We can look at game recording tools to try to understand what a world without DRM might have looked like. Those are able to easily record and encode video at 1080p or 4K on consumer hardware. Uploading that to YouTube or sharing that with friends isn't an issue either.
Absolutely not. Have you watched modern streaming services lately?
I recall when hdtvtest (Vincent) on YouTube tested Apple's 4K quality against 4K Ultra Blu-Rays via Apple TV (formerly iTunes Movies). IIRC the bitrate was about half (~25 Mbps vs 50Mbps) and the difference in visual quality was very difficult to see. Esssentially, he concluded that a high-quality streaming service or online digital movie purchase is pretty much just as good as a 4K Blu-ray.
There is absolutely no way you get something anywhere equivalent to a recent Severance episode (4K Dolby Vision Dolby Atmos) that Apple is streaming to you at ~25Mbps onto a DVD.
It's also important to note that the average US broadband speed is now quite a lot more respectable than it was back when we were all begging for US home Internet infrastructure to improve. I believe the average home connection is something like 100 Mbps if not better, and streaming services really have no trouble delivering Blu-ray quality 4K video to the average US consumer.
Now, obviously, you don't need that level of quality to enjoy the movie, but if that's what piracy is up against you will definitely need a lot of storage to compete with those streaming services that cost a couple of Starbucks coffees per month.
I think this is actually a bigger barrier than a lot of people assume. I have personally considered the idea of my own media server but keep getting put off by the fact that I really will need a very large NAS-grade HDD for it. The total hardware cost to get going is roughly equivalent to a multiple years of streaming service fees.
Well first off, what percentage of viewing hours are in 4K?
Second, a DVD could store a 54 minute episode at 20Mbps. That's close. And if I found the hdtvtest video you're talking about the bitrate was "between 15 and 25" so it would likely fit as-is. Also, that comparison was seven years ago with Apple using h.265, and today they could use AV1 to get the same quality with 20% fewer bits. Maybe h.266 to be even smaller or better.
(If you're interpreting their comment as "with actual DVD encoding", I think you're misreading them. I don't think they're suggesting streaming services are on par with low-noise 480p. And it doesn't fit with the CD comment.)
Of course I have - a typical Netflix movie is between 3-6GB.
Apple TV is the only one offering higher bitrates (which is why I use it, even though we're an Android/Linux only household, with iTunes running in a VM to buy movies from Apple TV).
> There is absolutely no way you get something anywhere equivalent to a recent Severance episode (4K Dolby Vision Dolby Atmos) that Apple is streaming to you at ~25Mbps onto a DVD.
Severance episodes, in 2160p with Dolby Vision and DD+/Atmos audio, are 8.3GB-8.7GB each. While you're technically correct, the point remains.
> I believe the average home connection is something like 100 Mbps if not better, and streaming services really have no trouble delivering Blu-ray quality 4K video to the average US consumer.
A typical 4K UHD bluray has a bandwidth of 95Mbps-120Mbps. A far cry even from the 25Mbps offered by Apple TV, let alone the 6-10Mbps offered by Netflix.
> I think this is actually a bigger barrier than a lot of people assume. I have personally considered the idea of my own media server but keep getting put off by the fact that I really will need a very large NAS-grade HDD for it.
I have a blu-ray collection, I do not have a blu-ray player. I watch my movies by ripping them to my NAS and playing them from my NVIDIA Shield TV.
If you don't do any transcoding on the NAS, you can use an old ThinkCentre or HP Microserver (about $60-$100). If you just rip your own movies from blu-ray, you don't need any redundancy, so you can buy a single 12TB drive for $200.
That's about $250-$300 for enough storage for 450 1080p blu-rays or 160 4K UHD blu-rays.
The only remaining cost is the content, but usually you don't just watch new releases. Used blu-rays are available at e.g. worldofbooks or rebuy for $5-$15 each.
But you still are talking about $300 up-front investment plus untold amount of unpaid time spent learning how to set up and operate such a thing. Plus cost of content.
This is competing with streaming services that, like it or not, are competing with Blu-ray quality at least close enough.
You are also not correct about Netflix's bitrates, they max out at above 17500kbps as of 2023, almost double your claim: https://netflixtechblog.com/all-of-netflixs-hdr-video-stream...
That's great, but I haven't ever seen anything close to that in real-world measurements. Not even with shows like Altered Carbon.
That said, even at 17.5Mbps, that'd still fit on a DVD and would be a far cry from the 90-120Mbps seen on blu-rays.
> But you still are talking about $300 up-front investment plus untold amount of unpaid time spent learning how to set up and operate such a thing. Plus cost of content.
Oh I absolutely agree that it's expensive and annoying today. I was arguing that in a world without DRM, recording your own media would be popular and affordable.
I was only referring to current-day technology to show that the tech exists. In a world without DRM, with an actual market for it, recording your own media would likely be as common, affordable and popular as VHS had been.
In a world without DRM, streaming would be even more attractive.
Just look at music as a real example. There wasn't any DRM for the majority of the digital music purchasing era (only a brief window of AAC protection from iTunes, but Apple took it DRM-free afterward and for the majority of the iPod era).
We already had completely DRM-free media with the iPod that was far smaller in file size and less cumbersome to store and manage than video.
Despite that ease and convenience, locally stored digital music was eaten completely alive by streaming subscriptions because the convenience was so much better. [1]
Nothing about losing DRM makes managing terabytes of media simple for the average person.
Let's say I wanted to store my favorite show, which for the purpose of this argument is Seinfeld. I need to be able to pick any episode at any time and just play it with no waiting. It's in really nice HD quality (thanks film!), so I store it at 10 Mbps.
I will need 297GB of storage to store the entire show.
That's just one show!!
It's also somewhat of a misnomer that VHS was affordable, at least not in the same sense as streaming. VHS tapes started out very expensive and were initially only practical for recording and re-using since each tape cost double digits of dollars. Video rental stores became popular especially because owning home video in the beginning was somewhat expensive. The technology really only became cost-practical for read-only media in its last 10 years. You would buy a movie once for ~$20-25 and that's it, you'd have your single copy of one movie. That costs more before inflation than a digital movie purchase today! VHS as you describe it is a recording technology (home movies, recording your own content, etc). As a consumption medium, streaming would demolish it, just like it demolished the digital purchase market for movies, TV, and music.
Again, use digital music as your practical example: in a world without DRM, recording your own media suffocates under the convenience and pricing pressure of streaming.
[1] https://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/2023-Year-En...
And compared to the not-fully-compatible 99 minute CD-Rs, they only get an extra 50% space. Not a very impressive format there when burnable DVDs were already out and would obviously drop in price over time. Plus you could get another 14% by using mode 2 with reduced error correction...