Don't Back Down

Of course I'm talking about file size when it comes to video. Or perhaps audio - though I don't really listen to much audio on my computer. Now that I think about it, I don't really listen to that much audio elsewhere either. Just in the car. But back to the point - if you store video, then you undoubtedly have come to the conclusion that it takes up a decent amount of space. If you browse most any of the popular file-sharing sites, you'll see that the low end of the equation - and I'm not counting the off-brand encodings, because they suck - come in around 700MB.

There are, of course, purists, who will tell you that 700MB isn't worth watching. And there are certainly examples where they are right. If you watch some videos (typically those with action in them), there are simply places where the frames can't keep up. Also, if you try and watch a 700MB MPEG, you aren't going to get very much video, unless you're just watching PR0N, in which case 700MB will get you all you need, and then some. But again, I digress. Let's say you want to settle in and watch a movie with the family. Just how much space do you need?

I remember a good 15 years ago when a friend of mine bought a 9GB drive. He described it as "moving into a hotel". Of course, 9GB these days wouldn't last most people a week, and certainly not if you're watching video. Many of us have 9GB on our keychain. I could probably dig up 9GB worth of storage in spare change, figuratively speaking. I think the card in my cell phone has 2GB. I don't even know - that's how little I care. My desktop computer has 250GB as a primary drive and 500GB for a secondary drive. The Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ that I purchased just over a year ago is humming along with more than 2TB (at least 50% of it is currently free). So how much is enough?

Looking at the TiVo, I see that a reasonable two-hour(-ish) movie takes up 4.24GB. This of course holds TiVo's encryption, but that's probably not the whole movie. So we're talking roughly DVD-length. If you should find it online, you can get the same movie for the aforementioned 700MB range, and watching it, there is little-to-no difference. Yes, I do understand that you can sit and nitpick, but when my family and I kick back for the night across the darkened room and simply enjoy the movie on our 42" LCD, it looks good enough.

Is it archival quality, where you'd want to have it in a hundred years? Probably not. But you know what? I don't care. I can watch it. It's perfectly usable, and it takes up roughly a sixth of the space. The video is good, the audio is just fine, so what is the complaint? The format isn't lost - whoever ripped it was considerate enough to do so in widescreen, so I'm not missing anything on the video (though I don't have any of the DVD extras from that copy). I don't have any subtitles (though I could find them if I looked hard enough), but even if I did, there's no way they are going to take up anything worth worrying about.

Yes, there is the issue of buying the content, and that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about a DVD that I own - or one that I've recorded off of a pay channel that I receive legally (something that I'm entitled to do - at least currently!). What I'm getting at is what size is good enough? In our house, at least, that 700MB file is just fine. I'm all for good video and everything, and I do get that DVD is better than VHS, but there's a point that it just doesn't matter any longer. Or maybe it's just that we're willing to put up with a few pixels here and there in exchange for the awesome convenience of having everything at our fingertips. What do you think?