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Comment by VikingCoder | Hacker News Reader

Ugh. Comparing the file size difference between a lossless PNG and a LOSSY H.264 video of a STATIC PAGE is absurd. Calling it "300 times the amount of data," when it's a STATIC IMAGE is insulting in the extreme. It really doesn't matter if the rest of the article has insights, because you lost me already.

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He clarifies right after that he got to those numbers because he used a lossless vs lossy encoder. Really should've kept reading

"right after that".

No he didn't explain "right after that." He rambled on and on, and even after all of that, he STILL doesn't bring up JPG.

It's an inherently stupid comparison to make. You can't polish a turd.

Thanks for the feedback! Sorry if I was unclear. The comparison with PNG is very intentional to illustrate the vast difference in the compression efficiencies involved. I do state the difference clearly here though:

> This concept of throwing away bits you don't need to save space is called lossy compression. H.264 is a lossy codec - it throws away less important bits and only keeps the important bits.

> PNG is a lossless codec. It means that nothing is thrown away. Bit for bit, the original source image can be recovered from a PNG encoded image.

It's a very high level example of the concept, which admittedly is absurd, but drives home the point for people who might not be familiar with the scope of the numbers involved.

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