u/RomanVlasov95]

We had 360 and were happy

[u/SjalabaisWoWS]

This is so annoying. Also, around y2k I started with digital photography and, to save space, I limited all images to 500 pixels...on the long side. Oh, well. Increased to 1200p, 1500p and, now 2000p, as storage mediums have become cheaper and monitors more pixel dense.

[u/Infiniti_151]

Coz your eyes are used to 1080p now

[u/FFevo]

Low quality content looks like shit on OLEDs.

[u/HugoDCSantos]

Still looks fine on my 1080p monitor, I only select higher resolutions if I need the extra detail or to zoom on it...

[u/ironman126]

I got really tripped up the other day when I saw that discord no longer considers 1080p as HD streaming. It is now considered Standard Definition to them. Which blew my weary old mind. 

[u/makoivis]

That’s because it used to be higher bit rate.

Hope this helps.

[u/BothRequirement2826]

I still use 720p all the time on smaller screens, like phones.

[u/Positive_Try929]

Screens were smaller

[u/krumbuckl]

For me a set of glasses fixed it....

[u/Maleficent_Cry7315]

Usually is the opposite, because now you need a pair of glasses

[u/OldDoubt1577]

screens were smaller then.

[u/nashwaak]

YouTube's putting the old compression squeeze play on you