Why 24fps is not enough for HDR movies

[Lgans316]

Anyone with ATV, Xcode, iTunes and MoviesAnywhere here?

I am now fully convinced that there is some sort of temporal noise reduction on iTunes. MA looks very close to disc. Yesterday, I checked Serenity. Grain structure on the disc and MA are similar. On iTunes, there is less grain and due to this, the facial close ups tend to look a bit soft.

[Rasmus Larsen]

I have Movies Anywhere but via a DNS trick (I'm not based in the US) so I'm not sure it will give me full bandwidth. Hopefully I can check soon but I need Xcode on Mac updated first.

[Lgans316]

I have Movies Anywhere but via a DNS trick (I'm not based in the US) so I'm not sure it will give me full bandwidth. Hopefully I can check soon but I need Xcode on Mac updated first.

I have recorded bit rates for about 30-40 films on both iTunes and MA.

Will share the details soon.

Btw, you don't need VPN or DNS to watch streams on MoviesAnywhere.

Only need VPN to sign up.

[Rasmus Larsen]

I noticed Apple are deliberately throttling bit rates on iTunes movies outside ATV box. On my FireTV stick, it never exceeds 17 Mbps. Most of the time its stuck under 10Mbps.

I heard that the same stream via ATV box is hitting 31 Mbps with bit rates hovering in 20 Mbps.

This has caused me to dump my FireTV stick in favour of ATV box.

There are no measurements but here's one reddit user complaining about lower quality (from Apple TV app) on LG webOS compared to Apple TV 4K.

So it would seem that not only FireTV is being served lower quality streams.

[Lgans316]

Managed to capture the bit rates via ATV box Developer HUD.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

AFAIK, I heard ATV app on X-BOX is peaking at 25 Mbps but on the TV apps and non-ATV boxes, its still capped at 17 Mbps and bit rates mostly hovering around 8-10 Mbps.

[Rasmus Larsen]

Solid work. Thanks for sharing.

As you noted, Movies Anywhere appears to offer higher bitrates in general. Is that the reason for the relative softness you noticed on iTunes vs. MA? I note that a movie like Aquaman has roughly 1:1 bitrates between iTunes and MA. Does the iTunes stream also look softer here?

Apple TV+ shows should peak at slightly higher bit rates than iTunes movies (on Apple TV 4K) - at least they did at launch in November 2019.

[Rasmus Larsen]

Wonder Woman 1984 will be HBO Max' first movie in 4K HDR and Dolby Atmos (December 25). Curious to see how it looks.

'Wonder Woman 1984' will be the first movie in 4K HDR & Atmos on HBO Max

[Lgans316]

iTunes bit rates for LOTR and Hobbit are disappointing.

MoviesAnywhere as usual gets higher video bit rates making grain looking better in motion and maintaining textural finesse but WB have stuffed it with 5.1 audio.

Columns 4-5-6 (iTunes AVBR - PBR - Audio bit rate)
Columns 8-9-10 (MoviesAnywhere AVBR - PBR - Audio bit rate)

Code: Select all

Hobbit 1 (EE)	Warner	4K - DV - DA	15.06	24.61	768	4K - DV - DD	24.56	32.13	256
Hobbit 1 (TC)	Warner	4K - DV - DA	15.06	24.61	768	4K - DV - DD	24.52	33.12	256
Hobbit 2 (EE)	Warner	4K - DV - DA	14.99	24.6	768	4K - DV - DD	24.33	31.58	256
Hobbit 2 (TC)	Warner	4K - DV - DA	15.01	24.61	768	4K - DV - DD	24.36	31.83	256
Hobbit 3 (EE)	Warner	4K - DV - DA	14.85	24.59	768	4K - DV - DD	24.6	31.72	256
Hobbit 3 (TC)	Warner	4K - DV - DA	14.87	24.59	768	4K - DV - DD	24.57	32.42	256
LOTR 1 (EE)	Warner	4K - DV - DA	15.15	24.63	768	4K - DV - DD	24.57	32.4	256
LOTR 1 (TC)	Warner	4K - DV - DA	15.15	24.64	768	4K - DV - DD	24.54	32.51	256
LOTR 2 (EE)	Warner	4K - DV - DA	15.15	24.63	768	4K - DV - DD	24.65	32.29	256
LOTR 2 (TC)	Warner	4K - DV - DA	15.04	24.44	768	4K - DV - DD	24.55	32.13	256
LOTR 3 (EE)	Warner	HD - SDR - DD - AVC	10.17	14.94	384	4K - DV - DD	24.9	33.3	256
LOTR 3 (TC)	Warner	4K - DV - DA	15.16	24.62	768	4K - DV - DD	24.84	31.74	256

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

[Rasmus Larsen]

Have anyone checked HBO Max's 4K?

And what about Discovery+? (I'm not getting 4K streams at this time, perhaps due to my DNS setup).

[Sledgegamma]

For Wonder Women (HBO Max), Dolby Vision version:
Bit rate : 18.1 Mb/s
Maximum bit rate : 47.0 Mb/s

[Rasmus Larsen]

18.1 Mb/s the average? And 47 Mb/s the indicated peak bitrate?

[Sledgegamma]

Yes, that is correct.