Re:CD sales grow for first time since 2004
by kasabali on Saturday March 19, 2022 @08:19PM
(#30738790)
That's one of the "psychovisual enhancements" employed by modern codecs. Here [0] is a nice explanation I could among in top search results:
"... 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...
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.