Conscious and subconscious awareness are different things. The mythical "most person" can't describe the difference between a blocky artifacted video and a clean high-bitrate video, but they will prefer the clean over the blocky and enjoy it more.

Sure, but OP argued they didn't care. I don't think its a question of conscious awareness, but rather opportunity cost.

The lessened quality is not something (most) people will cancel their subscription for, nor would they go out and buy the dvd just to get the better quality.

I think that's probably true if they got to A B test the options.

Further, they aren’t going to cancel their subscription because it’s blocky. What would they do instead, go out and buy The Office box set, and a optical drive to play it with?

These experience degradation pushes people gradually towards a cliff.

Another competing thing comes up in people's life (it need not be even in the same category), the previous one would be dropped if there are unpleasant association with it - conscious or subconscious.

OR, ..need to cut back (finance, digital wellbeing, etc.), again the first thing would go out is the one which is associated with less value i.e., of lesser quality, not living upto expectation, and so on..

You would still buy the burger even if it has a few fewer sesame seeds, would you? ... until there are just three artfully placed seeds on each bun and nobody buys any?

No, but they might pirate (but I bet yify is even worse)

On the contrary, the pirated media I've seen has been by far the highest-quality. It doesn't have to be delivered live, so encoding can be more efficient, and the source is almost always a 4k blu-ray or whatever else is the best that can be bought. In many cases it's even better than playing it through a DVD player because your computer uses better codecs.

Netflix (and most of Youtube) is offline encoded.

I believe the limitation being referred to is that they're bandwidth-constrained -- encoding for streaming needs to strongly favor size over quality.

Netflix needs a movie to be 500MB whereas torrents can happily be 2-8GB

Or 50GB, for some torrents 4K torrents.

I've heard from Netflix people that they re-encode their entire library every month. They are continually improving their encoding and storage tools so the streaming bandwidth/quality savings dwarfs the costs of re-encoding.

Is it really easy to find high quality pirated content?

I've got the impression that highly-compressed content is often so popular that bigger/higher quality files are hard to find.

As someone who occasionally downloads unlicensed content, I find that most movies (and occasionally high profile TV shows or those with a focus on visuals--like BBC's nature docs) are available in multiple qualities.

There are the basic 300-700mb copies for people who just want to watch something and don't have the time or bandwidth to bother with amazing quality (these look like your typical compressed cable or "tube" stream).

Then there are the 720/1080 versions which are still pretty compressed but at least encoded with decent settings and at a resolution that doesn't look bad on an average TV. Often these are "webrips" where someone capped the stream from Amazon or whatever online streaming rental service had the movie.

And last are the massive bluray rips that can go over 50GB in size and include 10bit HDR video, Dolby Atmos, etc. I never bother with these because honestly, if I'm pirating a movie/show it's because I'm not sure I'll enjoy it or it's just not available for me to watch yet. The movies I would want in maximum quality are the ones I would be buying anyway.

I'm sure plenty of people can't or won't buy the official blurays so these are the alternative, but for me, "bootleg" copies are the equivalent of "I'd watch it if it was on TV" but not a replacement for stuff I'm really invested in seeing at max quality because I love it.

Amazon's 1080p copies are usually very good quality, certainly comparable to the bluray release. Pirates have been able to download and strip DRM from there and itunes, etc. for a long time, no capturing+re-encoding necessary.

(Throwaway account)

Depends on the content but if it’s something remotely popular, and was released on BluRay, the answer is yes. The most popular torrent at the moment apparently 1.92GB BluRay rip of Joker (2019), with 8k seeders.

There’re 2 higher-quality versions found on the Internets, 6GB and 16GB. Both have 4k video encoded in 10-bit h265, have 5.1 / 7.1 audio, the former one has 1k seeders, the latter 100. These numbers are very approximate, I haven’t downloaded nor watched that movie. But usually, even 100 seeders is enough to saturate my 120 mbit/sec download link.

YMMV.

What makes you think it’s worse exactly?

I’m probably on the few folks who was searching for a copy of “The Witcher Season 1” on Blu-ray until I realized Netflix wouldn’t want to compete against its own platform.

Would be a major point of contention for content producers seeking to become Netflix originals. Traditional studios still produce lossless versions which then see re-releases in whatever format would be best decades after the original run has ended e.g. Sopranos getting a BR release, etc

Many popular Netflix originals have been released on Blu-Ray.

I'm on the Netflix SD service. It's never bothered me at all and I don't see a particular reason to upgrade.

I enjoy watching the BBC on HD, however for stuff like the Attenborough films.

I have watched Planet Earth in 4K (Real 4K not Netflix "4K"). on my new Home Cinema and it's the most beautiful digital content I have ever witnessed. Absolutely incredible.

I think that’s the best use for 4k, there are lots of tiny details in nature that come to life in 4k. For other things, movies and such it may even make it worse in some cases, too much detail isn’t always better.

Recently switched from a - what used to be high-end 10 years ago - 1080p plasma TV to a 4k OLED with HDR, and I must say, the HDR is much more impressive than the 4k tbh... 1080p with HDR would be fine for me...

I personally don't care. I even usually opt for the cheaper Netflix without "Full HD".