I think I must not have elaborated correctly if that's what you took away. I'm solely anti "not caring enough to know". Not knowing enough to care is a stage of development for every person, thus it would be a fruitless exercise to be occupied with that concern. To better capture the spirit of my contempt, the conversation between myself and a former acquaintance will be dramatized by 2 bears, I will be #1.
#1: Oh yeah I have a good copy, I can drop by and transfer it to you
#2: Nevermind that, I can put it on my USB
#1: What size do you have?
#2: I think 1 Gig
#1: It won't fit, I'll just stop by, it's already on my external
#2: It'll fit cause it has nothing on it
#1: Yeah but it's like 4 gigs
#2: Why is it so big?
#1: That's pretty normal for a 720p H.264
#2: What does that mean?
#1: It's a hi-def file, you know, usually MKV
#2: All the movies I get are around 700 megs
#1: You probably download XVIDs
#2: Oh yeah, those, they have the best quality
#1: Dude, let me put my copy on your laptop, and we'll hook it up to your TV, and play both this movie and your XVID, and then I'll let you state which has the best quality
#2: Isn't it still XVID
#1: No it's x264
#2: Oh nevermind I don't want it
#1: I can even set your system up to play them just fine, wouldn't take me more time than it does to transfer the file over USB
#2: I don't care, if it's not XVID, why would I want it
#1: Because I'd assume you like it in the best quality possible
#2: Yeah that's why I'll wait for the XVID
#1: Both versions are already out
#2: Then I'm gonna download the XVID
#1: But I could transfer the file to you in less time than it would take you to download
#2: Yeah but you don't have the XVID
#1: That's what I'm telling you, x264 is way better than XVID at the same bitrate and mine probably has 5 times the bit rate of an XVID
#2: I don't care
#1: And for stuff you play when hooked up to your TV is going to look a hell of a lot better
#2: I don't care
#1: It fucking prints money
#2: I don't care
#1: It can grant up to 3 wishes, even if one of those wishes is the XVID copy
#2: I don't care...
When I first saw that YouTube video, I was reminded of having a conversation, which was so similar in nature, with someone on a video codec subject. I started to describe in more detail about xvid/divx/avi/h.264/x264, and it literally ended with him telling me to shut up because xvid is better than whatever shit I'm talking about because he's seen xvid. It just got really ridiculous, and I never bothered to talk or hang out with him again. Naturally you should assume it wasn't the first time I had an argument with th8is particular individual. So now that I've elaborated, I'll stop with that point.
Does viewing in non-HD detract from the enjoyment of a movie ? No more than watching in B&W does.
Can I just interject to say that personally it does bother me quite a bit, being a videophile, if there is such a thing. I could place on exhibit... cams, but I'd rather stick to material that I've sat through. XVID artifacts that appear mostly because the bit rates are still being impractically restricted, really do irritate me to the point I just start cussing at the screen and beg for one of these fairytale Armageddon scenarios claim the population of life. And at the same time, a bunch of people pop up on and comment, "hey great quality, 10/V 10/A" from when I used to grab stuff in public just flip my switch a whole new level. It shouldn't irritate me as much as it does... but ohhhh it does. It's not their fault, it's the situation of the fsing community out there.
Technology is transient,art on the other hand is timeless.Therefore you are an idiot.
As to your infantile final judgments on things and people...
First of all, either something resonated really poorly with you, or you've majorly erred in judgment. I am in my own way venting, but I haven't taken anything out on anyone else in here, so it's a bit uncalled for, and I can't really pinpoint why you'd have the urge to throw that in. It just doesn't fit with the flow of your post.
Art, among its many services, provides entertainment. Technology is more than a delivery mechanism for art, it enhances it as well. A phonograph may have its charm to some, but wouldn't you prefer to hear Bolero's Revel @ 320 kbits/s on a home theatre system? Let's extend this analogy outside of art to comment on human taste. I know some people who, with deepest conviction, do not care what car they drive as long as it gets them from point A to point B. I am not one of those people, I have preferences tailored to type, color, styling, fuel efficiency, comfort, power. I'm very picky, and I understand that I'm more critical than most people. Ok I'm not actually going to finish my point because this is long-winded and I'm not sure if anyone's even going to read it. If you made it this far, use your imagination, I still have to read the rest of these posts.
I don't understand how pirating movies quite equates to wishing to be accepted. The two are largely unrelated, and the fact is, I probably end up watching the movie by myself, or by at most one friend with me
This made me think. The only time I watch xvids nowadays is when these 2 conditions are met:
1) I absolutely cannot find whatsoever a 1080i mpeg2 cap, DVD source or 720p x264/vc-1/etc
2) I have someone to watch it with...
To me this means I can only ignore the quality potential gap if I have someone there to share the content with.
example...
Avatar: the Last Airbender, a series which I paid no attention to until I heard about it enough times on The Totally Rad Show, which lead to watching the first season on Netflix, and downloading the 2nd and 3rd seasons as xvids. Right now, it's the only thing in my library with xvid. I wouldn't mind so much if most people actually bothered to optimize their encodes, but most of it is scene, which holds onto this archaic system of having the exact same file size to the MB and race to release. I may have just shown how little I know about scene, but that's how I've understood it thus far.