I have some *arrs on my server. Anything that comes from Netflix is bitstarved to death. If the same show is available on virtually any other streaming service, it will be at the very least twice the size.
No other service does this.
And for some reason, if HDR versions of their 1080p content are even more bitstarved than SDR.
This is true for amateurs encoding video files to be pirated, but for the mega corps, sending more bits costs more money.
Many years ago, I had a couple drinks with a guy from Netflix who worked on their video compression processes, and he fully convinced me they're squeezing every last drop out of every bit they send down the pipes. The quality is not great compared to some other streaming services, but it's actually kind of amazing how they're able to get away with serving such tiny files.
Anyway, I think we can expect these companies to mostly max out the resultant video quality of their bitstreams, and showing the average bitrate of their pricing tiers would be a great yardstick for consumers.
YouTube does this. When I open a video the quality is set to Auto by default. It'll also show the "actual" quality next to it, like "Auto 1080p". Complete lie. I see this and see the video looks like 480p, manually change to 1080p and it's instantly much better. The auto quality thing is a flat out lie.
I found a pirate copy of Netflix at 1080p looked a lot better than Netflix at 1080p, presumably because the pirate copy was a remix of the 4K copy and Netflix serves a low bitrate 1080p version.
