That’s a good detailed analysis. I was actually comparing two versions of a 2000s show I love, and I only had the second one because the first one was distractingly bad. I remember thinking on the old one, “Is this the Universal logo from the 1970’s??” It wasn’t, just really horrible compressed…

Ah, the *arrs are the first thing on my list if I ever get broadband again…

I’ve thought a lot about it, and I think it’s a combination of what your sensitivity is and what you’re used to seeing. There’s a natural point where your brain stops caring (or even noticing) quality improvements, much to the dismay of TV panel manufacturers. But there’s also that you will notice a degradation of quality until you re-adapt (if its above your natural threshhold).

Also, most TV shows aren’t so much about the cinematography/visuals (with some notable exceptions); 1080 is higher than I’d want for most TV shows, especially given the sheer amount of hours. (I think most Star Trek’s crunch down to 20+gigs at 720).

I’ll try to keep an eye on encodings I like and see if I can’t build a fan list of encoders.

What are you getting for that 3-5 extra gigs at 720P? 720 files seem to go from between 700MB and 2 gigs usually.

I haven’t dug into upscaling; I know my bluray does it, not sure if my TV or Jellyfin do.

Audio isn’t an issue for me; don’t have the money or space for a proper set up, so, heresy: I’m rocking my TV speakers, which sound way better than they should.

Yes, size doesn’t necessarily mean quality, but I see people using it for shorthand calculations, and maybe poorly encoded files get moved down the list. I’m watching a lot of older movies, though, so I probably need to pay more attention.

You mean you download a massive file and shrink it down yourself?

Do you have an recommended encorders for B&W film? Seems like an easy place to pick up some space savings while retaining or improving over a general full color codec.

Where do you source your harddrives from? And I guess you have some redundancies if you’re using used drives.

Your standards are undoubtedly higher than mine. HDR might be overkill (?), but I just find it very jarring when a scene that should be uniformly dark or black turns into bunches of little squares dancing around the screen. Do I need HDR to avoid that? I mean, yes, I do love the theater blacks enough that when Rogue One went from video outer space to film outerspace it melted my brain a little, so maybe I should look into that. But, overall, I think regular BluRay is the highest I’d want to target.

The system has really fucked itself with all the controls it has, especially for high quality streaming which they absolutely cannot guarantee AND they put a lot of restrictions on it as well.

I will speak up for having a physical library. It’s nice for guests to have something to pick up and hold. Of course, most of my guests these days are future and imaginary.

Maxing out most consumer TV’s days would probably fill your hard drive very quickly… I think my tv is technically 4K, but it really doesn’t need to be–my bluray doesn’t even play 4k.

I’m at 55" about 8 ft away. It’s not too big, not too small…

Jellyfin’s been rock solid, no problems, but I haven’t dived into a 50gb Solaris yet or anything.

Profiles, as in you’re remixing HQ files down yourself, or you just know what you’re looking for?

Thanks for the wikipedia link. I guess it makes sense that that’s where the information would be.

The good news for me is that I download everything on my mobile phone and it kills my battery, so I’m limited to how quickly I can fill up my hard drive. I can probably pull about 5-20G/night.

I really wish we still had long-term storage options like Zip drives or cassettes.

My guess is the US didn’t take out Iranian air defenses because they can’t; maybe it’s memory or imagination, but I thought they’re underground until they’re in use, or they only turn on when there’s been a visual, or there are a ton of cheaper decoys, or a combination of the three.

Damn, that’s pretty embarassing for the Russians, though.

Thanks for explaining the logic! It does make sense in an A2A context. Everything is about range.

But more broadly, I wonder what “air superiority” means in 2026. Even if you shot down every plane the enemy had, they can still deny you unchallenged access to their airspace. It looks like that’s what happening in Iran. We’re dropping standoff munitions at the border and sending missiles, not dropping gravity bombs directly overhead.

Seems ground defense can now match air offense at a fraction of the cost. “The assignment”, as I see it, is to build a cheap, robust military backed by an industrial base that can pump out munitions.

Those exist? Probably an olive, in that case.

What the hell even is that?

The chuds watching 300 thinking their side is Sparta and not Persia…

deleted by creator

Shorter:

I’d rather live in the US than China.

But I’d rather live near China than near the US.

There was a freeware sidescrolling game on Windows from long ago that looked like this. I think it was called Stranded or something? Basically, your spaceship crash lands on an alien forest that looks a lot like this, and you have a jetpack, a pewpew, and a grappling hook. Pretty durn complicated and I never got far, but it was a beautiful game.

Edit: Capsized! From 2011. And not free. Huh.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/95300/Capsized/

Of course ýou’d want to consider the value of the target.

So let’s consider a 10-story building costs $16 million to build. The enemy sends 3 20k drones out to destroy it. You counter with 6 missiles, for a total of $24 million. You’ve now, in a single afternoon, spent $8 million more than the building costs to rebuild.

The building obviously has utility, and might generate some income on its own, but the enemy has basically given you economic damage that is even greater than destroying the building. They spent 60k and you spent 24 million, a multiplier of 400!

Then the enemy sends 3 more drones, you’re out of interceptors, and you lose the building anyway. Total cost to them: 120k. Total cost to you: $40 million. The funny thing is that by sending in 3 extra drones to destroy the building, the multiplier DROPS to 333. If they wanted to purely drain your treasury, they’d try not to destroy your buildings to motivate you to keep intercepting drones!

Wars run on money. GRRM knew exactly what he was doing when he made the Iron Bank a major political player. You need money to win wars, and even if you win the war, you may have indebted your government so much it can’t recover.

One of the common themes of the fall of empires is that they own the fiat currency, therefore it is very easy for them to borrow money. So they keep borrowing money, and borrowing money, and borrowing money, until the day comes that they are spending most of their budget covering the interest.

Wars are the number one way empires run up their budgets.

The next step is the empire, losing its grip on the world, and becoming financially less stable, starts paying higher interest rates.

This is where on the map, we’d put a big arrow with the text: YOU ARE HERE (meaning the US). Bond yields are rising.

The next step is when even the interest become unaffordable, which triggers even higher rates, which cycles into higher taxes, lower services, which trigger less investment, and then it’s a vicious cycle to total economic meltdown.