Even pirates need rules, and a number of groups responsible for releasing pirated TV shows have joined together to set some new quality standards— but some of their "customers" aren't too happy with the change. The groups recently released a document called "The SD x264 TV Releasing Standards 2012 ," which went into practice on February 22nd, and saw them move from the Xvid standard to x264, an open-source encoder for H.264 that's often used for HD releases. And while some users are happy with the increased video quality, a vocal minority is also quite upset because the new format isn't compatible with many DVD players and other devices. "I'll be moving on to better sites," one user wrote in an EZTV thread for the Starz series Spartacus. "YOU CAN TRY RAMMING IT DOWN SOMEONE ELSES THROAT." The blame is largely being placed on the sites as opposed to those actually releasing the shows, but users are threatening to leave regardless. For their part, the 13 groups behind the agreement don't appear to be going back on the shift towards x264, despite the threats from their non-paying users. Read: The SD x264 TV Releasing Standards 2012 Source: The Verge
insanenutter, I saw castle and simpsons file size reduced from 349 MB to 202 MB and from 174 to 102 MB respectively for this new rule? Last week I did not DL castle because of this sudden reduced file size and instead downloaded the FQM version. If x264 is used and that results in better quality I wouldnt mind.
Yup x264 is a much more advanced codec, you can get both better quality and smaller file sizes compared to xvid. Most SDTV shows you download will now use this format if they don't already, even old modded Xbox's running XBMC should be able to play it perfectly. So nothing to worry about.
Not sure why people are complaining, if the quality is good and its free they shouldn't complain.There are many free programs that can convert these files to avi,mp4,ect.
All I know is that I'm getting a ton of shows downloading on RSS that I didn't ask for but are getting me better ratio. No complaints from me on that or this either. Sometimes the releases in HD are broken and need to be nuked. Hence I'm glad I can just download the lesser quality one right away
Bunch of idiots, x264 is much better, the size is smaller and the quality surpasses container AVI's. I wasn't able to watch The Walking Dead S02E11 so I had to convert to MP4 (ironic) to play it on my 360. Family Guy episode went from 170 MB to 64 MB, holy cow I was surprised even though I knew it could be this small.
Exactly, smaller file sizes, better quality. That's small enough to happily download on your mobile phone on the go. Most mobile devices will play it too so its a great step forward.
I'm new to this but X264 has been my preference and love the quality of the picture. Almost as good as watching a DVD. People just don't like feeling pressured to do things especially the computer community that download this stuff..hence the reason they do it in the first place.
Mighty bear, I have a question regarding this one without having any doubt on the superior quality of x264, that is, since x264 is used by different rippers around the net the file size is not fixed. For instance, castle ranged from 250 to 380 MB and The Simpsons which is used to be 174 MB in its xVid era now varies from 180 MB to 250 MB. Why is this variation?
With x264 the episodes are encoded to a set quality, where as with xvid episodes were encoded to a set filesize. The size will vary depending on whats going on in the episode.
So there is that trade-off. But I believe whatever is set to the quality it is better than that fixed file size of xVid, right?
Blu-ray uses mpeg2, h264 and vc-1. Anywho, today I watched Breaking Bad S05E01 480p HDTV rip and it looked awesome, the Picture Quality was top notch, almost makes the HD rips useless.
How big is the screen you watched it on? noting is wrong with 480p however i notice a significant difference between the two.
It's a 32" but I've come used to watch more DVD-quality rips than HD since the size is smaller and does the job fine. Download > Watch > Delete
The Xvid to x264 change, is probably one of the best things happening at the internet in a long time...