Hacker News Reader

Comment by m0dest | Hacker News Reader

Hosed. Getting timeouts for /details. 2 issues in general, though:

(1) The BitTorrent protocol is not hospitable to linear downloading.

(2) Pirated video content is extremely incompatible with browser-based playback... stuff like MKV and AVI containers, DTS/AC3 audio, multiple audio tracks, segmented RAR files.

If this works even for vanilla MP4 content, I will be super impressed - but the browser is the wrong place for this type of media app right now.

View on HN

EZTV YIFI and many more don't pack anymore the data inside rar files, and it works, you can watch silicon valley from an EZTV torrent from here http://iflix.io/#/play/ef87a3f97c653d487dece0e6ea8e60b7731a5...

Yify torrents are total garbage at any rate, you'd be better off just not watching whatever you wanted to watch rather than stare at the eyesore that is Yify. Seriously, Yify encodes are like watching something through a window coated in vaseline.

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison.php?id=87460

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison.php?id=10115

Looks okay to me.

Do you have a pony in this race?

No...I'd rather not watch something fuzzy. If you think it looks OK, then you may as well download proper SD rips. They'll look better with less artifacting.

I dunno, it seems to me Yify's torrents are a great balance of file size and quality.

They're a horrible balance, a proper SD rip will look better than a Yify encode

Yuck. This is a good example of why you're supposed to reduce the dimensions of the video if you want to reduce bit rate with H.264. If you simply reduce the bit rate, you end up losing detail.

e.g. for a video with a typical level of motion, if you want to achieve 1 Mbps, encoding at 854x480 is going to look significantly cleaner & sharper than encoding at 1280x720 (even when upscaled).

This is why adaptive streaming uses quality levels with varying dimensions. e.g. on Netflix, the low bandwidth streams are not 1920x1080, as that would look like garbage.

Hmm, at least that link actually shows me a video widget but I still don't see any actual video.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com