• AnyStream is having some DRM issues currently, Netflix is not available in HD for the time being.
    Situations like this will always happen with AnyStream: streaming providers are continuously improving their countermeasures while we try to catch up, it's an ongoing cat-and-mouse game. Please be patient and don't flood our support or forum with requests, we are working on it 24/7 to get it resolved. Thank you.

1080P or 4K on HBO Max

And with this knowledge I will always look into the log when I start to download 4k on HBO Max and add hvc1 or dvh1 to the file name so I always know when I try to play it and there is something that this is the reason for that.
There is also a program called MediaInfo (https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo) that you can use to check the file after downloading, without having to check the AnyStream logs.
 
Curious what most do when downloading from HM. I only have one 4K TV in my family room which is seldom used and use Plex as my server through a Synology 418 Play NAS. My 3 main TVs are all 1080P.

I realize 4K is better quality but it’s also double the file size. Is 4K really that much better? I’ve never watched 4K content so have nothing to compare with.

I realize it’s all personal preference but, just wondering if I should be grabbing stuff on 4K when it’s available to future proof. My library has over 1500 1080P movies and some day will pass it onto my son when he gets older.

Thanks for your input and suggestions.


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It's not really the 4K resolution that gives you such an improvement over 1080p but it is the HDR that is being offered with the 4K. That may be Dolby vision, HDR 10, HDR 10+. Without any of those 4K isn't as impressive.
 
It's not really the 4K resolution that gives you such an improvement over 1080p but it is the HDR that is being offered with the 4K. That may be Dolby vision, HDR 10, HDR 10+. Without any of those 4K isn't as impressive.
I'd like to disagree here ... given a big enough screen you can definetely see differences between 1080p and 4K, with or without HDR.
I reencoded several UHD disks with the same settings for both resolutions, and I would always go for 4K when watching.
HDR is just some Color/lighting improvement, but I like the details of 4K.

My advice to the OP: If you do not use the 4K screen often, stick with 1080P, as the Syno/Plex would have to reencode the 4K version to the 1080P screens and that would cost a lot of quality, even though the 418play should support hardware encoding.
 
It's not really the 4K resolution that gives you such an improvement over 1080p but it is the HDR that is being offered with the 4K. That may be Dolby vision, HDR 10, HDR 10+. Without any of those 4K isn't as impressive.

I respectfully disagree with this. 4k makes a very noticeable difference especially on larger screens. HDR in my opinion can indeed improve things but its so hit and miss at this point it's almost purely marketing as it exists now.

As far as 1080 vs 4k I have noticed a good 1080p with a high bitrate almost looks 4k especially if there is any upscaling going on but 4k is still superior. I play 4k/HDR natively on Plex without conversion and it looks great but it takes a beefy device (I use a Roku Ultra) because it soaks up about 100mb of raw bandwidth. But I do keep 1080p copies of every movie I have in 4K for "normal" viewing.
 
It's not really the 4K resolution that gives you such an improvement over 1080p but it is the HDR that is being offered with the 4K. That may be Dolby vision, HDR 10, HDR 10+. Without any of those 4K isn't as impressive.

4K is capable of huge improvement over 1080p, but not all sources are up to it. On some titles, film grain is already visible at 1080p. When scanning 35mm film, you can get from 2-4K, depending on film speed (graininess) and lens quality. Of course, higher resolutions do not fix lens flaws, focus errors and motion blur. Streaming services are not necessarily providing optimal quality: Netflix attempts to reduce bandwidth makes some 4K streams very poor quality, more like a lower resolution upscaled.

HDR is a significant improvement in dynamic range and color depth. It attempts to recreate true-to-life lighting levels and contrast range, but is limited by the device displaying it more than the standard encoding it. Many monitors and sets are limited to 300-600 nits maximum brightness, but this is still 3-6 times the dynamic range of the 100 nit maximum defined for a BT.709 display used for SDR video. Some HDR titles have not been transferred well, with the scanned film being stretched too far (unnatural/exaggerated dynamic range rather than just capturing the range that was naturally there in the film negative). The potential lies more in the realm of digital photography. It seems to be used as a bit of a gimmick at times, with lots of scenes of bright glaring lights in dim rooms and backlit scenes facing into the sun (this does not transfer well back to SDR displays and often the SDR version looks too dark).

The color gamut for HDR is much wider (BT.2020), theoretically covering 76% of all possible colors compared to BT.709 of SDR video which is only about 35%. BT.2020 is about the maximum color range that can be implemented in real life using only 3 primary colors. In practice, there are almost no displays that can do BT.2020 and/or 1000 nits or more (an ideal HDR target), due to technical problems creating a pure enough green primary, etc, so we usually see 300-600 nits in DCI color space (about 45% of all possible colors and 87% of all naturally occurring reflective colors). As film is wider gamut than a BT.709 display, this is much more faithful to source (DCI gives good coverage of the colors that can be reproduced with movie film). In practice, transfers of scanned film usually fit within 400 nits, so this is not as much of a problem as it could be. It is also possible to have SDR video that is BT.2020 or DCI color gamut, BTW.

In theory, you could have idealised HDR such that a dark scene depicting a candle will be as bright as a real candle and an outdoor scene of a sunny day would make you want to put on sunglasses. For watching movies, that amount of range is probably not practical (too difficult for the eyes to cope with adjusting to scene changes).
 
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