Ask Lemmy

Many years ago I was transcoding movies to fit on cd so I could watch them on my dvd player.

Way more movies in lower resolution. Your brain and mind will fill in the blanks automatically and lack of perfect visual acuity doesn't take away from the story one bit.

How long is a piece of string?

I used to watch movies and shows on my computer monitor, in which case 720 was mostly acceptable. Though a few years ago I switched to a NAS for storage and I use a typical TV instead... now I don't feel the need to use smaller filesizes. I tend to go with 1080 by default. The NAS is really a godsend... you can fill that thing up with whatever your want and still have room to spare.

Definitely more at lower. I see zero point in going above 1080p and for lesser media I do 720. I have 16tb of 720-1080 stuff.

I agree with people saying at least 1080p but more. Upscaling is quite good now and makes little difference for the enjoyment of a film whether you can read the newspaper on the desk in the corner... Unless you're a film buff who likes Easter eggs maybe

If I were to prepare for the internet to be out, I would most likely do the following:

I would go with a mix of 720 for most movies/shows and my favorites at 1080. I would also go for a collection of my favorite music.

Then as an extra download Wikipedia and some Ted talks, and a bunch of YouTube videos to watch offline. I guess some e-books and or PDF. Maybe download some memes and stuff to laugh at.

I don't want to go lower than 1080p. Having said that, there are compression formats that can get you respectable 1080p but in smaller file sizes (1-2GB).

Lower res, for sure. Modern GPUs/drivers and some media players can do a decent job of making them a bit nicer to look at 'on-the-fly', too.

I can watch content in lower resolutions, I can't watch content that I don't have access to at all.

Lower resolution and a lower resolution viewer (older TV).

Nah, I'd go for books and music.

Depends on the stuff and on what you will be watching it.

TV shows that were originally aired in SD will be fine in low resolution. Cartoons can usually be pretty low quality too. Old cartoons in SD on a CRT usually look great.

However stuff made for HD will probably need better quality to be enjoyable.

I've been collecting since the days of RealPlayer and still have lots of stuff in SD. Some shows are getting difficult to watch on a giant screen but the advantage of the small files is that they can be read by a toaster.

TLDR: More in lower resolution unless it's some modern shows or movies where HD is a necessity.

I frequently have this conundrum as I upload a lot of stuff on my phone when getting ready to go somewhere for work. I find that TV shows gives me more bang for the byte over movies, but I need a few of them to swap between so that I don't get burned out watching just one show.

Since it's on my phone anyway, resolution isn't that important to me. 720p is usually fine. For movies I tend to be a little more picky, so I usually go for 1080p.

Usually I pack my phone with 3-4 movies and 2 seasons each of various shows.

Id probably go for a middle ground. 720 is fine by me.

More stuff in lower resolution, and focus on less-popular (or less-collectible) material.

The internet isn't going to go out just for you, it's going to go out for everyone (at least in your region). You're going to be without it for the long-term, so you'll want variety in what you can watch and listen to. But your friends and family will also be looking for entertainment, so you'll be providing for a range of tastes over a long period.

You want to focus on less-popular / less-collectible material because trading networks will spring up, and the less-popular material will be the stuff that's in demand. There'll be plenty of people with a full collection of Star Trek or all the Best Picture winners, that kind of thing. But there'll also be people who suddenly realize that they want to re-watch all of Law and Order or they've always meant to watch Miami Vice and now is the perfect time.

I'll also point out that you've hypothesized that it's just the internet that's gone down. There would still be broadcast tv and radio, and I think people would re-adapt to broadcast viewing and listening.

I'm completely fine sacrificing resolution. I don't care about 4k resolutions at all, from where I sit to watch I can barely see the fly poops near the corners of the screen, and those are huge compared to the size of the pixels.

Regardless of outage, I decided quantity is better. I currently have ~5,500 movies. If I chose high grade 4k I would only have storage for ~300 of what I deem as the absolute best of cinema. With quantity>quality I can store everything that was mildly successful.

Yes. Depending on what you want.

Have you ever thought of just buying and therefore owning DVDs or BDs?