This is such a widespread issue, especially in dark scenes. Netflix is bad, but Prime Video seems by far the worst. I watched Mr Robot through a few months ago, and at times it was like watching 2009-era YouTube, despite being 4K on paper.
I'll take a 1080p Blu-Ray over a 4K stream any day. UHD Blu-Ray is nice, but it's a shame it's still 1.5-2x the price of regular BD. Then again you can still buy DVDs for some reason, so I guess high quality physical media is starting to be considered an enthusiast option..
Netflix streams sharp pixels towards the center of the screen, and the backgrounds are always bit worse due to the bandwidth constraints perhaps. It perhaps works on the assumption that our focus is on the foreground mostly, and not the background.
This is all good until the scenes are darker shades and you could notice the choppiness due to the network constraints.
"... x264’s psychovisual enhancements do a pretty good job of keeping detail where you’d notice it (the face), at the expense of the stuff you normally wouldn’t notice while watching (like those background areas)."
[0] https://mattgadient.com/comparing-x264-rf-settings-in-handbr...
Actually…
> All BluRay player, devices, and drives contain a key that unlocks the encryption and DRM present on BluRay discs. Since 2007, the consortium responsible for this DRM scheme has been pushing updates and revocation lists on individual BluRay releases. Putting one of these discs in your drive will brick the device […].
The hyperaggressive codecs and bandwidth-saving behaviors make the experience absolutely miserable.
Imagine you get two choices. One great quality and mundane to poor programs. The other is super compelling, but of dubious to low quality.
Which do you use?
Given a limit on stream throughput, choice will push quality aside every time.
The last straw was trying to watch Kurosawa's "Ran". The supposedly 4K remaster available on Amazon Prime Video is criminally badly encoded. During the raid on the castle, you literally can't see the smoke because macroblocks are popping so hard on every keyframe.
The Blu-Ray is pristine and nobody can take it away from me. With streaming services, you pay for movies but you never know what quality they actually deliver on a given day. These are public corporations trying to deliver shareholder returns in what has become an environment of sinking stock prices, so if they can save on bandwidth costs by making the movie look a bit worse, they'll probably do it at some point -- and then again next quarter.